More Of The Same

The Washington Examiner is reporting today that the United Nations has placed China, Cuba, and Russia on the U.N. Human Rights Council. They will become sitting member on that Council as of January 1.

The article reports:

On Jan. 1, China, Cuba, and Russia will become members of the U.N. Human Rights Council. Yes, China, which has imprisoned 2 million of its Uighur citizens in gulag reeducation camps, sterilized thousands, and used the rest for de facto slave labor, is donning the U.N. human rights mantle. Cuba, a dystopia tolerated by the Western media elite for its creaking art deco façade, sees many of its best and brightest choose to brave shark-infested waters in search of better lives. Vladimir Putin’s Russia wages a very thinly veiled war on all who question the Kremlin. Whether it’s Novichok nerve agents and Alexei Navalny, open windows and journalists, or gang attacks on gays, Putin’s Russia despises human rights.

It is not simply alarming that these governments are joining the Human Rights Council, but that so few governments and organizations are bothered by it.

The article concludes:

But the challenges go beyond human rights. In the face of repeated and successively increasing Iranian breaches of nuclear arms agreements, the U.N. sits idle. In the face of escalating Chinese circumvention of North Korean sanctions, the U.N. sits idle. U.N. officials like to blame the U.N. Security Council’s permanent members for these issues. But the truth is that the U.N. itself is to blame. Its leaders, now and before, have failed to address the broken structures that sit at the heart of their organization. They should act. But they won’t. They’re happy instead to make speeches and then return to the extensive and expensive budgets afforded to all U.N. staffers. It is extraordinary, for example, that so much of the U.N.’s money continues to be spent in New York City and Geneva rather than out in the field where it might, just might, save lives and make the world a slightly better place.

The U.N. doesn’t deserve many birthday presents. Not this year, at least. And likely not next year.

Unfortunately the United Nations has chosen to ignore the Preamble to its Charter, which states:

  • 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,

When an organization betrays the charter that formed it, it is time for the organization to disband. The United Nations’ actions in recent years have done nothing to promote peace, freedom, or human rights. It’s time for them to go.

 

Moving Toward Resolution?

The Epoch Times reported yesterday that Georgia Senate’s Election Law Study Subcommittee has requested an audit of absentee ballots in Fulton County.

The article reports:

Georgia Senate’s Election Law Study Subcommittee unanimously passed a motion during a Dec. 30 hearing to request an audit of absentee ballots in Fulton County.

The senators are asking the state’s largest county to make the ballots “available for inspection” through a method outlined during the hearing by digital ID systems inventor Jovan Pulitzer.

Pulitzer suggested all absentee ballots in the state of Georgia be forensically examined and fraudulent ones identified in just a matter of hours. He called on state officials to allow the examination.

Officials in the Georgia Secretary of State’s office didn’t immediately respond to requests by The Epoch Times for comment on the subcommittee motion.

“Fulton County did not participate in today’s hearing,” county spokeswoman Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez said in an email to The Epoch Times. “We will continue to collaborate with the Secretary of State and General Assembly as we execute elections in compliance with all applicable state and federal laws.”

The article explains:

Security camera footage from election night shows that in Fulton County, what appears to be tens of thousands of ballots were counted in the absence of party or state monitors. The video seems to show that election workers scanned the same batches of ballots repeatedly. This could be a legitimate action when there’s a scanning error in the batch, such as when the ballots get jammed in the scanner.

In that scenario, the workers are supposed to discard the whole batch of scans and scan the ballots again, but the video quality makes it hard to discern if that was the case in each instance.

Pulitzer said that he and his team could detect if that was the case as well.

“We would be able to tell if they were folded, if they were counterfeit, whether they were filled out by a human hand, whether they were printed by a machine, whether they were batch-fed continually over and over, we can detect every bit of that,” he testified.

The ballot paper itself, when scanned, becomes a piece of code, he explained. Every time the paper is physically handled, such as folded or written upon, the code would change and the change can be detected.

The examination he proposed can be done expediently, he said.

“All of these problems that you’ve heard today can be corrected and detected now by the simplest of things. It takes you days or weeks to recount votes. Give me these 500,000 ballots, we’ll have them done in two hours,” he said, apparently referring to the 528,777 ballots cast in Fulton.

Unfortunately, the resolution of the 2020 presidential election is going to be very messy. No matter what the outcome, half of the country is going to believe the election was stolen. There is also the possibility that half the country will go on a destructive rampage. This is a time for praying that the truth will be exposed and any guilty parties will be held accountable.

 

 

The Georgia Senate Hearings

Posted yesterday at The Conservative Treehouse:

This is rather remarkable.  In real time, during live testimony before a Georgia Senate Committee, a witness testifies to using Wifi capbility to enter the Fulton County voting system via the internet while the hearing was ongoing.

After watching this, do you have any faith in the current election in Georgia or in the 2020 presidential election in Georgia?

The Coming Threat To Religious Liberty

The Federalist posted an article today contrasting the Trump administration’s handling of religious liberty in America with the plans the Biden administration has for religious liberty. Joe Biden has already stated that he intends to sue the Little Sisters of the Poor again because they refuse to follow the contraception guidelines of Obamacare. Doesn’t the government have better things to do than sue a charitable organization that is doing good work?

