Why We Need To Maintain Energy Independence

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about some investment plans by the Communist Chinese.

The article reports:

Reuters reported Wednesday that “major Chinese investors” are in talks to buy a stake in Saudi Aramco, the national oil company of Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) mentioned the possibility of selling some Aramco stock in a television interview Tuesday.

…Reuters immediately noted China’s state-owned PetroChina and Sinopec previously expressed interest in buying up to five percent of Aramco in 2017. 

Aramco raised almost $30 billion with its initial public offering in 2019, providing a significant amount of the money needed to finance MBS’ “Saudi Vision 2030” plan to diversify the Saudi economy. 

The IPO ended up selling about 1.7 percent of the company’s stock, much of it to Saudi and Middle Eastern buyers. The record-breaking results were considered something of a disappointment compared to MBS’ original vision of selling 5 percent of the company and raising $100 billion.

The scaled-down IPO was partly a consequence of investors disputing the $2 trillion corporate valuation the Saudis put forward, and partly because Aramco was uncomfortable with some of the transparency requirements demanded by foreign investors. The dogged efforts of Iran’s terrorist proxies in Yemen to blow up Aramco facilities with missiles and drones were not helpful.

On Wednesday, “several sources” confirmed Chinese investors were part of the deal MBS mentioned in his interview, pointing to a sovereign wealth fund called China Investment Corporation (CIC) as a potential buyer.

The Renegade Tribune noted the following on November 7, 2018:

Nixon’s decision in 1971 to withdraw the United States from the gold standard greatly influenced the future direction of humanity. The US dollar rose in importance from the mid-1950s to become the world reserve currency as a result of the need for countries to use the dollar in trade. One of the most consumed commodities in the world is oil, and as is well known, the price is set by OPEC in US dollars, with this organization being strongly influenced by Saudi Arabia.

It is therefore towards Riyadh that we must look in order to understand the workings of the petrodollar. After the dollar was withdrawn from the gold standard, Washington made an arrangement with Riyadh to price oil solely in dollars. In return, the Saudis received protection and were granted a free hand in the region. This decision forced the rest of the world to hold a high amount of US dollars in their currency reserves, requiring the purchase of US treasuries. The relationship between the US dollar and oil breathed new life to this currency, placing it at the centre of the global financial and economic system. This privileged role enjoyed by the dollar allowed the United States to finance its economy through the simple process of printing its fiat currency, relying on its credibility and supported by the petrodollar that required other countries to store reserves of US treasuries in their basket of currencies.

This arrangement continued to sustain itself in spite of numerous wars (the Balkans, Iraq, Afghanistan), financial crises (the Black Monday of 1987, the Dotcom bubble of 2000, and Lehman Brothers’ subprime crisis of 2008), and the bankruptcies of sovereign states (Argentina in 1998). The explanation is to be found in the credibility of the US dollar and the US itself, with its ability to repay buyers of treasury bonds. In other words, as long as the US continues to maintain its dominance of the global financial and economic system, thanks to the dollar, its supremacy as a world superpower is hardly questioned. To maintain this influence on the currency markets and the special-drawing rights (SDR) basket, the pricing of oil in US dollars is crucial. This explains, at least partially, the impossibility of scaling down the relationship between Washington and Riyadh. Nobody should delude themselves into believing that this is the only reason why Saudi-US relations are important. Washington is swimming in the money showered by Saudi lobbies, and it is doubtful that those on the receiving end of such largesse will want to make the party stop.

Think about what the impact of large amounts of Chinese cash into Saudi Arabia might have on the current arrangement of the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency. China has wanted to undo that arrangement for some time. Also consider the impact of the runaway spending proposals of the Biden administration and the impact they will have (if passed) on the value of the U.S. dollar. We may be headed for a perfect storm. One thing that would help us weather than storm would be energy independence.

Actually, There Were Two Early-Morning Events Involving The FBI Wednesday Morning

On Wednesday, The New York Post reported that the FBI had seized electronic devices from lawyer Victoria Toensing.

The article reports:

Federal investigators on Wednesday morning seized electronic devices from lawyer Victoria Toensing, who is a close associate of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a source familiar with the events said.

The move came around the same time investigators executed a search warrant at Giuliani’s Manhattan apartment and office.

Agents came to Toensing’s Washington, D.C.,-area home, confiscated her phone and left without searching the house, the source said. 

“She would have been happy to turn over any relevant documents. All they had to do was ask. Ms. Toensing was informed that she is not a target of the investigation,” a spokesperson for her law firm said. 

I know it is just an incredible coincidence that both Rudy Giuliani and Victoria Toensing were both involved in investigating the election fraud that occurred in the 2020 presidential election.

The article concludes:

An attorney for Giuliani, Robert Costello, told The Post agents seized his electronic devices as they searched his Upper East Side apartment.

Costello blasted the raid in a statement, saying DOJ targeted the former mayor because of “Trump derangement syndrome.”

“It is outrageous that the Trump Derangement Syndrome has gone so far that hatred has driven this unjustified and unethical attack on the United States Attorney and Mayor who did more to reduce crime than virtually any other in American history,” the statement said.

“Mr. Giuliani respects the law, and he can demonstrate that his conduct as a lawyer and a citizen was absolutely legal and ethical.”

A spokesperson for the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York declined to comment on the raid.

This looks an awful lot like the intimidation tactics of a tyrannical government. Unless these abuses of government power are stopped, we will be continuing down a dangerous road.

Racism From The Federal Government

Yesterday The Daily Signal posted an article about Christopher Baird, a dairy farmer near Ferryville in southwest Wisconsin. Mr. Baird is like many farmers; he has direct loans through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency.

The article reports:

But the dairy farmer isn’t entitled to a new FSA loan-forgiveness program provided as part of COVID-19 relief in the $2 trillion American Rescue Plan Act, legislation touted Wednesday night by President Joe Biden in his address to Congress

Baird is white. He joined four other white farmers Thursday in suing federal officials over being left out.

Only “socially disadvantaged” farmers may apply for some of the $4 billion in loan-forgiveness funds, which include direct payments to farmers of up to 20% of the value of the loan. Specifically, the law says those eligible must be “Black/African American, American Indian or Alaskan native, Hispanic or Latino, or Asian American or Pacific Islander.”

“There is a case for loan forgiveness for individuals,” Baird said, “but we shouldn’t be looking at the color of someone’s skin and saying, ‘This person needs more help or less help based on the color of their skin.’ That’s just wrong.”

Baird is among five white farmers from Wisconsin, Minnesota, Ohio, and South Dakota who are suing Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and FSA Administrator Zach Ducheneaux, alleging racial discrimination and violation of their right to equal protection under the Constitution.

