Reality vs Practicality

Yesterday Andrew McCarthy posted an article at National Review about birthright citizenship. President Trump is considering ending birthright citizenship by executive order. Actually, it’s not so much a question of ending birthright citizenship as it is reviewing exactly what the 14th Amendment actually says.

The article explains:

My friend John Eastman explained why the 14th Amendment does not mandate birthright citizenship in this 2015 New York Times op-ed. In a nutshell, the Amendment states: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” The highlighted term, “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” was understood at the time of adoption to mean not owing allegiance to any other sovereign. To take the obvious example, if a child is born in France to a married couple who are both American citizens, the child is an American citizen.

If I am living in Britain on a work visa and have a child, that child is not automatically a British citizen. Why should America do things differently?

The article concludes:

Moreover, it seems to me that, because Congress has weighed in on citizenship by codifying the 14th Amendment, the courts will swat down any executive order on the ground that it exceeds the president’s authority. That is, the courts will not even have to reach the merits of what jurisdiction means for purposes of the 14th Amendment and Section 1401.

We have seen something like this in an area of more certain executive power. President Bush attempted unilaterally to set up military commissions in wartime under his commander-in-chief authority. Even though there was plenty of precedent supporting this, the Supreme Court invalidated the commissions and told the president he needed Congress’s statutory blessing. (Congress later enacted the Military Commissions Act.)

Consequently, if the president actually issues an executive order changing the birthright-citizenship policy, I doubt the sun will set before an injunction is issued. I am in favor of changing the current understanding of birthright citizenship, but I believe such a change must be done by statute to have any hope of surviving court-scrutiny . . . and even then, I give it less than a 50-50 chance.

Stay tuned.

Why We Need Concealed Carry

Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about an incident in an Alabama McDonald’s.

The article reports:

Once again: The Second Amendment saves. 

The father, who hasn’t been publicly named, was leaving the fast food place on Saturday when a masked man walked in and began shooting.

The dad then pulled his own weapon and started firing at the masked shooter — becoming the shooter’s target in the process.

The father sustained life-threatening injuries, according to WBRC. His son is recovering from his own gun-related injuries. The masked gunman, meanwhile, died from wounds suffered during the incident.

Police aren’t sure what the masked gunman was after — whether he was trying to rob McDonald’s or shoot someone within the establishment. But what’s sure is the father is not going to be charged.

The thing that stopped the shooting from being a massacre was a good guy with a gun who shot the bad guy with a gun, Thank God for gun rights in America.

The article concludes:

Simply put: If it hadn’t been for that armed dad, the bloodshed would’ve been a lot worse. If not for his gun-toting self, the media reports on this would be a lot different, a lot more tragic, and the focus would be on how many were murdered, not saved.

“The shooting took place at the McDonald’s across from Princeton Hospital,” WBRC reported. “A masked man entered the restaurant when an employee opened the door for a father and his sons to leave. The masked man then opened fire in the restaurant. At that point, the father began shooting at the masked man.”

Aside from the father and one of his sons, nobody else was reported injured. Nobody else, aside from the masked gunman, was killed.

This unidentified father deserves a hero’s award for quick and life-saving thinking. Once again, it’s a case of the Second Amendment saving untold numbers from disaster.

Yes,

When Success Becomes Political

It is in the best interests of all Americans for the country to prosper. Unfortunately, some of our politicians have forgotten that principal.

Stephen Moore posted an article at Townhall today with the following title, “Why the Left Hates Prosperity,” It’s an interesting premise.

The article states:

Here is Moore’s rule of modern-day politics: The better the economy performs under President Donald Trump and the more successes he racks up, the more unhinged the left becomes. It’s a near linear relationship. And it goes for media as well.

That’s why the monthly jobs announcements and the quarterly GDP reports, like the one released Oct. 26, are the unhappiest days of the year for the Trump haters. News of 3.5 to 4 percent growth and 7 million surplus jobs are the bane of the resistance movement’s existence.

The usual charge against President Trump is the he has moved the Republican party to the far right and ended the days of compromise with the likes of Ted Kennedy. Just for the record, that wasn’t compromise–it was capitulation (aka losing).

The article continues:

Liberals want a return to the days when the GOP’s standard bearers were people like George H.W. Bush, Bob Michel, Bob Dole, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and most recently, John Kasich.

Think. What do all these Republicans have in common? Losing.

My intention isn’t to disparage these men. I have known all of them and respect them all — especially the noble war heroes. Michel was a Republican minority leader beloved by the left for years and years, precisely because he kept the House Republicans where they belonged — in the minority.

I think Mr. Moore is on to something here. As long as the Republicans were shooting themselves in the foot, the Democrats loved them. Donald Trump is not your average Republican. He is probably one of the few Republicans who would have stood strong during the nomination process of Justice Kavanaugh, That’s one of many reasons why Democrats hate him.

The article concludes:

Politics is a contact sport. There aren’t many moral victories in politics. And yes, it really all does come down to winning. As two-time winner Bill Clinton used to say, you can’t change the country if you don’t win.

The problem for the Trump haters, and the reason they are so spitting angry, is that Trump is changing the country for the better. According to a Quinnipiac poll, 7 of 10 voters rate the economy as good or great. Liberals are doubly angry and frustrated because they were so sure he would fail. Perhaps they are the ones who are intellectually inferior.

I strongly suggest that you follow the link and read the entire article–there is a lot of insight in what Mr. Moore is saying. No one likes to lose, but at least the Republicans were gracious about it–too gracious.

Results vs. Spin

The American economy has done very well under President Trump. The fact that many Americans now have jobs, bonuses, and pay raises has not gone unnoticed by many voters. Many Americans have simply tuned out the constant anti-Truemp drumbeat of the mainstream media. Voters are looking at the economic results of the Trump administration–not the spin of the media.

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit reported:

Trump approval hits 50% after tumultuous week of violent attacks that shook the nation.

The latest Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Monday shows that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters approve of President Trump’s job performance. Forty-nine percent (49%) disapprove.

President Barack Obama had an approval rating of 44% on October 29, 2010 before his party suffered HUGE losses in the 2010 midterm elections.

And that is despite an attacking media that is 92% negative in its Trump coverage.

The mainstream media has become so biased that they are not taken seriously. If they want to regain some of their status, they might try simply reporting the news and letting people form their own opinions.