The White House issued a proclamation yesterday marking the 850th anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Thomas Becket.

The proclamation declared:

We pray for religious believers everywhere who suffer persecution for their faith. We especially pray for their brave and inspiring shepherds—like Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong and Pastor Wang Yi of Chengdu—who are tireless witnesses to hope.

To honor Thomas Becket’s memory, the crimes against people of faith must stop, prisoners of conscience must be released, laws restricting freedom of religion and belief must be repealed, and the vulnerable, the defenseless, and the oppressed must be protected. The tyranny and murder that shocked the conscience of the Middle Ages must never be allowed to happen again. As long as America stands, we will always defend religious liberty.

A society without religion cannot prosper. A nation without faith cannot endure—because justice, goodness, and peace cannot prevail without the grace of God.

The article contrasts that statement with statements made and policies supported by Joe Biden and Kamala Harris:

Although he professes to be Catholic, Biden has already indicated he will once again target religious groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor, as the Obama administration did, in an attempt to force such religious orders to participate in state-funded abortion.

And Biden’s soon-to-be vice president, Kamala Harris, is an open anti-Catholic bigot. She infamously imposed an unconstitutional religious test on a nominee for the federal bench in 2018. When Brian Buescher was nominated as a District Court judge, Harris inveighed against him for being a member of the Knights of Columbus, asking, “Were you aware that the Knights of Columbus opposed a woman’s right to choose when you joined the organization?”

Of course, the Knights of Columbus (of which, full disclosure, I’m a member) has no special position or focus on abortion. The charitable organization simply adheres to the Catholic Church’s teaching on abortion, marriage, and everything else. Harris’s obvious implication was that adhering to orthodox Catholic moral teaching somehow renders a person unfit for positions of public trust, such as the federal judiciary.

Aside from this appalling incident, Harris has a long record of going after organizations whose positions are in line with Catholic moral teaching, especially on abortion. As California attorney general, she authorized a raid on the home of David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress, which had exposed the illegal trafficking of organs from aborted children by Planned Parenthood.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. Things are not looking good for religious freedom in America during the next four years.

 

This Might Be A Really Good Year To Make Sure Your Taxes Are Filed Accurately

In November, Accounting Today posted an article reporting that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) plans to ramp up audits of smaller businesses and their investors by about 50 percent next year, following years of persistently low examination rates, an agency official said Tuesday.

The article reports:

“The IRS is focusing our efforts to increase compliance activity in this area of not only partnerships, but also investor returns related to pass-throughs,” De Lon Harris, the IRS deputy commissioner of examination for small businesses, said at an American Institute of Certified Public Accountants event. For 2021 “we are planning for 50 percent more than we had in the previous year.”

Pass-through entities, which include partnerships, limited-liability companies and sole-proprietorships, are incredibly difficult for the IRS to audit because they frequently have complex structures that can involve dozens of inter-related entities. Pass-throughs don’t pay taxes themselves, but “pass” along the profits and tax liabilities to investors — who then pay the taxes on their individual returns.

The article concludes:

The IRS is hiring 50 more specialized auditors to work these cases, with the aim of having them in place by February, Harris said. The IRS can select returns to audit that are up to three years old. If the agency finds significant problems in a taxpayer’s filings, the auditors can examine returns that are even older.

New audit procedures that Congress approved in 2015 mean that the IRS can more easily collect any underpaid taxes it finds during the audit. Instead of having to track down each investor, the IRS can now collect the money from the partnership itself.

File your taxes carefully!

The Predicted Dark Winter

Issues & Insights posted an article today about recent statements from Joe Biden that the country is facing a dark winter.

The article notes:

“Before the surge in COVID cases we predicted, many predicted, and the deaths rise that we’ve seen in December … we head into a very dark winter ahead,” he said.

He also lamented the “grim” jobs report, which showed “an economy that is stalling.” Employment grew by only 245,000 in November, “well below the 440,000 expected by economists and a sharp drop from the 610,000 reported in October,” CNBC reported.

“We remain in the midst of one of the worst economic and job crises in modern history,” said the man who as vice president oversaw one of the weakest economic recoveries in U.S. history.

Apparently it never occurred to Biden and his handlers that government intervention, not the virus, caused 2020’s downturn. Nor have they even begun to understand that Democrats’ economic policies, filled with steep, punitive taxes, and impossible-to-jump regulatory hurdles, are a slow-motion march of the economic lockdowns that almost instantly paralyzed the economy this year.

A lack of optimism in a Biden economy is not ours alone.

“Wall Street investors largely believe a Joe Biden presidency could mean lower stock-market returns,” says another CNBC report, this one highlighting the network’s survey of “more than 100 chief investment officers and portfolio managers.”

“Two-thirds said the first four years of Biden will be worse for stocks than Trump’s term,” according to the results. 

The article explains why the stock market is important to all Americans:

Should we care about stock performance? Of course we should. Wall Street and Main Street USA meet at a large and busy intersection. More than half of the country – 55% – owns stock. That’s down from the two-thirds that owned stock in 2002. But still more than enough for stock performance to count.