The other Wisconsin farmer who sued, Adam Faust, said the federal government shouldn’t provide taxpayer money “just based on race.”

Baird, Faust, and the three other farmers filed the lawsuit Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Wisconsin’s Eastern District. 

The article concludes:

In short, the complaint says, the way “to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

The farmers suing the USDA argue that a program that excludes them is just more discrimination.

Faust owns a dairy farm near Chilton, in Calumet County. A double amputee, he milks about 70 cows and farms 200 acres for feed. Because he is white, Faust isn’t eligible for the loan-forgiveness program.

“There should absolutely be no federal dollars going anywhere just based on race,” Faust said. “The economic impact from COVID-19 didn’t hurt any race more than another as far as agriculture goes.”

Discrimination on the basis of race is wrong regardless of what race you choose to discriminate against. Hopefully this case will make its way to the Supreme Court where the law should be declared unconstitutional.

Political Use Of The Justice Department?

During the Obama administration (and possibly before) the Justice Department was politicized. When the New Black Panthers were not held accountable for voter intimidation in Philadelphia (despite video evidence), it was obvious that lady justice had removed her blindfold. The fact that no one in authority was held accountable for the violation of Carter Page’s civil rights during the Obama administration is another example of unequal justice. The fact that lying to Congress of the FBI  only matters when you are not a Democrat has become very obvious in recent years (contrast the treatment of James Comey with the treatment of Roger Stone). There was also the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) during the Obama years. Well, that pattern is going to continue in the Biden administration. Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about an early morning raid by the FBI at the home of Rudy Giuliani.

The article reports:

A lawyer for Rudy Giuliani said federal investigators executed a search warrant at the home of the former New York City mayor and attorney to former President Donald Trump and seized electronic devices.

Giuliani’s attorney Robert Costello told Fox News that seven FBI agents arrived at his Manhattan apartment at 6 a.m. on April 28 and remained there for about two hours. They seized laptops, cell phones, and other electronic devices, Costello said.

“This is totally unnecessary,” Costello told Fox News, adding that the raid was carried out to “make him look like he’s some sort of criminal.”

The New York Times was the first to report on the search, claiming that it may have at least partially stemmed from Giuliani’s dealings in Ukraine. Giuliani wasn’t arrested or charged with a crime, and it’s not clear exactly why the former mayor’s house was searched.

“What they did today was legal thuggery,” Costello told the paper. “Why would you do this to anyone, let alone someone who was the associate attorney general, United States attorney, the mayor of New York City, and the personal lawyer to the 45th president of the United States.”

Costello also told the Wall Street Journal that in recent years, he had offered to answer investigators’ questions, but they declined.

Rudy Giuliani’s son has since stated that the one thing the agents did not take was the hard drive containing a copy of Hunter Biden’s laptop. We could have a lot of fun speculating on why that is.

Unfortunately this is an example of the way the Biden administration will handle its political foes. Following closely in the trail of the Obama administration, negotiation is not an option–destruction is. Despite what he said in his speech last night about unity, President Biden does not really want the traditional definition of unity. The current Democrat definition of unity is ‘agree with me or else.’

How To Tax The Middle Class Secretly

On Tuesday Townhall posted an article that explains where some of the money will come from to pay for President Biden’s expansive spending plans. I believe that the most recent claim is that your taxes will not increase if your income is less than $200,000 a year. Supposedly the bulk of the tax revenue will come from corporations. First of all, corporations don’t pay taxes–their customers do in the form of higher prices and their workers do in the form of lower wages. We can expect both of those things to occur. But the expansive programs will need more than corporations and earners making over $200,000 a year. That will come in the form of stealth taxes on the middle class (the people who actually do shoulder a lot of the tax burden).

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy posted the following graph on April 11, 2019. As you know, that was after the Trump tax cuts went into effect:

So how will the Biden administration get more tax revenue from average Americans?

The article quotes an op-ed for InsideSources written by Kelly Johnston:

You will be told that the tax plan only taxes the wealthy. Untrue. Corporations do not ultimately pay taxes – they collect them. Their “promise” won’t include intergenerational transfers of property and assets, like houses, family businesses, family farms, and stock.

Meet stepped-up basis. Here’s how that works. Say you’re a 60-year-old almost-retiree whose 90-year-old parent just passed away. You are bequeathed their Florida home acquired in 1980 for $100,000. Its value is now $500,000. Hopefully, it won’t be complicated by a reverse mortgage or isn’t burdened by other forms of leveraged debt. You sell it for $500,000. Thanks to “stepped-up basis,” you should owe no federal capital gains tax on the sale.

But what happens if all this happens after Democrats eliminate this so-called “loophole?” You’ll owe capital gains taxes on the gain in value since the property was purchased 41 years ago, most of which is probably inflation. That’s a likely 20 percent tax hit on the “gain” of $400,000 – some $80,000 to Uncle Sam. For people with incomes over $1 million, Biden may raise Capital Gains taxes to match the highest personal income tax rate of 39.5 percent.

The Biden plan may exempt the first $1 million of “unrealized” gains, but that’s a shallow threshold for many family businesses and farms. And it is not just homes or beach property. It includes stocks and family businesses.

Being allowed to keep your or your family’s own money is now a “tax loophole.”

…Whose money do the Democrats think we’re talking about? They seem to think all money is the government’s, and they’re letting you keep some of it. They clearly believe that they can spend it better than you. It doesn’t take long before that extends into other private property. Your pensions and IRAs may be next.

According to the Democrats, it’s never really YOUR money–it’s theirs to spend.

A Portent Of Things To Come?

Sometimes people say really stupid things. Most of the time, those comments can be easily dismissed. However sometimes even when a comment seems totally insane, it needs to be paid attention to because it may be a clue to future events.

Yesterday Breitbart posted an article about a recent comment made by Representative Adam Schiff.

The article reports:

Representative Adam Schiff (D-CA) said Wednesday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that we could not ignore the so-called predominant domestic threat was the white national threat and “some of the folks are part of the Trump base.”

Wallace (Nicole Wallace) said, “I want to ask you about the work on the intelligence committee. Is it different now that the intel chiefs testified to the tragic new reality that the gravest threats to the country are domestic violent extremists? Currently, under the threat warning, we know about radicalized by the big lie still being repeated by Donald Trump. I believe six times since last week and some COVID restrictions where he was also a leading and rater with tweets of liberate Michigan and liberate Virginia?”