An Article From September That I Missed

Reason posted an article in September with the following title, “New Research Confirms We Got Cholesterol All Wrong.”

The article reports:

A comprehensive new study on cholesterol, based on results from more than a million patients, could help upend decades of government advice about diet, nutrition, health, prevention, and medication. Just don’t hold your breath.

The study, published in the Expert Review of Clinical Pharmacology, centers on statins, a class of drugs used to lower levels of LDL-C, the so-called “bad” cholesterol, in the human body. According to the study, statins are pointless for most people.

“No evidence exists to prove that having high levels of bad cholesterol causes heart disease, leading physicians have claimed” in the study, reports the Daily Mail. The Express likewise says the new study finds “no evidence that high levels of ‘bad’ cholesterol cause heart disease.”

The study also reports that “heart attack patients were shown to have lower than normal cholesterol levels of LDL-C” and that older people with higher levels of bad cholesterol tend to live longer than those with lower levels.

It is estimated that 11 million Americans take statins to lower their cholesterol. A Forbes article from 2008 states that ” 25 million more should be on them (statins).”

The article at Reason concludes:

What’s more, if bad cholesterol isn’t so bad, then the benefits of so-called good cholesterol are also under assault. Recently, *HDL, the so-called “good” cholesterol, was itself deemed suspect in some cases.

Dietary fat also appears not to be the danger the government says it is. Another new study, reported on by Ron Bailey this week, suggests, as he writes, that the federal government’s warnings to avoid dairy products that are high in fat “is bunk.”

I’m not a nutritionist. I don’t know if the science on cholesterol is settled. But the federal government has warned us for decades about cholesterol in our bodies and in our food. The fact those warnings are now changing means the government has, despite what I’m sure are the good intentions of everyone involved, been handing out poor dietary advice and developing regulations that reflect that poor advice.

I’m one of many who has called out the DGAC and the federal government for foisting “decades of confusing and often-contradictory dietary advice” upon the American public. I also suggested, in a column last year, that one way the government might back up its claims to possess invaluable and unparalleled expertise in the areas of food policy and nutrition would be stop regularly reversing or altering its recommendations.

“The reason that we don’t know about these huge reversals in dietary advice is that the nutrition establishment is apparently loathe to make public their major reversals in policy,” Teicholz says. “The low-fat diet is another example: neither the AHA or the dietary guidelines recommend a low-fat diet anymore. But they have yet to announce this to the American public. And some in the establishment are still fighting to retain the low-fat status quo.”

I am not your doctor, nor your nutritionist. I have no idea what you should eat. Maybe the government should adopt that mantra, too.

We really don’t know as much about our bodies as we think we do.

One Has To Wonder About Their Motives

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article with the following headline, “Leaked Documents Prove Soros’s Open Society Is Working with UN in Supporting Current Illegal Migrant Crisis.”

The article includes the following:

Also in 2016 Breitbart.com obtained a leaked document from the Soros Open Society Foundation that reveals their close links to UN migration representative and former Goldman Sachs executive Peter Sutherland.

The George Soros Open Society also claims that through Sutherland they are able to influence international migration policy due to the current migrant crisis.

…George Soros’ Open Society Foundation admits influence and incredibly close links with UN migration representative and former Goldman Sachs executive Peter Sutherland in leaked document.

The paper, which told of how the migrant crisis presented an “opportunity” for the foundation to extend its global influence and attract more money, mentions Sutherland’s pro-migrant work. The foundation notes that through Sutherland they have been able to advocate at an “elite level” behind the scenes.

Open Society are one of the contributors to the Columbia Global Policy Initiative (CGPI) which hosts Mr. Sutherland and claim that through Sutherland they are able to influence international migration policy due to the current migrant crisis. On the United Nations website Sutherland is described as a “strong advocate for promoting practical action to increase the benefits of migration” and has routinely made comments against national borders and national sovereignty in Europe. Sutherland has even called for the European Union to “undermine the homogeneity” of member states.

Sutherland has even gone as far as defending all migrants regardless of whether or not they are legitimate refugees saying, “We’re not just talking, either, about refugees. We’re talking about economic migrants, many of whom could be the future, and some at the present… are survival fighters. They’re not to be dismissed as an irrelevance.”

It is becoming obvious that the United Nations has lost its way.

This is the Preamble to the United Nations Charter:

  • to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind, and
  • to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and
  • to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained, and
  • to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

There is nothing in that Preamble about overwhelming countries with migrants in order to abolish national borders. If the United Nations truly worked for justice and human rights in the countries the migrants are fleeing, the migrants would not be fleeing.

We have to stop the migrant caravan at our border and insist that the people in the caravan go through the legal process of immigration. While we are at it, it might be a really good idea to get rid of the United Nations.

 

 

 

Hoisted On Your Own Petard

There are many Americans who believe that Robert Mueller is engaged in a witch hunt. The indictment of thirteen Russian companies was part of that witch hunt. The plan was that the indictments would show that there really was Russian influence, the people involved in the companies indicted would never set foot in America, and Mueller would look as if he actually found evidence of Russian interference. Well, the best laid plans…

The Gateway Pundit posted an article today updating us on the status of the Russian companies who supposedly interfered in our election. Things have not gone as planned for Mr. Mueller.

The article reports:

In an effort to tie their corrupt investigation to Russia, the Mueller team indicted 13 Russians after presenting their cases to a grand jury in February of this year. Immediately, these indictments were suspect as everyone on to the corrupt Mueller team knew that these ‘Russians’ would never be brought to justice, even if they were real, because they would never come to the US to stand trial and risk being put in jail.

Unfortunately for Mueller however, this soon turned into a royal mess. Lawyers defending one of three Russian companies indicted with the 13 Russians, Concord Management, showed up for court. Mueller’s team was caught off guard and never expected this. They immediately asked the judge for more time but the judge denied their pleas noting that they were the ones who indicted the Russian company in the first place.

When the case proceeded, the Concord attorney’s noted that another of the three companies indicted by Mueller was not in existence at the time of Mueller’s indictment. They called this a case of Mueller indicting the proverbial ‘ham sandwich’.

At a following court appearance, the attorneys representing Concord stated that the corrupt Mueller team’s allegations of 13 Russian individuals impacting the 2016 election were “made up” nonsense. The individuals were not even real.