The concerns cited by the CIOs and managers should be alarming even to those who aren’t shareholders. If Biden is able to reverse the Trump tax cut (and increase taxes by several trillion), as well as unwind the administration’s critical regulatory relief, the economy that was recovering strongly from the lethargic Obama years during Trump’s first three years will stagnate, likely even decline.

The article also notes the Biden policies that will have a negative impact on economic growth:

  • Biden’s New Green Deal Lite.
  • A government-run banking system that would “would undermine private banks, moving the U.S. closer to the socialist ideal of a nationalized financial sector.”
  • The possibility Biden will close the economy to the extent that he can, even though 2020’s lockdowns punished the economy and did nothing to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus.

The article concludes:

We’ve said before but it needs to be said again (and again): ”Every major policy Biden campaigned on is anti-growth. … Biden boasts of an FDR-scale agenda without realizing that it was Franklin Roosevelt’s reckless interventions that extended and deepened the Great Depression.”

A dark winter. A dark spring. Darkness until the Democrats are stripped of their political power to choke the economy. Bidenomics are not a promise but a threat.

A Republican Congress can mitigate the damage somewhat, but if Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are successful in implementing their economic policies, there will be a dark winter.

 

He Probably Meant Well

The following is a post that appeared on the Judicial Watch website:

How The Barr DOJ Failed

“They’ve been protecting Hillary Clinton, they’ve been protecting Obama, they’ve been protecting the Deep State,” Fitton (Tom Fitton) stated last Friday.

Attorney General Barr’s resignation amidst a contested presidential election dominated last week’s political airwaves. On Friday, Fitton reminded viewers that “AG Barr or at least the Justice Department under AG Barr has been a black hole in terms of responding to Judicial Watch.” As Fitton reported, “they recently went to court to shut down all of our Clinton email investigations, discovery, and FOIA lawsuits – they don’t want us to do anything.”

Fitton believes that the Justice Department has turned a blind eye to scandals surrounding VP Joe Biden, especially material evidence discovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop last year. The scandals, which he has described as “obvious criminal conduct,” were largely set aside by the Department of Justice, according to Fitton. “They [the DOJ] protected Joe Biden and interfered in the election by doing nothing about the Joe Biden scandals.”

Those defending the DOJ’s decision to not investigate the Bidens are, in Fitton’s estimation, misunderstanding the role the Agency plays in investigating corruption surrounding presidential candidates. While it is correct that the DOJ should not investigate candidates in a bid to influence the outcome of an election, Fitton believes that the Agency is doing just that – but in a different way: “this person is running for office and they get a get of jail free card.” Likening the policy to a game of Monopoly, Fitton contrasts this approach with that employed by the DOJ against President Trump, when “they specifically targeted Trump because he was running for office.

As Fitton concluded, “it doesn’t matter who the next AG is, I don’t expect any difference coming January. We just have to keep doing the work we’re doing. We can’t trust them to investigate Biden, so we’ll do it instead.”

The fact that no one in authority was charged in the overt violation of the civil rights of the people involved in the Trump campaign and the Trump transition team says a lot about the corruption in our federal law enforcement agencies. The fact that a senior administration official can totally mishandle classified information and pay no price while a sailor goes to jail for taking a picture of his workplace is disturbing. Somewhere along the line we have lost the concept of equal justice under the law. Until someone has the courage to clean out the agencies that are supposed to be working for all Americans–not just those of one political persuasion–our country will be in danger of becoming a banana republic. We are already hearing cries from some Democrats of investigating the President when he leaves office with the goal of arresting him. That shouldn’t happen in America. An honest justice department and related agencies is needed. Unfortunately, William Barr was not able to deliver that.

Whoops!

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit reported the following:

After nearly two months, the state of Pennsylvania is found to have certified votes that are in error.

The Pennsylvania House has just uncovered that the certified results in Pennsylvania for President are in error by more than 200,000 votes. This is more than twice the difference between President Trump and Joe Biden.

What a mess.  Republican State Representative Russ Diamond uncovered and reported today that the results for President are way off in Pennsylvania.  More ballots were cast than people voted by more than 200,000 votes.

The article includes the following:

The group of Republican Representatives released this message:

HARRISBURG – A group of state lawmakers performing extensive analysis of election data today revealed troubling discrepancies between the numbers of total votes counted and total number of voters who voted in the 2020 General Election, and as a result are questioning how the results of the presidential election could possibly have been certified by Secretary of the Commonwealth Kathy Boockvar and Governor Tom Wolf. These findings are in addition to prior concerns regarding actions by the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the Secretary, and others impacting the conduct of the election.

A comparison of official county election results to the total number of voters who voted on November 3, 2020 as recorded by the Department of State shows that 6,962,607 total ballots were reported as being cast, while DoS/SURE system records indicate that only 6,760,230 total voters actually voted. Among the 6,962,607 total ballots cast, 6,931,060 total votes were counted in the presidential race, including all three candidates on the ballot and write-in candidates.