…Schiff said, “We ought to be able to find common ground that the predominant terrorism threat facing the country right now is a domestic threat. The predominant part of that domestic threat is white national threat. That has international, transnational links as well. We can’t ignore that because of a political sensitivity that some of the folks are part of the Trump base. So I hope we can find common ground. We need to make sure we protect the country.”

I firmly believe that this is the prelude to the talking points that will be utilized if the audit of the Arizona presidential vote shows systematic fraud. Rather than face the issue and admit there is a problem, people saying that there was systematic fraud will be charged with undermining the election and labeled as domestic terrorists.

In another Breitbart article that was posted yesterday, Senator Schumer had the following comment:

On Wednesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The ReidOut,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stated that if Democrats can’t come to a bipartisan agreement on voting rights legislation “everything will be on the table to get it done.” And that one of the pieces of leverage he has for Democratic senators is that if Democrats don’t block some state election laws, “the chances of our caucus retaining the majority and people who are up for re-election like Kelly and Warnock winning is greatly diminished.”

Essentially what he is saying is that if the Democrats don’t tilt the playing field, they can’t win. Federalizing elections (which is against the Constitution) and calling anyone who opposes what you are doing domestic terrorists is one way to tilt the playing field.

Can You Be Punished In School For What You Said Outside Of School?

Yesterday Paul Mirengoff at Power Line Blog posted an article about a case that will be heard by the Supreme Court today. The case is particularly interesting to me because it illustrates how social media has impacted the lives of our children. Essentially a student threw a temper tantrum on social media after she failed to make the varsity cheer-leading team. Back in the days of dinosaurs when I was in school, she would have done this in the privacy of her own home, calmed down, and that would have been the end of it. Unfortunately when you post something on social media, people see it and sometimes react. That’s what happened.

The article reports:

Tomorrow, the Supreme Court will hear the case of Mahanoy Area School District v. B.L. Brandi Levy (B.L.) is a high school student who, after failing to make the varsity cheerleading team, went on social media to post a picture of herself raising her middle finger under the caption “F*** school f*** softball f*** cheer f*** everything.”

The school suspended B.L. from junior varsity cheerleading. It found that she had damaged its image and had violated its policies, to which she had assented, requiring respect for coaches and prohibiting “foul language and inappropriate gestures.”

The suspension produced the lawsuit now before the Supreme Court. B.L. prevailed in district court and at the appellate level. The district court concluded that her mini-rant did not disrupt the school’s operation and therefore was protected under the Supreme Court’s decision in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District. In Tinker, the Supreme Court upheld a student’s right to wear an armband at school in protest of the Vietnam war because the protest was non-disruptive.

The Third Circuit affirmed. It held, however, that the Supreme Court’s decision in Tinker does not apply to off-campus activity. Even disruptive speech by students is protected if it takes place outside of school, the panel majority said. A third judge on the panel, in a concurring opinion, applied Tinker to off-campus speech, and agreed with the district court that B.L’s speech was not disruptive.

I am not condoning her behavior or saying that she was smart to put the rant on social media, but I do agree that she does have the right to free speech.

The article concludes:

As to what should replace the “disruption” standard, Will points to a brief filed by three law professors, one of whom is Eugene Volokh. Their brief argues that while schools may control virtual as well as physical classrooms, they may not control online or other speech outside the “school context.”

Under this approach, schools could punish online, school-related cruelties, but only when they are about “the characteristics of individual people, not about broader policy matters.” Thus, schools would not be powerless to punish online bullying. However, as Will describes the brief, the professors argue that only truly threatening speech can be punished, not speech that threatens only the serenity or the sense of “safety” of the hypersensitive.

The approach of the three law professors, as described by Will, seems preferable to a “disruption” standard, at least in cases of off campus speech. The distinction they draw between speech about individual characteristics and speech about broader policy matters seems both easier for courts to adjudge and more attentive to free speech concerns. Off campus speech about policy matters may be disruptive, but unless it poses a true threat to safety, it should be permitted.

Or so it seems to me.

Never put anything in writing (or on social media) that you wouldn’t want your mother to see on the front page of The New York Times. Following that advice would solve a lot of problems.

Corruption At The Highest Levels

There are many of us who are wondering whether it is time to put a picture of John Durham on milk cartons–he has been among the missing for quite some time. I was hopeful that at least some of the abuses in the use of surveillance that occurred during the end of the Obama administration and the beginning of the Trump administration would eventually be addresses. Unfortunately a recent hiring by Presiding Judge James Boasberg of The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court has dashed those hopes. The swamp continues to protect its own. The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today that explains exactly where we are in untangling Russiagate.

The article reports:

I hate to write this, but there is just no good way to look at this. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, specifically Presiding Judge James Boasberg, has hired former DOJ National Security Division head, Mary McCord, as amici curiae advisor to the court. [LINK] The placement was first noted by an announcement from Georgetown Law ICAP.

Presiding Judge James Boasberg, is the decision-maker in the appointment of Amici Curiae to the FISA court. There is no way, NO WAY, Judge Boasberg does not know Mary McCord was at the epicenter of the fraudulent FISA application used against Carter Page. Remember, in addition to being the FISC Presiding Judge, Boasberg was also the trial judge in the case against Kevin Clinesmith, the FBI lawyer who lied about Page working for the CIA on the FISA application. {Go Deep}

Boasberg knows Mary McCord took over from former DOJ-NSD head John Carlin (October 2016); and it was McCord who guided the Carter Page FISA application through the court and across the finish-line (October 2016 and January 2017). That FISA application was built upon fraud and Mary McCord was at the center of it.

Mary McCord was also the DOJ-NSD official who went with Sally Yates to confront the White House Counsel, Don McGhan, about the Michael Flynn interview with the FBI. {Go Deep} It was also Mary McCord who had Michael Atkinson as the chief-legal-counsel for the DOJ-NSD -that’s her office attorney- when the FISA application was submitted in October 2016, and renewed in January 2017.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The article includes a number of links that provide background information on the players and behind the scenes maneuvers in this drama. Unfortunately it is going to be at least a few more years before another attempt is made to drain the swamp.

Definitely Heading Down The Wrong Path

The Epoch Times posted an article yesterday (updated today) about President Biden’s first 100 days in office. The article notes that the moderate, unifying President we were promised during the election campaign has not shown up yet.

The article reports:

President Donald Trump and conservative pundits warned for months during the 2020 campaign that behind then-candidate Joe Biden’s centrist, bipartisan façade lay a radical liberal agenda to transform the United States. Biden has proven them right in less than 100 days, earning praise from liberal observers who are drawing historical comparisons to the tenure of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill, written along the outline of Biden’s proposal, dwarfs FDR’s New Deal in terms of total cost to the American taxpayer. Democrats rammed the measure through Congress without any Republican support, proving Biden was the partisan that critics had warned about.

