Monthly Archives: April 2021

Actions Have Consequences

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Yesterday The Washington Examiner posted an article warning of the consequences of passing the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill.

The article reports:

We are often told to “follow the science.” This is true of wearing masks, how we teach children to read, and addressing the perils of climate change. So we should probably better do the same with the economy, no?

Consider the new Congressional Budget Office report on that very thing, the budget, the economy, and how we tax it. Let’s assume that we want the Federal government to spend lots more money on infrastructure. I don’t, because I’m certain that the money will be sprayed up the wall like the last few trillions were.

Still, the CBO report is useful in laying down the basic science of taxation. Whatever we tax, we’ll get less of. Tax corporations and there will be less corporate activity. Tax the income from capital investment and there will be less investment. Tax labor incomes and fewer will work so hard to make that money. Put simply, if people get less from doing something, they’ll do less of it. Toddlers grasp this: they will do more for two pieces of candy and less for one. In the jargon these are known as “deadweights.” That is to say, things that do not happen, economic activity that is wiped out by taxation.

Yes, it’s true that we can buy lovely things with the money that has been taxed, or at least we might. But it is still true that the act of taxing itself reduces economic activity. Worthwhile tax and spend is defined as that which is even more lovely in its results than what we’ve lost by financing it.

The Democrats seem to be unaware of the Laffer Curve. That is the principle that says that after people who produce wealth are taxed to a certain point, they will stop producing wealth. We will reach a point where the only way to pay for our bloated government is to devalue our currency. That is happening to some extent right now. The result of that will be hyper-inflation and a total collapse of our economy. That is the end result of unbridled tax and spend programs.

Where Is The Infrastructure Spending?

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Yesterday The Epoch Times posted an article about the infrastructure bill that is currently working its way through Congress.

Here are some highlights from their overview:

$621 billion in transportation infrastructure and resilience. 

    • $115 billion to modernize bridges, highways, roads, and main streets most in need of repair. This includes funding to improve air quality, limit greenhouse gas emissions, and reduce congestion. 
    • $20 billion to improve road safety. 
    • $85 billion to modernize existing transit systems. 
    • $80 billion to address Amtrak’s repair backlog.
    • $174 billion investment in the electric vehicle market.
    • $25 billion for airports. 
    • $17 billion in inland waterways, coastal ports, land ports of entry, and ferries. 
    • $20 billion for a new program that will reconnect neighborhoods cut off by historic investments and ensure new projects “increase opportunity, advance racial equity and environmental justice, and promote affordable access.” 
    • $25 billion for a dedicated fund to support ambitious projects that have tangible benefits to the regional or national economy but are too large or complex for existing funding programs.
    • $50 billion in dedicated investments to improve infrastructure resilience.
    • Building a national network of 500,000 electric vehicle chargers by 2030.
    • Electrify at least 20 percent of the yellow school bus fleet through a new Clean Buses for Kids program.

$180 billion investment in R&D and the technologies of the future:

    • Includes $35 billion in the full range of solutions needed to achieve technology breakthroughs that address the climate crisis and position America as the global leader in clean energy technology and clean energy jobs. This includes launching ARPA-C to develop new methods for reducing emissions and building climate resilience, as well as expanding across-the-board funding for climate research.
    • $15 billion in demonstration projects for climate R&D priorities, including utility-scale energy storage, carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, advanced nuclear, rare earth element separations, floating offshore wind, biofuel/bioproducts, quantum computing, and electric vehicles.
    • 15 billion in creating up to 200 centers of excellence that serve as research incubators at Historically black colleges and universities and other minority serving institutions to provide graduate fellowships and other opportunities for underserved populations, including through pre-college programs.

$300 billion to strengthen manufacturing supply chains for critical goods

    • $50 billion to create a new office at the Department of Commerce dedicated to monitoring domestic industrial capacity and funding investments to support production of critical goods.
    • $50 billion in semiconductor manufacturing and research, as called for in the bipartisan CHIPS Act.
    • $30 billion over 4 years to create U.S. jobs and prevent the severe job losses caused by pandemics through major new investments in medical countermeasures manufacturing; research and development; and related biopreparedness and biosecurity.
    •  $46 billion investment to jumpstart clean energy manufacturing through federal procurement.
    • $52 billion in domestic manufacturers.

…$100 billion in proven workforce development programs targeted at underserved groups and getting students on paths to careers before they graduate from high school.

    • $5 billion over eight years in support of evidence-based community violence prevention programs. Biden is calling on Congress to invest in job training for formerly incarcerated individuals and justice-involved youth and in improving public safety.
    • $48 billion in American workforce development infrastructure and worker protection. This includes registered apprenticeships and pre-apprenticeships, creating one to two million new registered apprenticeships slots, and strengthening the pipeline for more women and people of color to access these opportunities through successful pre-apprenticeship programs such as the Women in Apprenticeships in Non-Traditional Occupations.

Please follow the link above for more liberal dreams. Just a note–the bill would not have to ‘invest’ $52 billion in domestic manufacturers if it didn’t plan to increase the corporate tax rate.

When The Media Totally Distorts The Truth

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The American Thinker posted an article today about one network’s recent attempts to smear Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Governor DeSantis is a current target because of his state’s relatively successful handing of the coronavirus. He is also viewed as a future candidate for higher office and thus must be destroyed before that happens. The article explains the smear attempt and then explains what actually happened.

First the smear attempt:

…In addition to repeatedly and falsely implying that Florida handled COVID badly and is a hotbed of disease, the media are now attacking DeSantis directly.