The difference of 202,377 more votes cast than voters voting, together with the 31,547 over- and under-votes in the presidential race, adds up to an alarming discrepancy of 170,830 votes, which is more than twice the reported statewide difference between the two major candidates for President of the United States. On November 24, 2020, Boockvar certified election results, and Wolf issued a certificate of ascertainment of presidential electors, stating that Vice President Joe Biden received 80,555 more votes than President Donald Trump.

I have no idea what happens next, but it seems to me that this might be a problem in certifying the results.

Who Is Our Government Supposed To Represent?

A lot of us have questions about who our government is actually representing, but what about the question of who they are supposed to represent? Theoretically, the census determines how many representatives each state has and also impacts the electors in the Electoral College. So who should be included in the census? Various courts have been dealing with that question for a while.

Just the News reported today that a recent Supreme Court ruling states that illegal aliens will not be counted in the 2020 census. That makes perfect sense to me–if they are here illegally, why should they be represented in Congress?

The article reports:

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday vacated two lower court decisions that blocked the government from excluding illegal aliens during the process of allotting congressional seats.

The decision to remand the two cases to lower courts “with instructions to dismiss for lack of jurisdiction” follows a ruling by the high court earlier this month that allows the Trump administration to pursue plans to exclude illegal aliens from the apportionment base.

Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented from the high court’s ruling yesterday, just as they had in Trump v. New York earlier this month.

So what is the possible impact of this decision? California had been relying on its illegal alien population to counter the fact that many residents of that state are leaving the state to settle in other states. This is the result of continued poor fiscal policies in California and a refusal to deal with many quality of life problems. Homelessness in California is out of control while taxes on ordinary people are increasing and the cost of living in the state is increasing. Because of this ruling, California may lose a Congressional Representative and an elector in the Electoral College. Other states with large populations of illegal aliens may also lose representatives or electors.

Regardless of how you feel about illegal aliens, amnesty, a path to citizenship, etc., Congress is supposed to represent American citizens. They don’t, but they are supposed to.

The Impact Of Brexit And The Signed Stimulus Package

MSN is reporting the following today:

Global shares rose and U.S. bond yields ticked higher on Monday after President Donald Trump signed a $2.3 trillion spending package and as investors continued to celebrate a last-minute trade deal clinched between Britain and the European Union.

By backing down from his earlier threat to block the bipartisan bill, Trump allowed millions of Americans to continue receiving unemployment benefits and averted a federal government shutdown.

“As the coronavirus pandemic has shown little sign of abating, the emergency aid was needed to avoid a sharp slowdown in the economy during the first quarter,” said Nobuhiko Kuramochi, market strategist at Mizuho Securities.

“It would have been unsettling if we hadn’t had it by the end of year,” he added.

…Germany’s export-oriented DAX surged to a fresh record high, reflecting relief over the Brexit deal, while the British market was closed for the Boxing Day holiday.

“We can finally move on from the Brexit drama,” said Win Thin, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman.

“After the last-minute deal was struck last week, the UK parliament will vote on the deal Wednesday. With (opposition party) Labour promising its support, it should pass handily,” he added.

Earlier Japan’s Nikkei advanced 0.7% and China stocks also rose, helped by strong industrial profit data. MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan rose 0.1%.

The rollouts of COVID-19 vaccines were also bolstering hopes of more economic normalisation next year, with Europe launching a mass vaccination drive on Sunday.

There is some downward pressure on the financial markets as a result of the new strain of the coronavirus. However, I wonder if we have reached the point of reliving ‘the boy who cried wolf.’ The coronavirus is serious, and it does represent a major health threat. However, it is time to replace fear with logical thinking–protect the vulnerable and let the rest of us go on with our lives.

This Could Get Interesting

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit reported that President Trump has signed the pork-laden coronavirus stimulus bill. However, that is evidently not the end of the story.

The article reports:

The president said Sunday that along with signing the bill, he will invoke the 1974 Impoundment Control Act to demand “rescissions” be made to the spending measures. Under the Act, if the president wants to spend less money than Congress provided for a particular program, he can seek congressional approval to rescind by sending a special message to Congress identifying the amount he proposes to rescind, reasons for it, and the economic effects of the rescission.

“I will sign the Omnibus and Covid package with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed. I will send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal rescission request to Congress insisting that those funds be removed from the bill,” he said.

The authority for controlling spending rests in the House of Representatives. The Democrats will still control the House of Representatives after the newly-elected Representatives are seated, but it will be a much smaller majority. Before the 2020 election, Democrats had won 232 seats to Republicans’ 197. After the election, the numbers were Democrats 222 seats to Republicans’ 212. By invoking the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, President Trump will reveal which Congressmen actually want to control spending and put an end to the spiraling national debt.

 

 

 

Why Many Of Us Don’t Trust The Government Or The News

Just the News posted an article (updated today) about the comments made by Dr. Fauci about the coronavirus.

The article reports:

Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared to admit last week that he has deliberately misled the public regarding the coronavirus — for the second time since the pandemic began.

In a Christmas Eve interview with the New York Times, Fauci acknowledged he had offered a lower estimate of the level of herd immunity necessary to stop the COVID-19 pandemic because he thought Americans would be discouraged by hearing his true thoughts on the issue. 