The article continues:

Concord Management’s lawyers revealed that Mueller’s team had ignored over 70 discovery requests they had made for information in the case. In response Mueller’s team offered to give Concord Management’s lawyers a massive amount of social media data from those dangerous trolls who sought to influence the US election and the majority of the data was in RUSSIAN.

Mueller’s lawyers then admitted that they didn’t even have English translations for the Russian social media posts. However, somehow Mueller’s lawyers believed Americans were influenced by these Russian language posts?

The case of the Russians has now turned into a big joke as the legitimacy of the Mueller indictment is being challenged by Concord Management.

In a hearing on October 15th, Concord Management claimed that the Special Counsel’s entire case is built around a 100 year old law that he Mueller team is trying to use in a manner it was not built for.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It is rather complex, but gives a lot of insight as to the political aspects of Mueller’s investigation, Hopefully this mess will be wrapped up shortly. It has cost American taxpayers large sums of money and is strictly the result of political maneuvering.

Who’s In The Caravan?

On October 25th, Judicial Watch posted an article about the caravan heading for the southern border of America. The title of the article is, “Guatemalan Authorities Rescue Group of Minors from Human Smugglers in Caravan.”

The article reports:

Judicial Watch has obtained exclusive information and photos from Guatemalan authorities revealing that they have recovered seven unaccompanied minors from human smugglers working inside the caravan. The children have been taken into custody and they are being provided with food, water and medical attention, according to a high-level Guatemalan government official. The smugglers have been arrested and the broader investigation into criminal activity in the caravan is ongoing.

A Judicial Watch team, headed by Director of Investigations Chris Farrell, spent several days on the Guatemala-Honduras border covering the illegal alien caravan, which originated in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. The team filed a number of exclusive reports and videos and met with Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales and other top government officials.

“Judicial Watch has been at the forefront of this top news story, reporting exclusive information from inside that no other news organization is reporting,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Chris Farrell and Irene Garcia put themselves in harm’s way to get this material, and Judicial Watch supporters nationwide are highly grateful for their sacrifices.”

In articles posted October 26th, Judicial Watch reported:

The migrant caravan marching northbound through Central America is an “elaborately planned” movement that’s benefiting human smugglers and bringing disturbing numbers of violent gang members and other criminal elements through Guatemala, according to government sources in the capital city.

“MS-13 gang members have been detained and coyotes (human smugglers) are joining the march with clients who pay to get smuggled into the United States,” a Guatemalan official told Judicial Watch. People from Asian countries waiting to get smuggled into the U.S. through Central America are also integrating with poor Hondurans in the caravan, a high-level Guatemalan government source confirmed. Among them are nationals of Bangladesh, a south Asian Islamic country that’s well known as a recruiting ground for terrorist groups such as ISIS and Al-Qaeda Indian Subcontinent (AQIS). “There are lots of dirty businesses associated with this,” Guatemalan authorities told Judicial Watch. “There’s lots of human trafficking.”

Sandwiched between Honduras and Mexico, Guatemala has been overrun with the onslaught of migrants that began their journey last week in the northern Honduran city of San Pedro Sula. At last count around 7,000 have participated in the trek, a great deal of them rowdy, angry men ages 17 to 40. President Jimmy Morales has ordered the military and police to detain all of the migrants and facilitate their safe return back to Honduras, though thousands have already reached the Mexican border. In a morning interview with Judicial Watch at the Guatemalan Ministry of Defense, Secretary of Defense General Luis Miguel Ralda Moreno said more than 2,000 Hondurans have been sent back home on buses. “We’re doing everything possible to stop the caravan while still respecting human rights,” General Moreno said.

During an afternoon interview at the National Palace, President Morales said that Guatemala has absorbed the huge cost of mobilizing police and military to return thousands of people to Honduras. He would like the United States to help him find the organizers of the caravan so they can face legal consequences. “Mass immigration like this endangers lives,” Morales said. “This is unprecedented. We are in the process of investigating who is behind the caravan.” Morales assures that Guatemala is doing everything possible to curb illegal immigration and asked for cooperation from the United States.

It has been a delicate and complicated task, Guatemalan officials say, because the caravan is a very organized movement that has been well orchestrated. There are rest points along the route with food, water and shelter for the migrants as well as medical care in some areas. “It’s very strategic and extremely organized,” a Guatemalan government source told Judicial Watch. “It is very complex, not a simple march. There is nothing spontaneous about it.” During a visit to the Guatemalan-Honduran border this week Judicial Watch interviewed multiple migrants who repeated the same rehearsed line when asked who organized the caravan, insisting it was a spontaneous event even though there were clearly organizers shouting instructions in Spanish and putting select persons in front of cameras for interviews. All of them said the caravan was not about politics but rather poverty.

Guatemalan officials disagree, estimating that the caravan is a movement of radicalized forces to destabilize Central American countries. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, a conservative, echoes that assessment. In a local newspaper report published last week Hernández asserted that leftist interests seeking to destabilize the country are manipulating migrants. Women and children are being used without regard to the risks to their lives, Hernández said. “The irregular mobilization was organized for political reasons to negatively affect the governance and image of Honduras and to destabilize the peace of neighboring countries,” the president said, adding that many have returned to the country after realizing they’ve been fooled.

We need to use whatever force is necessary to keep the people in the caravan from illegally entering America. If they are economic migrants, they need to come here legally through our immigration system. What we see happening is an illustration of the fact that Congress is unwilling to deal with this issue. Congress is responsible for making laws in the United States. They have not put in place sane immigration laws because the Democrats believe that the illegals will eventually become legalized and be a Democrat voting bloc and the Republican big money wants cheap labor. Meanwhile ordinary Americans are caught in the middle.

A Story That Needs To Be Told

On October 6, Neal Pollack posted an opinion piece in The New York Times. The title of the opinion piece is, “I’m Just a Middle-Aged House Dad Addicted to Pot.”

The opinion piece details the author’s journey from using marijuana regularly in his 20’s to the realization that he was hooked on the drug.

Some observations from the author:

I started smoking regularly in the ’90s, when I was in my mid-20s. Pot made everything better — food, music, sex, cleaning — and it made nothing worse. I got depressed less often. I laughed all the time.

But I also lost my temper for no reason. Did I yell at strangers in public? Probably. I barely remember, because I was stoned. But I do remember that once, high as a promotional blimp, I got into a bar fight with a former friend and broke his tooth with a beer bottle.