The Democratic president’s proposed infrastructure measures—the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan—would bring the total price tag to an estimated $5.4 trillion, while ushering in a wave of welfare programs unseen since the introduction of Medicare and food stamps. The cost splits up to more than $43,000 per household and more than the combined wealth of all the billionaires in America. Democrats could enact both plans without any Republican support, by using, for the first time ever, the reconciliation process more than once in a budget year.

The fiscal scale and radical nature of the agenda, coupled with the razor-thin House and Senate majorities the Democrats are using to implement it, are exerting pressure on an American system of governance that has historically demanded a measure of bipartisanship in order to enact transformative change.

The article concludes:

Though his cabinet wouldn’t admit it, Biden inherited a successful vaccine development and distribution program from Trump. This meant that Biden’s campaign promise of injecting 100 million Americans with the vaccine against the CCP virus in his first 100 days was on track to being fulfilled even before he took office on Jan. 20. After eluding questions about raising the target to a more ambitious figure, Biden doubled the goal to 200 million. The administration is now on pace to triple the initial goal by April 29, his 100th day in office.

That tangible highlight is offset by the crisis on the southern border, which some experts say was triggered by Biden’s revocation of Trump-era immigration policies. Illegal aliens are crossing the border in numbers unseen in decades, forcing immigration authorities to overload shelters for housing detained minors. After weeks of avoidance, Biden finally called the situation a crisis earlier this month.

The White House has signaled that it intends to solve the crisis by investing in the countries the illegal aliens are fleeing from. Over the past two decades, the United States has spent billions in foreign aid to the nations in question.

Biden’s approval ratings have fluctuated between the high-40s and mid-50s during his first three months in office, according to Rasmussen, the only pollster conducting daily presidential approval surveys. The media may be contributing to that outcome. A recent Media Research Center study showed that evening news coverage of Biden was 59 percent positive during his first three months in office, compared to just 11 percent positive coverage during the same period in Trump’s presidency.

A supportive media cannot cover up the negative impact of President Biden’s policies forever. As inflation increases (as a result of the runaway spending) and the influx of illegal immigrants further increases federal spending, Americans may begin to believe what they see rather than what they are being told.

Where The Money Went

Yesterday The Daily Signal posted an article about how the money from the coronavirus stimulus package has been distributed.

The article reports:

The 591-page American Rescue Plan Act also changed Congress’ normal formula for appropriating money. Rather than scaling funding by population, the measure awarded taxpayer dollars based on which states had the highest unemployment rates in the fourth quarter of 2020.

That shifted $31 billion in funding, according to Open the Books’ analysis, so that 27 states gained by the allocation change and 23 states lost money they would have gotten from the normal formula.

“There is a $31 billion shift and it has shifted to blue states,” Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of Open the Books, told The Daily Signal. “The big winners were California, New York, Illinois, New Jersey. Obviously Florida, which kept their economy open [under] Gov. Ron DeSantis, they continue to flourish. They lost money on that allocation change.”

I would like to remind anyone reading this that no Republicans voted for this bill. When you look at how the money has been allocated, the reason for that becomes obvious. States that were fiscally responsible were short-changed. States with already bloated spending were rewarded. Essentially bad behavior was rewarded and encouraged.

The article cites a few examples of how the money was misspent:

DeSantis (Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida) is a Republican. Under the congressional legislation, $10.1 million went to Key West, Florida, even though the state as a whole didn’t fare so well. Other wealthy conclaves receiving federal tax dollars include Oyster Bay, New York, which got $32.7 million, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, which got $65 million. 

The city topping Bloomberg’s Richest Places index with a median income of $525,000—Atherton, California—scored $1.3 million from taxpayers. Scarsdale, New York, which is No. 2 on Bloomberg’s list and the wealthiest city on the East Coast—got $2 million. The third city on the list, Hillsborough, California, got $2.1 million.

It is time to clean house in Congress.

Not Surprising To Anyone Paying Attention

Obviously there is a lot of money that floats around in politics. Much of that money comes from Political Action Committees (PAC’s). PAC’s are funded by corporations, unions, and groups of people uniting behind a cause. Unfortunately, many PAC’s are indirectly funded by the federal government–organizations that take federal money then have extra money that they can put into PAC’s. Planned Parenthood, American Association for Retired Persons ( AARP), and unions are all examples of this. It is simply glorified money laundering. Most of the money from the groups mentioned above goes into Democrat campaign coffers. Therefore it should not surprise anyone that our current President is working hard to increase union membership and make unions stronger. That is one of many ways to strengthen Democrat political majorities.

Yesterday The Washington Times posted an article about a new task force President Biden is forming:

President Biden tapped Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday to lead a White House task force aimed at the unprecedented goal of unionizing more workers in the U.S. with the broad support of the federal government.

Mr. Biden signed an executive order creating the White House Task Force on Worker Organizing and Empowerment to mobilize Cabinet agencies and other federal offices to help workers “organize and successfully bargain with their employers,” the White House said.

National Right to Work Committee President Mark Mix called Mr. Biden’s task force “a blatant payoff to the union politicos who backed his campaign” in 2020.

I suspect the Vice-President will be devoting more time to this than she has to the border crisis.

The article notes:

It was another sign of organized labor’s grip on the Democratic Party and its influence with Mr. Biden. Unions gave more than $27 million to Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign and groups that supported him, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The initiative was announced less than a month after online retail giant Amazon defeated a move to unionize workers at its huge warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama. It also follows a series of pro-union steps that Mr. Biden has taken, including a shake-up of the leadership at the National Labor Relations Board and an endorsement of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act, broad legislation that would make it easier for workers to unionize.

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, a close Biden ally, said the president “is acting to remove the structural impediments to the power and promise of unions so workers can join together for a better life.”

“Workers finally have a champion in Washington,” she said.

Conservatives and pro-growth groups slammed the executive order as an effort to put Mr. Biden’s thumb on the scale of the labor market.

Sean Higgins, a research fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute in Washington, said Mr. Biden “seems to believe joining a union is an obligation that the federal government must prod workers to do.”

“This executive order is a harbinger of further aggressive sales tactics from this administration on behalf of its union allies,” Mr. Higgins said.

Mr. Mix said the move will result in “another attempt to rig the law against workers who want nothing to do with union officials’ so-called representation.”

This is not good news for workers who choose not to be part of a union.