He recently raised his estimate on the herd immunity threshold “partly based on new science,” the newspaper reported, “and partly on his gut feeling that the country is finally ready to hear what he really thinks.”

Fauci himself told the paper that he had withheld the higher estimates because polling results made him think such estimates would be viewed unfavorably.

Read that last sentence again. That is totally unacceptable. No one elected him. He is a paid public official. His job is to report the truth, he is not supposed to be changing numbers to assuage public opinion.

The article concludes:

Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has been at the forefront of the country’s response to the coronavirus since the beginning of the year. A member of the White House coronavirus task force, he was a regular fixture at press conferences throughout the spring and has made countless media appearances since then.

Fauci was observed to have something of a falling-out with President Trump over the course of the year, with Trump calling for a more rapid return to something resembling normal life. At times, the president has openly criticized Fauci, who has warned that Americans may have to abide by masks and “social distancing” rules until as late as 2022.

In spite of the tension between the two, Fauci has retained broad popular support in public polls, with most Americans trusting him to accurately and effectively promulgate information on the pandemic.

It is becoming obvious that putting our trust in this man was a mistake. He was so enamored with being a media darling, he chose to hide the truth of what was and is happening.

Meanwhile, just for the record, Breitbart is reporting the following today:

The United States on Sunday saw significant decreases in COVID-19 cases and deaths — marks that were two of the lowest in weeks, according to updated data from Johns Hopkins University.

The data shows 150,100 new coronavirus cases and about 1,200 related deaths nationwide. The case count, apart from Christmas Day, is the lowest since late November and the death toll is just the second this month that’s been 1,200 or lower.

That is good news.

There will be no further posts on this site until Monday, December 28th. In the meantime, articles that I believe people need to see will be posted on Parler at Rightwinggranny or in the Facebook group (which you can ask to join) Right Wing Granny.

Have a wonderful Christmas and a blessed New Year.

A Preview Of Things To Come

If the election of Joe Biden is allowed to stand, America is going to become a subsidiary of China. If you think I am overreacting, I would like to direct you to an article posted at Legal Insurrection yesterday.

The article reports:

Communist China on Monday demanded the United States to return to the Iran nuclear deal and end all sanctions placed on Tehran under President Donald Trump’s watch once Joe Biden moves into the White House.

“The US shall return to the Iran nuclear deal as soon as possible and without any preconditions, and the US should also scrap all sanctions imposed on Iran, other third-party entities and individuals,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in a video conference with other four signatories of the 2015 nuclear accord.

The Chinese foreign minister’s undiplomatic and stern tone underlines China’s belief in a ‘reset‘ in bilateral relations with a Biden-run administration. According to Chinese media reports, Beijing opened backchannel talks with figures close to the Biden team last month and wants a rollback on the tough policy course pursued by President Donald Trump.

…“A joint statement released by [German Foreign Minister Heiko] Maas and the foreign ministers of Iran, China, Russia and the UK acknowledged their desire to see the treaty upheld and greeted the prospects of a US return to it under incoming President-elect Joe Biden as ‘positive,’” Germany’s state-run DW News reported Monday.

“With Joe Biden on board, all parties to the nuclear deal want to bring it back to life,” the German broadcaster noted in a separate article last week.

The European Union has also joined the diplomatic push to get the U.S. to back the nuclear deal without any preconditions. European powers, mainly Germany, France, and the UK, had lined up huge investments in the oil-rich country before the Trump administration snapped back sanctions on the regime two years ago.

So why would the EU want us to enter into a deal that would eventually allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons aimed at Europe? Because the money to be made in the short term with trade with Iran has blinded them to the future with a nuclear Iran holding them hostage.

There is little doubt in anyone’s mind that a Biden administration will renew the Iran nuclear deal. There is also a lack of realization that the deal will make the world a much more dangerous place. You have only to look at the alliances currently forming in the Middle East to know what the countries closest to Iran think of the intentions of that state.

Festivus Report’ of government excess

Yesterday The Washington Examiner reported that Senator Rand Paul released his annual Festivus Report, airing his grievances of government excess and spending.

The article lists some of the details of the report:

“Spending was about 50% higher than last year, and payments of interest on the public debt remained extremely high at $387 billion. If you laid out that many $1 bills end to end, it’d be enough to wrap around the earth 1,506 times,” Paul wrote. “Our debt puts at risk the long-term solvency of major programs such as Social Security. And why? To pay for test tubes for COVID tests that turn out to be soda bottles?”

Paul’s report documented more than $54.7 billion worth of “totally wasted money.” He points to specific projects and studies that received federal funding and identifies the total value of grants used to conduct the research.

That amount of money, Paul said, was enough to fund the entire Treasury Department for three years, the Department of Housing and Urban Development for six months, or buy every citizen a 40-inch television.

The “waste” spending varies from failed international missions, such as $8.6 billion spent in Afghanistan to boost counternarcotics efforts or $23.9 billion spent “trying unsuccessfully to replace the Bradley [Fighting Vehicle],” to oddities including $1.3 million researchers accessed to determine whether people would knowingly eat ground-up bugs or $2 million spent testing whether hot tubs lower stress.