Back when my writing career was booming, I got invited a couple of times to do readings in Amsterdam, a bad gig for a pot addict. Once, after ingesting a couple of THC pills, I dumped a pitcher of water over my head and insulted the Iraqi representative to National Poetry Day Amsterdam. Another time, I pulled down my pants and flashed a crowd of several hundred. If I had any boundaries, weed erased them thoroughly. The boom ended fast.

…In early November (2017), I had the chance to fulfill my lifelong dream of attending a Dodgers World Series game. I spent way too much money on a ticket that turned out to be fake. So high that I couldn’t remember where I’d parked, I started screaming outside the stadium. If I’d been sober, I would have just called the vendor and gotten a refund. That’s what I ended up doing, eventually. But not before security guards surrounded me.

I looked into a car mirror and saw an old man, sobbing over a baseball game. That was the moment I accepted that I had a problem. Three weeks later, I quit.

Mr. Pollack has a few thoughts on how to handle the legalization of marijuana:

There’s a reason that Alcoholics Anonymous started in 1935, two years after the end of Prohibition. Alcohol abuse became rampant, and the country almost drank itself off the rails. Will the same thing happen with marijuana?

Marijuana isn’t alcohol or an opioid. You can’t die from an overdose. It doesn’t really evince physical cravings. So is it better to call my problem marijuana “dependence”? Does it matter?

Cannabis should be legal, just as alcohol should be legal. But marijuana addiction exists, and it almost wrecked my life. If you have a problem, you are not alone.

I personally think marijuana should be limited to medicinal purposes and be a controlled substance. In places where it is legal, children have gotten into mom and dad’s stash and had severe medical issues. There is also an increase in auto accidents due to driving while under the influence of marijuana. I understand that the concept of medical marijuana has been abused in the past, and I have no solution for that. I just think most people function better when they are not under the influence of drugs (or alcohol).

Things To Note…

European law, the Dublin Regulation, requires that asylum seekers register their asylum claim in the first country they arrive in, and that the decision of the first EU country they apply in is the final decision in all EU countries. This is the international law on asylum seekers. Somehow a lot of the American news media has neglected to mention that. The migrant caravan currently making its way to America is from Honduras. America is not the first country they have arrived in. It should also be noted that Mexico has a vested interest in stopping this caravan–if the caravan causes America to build the wall and stop illegal immigration, the amount of money sent from America to Mexico will decrease drastically. Those are only two aspects of the problem.

Hot Air posted an article about the caravan today dealing with some of the actions the Mexican government has taken regarding the caravan.

The article reports:

If you had any doubts about the intentions of the migrants in the Honduran caravan you can put them to rest. Mexico continues to make good faith efforts to deal with the flood of humanity in a legal fashion, but the organizers of the caravan have no interest in the law. This week the Mexican government offered the travelers refuge, supplies and the opportunity for permanent residency in two southern states if they applied for asylum. While hundreds of the Hondurans took them up on the offer, thousands more took a vote and decided once again to reject the plan, insisting that they were heading to the United States.

…As we’re seeing in this story, Mexico is also trying to take on the role of a Safe Third Country Agreement participant, even though we haven’t formalized that deal with them yet. By offering the migrants asylum status and temporary food and lodging while their claims are processed, there’s no reason the vast majority of them couldn’t remain in Chiapas and Oaxaca. It represents a major drain on Mexico’s resources to make such an offer and they should be earning a lot of credit and support from the United States for doing so.

Unfortunately, as I noted at the top, most of the migrants have no interest in accepting the offer. They plan to march on the United States border uninvited. We have no more ability to process that many requests in a short period of time than Mexico does and the travelers have already demonstrated what they plan to do if their demands can’t be immediately accommodated. They jumped one border crossing over from Guatemala to Mexico and they will obviously do it again when they reach the United States.

The caravan has more than 1,000 miles to go before they reach Texas. That gives us some time to come up with a plan to stop what can only honestly be described as an invasion. But that time isn’t unlimited, so the state and federal governments need to be working together and preparing for their arrival.

This may get very ugly, and we can depend on the American media to report anything that happens as unfairly as possible. However, we need to remember that as a sovereign county we have the right and responsibility to protect our borders. We also need to remember that the federal government is charged with protecting our borders. When the sympathy stories come out about these poor people, remember that they had a legal chance to settle in Mexico, they were paid to be part of the invasion of America’s southern border, and that the majority of them are military-age young men, The caravan heading for America is a disaster on many levels,

I Don’t Like Federal Regulations, But…

America ideally is a land of equal opportunity. To some extent that is true, but there are some people who abuse their position and take advantage of the generosity of the American people. A story posted in The Boston Herald yesterday illustrates how a charity can be used for personal gain–I am not talking about the Clinton Foundation, but the Clinton Foundation might have gotten a few ideas from what I am about to share.

The article reports:

Do you know how much money Joe Kennedy, the former congressman, is now making at his “nonprofit”?

According to the most recent documents, his “public charity” has filed with the state attorney general, in 2016 Kennedy pocketed a total of $824,929 — $109,336 from Citizens Energy and $715,703 from “related organizations.”

His second wife, Beth, grabbed another $316,573 — $55,222 from Citizens Energy and $261,351 from those “related organizations.”

…Kerry Kennedy, got back into the news recently.

… like her older brother, Kerry, too, is fabulously well-to-do thanks to a family “nonprofit.”

The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights foundation pays her $352,298 a year, including a $70,000 “bonus.”

…Reading the stories about Kerry’s big payday reminded me of Joe K. And it’s not only him and the second missus who are getting rich off the Citizens Energy gig —  I mean, nonprofit.

According to the public filing, CE’s CEO, one Peter Smith, made $627,983 in 2016. The chief financial officer, Ernest Panos, pocketed $447,260. Joe’s flack in his congressional office —  Brian O’Connor —  now makes $240,962 a year at Citizens Energy.

Charity Navigator, a somewhat reliable source for rating charities, does not rate Citizens Energy Corp because Charity Navigator only rates organizations that are classified as 501(c)(3) and able to accept tax-deductible donations. Citizens Energy Corp is classified as a 501(c)(4). However, just as a point of reference, Charity Navigator does rate the Clinton Foundation as 92.40 out of 100. I find that somewhat questionable.