After All, It’s Only Taxpayers’ Money

CNBC is reporting today that President Biden will issue an executive order to raise the minimum pay for federal contract workers to $15 an hour by March of next year. The current minimum is $10.95. Future increases will be tied to inflation. (Has it occurred to him that such a rapid increase in wages will fuel inflation?

The article reports:

President Joe Biden on Tuesday will continue his push for a national $15 minimum wage with an executive order that raises pay to at least that level for hundreds of thousands of federal contract workers, according to senior White House officials.

The move will increase the current minimum wage of $10.95 by nearly 37% by March of next year and continue to tie future increases to inflation.

It will apply to federal workers from cleaning and maintenance staff to food service contractors and laborers, sweeping in tipped workers who were previously left out of the last increase under former President Barack Obama.

White House officials insist it won’t increase costs for taxpayers because of benefits including increased worker productivity.

Biden has expressed his belief that strong unions and higher wages can resurrect America’s middle class while helping bridge economic and racial inequities, and the executive order is his latest step in support of the organized labor movement.

So what happens when the minimum wage is raised? First of all, it provides a bargaining chip for unions in their wage negotiations. This creates higher wages across the board which leads to inflation. There is no evidenced that increasing wages increases worker productivity. The people who will actually be financially impacted by this move in a negative way are senior citizens and those in the middle and lower economic classes–the inflation that will follow will be much more difficult to manage for those two groups than for the wealthy.

Getting a significant wage increase is useless if the price of everything you need also increases significantly.

The Impact of President Biden’s Tax Policies

In April 2014, The Tax Foundation reported the following:

The tax code is huge and complex. But how huge and complex is it?

Andrew Grossman, the legislation counsel for the Joint Committee on Taxation that helps write tax laws, attacked us in Slate yesterday for saying that the tax code runs 70,000 pages, countering that it’s “only” 2,600 pages.

So how long is the U.S. tax code really? There are a couple ways to look at it.

Statutes

There’s the literal statutes that Congress has passed (Title 26 of the U.S. Code). The Government Printing Office sells it spread over two volumes, and according to them, book one is 1,404 pages and book two is 1,248 pages, for a total of 2,652 pages. At perhaps 450 words per page, that puts the tax code at well over 1 million words. (By way of comparison, the King James Bible has 788,280 words; War and Peace runs 560,000 words; and the Harry Potter series is just over 1 million words.)

Statutes and Regulations

However, a tax practitioner who relies just on the tax statutes will go to jail, because so much of federal tax law is in IRS regulations, revenue rulings, and other clarifications. Congress will set down a policy and leave it to the IRS to write all the rules to implement it. These regulations aren’t short: the National Taxpayer Advocate did a Microsoft Word word count of the tax statutes and IRS regulations in 2012, and came up with roughly 4 million words. Again at roughly 450 words per page, that comes out to around 9,000 pages. The National Taxpayer Advocate also noted that the tax code changed 4,680 times from 2001 to 2012, an average of once per day.

The tax code is that large and that complex due to the efforts of lobbyists in Washington, D.C. Money talks. Corporations and foreign governments know how to get around laws limiting their gifts (bribes) to Congressmen, and Congressmen know how to earn money through investments in areas of the economy (and other countries) influenced by their decisions. It’s not right, but it is what is.

Yesterday Newsmax posted an article about some recent comments made by former Trump Chief Economist Larry Kudlow about President Biden’s tax proposals.

The article reports:

Former Trump Chief Economist Larry Kudlow says President Joe Biden’s tax plan is an “assault on investment.”

“There’s some pretty tough headwinds ahead if these taxes, which are an assault on investment … and the people they are going to hurt the most are the middle class, the blue collar middle class, [who will bear] 70% of the burden of the corporate tax, which includes the capital gains tax, 70% of that burden falls on the blue-collar middle class. Make no mistake about that Biden rhetoric notwithstanding,” Kudlow on Sunday told John Catsimatidis on his radio show, “The Cats Roundtable ” on WABC 770 AM.

When corporate profits are down that means less investment, less capital, which results in less family income, he explained.

“You’re going to take about 20 to 25 percent of corporate profits down. Now, that means less investment, that means less money to payout wages, that means less money to purchase new machinery and equipment to enhance productivity, and that means family incomes are gonna go down. That’s the cap gains tax, which runs through corporate profits taxes,” said Kudlow.

Because of Biden’s tax plan, over time, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) will drop 1 percentage point, “this is not good,” he added.

The article concludes:

Under former President Donald Trump’s economic principals “we’re in a boom,” he said.

“This economy is in good shape because right now before new legislation. Tax rates are low, and the regulatory burdens are low, and we still have energy independence,” he said.

Kudlow asked, “Why would you start taxing the daylights out of an economy that is roaring ahead? I don’t get it.”

“Don’t use your ideology from the left to smother this boom for heaven sakes–use common sense,” he said. He continued; this is ideology. This is a progressive left wing ideology tax. The rich redistribute incomes to build up a new great society, a social welfare state, he said.

Hang on to your wallet. Tax and spend is here for at least three more years unless conservatives take over Congress in 2022.

Not Surprising, But What Should Be Done About It?

One America News is reporting today that the ballot counters auditing the Presidential election in Arizona are finding evidence of systematic fraud.

The article reports:

On Sunday, forensic experts confirmed they are examining thousands of ballots cast in November as part of the audit in the Grand Canyon State. They are using ultra-violet lights to search for ballot watermarks and weed-out phony ballots.

Additionally, auditors have been split into several groups with some examining mail-in ballots and others inspecting ballot folders, envelopes along with other related items. Officials said evidence of systemic fraud has already started to show.

Democrat Party officials have tried to challenge the audit in court and they are deploying their operatives in the mainstream media in an attempt downplay the severity of election fraud as well as discredit Republican challenges to election security.

Arizona Republicans were able to continue the audit after thwarting Democrat attempts to derail the audit this weekend. On Friday, Democrats filed a temporary restraining order to stop auditors from counting the ballots. They later retreated from their position after a judge ordered them to pay $1 million if they lost their legal challenge.

The chair of the Arizona GOP, Dr. Kelly Ward, commented on the victory and gave insight into what’s to come. She said the state’s Supreme Court is set to make a decision to prevent Democrat attempts to stop the audit. The Arizona justices believe an audit is a constitutional right that protects election integrity and ensures the separation of powers.

The obvious question here is what should be done if provable fraud is found? Can actions be taken to prevent similar fraud in future elections? We need to find those responsible for the fraud and make an example of them. Serious jail time is in order.

The article concludes:

Meanwhile, Trump-era trade advisor Peter Navarro has been looking ahead to a similar audit in Georgia. He predicts an audit would likely reveal election fraud in the 2020 election just as it is in Arizona. Navarro added, the scale of voter fraud in Georgia is “much larger than in Arizona” and cited preliminary estimates.