The report identified $896,000 spent by the National Institutes of Health “to give cigarettes to adolescent kids to test their reactions to various levels of nicotine in the cigarettes.”

The article concludes:

“Congress has every tool it needs to fight and end government waste,” Paul’s report stated. “It’s just a matter of finding the willpower to use them. Rest assured, I will keep fighting for fiscal sanity and providing my colleagues in Congress with the opportunity to find their fiscal backbone!”

Americans already pay more money in taxes than the medieval serfs did to their manor lords. Unless the spending is brought under control, our children and grandchildren will be slaves to the government. Congress controls the spending. Until voters elect congressional representatives who are willing to cut spending, things will not change.

What’s Good For The Goose…

Townhall posted a very interesting article today about the possibility of a government shutdown.

The article notes:

In late September, Congress passed a bill to keep the government funded at current levels through this Friday. Trump has refused to sign the comprehensive funding bill tied to providing new $600 stimulus checks to qualifying Americans. It’s clear that they don’t have much time to resolve their disagreements and pass a law President Trump will support.

Most likely, they will pass another extension, but Trump has already signaled he would rather use a pocket veto and let the next president handle the issue than sign a bill he can’t support. Such a standoff risks a government shutdown if a solution cannot be passed and signed.

President Trump has had three shutdowns in his term as president, the longest being 35 days between December 2018 and January 2019 over the issue of funding for the border wall. That shutdown forced about 800,000 federal government workers to go on furlough without pay. If an extension is not passed to avoid a shutdown, thousands of government workers considered nonessential would again be furloughed or forced to work without pay until the shutdown ends.

Government leaders love to say how they experience our pain for the lockdowns generated in many Democrat controlled states and cities during the COVID Pandemic restrictions. Many Americans have lost jobs; some have lost their businesses. Government workers can talk as though they understand, but they’ve had no cuts in salary or their retirement plans. They have been insulated from the consequences of their own actions.

While small business and their employees have been suffering, big box stores and Amazon have seen large profits. While your neighborhood restaurants and bars have been closed, many larger restaurants with more physical space have managed to remain open at partial capacity. The impact of the shutdowns has been very uneven, with small businesses and their owners being hit the hardest. Meanwhile, Congress and federal employees have continued to receive full paychecks. The people who made the decision to shut down have generally not suffered the consequences of that decision. Seems a little unfair.

The article concludes:

Currently, government workers have no skin in the game. There is no shared sacrifice. When any shutdown furlough ends, they’re usually paid retroactively for what income they lost. What do our citizens get for having their businesses closed and their jobs lost—$600 or maybe $1,200. Citizens will get crumbs and the promise of higher taxes.

President Trump came to Washington to take on the swamp. It put up more of a fight than expected. In fact, if the results of this election stand, the swamp will have won. The Biden administration has no plan to cut back the size of government. No, his plan is to feed the beast and free it to take control of more of your life.

Could we shut down government for two years until the mid-term elections? Unfortunately, probably not.

It’s time for the President to just say no to the ridiculous pork in the spending bill and send more money to the people who have actually been hurt by the shutdowns.

The Enemy Within

Yesterday The Epoch Times reported the following:

Hundreds of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) members are embedded within the Chinese divisions of major U.S. corporations, from IBM to PepsiCo to 3M, a leaked CCP-member database revealed.

The existence of Party units within foreign companies in China is hardly surprising, given that the regime mandates any organization with at least three CCP members to form a Party branch. But the 1.95 million CCP member list, which includes names, levels of education, ethnicity, and the Party branches they belong to, was to date the biggest revelation on the scale of the CCP’s influence on international companies.

Most of the members in the database are from the country’s southeastern coastal metropolis of Shanghai.

New York-headquartered tech firm IBM has at least two dozen Party units with 808 members in China.

3M, a manufacturer of consumer and health care goods, including N95 respirators and other medical products critical to preventing COVID-19 spread, employs at least 230 CCP members within five Party units.

PepsiCo, the multinational snack and beverage company, has 45 employees listed under the company’s Party branch committee.

The article concludes:

Xu Tao, the hotel’s Party branch secretary, said that he had tried to “incorporate political things into activities accepted by both Chinese and Western employees” to give Westerner staff the impression that “Party branch work are infusing more Chinese elements into the Westin brand and thus make the hotel more locally competitive,” according to a report by state media Xinhua. Xu had organized events to have workers stitch national flags together and to study the “spirit of the Long March,” the CCP army’s retreat in the 1930s.

The “membership in the Chinese Communist Party makes those people devoted not to the nation of China, or to the people of China, but to the political party of the CCP,” said Journalist Gertz. He called such efforts the CCP’s “ideological drive” to “basically take over the world.”

“They [CCP members] see themselves as besieged by the capitalist world, they see themselves as, basically, at ideological war with a non-communist world,” he said on The Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders program.

“Now the West, the free world, needs to wake up and start fighting back against the Chinese Communist Party.”

3M declined to comment. IBM, PepsiCo, Dow Chemical, Marriott, Nielsen, Mars, MetLife, Boeing, and Pfizer didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

The CCP has funded our colleges to influence the way our future leaders are educated and infiltrated our major corporations in order to further their goals–not American’s goals, but the CCP’s goals. Please follow the link to read the entire article. I don’t know how much time we have to turn this around, but it is a grave threat to our country and to our freedom.