It seems to me that there are people making large amounts of money due to the generosity of the American people. The government should not be in the business of determining the wages of anyone, but it seems to me that those running non-profit organizations should be paid salaries more in line with the average American. Helping people in need should not be a million-dollar-a-year job. I suspect the only way to deal with this problem is for the American people to pay more attention to the charities they support. More transparency from charities would also be helpful. Americans are a very generous people. It is unfortunate that there are those among us who are taking advantage of that generosity.

Europe’s War On Free Speech

Many years ago I met Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff at a dinner in Stoughton, Massachusetts (story here). She told her story of being charged with hate speech for teaching a course about Mohammad that included identifying him as a pedophile (story here).

Today, Reason posted an article about a decision by the European Court of Human Rights that most knowledgeable observers recognize as the case of Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff. The title of the article is, “European Court: OK to Criminalize Calling Mohammed a Pedophile.”

The article reports:

The case, decided yesterday by the European Court of Human Rights, is E.S. v. Austria — I assume from the facts and from the initials that this is the Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff case. Here’s the court’s own summary:

Criminal conviction and fine for statements accusing the Prophet Muhammad of paedophilia: no violation

Facts – The applicant held seminars with the title “Basic information on Islam” at the right-wing Freedom Party Education Institute. At one such seminar, referring to a marriage which Muhammad had concluded with Aisha, a six-year old, and consummated when she had been nine, she stated inter alia “[Muhammad] liked to do it with children”, “the thing with Aisha and child sex” and “a 56-year-old and a six-year-old? What do you call that? Give me an example? What do we call it, if it is not paedophilia?”

In 2011, as a result of these statements, the applicant was convicted of disparagement of religious precepts pursuant to Article 188 of the Criminal Code. She was sentenced to pay a fine of EUR 480, or serve 60 days of imprisonment in the event of default.

The domestic courts made a distinction between child marriages and paedophilia. In their opinion, by accusing Muhammad of paedophilia, the applicant had merely sought to defame him, without providing evidence that his primary sexual interest in Aisha had been her not yet having reached puberty or that his other wives or concubines had been similarly young. In particular, the applicant had disregarded the fact that the marriage with Aisha had continued until the Prophet’s death, when she had already turned eighteen and had therefore passed the age of puberty.

The thing to remember here is that there is no regard for truth here.  What Ms. Sabaditsch-Wolff said about Mohammad is true, but according to Sharia Law, any speech that a Muslim does not like can be considered slander. In a country under Sharia Law, you can be executed for slander. Is Europe moving toward a Sharia Law definition of slander by calling it hate speech? In America we have the First Amendment (at least for now). We need to protect our First Amendment rights because they are somewhat unique–even in the western world. In Britain and Canada pastors have been charged with hate speech for quoting the Bible on such issues as homosexuality. Their pastors are not free to share the Bible in its entirety. In America we need to make sure we elect leaders who will abide by the Constitution and protect free speech.

I strongly suggest you follow the link above to read the entire article at Reason. The thought that you can go to prison for telling the truth is chilling.

 

Good Economic News

The Gateway Pundit is reporting today that the third quarter GDP was 3.5 percent.

The article reports:

The US GDP for the third quarter was reported at a whopping 3.5% under the leadership of President Donald Trump. This was another BIG Trump win which doubles the first quarter growth of 2.2%. 

President Obama never reached an annual GDP Growth rate of more than 3.0%.  No President over the past century had not ever been held to GDP growth rates of less than 3.0% until Obama.

The article includes the following chart:

Note the large increase in GDP ratio to debt between 2007 and 2009. The way to bring that ratio back down is to grow the economy. It will be a slow process, but it can be done.

One thing to keep in mind when looking at the above numbers is what would have happened had Hillary Clinton been elected in 2016. The policies of President Obama would have continued–slow economic growth, high unemployment, increased dependency on food stamps, etc. One political theory that is embraced by some in the political left is Cloward Piven.

The Cloward-Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a national system of “a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty”.

I believe that the outcome of the Cloward-Piven theory was the goal of the economic policies of President Obama and expected President Hillary Clinton. We have temporarily dodged that bullet, but we need to remember that there are powerful Americans working toward that end.

 

There Are Unbalanced People On All Sides Of The Political Spectrum

In June of 2017, Steve Scalise was shot on a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, by a Bernie Sanders supporter.

In June 2018, Maxine Waters said the following:

“If you think we’re rallying now, you ain’t seen nothing yet. You have members of your cabinet being booed out of restaurants. You have protesters taking up at their house. We say no peace, no sleep. No peace, so sleep. And guess what? We’re going to win this battle, because while you try to quote the Bible, Jeff Sessions and others, you really don’t know the Bible. God is on our side. On the side of the children. On the side of what’s right. On the side of what’s honorable. On the side of understanding that if we can’t protect the children, we can’t protect anybody, and so let’s stay the course. Let’s make sure that we show up where ever we have to show up. If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out, and you create a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

How many Republican officials and lawmakers have been forced out of restaurants by angry mobs in recent months? The political rhetoric has reached a dangerous level in recent months. I do not think all of the blame for this falls on President Trump–I watched a few minutes of CNN yesterday and was truly surprised at the incendiary language used to malign the current President.

Today we have a suspect in the recent bombings. CNBC is reporting that the suspect has been in trouble with the law before.

The article reports:

Public records reveal that in 2002, Sayoc was arrested in Florida for allegedly making a threat to throw, place, project or discharge a destructive device, according to public records.

Sayoc, who is originally from New York, also had previously been arrested in Florida on multiple charges of theft and possession of steroids. He was convicted of grand theft in 1991 in Florida and placed on probation.

In 1994, a woman who had the same name as Sayoc’s grandmother accused him of domestic violence in the civil division of domestic violence court in Broward County, Florida. If it was Sayoc’s grandmother, she would have been about 80 years old at the time.

Sayoc filed for bankruptcy in 2012, public records show.

The mainstream media is making a big deal of the fact that the man is a registered Republican and has Trump stickers all over his van. I would just like to mention that one of the nicest people I know is a registered Republican and has Trump stickers all over his truck. The linking of this to President Trump is disingenuous at best and incendiary at worst.

Let’s tone down the rhetoric and try to work together to make America a better, safer place.