The former Trump administration advisor believes election officials let fraud slide through due to collusion between Georgia officials and Democrat Party operatives. He stressed these audit will reveal patterns of systemic fraud that were used by Democrats in battleground states last year.

If we find systematic provable fraud, what is the next step?

They Are Coming After My Whopper Again

On Saturday The Western Journal posted a commentary about President Biden’s energy proposals. I am not exactly sure who is running the country right now, but in my mind they have absolutely crossed the Rubicon with this proposal.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden kicked off his virtual Earth Day climate summit on Thursday by announcing his administration’s very ambitious plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 and enable the U.S. to reach net zero emissions by 2050.

Sacrifice on the part of every American will be necessary in order to achieve these goals. It will change our diets, force us to purchase electric cars and dictate the way we heat our homes.

The Daily Mail published a report on what adjustments will be required of us.

…The plan “would require Americans to only consume about four pounds of red meat per year, or 0.18 ounces per day” which “equates to consuming roughly one average sized burger per month.”

…Electric cars account for approximately two percent of annual new car purchases in the U.S., according to the report. Biden’s plan reportedly calls for that figure to rise to 65 percent by 2030. Additionally, “10 percent of new truck sales would need to be electric.”

The Mail estimated the average price of a new electric car at $55,000.

…The Mail pointed out that “[n]early 25 percent of homes would need to be heated by electricity, rather than natural gas or oil, to help reach Biden’s emissions goal by 2030. The average cost to install an electric heat pump, which an all-in-one heating and cooling unit, is about $5,613, according to figures home HomeAdvisor.”

Some things to note here. Where does the electricity to heat the homes come from? Has anyone considered the labor conditions and environmental impact in mining the lithium needed for the batteries to run electric cars? Also, seriously, what impact on the American economy would cutting red meat consumption to 4 pounds a year per American? How would that impact the cattle industry, the farmers, etc.?

In November 2020, The Institute for Energy Research reported the following:

During the Obama-Biden administration, hydraulic fracturing was accused of causing a number of environmental problems—faucets on fire, contamination of drinking water, etc.—but the administration’s own Environmental Protection Agency could not validate those accusations.  Now Biden is planning to transition the transportation sector to electric vehicles that are powered by lithium batteries and require other critical metals where China dominates the market. Mining and processing of lithium, however, turns out to be far more environmentally harmful than what turned out to be the unfounded issues with fracking.

In May 2016, dead fish were found in the waters of the Liqi River, where a toxic chemical leaked from the Ganzizhou Rongda Lithium mine. Cow and yak carcasses were also found floating downstream, dead from drinking contaminated water. It was the third incident in seven years due to a sharp increase in mining activity, including operations run by China’s BYD, one of the world’ biggest supplier of lithium-ion batteries. After the second incident in 2013, officials closed the mine, but fish started dying again when it reopened in April 2016.

…Environmentalists expressed unfounded concerns about fracking, but they need to be worried about replacing fossil fuels in the transportation and electric generating sector with electric vehicles and renewable energy where lithium, cobalt and other critical metals are needed to produce these technologies. Mining, processing, and disposing of these metals can contaminate the drinking water, land and environment if done improperly as seen from several examples. And, since China dominates the global market, it just switches what once was U.S. reliance on the Middle East to U.S. reliance on the People’s Republic.

We might want to rethink this.

 

Undermining American Sovereignty

On Friday The Daily Caller reported that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will no longer collect fines for illegal immigrants who fail to leave the United States. So let’s just encourage people to break out laws.

The article reports:

At the direction of Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) rescinded two delegation orders relating to financial penalties. The fines, which were first put in place in 2018 by the Trump administration, collected “civil financial penalties for noncitizens who fail[ed] to depart the U.S,” according to the press release.

ICE Delegation No. 006-2020, “Delegation of Authority to Administer Certain Provisions Relating to Civil Penalties for Failure to Depart,” was deemed as counterintuitive “to the agency’s best interests.”

So what incentive does an illegal immigrant now have to leave America?

The article notes:

Mayorkas and Acting ICE Director Tae Johnson agreed the fines were “not effective” and “had not meaningfully advanced the interests of the agency.”

The DHS press release also stated that ICE would work with the Department of Treasury to cancel the existing debts of those who had been fined.

“The rescission marks ICE’s latest move toward focusing its limited resources on those posing the greatest risk to national security and public safety in accordance with the current guidance on civil immigration enforcement and removal priorities,” the statement concluded.

How many people have to come to America illegally before we realize that is a threat to our national security?

 

Banning Prayer?

Yesterday PJ Media posted an article about a move by lawmakers in Britain and Australia to ban ‘conversion therapy’–the practice of helping homosexuals who want to leave that lifestyle. The laws being considered may criminalize such common practices as preaching, counseling, and even prayer. From a Biblical perspective, homosexual behavior is a sin. A homosexual in the church should be free to seek change if that is his desire. As long as no one is forcing change on the person, I don’t see how helping a person leave that lifestyle can be made illegal. However, Britain (I don’t know about Australia) does not have a First Amendment that protects free speech, so that could get interesting.

The article notes:

Arthur Goldberg, founder of the therapy referral service Jews Offering New Alternatives for Healing (JONAH) objected to the term. “Conversion therapy is not even a term of art. It’s a misnomer. It’s a pejorative term that talks about emotional trauma and physical trauma,” he told PJ Media. JONAH did not recommend or carry out so-called “conversion therapy.” It gave people “references for therapy for underlying issues which may result in same-sex attraction,” yet a New Jersey judge shut it down on false pretenses.

As ex-gay leader Christopher Doyle explains in his book The War on Psychotherapy, “One of the strategies that far-left advocacy and gay activist organizations use to smear professional psychotherapists assisting clients distressed by sexual and gender identity conflicts is to intentionally conflate professional therapy with religious practice and/or unlicensed, unregulated counseling. They do this by labeling all efforts—therapeutic, religious, or otherwise—to help clients distressed by sexual and gender identity conflicts [as] ‘conversion therapy.’”

The tragic situation in England demonstrates that LGBT activists will not stop at banning “conversion therapy” in the talk therapy setting. Some are explicitly targeting “the pernicious power of prayer.” Christians — and free thinkers who value the ability to dispute the LGBT orthodoxy — need to be on our guard.

It is interesting to me that the group opposing this would include banning prayer. I take that as an acknowledgement that prayer works.

I Didn’t Make This Up

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse reported that unaccompanied children illegally crossing into the United States from Mexico are being given a copy of Kamala Harris’ book, Superheroes are Everywhere.”