This Isn’t Really Surprising

Bad governance has consequences. Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about what is happening to New York. California may not be far behind.

The article reports:

More residents escaped from New York over the last year than from any other state, according to estimates released by the US Census Bureau on Tuesday.

Some 126,355 people hightailed it out of the Empire State between July 2019 and July 2020, a dip of 0.65 percent, the preliminary figures show.

New York has been losing locals since 2016, but the most recent drop was significantly larger than in years past.

It was also the state with the nation’s biggest population decline, followed by Illinois with a 0.63 percent dip, Hawaii with 0.61 percent and West Virginia with 0.58 percent.

The estimates are based on the 2010 Census, and the official 2020 Census results will be released next year, along with a new legislative map.

The once-a-decade national head count determines how the 435 seats in the House of Representatives are divided among the 50 states based on the population changes recorded.

If the numbers hold, New York could lose one seat, dropping to 26, according to an analysis by William Frey, chief demographer for the Brookings Institution, the New York Times reported.

That would leave the Empire State with fewer seats than Florida for the first time ever, the report said.

That seems only fair since many of the people leaving New York are headed to Florida. However, it will be interesting to see if the transplanted New Yorkers bring the same bad ideas to Florida that caused the downfall of New York.

What We Teach Our Children Matters

Yesterday John Hinderaker at Power Line Blog posted an article about the draft publication of the Minnesota social studies standards. The standards are available for public comment. The article cites information found in an article at the Center of the American Experiment website.

The article at Power Line Blog reports:

WORLD/U.S. HISTORY

There are several key pieces of our world and nation’s history that are missing when compared with the 2011 social studies standards.

Missing Benchmarks

* World War I—benchmarks on the social, political and economic causes of the war; nations involved, major political and military figures, key battles; political impact (including formation of the League of Nations)

* World War II—benchmarks on the social, political and economic causes of the war, and main turning points; nations involved, major political and military figures, key battles; timeline of key events leading to WWII

* The Holocaust (including references to the Nazi regime and Jews)

* Rise and effects of communism and socialism; Communist Revolution

* American Revolution—benchmarks on timeline of the major events and turning points of the revolution, including the involvement of other nations and the reasons for American victory; identifying historically significant people during the period of the revolution (Examples: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Elizabeth Freeman)

* Civil War—benchmarks on timeline of the key events of the war; causes of the war; major political and military events; main ideas of the debate over slavery and states’ rights and how they resulted in major political compromises and ultimately war
***

I need someone to explain to me how you can teach WWII without teaching about the Holocaust, Nazis, and Jews.

These are just a few examples from the article. Please follow the link to read the entire article. It offers insight as to the reasons our children don’t understand the freedom and heritage they have in America and why many are willing to trade that freedom for the slavery of socialism.

China Is A Problem In Many Ways, But American Corporations Are Not Helping

Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about some of the activities of Zoom, one computer application that has seen a significant increase in usage because of the coronavirus lockdowns.

The article reports:

A Zoom executive worked with Chinese authorities to provide data on users located outside of China and ensure the U.S. video-call giant retained market access in the country, according to recently unsealed court documents filed by U.S. federal prosecutors.

The documents detailed internal communications between Zoom employees, which showed that Chinese security authorities made numerous requests to the company for data on users and meetings that discussed political and religious topics Beijing deemed unacceptable. Zoom complied with most of these requests, at times involving users outside of China.

The revelations highlight how users outside of China’s shores are increasingly being caught in the crosshairs as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) steps up its demands on companies like Zoom to surveil and censor users both at home and abroad. Zoom is a San Jose-based company, whose software is developed in China.

The claims arose in a prosecution announced on Dec. 18 against Jin Xinjiang, also known as Julien, a China-based Zoom executive. Jin was charged over his role in disrupting a series of meetings this year commemorating the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre—an event deemed taboo by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

The article concludes:

In another example highlighting challenges facing American companies operating in China, the former chief trust officer of Airbnb abruptly resigned last year over concerns about how much data the rental platform was sharing with China, Wall Street Journal recently reported.

Sean Joyce, a former deputy director with the FBI hired by the company in May 2019, became alarmed that the company was not transparent about how much data Airbrb shared with the CCP, including Americans traveling to China. In a conversation with the company’s top leaders outlining his concerns, co-founder Nathan Blecharczyk told Joyce that “we’re not here to promote American values,” the outlet reported.

William Evanina, director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center, at a panel discussion earlier this month, said that Americans should be more aware of this issue.

“When we sign up for these companies … these apps, are we okay with our data going over to a communist country for utilization by the intelligence services?” Evanina said.

Unfortunately a number of the people slated to be part of a Biden cabinet have extensive business dealings with China. They will be in the same position many American companies are in–do I cooperate with the CCP for financial reasons or do I protect America? We saw what happened when a team manager in the NBA spoke out in favor of the freedom movement in Taiwan (article here). Because the NBA has a very large audience in China, he was forced to apologize. The NBA chose money over freedom. How many other American companies have done or are doing the same thing?