Some Overlooked History

Yesterday The American Patriot’s Daily Almanac posted the following:

On October 25, 1774, one of the first organized political actions by American women occurred in the town of Edenton, North Carolina, when fifty-one ladies gathered at the home of Mrs. Elizabeth King and signed a proclamation protesting the British tax on tea. Led by Penelope Barker, the patriots vowed to support resolves by the Provincial Deputies of North Carolina to boycott “the pernicious custom of drinking tea” and avoid British-made cloth until the tax was repealed.

The ladies of Edenton signed a resolution declaring that “we cannot be indifferent on any occasion that appears nearly to affect the peace and happiness of our country.” The boycott was, they declared, “a duty that we owe, not only to our near and dear connections . . . but to ourselves.”

It was a bold move in a time when it was considered unladylike for women to get involved in political matters. Unlike the participants of the famous Boston Tea Party, the Edenton women did not disguise themselves in costumes, but openly signed their names to their declaration “as a witness of our fixed intention and solemn determination.”

At first the British sneered at the Edenton Tea Party. One Englishman wrote sarcastically, “The only security on our side . . . is the probability that there are but few places in America which possess so much female artillery as Edenton.” They soon discovered otherwise.

Sometimes freedom has unique beginnings! Obviously the British did not understand that there was a revolution coming.

Voting Problems In Texas

Yesterday The Star-Telegram in Fort Worth reported the following:

A Fort Worth woman recently indicted on voter fraud charges paid others involved in the scheme with funds provided by a former Tarrant County Democratic Party leader, court documents filed this week say.

After learning about a state investigation, Leticia Sanchez — one of four women arrested and indicted on voter fraud charges — allegedly directed her daughter to send a text message to others in the scheme, urging them not to cooperate with investigators, state officials say.

The allegations are made in the state’s notice of intent to introduce evidence in Sanchez’s criminal case, where state officials say she was among those who collaborated to vote for certain down-ballot candidates with a number of north side residents’ mail-in ballots.

The notice, filed Tuesday, states that Sanchez engaged in organized criminal activity in collaboration with her three co-defendants; Stuart Clegg, a former executive director for the Tarrant County Democratic Party; and others.

The article reports that the voter fraud included illegally obtained mail-in ballots Forged signatures were also used on absentee ballots and mail in ballots.

The article continues:

Earlier this month, four women were arrested — Sanchez, her daughter, Leticia Sanchez Tepichin, and Rosa Solis and Laura Parra — after being indicted on more than two dozen felony counts of voter fraud.

Officials allege the women were paid to target older voters on the city’s north side “in a scheme to generate a large number of mail ballots and then harvest those ballots for specific candidates in 2016.”

The notice did not specify which candidates the suspects were allegedly paid to support, but it noted that Sanchez and others marked down-ballot candidates “without the voter’s knowledge or consent.”

AG officials have said these charges “are in connection with the 2016 Democratic primary, but the case has connections with the 2015 city council election.”

AG spokesman Jeff Hillery declined to comment when asked if any other charges would be filed.

This development comes as early voting for the Nov. 6 midterm election is underway. Voters may vote early through Nov. 2. Election Day is Nov. 6.

The article suggests that the arrest and indictment of Ms. Sanchez may be a political move because it occurred right before the election, but it seems to me that the time to find and deal with voter fraud issues is before the election. People need to know that there are consequences for committing voter fraud.

A report from The Star-Telegram today warns voters to check the voting machines carefully before recording their votes.

The article reports:

Texas voters: Take your time when casting ballots.

This advice comes as state election officials receive complaints across the state from early voters casting straight tickets on Hart eSlate machines who believe the machines changed their votes.

Two complaints, reported through a third party, have been made in Tarrant County, said Heider Garcia, elections administrator.

“We have … tested everything,” he said. “We don’t have any indication that there’s a technical issue.”

The Texas Secretary of State’s Office has issued a statement about the issue.

The article cites one example:

Evelyn Brown, a 63-year-old longtime Fort Worth voter, said she had a problem voting this week.

She had gone to the Southwest Community Center on Welch Avenue and had cast a straight party ticket.

When she reviewed the summary, she saw that her choice in the U.S. Senate race — which pits Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz against Democratic challenger U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke — had flipped to the candidate in the other party.

She spent seven or eight minutes trying to move back to change the candidate in that race, but wasn’t successful.

“I’m accustomed to using the booth,” she said. “I used the keys that let you move forward and back. It didn’t move at all. It was stuck.”

So she called the election judge over who ended up calling the Tarrant County Elections Office.

In the end, the election judge had to at least temporarily put that machine out of service. He moved Brown to a different machine, where she said she was able to cast a vote for all the candidates of her choice.

Vote carefully, Your country depends on it.

The Charges Are Unraveling

The Hill posted an article yesterday with the following heading, “A convenient omission? Trump campaign adviser denied collusion to FBI source early on.” Somehow that fact got left out of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) request.

The article reports:

Just weeks after the FBI opened a dramatic counterintelligence probe into President Trump and Russia, one of his presidential campaign advisers emphatically told an undercover bureau source there was no election collusion occurring because such activity would be treasonous.

George Papadopoulos says his spontaneous admission to London-based professor Stefan Halper occurred in mid-September 2016 — well before FBI agents and the Obama Justice Department sought a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to collect Trump campaign communications in the final days before the election.

“He was there to probe me on the behest of somebody else,” Papadopoulos told me in an interview this week, recalling the Halper meeting. “He said something along the lines of, ‘Oh, it’s great that Russia is helping you and your campaign, right George?’ ”

Papadopoulos said Halper also suggested the Trump campaign was involved in the hacking and release of Hillary Clinton’s emails that summer. “I think I told him something along the lines of, ‘I have no idea what the hell you are talking about. What you are talking about is treason. And I have nothing to do with that, so stop bothering me about it,’ ” Papadopoulos recalled.

The former campaign aide is set to testify behind closed doors Thursday before two House panels.

Sources who saw the FISA warrant and its three renewals tell me there is no mention of Papadopoulos’s denial, an omission of exculpatory evidence that GOP critics in Congress are likely to cite as having misled the court.

It is becoming more and more obvious that President Obama’s administration used the power of the federal government to spy on the Trump campaign and later to work against the Trump administration. Whether or not we will ever learn the full extent of the misuse of government agencies will depend largely on the results of the mid-term election. If the Democrats take over the House of Representatives, it is fairly certain that all investigations regarding misuse of government agencies will cease. That will send a clear message to those in power in Washington that it is okay to misuse the powers of government as long as you continue to hold power over the oversight committees that would investigate those abuses. That is not a county that we all want to live in.