The article notes:

Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh was arrested for using her authorship of a book as a pay-to-play scheme for personal financial gain {Go Deep}.  In what appears to be a similar situation, unaccompanied alien children (UAC’s) are being given a book authored by Kamala Harris.

…You can be sure that if Trump books were being purchased with taxpayer funds to be distributed to thousands of people, the leftists would immediately demand an investigation.  However, when Kamala Harris does it… crickets.

In an interesting side note:  Kamala Harris was in New Hampshire Friday and Jill Biden was in Arizona Friday.  Both Arizona and New Hampshire are conducting ballot audits.  Interesting coincidence…

I guess using taxpayer money to purchase your books to give away is the new revenue producing scheme used by Democrats. How you classify income from book royalties can also impact your taxes.

On September 29, 2020, I reported:

Joe Biden responded to President Trump’s partial suspension of payroll-tax collections with a statement calling it the “first shot in a new, reckless war on Social Security.” He continued: “Our seniors and millions of Americans with disabilities are under enough stress without Trump putting their hard-earned Social Security benefits in doubt.”

Mr. Biden’s objections might be more persuasive had he and his wife, Jill, not gone out of their way to avoid funding seniors’ entitlement benefits. According to their tax returns, in 2017 and 2018 the Bidens and his wife Jill avoided payroll taxes on nearly $13.3 million in income from book royalties and speaking fees. They did so by classifying the income as S-corporation profits rather than taxable wages.

The Bidens did pay themselves “salaries” from their corporations—CelticCapri Corp. and Giacoppa Corp.—of nearly $750,000 between them over two years, and they paid full taxes on that income. But they circumvented the payroll tax on the nearly 95% of their income that remained. A tax expert interviewed by the Journal in 2019 called the Bidens’ scheme “pretty aggressive”; another told the paper it served solely to avoid the payroll taxes.

Gaming the system is a way of life for our current President and Vice-President.

 

So Why Are People Supposed To Be Vaccinated?

Yesterday Trending Politics posted an article highlighting some of the very confusing statements recently made by President Biden. The President has been vaccinated for the coronavirus, yet he is still wearing a mask. If the mask prevents you from getting the virus, what does the vaccine do (or vice versa)? The President is also hinting that if everyone isn’t vaccinated, we may not be able to celebrate Independence Day. Isn’t that ironic?

The article reports:

On Wednesday, the nation’s 46th president reiterated his tired threat: If people don’t march down to their local vaccination site and roll up their sleeves, that they would not be able to celebrate July 4th. Even to get together in “small gatherings” to commemorate the day when our forefathers broke free of the tyranny of a king.

Biden’s mass vaccination push has gotten stuck in the mud now that those who were eager to take “the jab” have done so. That leaves tens of millions of Americans who are understandably wary of being injected with vaccines that were rushed into distribution under emergency use approval. Without the standard years of clinical and animal trials that show safety and effectiveness long-term.

Last month Biden dangled the carrot that he would generously allow scaled down celebrations, while brandishing the stick that he could change his mind if his orders were not obeyed. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci also suggested that there would be prohibitions on the cherished American holiday if sufficient numbers didn’t get vaccinated.

With vaccine supply now outweighing demand in many areas according to reports, Biden shook that stick at Americans.

The article concludes:

Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responded, “It was advice for an alternate universe. The president and his advisers may need to get out more. Americans are already getting together in small groups outdoors in blue states and red states, in small towns and big cities. The country is not locked down waiting for July 4.”

Texas GOP Senator John Cornyn also weighed in; “If every willing person in America is vaccinated for #COVID19 by May, as POTUS has said, why put our lives on hold till July the 4th?”

Biden’s hostage-taking is arrogant, obscene and just plain un-American. Red states have successfully reopened, mask mandates have been rolled back and people are getting about their lives without waiting for permission from Washington. Red state or blue state, patriots will be celebrating July 4th no matter what Biden and Fauci threaten.

If the vaccine works and every willing American has been vaccinated, what is the problem? If the vaccine doesn’t work, why is the government so anxious to have Americans take it?

Amazing Technology

On Thursday The Times of Israel posted an article about the use of artificial intelligence in archeology.

The article reports:

New research has revealed tantalizing evidence in the mystery of who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls, identifying that two scribes were apparently behind one of the most famous of the manuscripts, and not just a single workman as had been largely assumed.

Harnessing the keen attention to detail of computer-assisted pattern recognition boosted by artificial intelligence, biblical and computer researchers from the University of Groningen in The Netherlands analyzed the Great Isaiah Scroll, one of the first of a trove of ancient scrolls discovered in the caves in the Qumran region near the Dead Sea in 1947.

That there were two scribes “sheds new light on the production of biblical manuscripts in ancient Judea,” the authors of the study wrote.

The results of the study by Mladen Popovic, a professor of Hebrew Bible and Ancient Judaism, Lambert Schomaker, professor of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence, and PhD candidate in Artificial Intelligence Maruf Dhali, all from Groningen, was published Wednesday in the PLOS ONE archaeological journal.

“Demonstrating that two main scribes, each showing different writing patterns, were responsible for the Great Isaiah Scroll, this study sheds new light on the Bible’s ancient scribal culture by providing new, tangible evidence that ancient biblical texts were not copied by a single scribe only but that multiple scribes, while carefully mirroring another scribe’s writing style, could closely collaborate on one particular manuscript,” they said.

The article concludes:

The researchers used digital images of the scrolls and were able to identify distinctive ink traces, unique to each scribe.

“This is important because the ancient ink traces relate directly to a person’s muscle movement and are person-specific,” they wrote.

By identifying individual scribes from the differences in their penmanship, archaeologists may be able to piece together the links between fragments of other scrolls and gain a better insight into their origins. The same process could also be applied to other ancient manuscripts in the future.

“The change of scribal hands in a literary manuscript or the identification of one and the same scribe in multiple manuscripts can be used as evidence to understand various forms of scribal collaboration that otherwise remain unknown to us,” the study said.

Wow.

 

A Portrait Of Things To Come

One of the things that President Trump did that positively impacted the American economy was to deal with over-regulation and to make sure that the rights of people who chose not to join unions were protected. Well, that was then; this is now.

Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon reported on a recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

The article reports:

President Joe Biden’s labor arbiter threw out hundreds of votes from workers attempting to cut ties with a Delaware union.

The National Labor Relations Board overruled hundreds of Delaware poultry workers who had voted to reject union leadership. The agency said in a 3-1 ruling released Wednesday that a provision prohibiting workers from leaving a union for a set time period after a contract is signed allowed the board to ignore the workers’ March 2020 vote. The decision reversed a regional NLRB director who had initially ruled in the workers’ favor.