…And All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt…

Many tourist destinations sell children’s t-shirts that say “My mommy and daddy went to (fill in the blank) and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” That’s about how American taxpayers should be feeling right now.

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article detailing some of the spending in the almost 6,000-page coronavirus relief bill (which was combined with the omnibus budget bill). I suspect that the political theory behind combining the two was that the President wouldn’t veto the coronavirus relief bill. This may have actually been the reason the House of Representatives has refused to approve a relief package before now. This allowed the big spenders in Congress to create a Christmas tree of spending in the omnibus budget bill.

The article includes some of the highlights:

    • $169,739,000 to Vietnam, including $19 million to remediate dioxins (page 1476).
    • Unspecified funds to “continue support for not-for-profit institutions of higher education in Kabul, Afghanistan that are accessible to both women and men in a coeducational environment” (page 1477).
    • $198,323,000 to Bangladesh, including $23.5 million to support Burmese refugees and $23.3 million for “democracy programs” (page 1485).
    • $130,265,000 to Nepal for “development and democracy programs” (page 1485).
    • Pakistan: $15 million for “democracy programs” and $10 million for “gender programs” (page 1486).
    • Sri Lanka: Up to $15 million “for the refurbishing of a high endurance cutter,” which is a type of patrol boat (page 1489).
    • $505,925,000 to Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama to “address key factors that contribute to the migration of unaccompanied, undocumented minors to the United States” (pages 1490-1491).
    • $461,375,000 to Colombia for programs related to counternarcotics and human rights (pages 1494-1496).
    • $74.8 million to the “Caribbean Basin Security Initiative” (page 1498).
    • $33 million “for democracy programs for Venezuela” (page 1498).
    • Unspecified amount to Colombia, Peru, Ecuador, Curacao, and Trinidad and Tobago “for assistance for communities in countries supporting or otherwise impacted by refugees from Venezuela” (page 1499).
    • $132,025,000 “for assistance for Georgia” (page 1499).
    • $453 million “for assistance for Ukraine” (page 1500).

Most Americans can expect a check for $600 and extended unemployment benefits. Wow.

Ruining Education Even In Private Schools

In many areas of America, private schools are still doing in-person learning while public schools are on either mixed schedules or total remote learning. A few public schools are doing in-person learning, but they seem to be a minority. Unfortunately this will create a major divide in American society in five to ten years. Children that are learning remotely are failing at a much higher rate than those that are learning in person. There is also the issue of children that may not have access to the broadband they need for remote learning. The school shutdowns have done a major disservice to our children. Private schools have been there for some children to fill the gap, but not everyone can afford private school.

Meanwhile a private school in New York City has decided to make some changes that are not sitting well with some of the parents of the students. Today, Hot Air posted an article about The Dalton School, an expensive private academy on Manhattan’s posh Upper East Side.

The article reports:

The school counts many celebrities and other famous folks among its almuni, including Anderson Cooper and Christian Slater. Parents who manage to land their children in the college prep academy shell out more than $50K per year for the honor. But now they’re running into a bit of a problem. The school is experiencing what the New York Post describes as an “uproar” after a number of faculty members signed off on an antiracism manifesto” that includes a list of demands for the school to meet so they can combat systemic racism or whatever else they’re complaining about. And many of the parents aren’t having it.

The article includes the list of demands:

So what has everyone so up in arms? The list of “demands” from the teachers who signed the manifesto aren’t simply decrying what they perceive as raism. They’re looking to overturn the entire social order of the school. Some of the bullet points seem fairly reasonable, such as ensuring a more diverse hiring policy and expanding the curriculum to cover a more inclusive range of subjects. But some of the others are simply out of this world. Here are a few of the lowlights:

    • Hiring 12 full-time diversity officers, and multiple psychologists to support students “coping with race-based traumatic stress.”
    • Paying the student debt of black staffers upon hiring them.
    • Requiring courses that focus on “Black liberation” and “challenges to white supremacy.”
    • Abolishing high-level academic courses by 2023 if the performance of black students is not on par with non-blacks.
    • Donating 50 percent of all fundraising dollars to NYC public schools if Dalton is not representative of the city in terms of gender, race, socioeconomic background, and immigration status by 2025.

Hiring dozens of “diversity officers” and psychologists should drive up the tuition a good twenty percent or more. I wonder how well that will go over? But that’s hardly the worst of it.

There are a few things here that stand out. It seems a little unfair to pay the student debt of black staffers and not white staffers. If both groups are paid the same salary, why should one group get an extra benefit? Isn’t that racist? I particularly like the idea of abolishing high-level academic course if the performance of the black students is not up to the performance of the other students? Don’t people send their children to private school to take these advanced courses? Even public schools have not abolished advanced placement courses, although I should be careful not to give them any ideas.

The article concludes:

Small wonder that some of the parents are already bailing out. And as they leave, the school will be losing even more of the revenue they would need to meet this list of demands. If enough of them vote with their feet, the school won’t be able to cover its costs and none of them will have a job. Wouldn’t that just be a shame?

Would you pay 50k a year for that?