Sometimes The Facts Just Don’t Agree With The Spin

Investor’s Business Daily posted an editorial yesterday about some assertions made by former President Obama in a recent speech.

The editorial notes:

In a speech at a rally in Nevada, Obama claimed that the current economic boom has nothing to do with Trump’s economic policies.

“By the time I left office,” he said, “wages were rising, uninsurance rate was falling, poverty was falling. And that’s what I handed off to the next guy. So when you hear all this talk about economic miracles right now, remember who started it.”

Well, who did start it?

The editorial explains:

GDP growth was decelerating throughout 2016. Household income was flat. The unemployment rate was flat. The stock market was flat.

And, “by 2016, wage growth began to taper off quickly,” notes the American Action Forum’s Ben Gitis.

Even The New York Times, which has been gamely trying to grant Obama credit for the current boom, now admits that 2016 was an “invisible recession.”

“There was a sharp slowdown in business investment, caused by an interrelated weakening in emerging markets, a drop in the price of oil and other commodities, and a run-up in the value of the dollar,” it explained.

Slow Growth Expected

By the end of 2016, pundits and economists were widely predicting a new era of slow economic growth. Why? Because for eight years under President Obama’s leadership, the economy struggled to even top 2% annual growth. It never reached 3%. And every single year GDP growth missed the forecasts by Obama’s own economists.

So for Obama to claim that he handed Trump a thriving economy is 100% pure poppycock.

What’s more, Obama and other liberal Democrats insisted in 2016 that if Trump were elected, he’d send the economy into a tailspin.

There is a definite difference between words and results. Former President Obama can claim all the economic success he wants, but the numbers simply do not back him up.

Asking The Right Question

First of all, The Gateway Pundit posted an article today that points out that the migrant caravan is not walking to America–they are arriving on flatbed trucks.

That actually makes sense. Who is paying for the trucks and the gasoline?

That article explains:

The migrants ‘walking’ through Mexico to reach the US appears to be more of a production than reality.

It’s clearly impossible for an individual or a group to cross the southern Mexican border and then walk all the way to the northern Mexican border in a matter of a couple of days. It is simply not possible.

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article that I believes sums up the problem with the immigrant caravan headed this way.

The article at The Daily Caller reports:

Things got awkward fast after Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Univision anchor Jorge Ramos to state exactly how many caravan members HE planned to personally take in.

Ramos, an outspoken immigration advocate, spoke with Carlson remotely on Tuesday from the caravan in southern Mexico. The Fox News host’s question came after the Univision host made several comments defending its members, including insisting unequivocally that none of them were from the Middle East.

“How many of these migrants are you taking in personally into your home and are supporting once they get into the United States?” Carlson asked.

“I think that’s a great question and that’s precisely the kind of question that people like you ask when you don’t want to understand that this has nothing to do with individuals,” responded Ramos. “It has to do with nations. And what we have to understand is that these refugees are not a threat to the United States. I know that in Fox News …”

“Before you attack Fox, this is a simple question,” Carlson interrupted. “How many are you taking in?”

After a back and forth that included Ramos stating that immigrants’ desire to come is “really a love letter to the United States,” the Fox News host pressed again: “I’m asking you a very simple question – How many of these migrants are you personally taking responsibility for? How many are going home to Jorge’s place in Miami at the end of the day? And please be specific.”

“I think that again this has nothing to do with individuals. I wish I could help all of them,” responded Ramos.

The problem is that we all want to help them, but we are not able to help all of them without overwhelming ourselves. Those who are saying we need to let in these thousands of people and feed and clothe them need to remember that we have homeless Americans (many of whom are veterans) that we need to help first. I am sorry that they have been misled to make the trip north by empty promises, but notice that the countries that they passed through on their way here have not provided them with asylum (as required by international law). The only way to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into America is to send them home.

In looking at the potention damage letting this caravan of people into the country could do, we need to remember the Cloward-Piven Strategy. The Cloward-Piven strategy is a political strategy outlined in 1966 by American sociologists and political activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven that called for overloading the U.S. public welfare system in order to precipitate a crisis that would lead to a replacement of the welfare system with a national system of “a guaranteed annual income and thus an end to poverty”. That is the promise of communism. We see how well that has worked in the past.

The Real Numbers vs The Propaganda

Guy Benson posted an article at Townhall today about taxes.

The article includes the following:

Democrats already have a well-worn, and misleading, talking point about it: 83 percent of the tax cuts go to the wealthiest 1 percent. That’s true for 2027 but only because most of the individual income tax changes expire by then…The important missing context is that the final tax legislation, which President Donald Trump signed into law Dec. 22, allows most of its individual income tax provisions to expire by 2027, making the tax benefit distribution more lopsided for the top 1 percent than in earlier years. In 2018, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center, the top 1 percent of income earners would glean 20.5 percent of the tax cut benefits — a sizable chunk, but far less than the figure that’s preferred by Democrats. And in 2025, that percentage would be 25.3 percent, with the top 1 percent (those earning above $837,800) getting an average tax cut of $61,090. Just two years later, in 2027, the percentage of tax benefits to this income group jumps to 82.8 percent, “because almost all individual income tax provisions would sunset after 2025,” explains TPC. 

The article explains who pays income taxes:

The much-maligned top one percent paid more than 37 percent of all federal income taxes that year, which is the most recent on record for which we have data.  The top three percent footed just over half of the total federal income tax bill.  And those in the top five percent were responsible for paying nearly 60 cents of every federal income tax dollar collected by Uncle Sam.  If you look at the black lines on the bar graph above, you will see that the federal income tax share paid by “the rich” far outpaced their respective portions of the nation’s overall earnings.  The bottom half of US earners — 50 percent of the country — paid approximately three percent of all federal income taxes in 2016, slightly less than the contributions of the top .001 percent alone.  The Left’s political stories about “fair shares” and “millionaires and billionaires” may pack a potent rhetorical punch in the service of fueling grievance politics and class warfare, but they’re not grounded in facts and omit crucial perspective.  It’s worth noting that in the latest NBC/WSJ poll, the GOP holds a record-high 15 point lead over Democrats on the economy.

It really is time to consider a flat tax, where deductions are very limited and everyone pays the same percentage. Our current tax code is demotivational–it does not encourage prosperity. However, in reality we need to fix the spending–that will eventually fix the tax code.