Oscar Cruz Sosa, the employee who led the charge to hold the election, ripped union leadership for disregarding the voices of workers. “The union has been harassing and intimidating us for a long time and it’s unbelievable that they’re going to get their way by having 800 ballots destroyed,” Cruz Sosa told the Washington Free Beacon.

The article notes:

The decision marks a victory for the local chapter of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, the nation’s largest private sector union and a major backer of Democratic candidates. The union’s PAC spent more than $1.2 million in 2020 electing Democratic candidates.

Of course they did.

The article concludes:

The decision comes after the NLRB became engulfed in a political scandal over a series of unprecedented personnel moves made by Biden. As one of his first moves in office, the Democrat fired the NLRB’s top prosecutor after the general counsel refused to resign. Glenn Taubman, a National Right to Work attorney who helped represent Cruz Sosa, said the Biden administration has repeatedly signaled that it “exists solely to please labor union officials.”

“They do not give one whit about employees and employee rights. All they want is to force employees to pay dues to labor union officials, whether those employees want to or not,” Taubman said. “The whole tone and tenor of this administration is, ‘We’re here for the union bosses and if it’s good for them, we don’t care who it harms or it’s bad for.'”

The NLRB declined to comment further on the decision beyond the press release. The United Food and Commercial Workers union did not respond to a request for comment.

The politicization of the NLRB began under President Obama.

On August 11, 2015, The Washington Examiner reported:

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that Lafe Solomon, the former acting general counsel for the National Labor Relations Board from 2011 through 2013, had been serving in violation of the law governing federal appointments. It was the latest example of a federal court throwing out President Obama’s picks for the board, which is the main federal labor law enforcement agency.

Last year, the Supreme Court ruled in the case Noel Canning v. NLRB that three of Obama’s 2012 recess appointments to board were unconstitutional. The decision voided an entire year’s worth of agency decisions.

Friday’s ruling is unlikely to be as far-reaching as the Supreme Court decision. A three-judge panel for the circuit court was careful to say the ruling was specific to the case in question, which involved a business that had directly challenged the legality of Solomon’s appointment at the time he was serving, and would extend only those that had made the same challenge.

Unfortunately, any objectivity in the NLRB will be further eroded under President Biden. The formerly non-partisan NLRB is simply another casualty of the 2020 presidential election.

Making American Students Less Competitive

The Federalist is reporting today that the Commonwealth of Virginia is revamping its school curriculum to improve equity in education. Notice the word ‘equity’ instead of ‘equality.’

The article reports:

The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is eliminating accelerated math courses before 11th grade to “[i]mprove equity in mathematics learning opportunities.”

Loudoun County school board member Ian Serotkin announced Tuesday that the “Virginia Mathematics Pathways Initiative (VMPI),” is a “a sweeping initiative by the Virginia Department of Education to revamp the K-12 math curriculum statewide over the next few years” by “eliminat[ing] ALL math acceleration prior to 11th grade.”

“That is not an exaggeration, nor does there appear to be any discretion in how local districts implement this” Serotkin wrote. “All 6th graders will take Foundational Concepts 6. All 7th graders will take Foundational Concepts 7. All 10th graders will take Essential Concepts 10. Only in 11th and 12th grade is there any opportunity for choice in higher math courses.” 

The VDOE website says that in addition to improving equity, the change will “[e]mpower students to be active participants in a quantitative world.” 

However, a Loudon parent told Fox News Thursday that the initiative would actually “lower standards for all students in the name of equity.”

“These changes will have a profound impact on students who excel in STEM-related curriculum, weakening our country’s ability to compete in a global marketplace for years to come,” the parent said.

VDOE spokesperson Charles Pyle told Fox News the VMPI would “support increased differentiated learning opportunities within a heterogeneous learning environment.” 

Delegate candidate for Virginia’s 50th House District, Mike Allers, told The Federalist that VDOE “didn’t level the playing field —they destroyed it.” 

It’s time to remember that all children are not academically equal and denying accelerated classes to students who can handle them will not make slower students smarter. It will simply make smarter students frustrated and possibly cause them to lose interest. This is a really bad idea.

As the mother of three very different students (obviously all grown-up now), I am really upset by this thinking. One of my children has an art degree, one is an electrical engineer, and one is a lawyer. The electrical engineer took accelerated math and science throughout high school. Without those courses, she would have been bored to tears. If you had put the lawyer in any one of those accelerated math or science courses, she would have been thoroughly discouraged. The daughter with the art degree always got “A’s” in art courses and any math she could draw. They were three totally different kinds of students. Holding one back would not have helped the others. Putting a child in an accelerated class in a subject that is not his strength is also not helpful. One size does not fit all, and the Commonwealth of Virginia is making a serious mistake here if it wants its students to be competitive with students in other areas of the nation.

Where Are The Perpetually Outraged?

Yesterday Fox News reported that BLM protestors had stormed the Oklahoma Capitol Building on Wednesday, forcing the Oklahoma House of Representatives into lockdown.

The article reports:

Demonstrators chanting “Black Lives Matter” stormed the Oklahoma Capitol on Wednesday, forcing the state House of Representatives into lockdown, in order to protest several Republican-backed bills, including one that provides legal protections to motorists fleeing riots.

More than two dozen protesters filled the gallery on the fifth floor while the Oklahoma House in the chamber below was in session. Video showed demonstrators chanting, “Stand united against all hate,” and “We will use our voices to stand against corruption, to fight hate, to defend Black and Brown lives.” The disturbance interrupted the session for several minutes.

The demonstration was organized against what activists describe as anti-protest and anti-transgender bills advancing through the GOP-controlled state Senate and House. One bill increases penalties for protesters blocking traffic and protects drivers who unintentionally strike drivers with their cars. Another aims to protect law enforcement and their families from “doxxing.”

The article notes:

Oklahoma Highway Patrol escorted protesters from the building, and a drug dog was brought into the chamber to make sure “nothing was left behind,” KOCO reporter Dillon Richards tweeted.

I’m not sure I have seen this widely reported in the mainstream media.

It’s interesting to me that none of the bills they were protesting has anything to do with hate. The only bill that might even remotely be related to hate is the one protecting law enforcement and their families from “doxxing.”  Their problem with that bill would probably be that it protects people they don’t like. Blocking traffic should be illegal. There has been more than one incident when an emergency vehicle has been blocked by a protest and lives were at stake. The bills passed were not anti-protest–they were simply pro-common sense.