 

Who Holds Our Debt?

CNS News is reporting today:

Chinese holdings of U.S. Treasury securities are 11.5 percent below their peak level which was attained in November 2013, according to data published by the U.S. Treasury.

U.S. government debt held by entities in the People’s Republic of China peaked at $1,316,700,000,000 in November 2013, according to the Treasury. As of August 2018, according to the latest date released by the Treasury this month, China held $1,165,100,000,000 in U.S. Treasury.

That is a drop of $151,600,000,000 from the November 2013 peak.

We are still carrying way too much national debt, and that will be a more serious problem as the federal reserve raises interest rates. However, although China is holding less of our debt, it is still the the top foreign holder of U.S. Treasury securities.

The article concludes:

While China remains the top foreign owner of U.S. government debt—despite its declining holdings—the Federal Reserve still owns far more. As of the end of November, according to the Federal Reserve, it owned $2,324,589,000,000 in U.S. Treasury securities.

China’s $1,165,100,000,000 in U.S. Treasury securities was only 50.1 percent of the Fed’s holdings.

It’s time to cut government spending and get out of debt!

 

 

Does This Look Like What We Are Being Told It Is?

There is currently a migrant caravan headed toward the southern border of the United States. We are being told that it is a caravan of hopeless, innocent women and children fleeing danger and economic hardship. Well, let’s look at the pictures.

On October 19th, the U.K. Daily Mail posted pictures of the caravan. Let’s take a look at some of those pictures:

Look carefully–these are not women and children.

Why are they raising their hands and singing their national anthem? This is not a peaceful group of people seeking to immigrate to America–these are military age men coming illegally in a large group. Common sense says turn them back at the border.

One last picture:

In Areas Involving Security, The Government Needs To Function More Like A Business

Yesterday Fox News posted an article with the title, “Here’s why Hillary Clinton losing her security clearance matters for the rest of us.”

The article explains:

Hillary Clinton no longer has a security clearance. A letter released from the Department of State to Senator Chuck Grassley, a Republican from Iowa, says she lost her clearance on August 30 at her request. The State Department also withdrew security clearances from five people Clinton had previously requested clearances for, as she had designated them “researchers.” One was Cheryl Mills, who was once the deputy White House counsel for President Bill Clinton who defended him during his 1999 impeachment trial. The names of the others were redacted.

The mainstream media is treating the loss of these clearances as a move by Clinton to avoid a political snub by the Trump administration.

The article points out that Hillary Clinton should have lost her clearance when it was discovered that she had classified information on her private servers. Unfortunately, Hillary’s servers were not the only problem.

The article continues:

For instance, the group of House IT aides who made up what amounted to a spy ring didn’t even have to undergo background checks to get their insider positions—jobs that allowed them to see and copy all of the emails and more from the members of Congress they worked for.

Evidence shows that Imran Awan, the head of the group who was an IT aide working for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida, was spying on congressmen and even congressional staffers. A current IT aide who wants his name kept out of print told me Awan even used his own email address as the Apple IDs when setting up staffer’s phones.

“The only reason I can think of for why Imran would do that is this would have given him the ability to see everything these staffers were doing,” said the House IT aide, a contracted employee who has more than a decade of experience working for congressmen.

This IT spying scandal, however, was covered up – as it only had to do with Democrats in Congress, the mainstream media apparently had no interest in pursuing the story.

But this lax security is not simply a political story. It puts every one of us in jeopardy. A congressman whose private emails or other data are in the hands of someone who can blackmail or otherwise influence them is a risk. For all of us. And without public pressure, it’s next to impossible to know whether Congress has tightened security to prevent this kind of spying from taking place.

There is a more recent incident:

Only weeks ago, a volunteer on the staff of a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Jackson A. Cosko, was arrested after Capitol Police became aware the Wikipedia pages of three U.S. Senators had been edited to include restricted personal information without their knowledge or permission.

“On the night of Oct. 2, 2018, according to the affidavit,” says a Department of Justice press release, “a witness saw Cosko at a computer in the office of a U.S. Senator who had once employed him. The witness confronted Cosko, who left the office. An investigation led to Cosko’s arrest by the U.S. Capitol Police.”

If Cosko hadn’t posted the information, as he is alleged to have done, for political purposes (called “doxxing”) but had instead used it privately or even gave it or sold it to a news agency or a foreign government, he might never have been arrested. Or he might have gotten off just as Imran Awan and his associates did.

The article reminds us that private companies do a much better job of internet security:

What other employer allows former employees to access their networks? Companies commonly terminate employees email accounts and access before they even tell them they’ve been let go.

The government needs to learn the lesson that private companies have already learned.

Going Against Conventional Wisdom

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about a recent study of which states are the wealthiest and which are the poorest. Then Breitbart compared those results with the voting records of the people in those states. The results were surprising.

The article reports:

Democrats paint themselves as the party looking out for the little guy and more interested than Republicans in representing the poor and their best interests.

But according to Ken Fisher, the founder and executive chairman of Fisher Investments, best-selling author and one of the richest men in the United States, a USA Today study released earlier this month that shows the economic profile of all 50 states, ranked by household income, reveals much more.

When Fisher read what he called “a breathtaking economic profile” of the states he found in it something that was “embedded” in it that reveals what he believes is “arguably the greatest unseen political truth of our time.”

This is the surprising correlation:

USA Today headlined its story reporting on its findings: “Wealth in America: Where are the richest and poorest states based on household income?”

But Fisher headlined his commentary about the study published in USA Today on Sunday: “Midterms: Poorest states have Republican legislatures, and richest have Democratic ones.”

“Fathom it, and you will see how politics may unexpectedly affect economics and wealth for years to come,” Fisher wrote.

The article points out that the five richest states have legislatures controlled by Democrats. He doesn’t mention that those states also have some of the highest tax rates in the country. Those states are Maryland, New Jersey, Hawaii, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.  According to an article at Wallet Hub, a website that ranks states according to tax rates, Maryland ranks 44th, New Jersey ranks 47th, Hawaii ranks 51st, Massachusetts ranks 45th, and Connecticut ranks 49th in the list of states with the lowest tax rates. Yes, I know there are not 51 states, but the District of Columbia was included in the list.

I guess you have to move to a state with a legislature controlled by Republicans if you want lower taxes.