Most recently, CBS’s 60 Minutes, openly accused DeSantis of a pay-to-play scheme with Publix, giving the latter the right to distribute vaccinations in exchange for a $100,000 campaign donation. You can see the set-up in the string of three tweets, below, which culminate in ostensible footage of an angry DeSantis baselessly swatting aside Sharyn Alfonsi’s challenging questions:

This is one of the tweets:

If that were the entire story, it would not be a good look. However, there is more to the story.

The article notes:

Well, it turns out that CBS forgot to include a few things when it put together that footage of a contentious exchange between the “brave” Alfonsi and the “evil” Republican governor. In fact, DeSantis carefully explained to the assembled media the decision-making behind choosing Publix to disburse vaccinations:

So, first of all, when we did, the first pharmacies that had it were CVS and Walgreens. And they had a long-term care mission. So they were going to the long term care facilities. They got vaccine in the middle of December, they started going to the long-term care facilities the third week of December to do LTCs. So that was their mission. That was very important. And we trusted them to do that. As we got into January, we wanted to expand the distribution points. So yes, you had the counties, you had some drive through sites, you had hospitals that were doing a lot, but we wanted to get it into communities more. So, we reached out to other retail pharmacies — Publix, Walmart — obviously CVS and Walgreens had to finish that mission. And we said, we’re going to use you as soon as you’re done with that. For the Publix, they were the first one to raise their hand, say they were ready to go. And you know what, we did it on a trial basis. I had three counties. I actually showed up that weekend and talked to seniors across four different Publix. How was the experience? Is this good? Should you think this is a way to go? And it was 100% positive. So, we expanded it, and then folks liked it. And I can tell you, if you look at a place like Palm Beach County, they were kind of struggling at first in terms of the senior numbers.

DeSantis explained too, that at a meeting with the Palm Beach County mayor, administration, and other “folks,” one of the things they calculated was “that 90% of their seniors live within a mile and a half a Publix.” The ultimate calculation, therefore, was what would be easiest for residents:

Please follow the link above to the article to read the rest of the story. As the mid-term elections approach, we can expect to see more character assassination directed at conservative candidates. Many Republican candidates will avoid this because they are part of the uni-party, but look for attacks (mostly baseless) on conservatives during the next year–particularly those who might run for President.

 

When Americans Won’t Vote For You, Simply Import New Americans

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Yesterday Trending Politics posted an article about how the Biden administration is handling to flood of illegal immigrants currently pouring into America. The crisis at the border is rapidly spreading to all areas of the country. There is no way the number of people crossing into our country illegally are going to remain in one small area.

The article reports:

Biden’s border crisis is spreading nationwide, according to a new report from the Center for Immigration Studies. The new administration is pursuing an immigration policy dubbed “catch-and-bus” with the aim of establishing undocumented immigrants in states in the interior of the United States.

The Biden “smuggling routes” have gone largely unreported by media outlets that are fixated on the disastrous border crisis, where children are being kept in unsanitary conditions within detention facilities that violate COVID protocols.

According to an original investigation by CIS, a veritable “conveyor belt” of busesfrom Texas, Arizona and California are transporting “thousands” of undocumented immigrants into America’s heartland.

…“As best as the Center for Immigration Studies can determine from interviews and scattered media reporting, the buses are leaving regularly from Del Rio, the Texas Rio Grande Valley communities, and Laredo, but the busing also appears to be going on in Arizona, as well as in California,” the report continued.

“Where are the buses going?” the CIS rhetorically asked. “They often drop their Haitian, Venezuelan, and Cuban passengers in Florida and New Jersey. Those from Nicaragua and other Central American nations have been delivered to Tennessee, Massachusetts, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and to large cities in Texas such as Dallas and Houston.”

The estimates square with other Border Patrol estimates, The Blaze corroborates.

The article concludes:

“One Nicaraguan migrant showed CIS a DHS document titled ‘Interim Notice Authorizing Parole’, which grants him a renewable one-year term to live legally inside the country,” the report went on, adding, “Most will likely use their time to apply for asylum, a lengthy, back-logged process that allows for work authorization and Social Security cards during an adjudication process that can drag on for years.”

The Biden “catch-and-bus” policy is an escalation of the Democratic Party’s open borders policy. Even if a state is not on the southern border, an illegal migrant can walk across it and get a free bus ride from the Biden administration to any place it chooses.

Has anyone given any thought to the people who have been waiting in line to come to America legally? Admittedly our immigration policies need to change to eliminate a lot of the expense and red tape, but open borders are not the answer!

Let’s project this a year or two down the road. The people who came here illegally are given a renewable one-year term to live in America. Some of the immigrants will renew; others will simply vanish somewhere inside the country. Eventually a Democrat congressman will say that like the dreamers, they have been here long enough so that they should automatically be given citizenship. At that point they should be allowed to vote. Voila! You have changed to voting demographic of America. Do you think the Democrats would close the borders if they thought the people coming across would eventually become Republican voters?

Fighting With Facts

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I will admit that in doing research for this blog, I read a lot of news. However, I don’t think I am any smarter than the average America. I may be better informed, but that is a choice I made. Anyone can make that choice. I believe that one of the major problems in America right now is that people are believing what they are told and not doing their own research. That was recently illustrated in a post at Townhall by Larry Elder.

The article reports:

A couple of years ago, I gave a speech before a conservative, predominantly white audience. I couldn’t help but notice a tall, heavyset Black man, arms folded, standing in the back. From time to time, I would look at him, only to see him frown and shake his head, I assumed disapprovingly, when I made what I considered important points.

After the speech, he came up to me. “I am angry,” he said. “Not at you — at myself. I thought I was well informed. I read the news. I watch the news. I now see I’ve been manipulated by the party that I voted for all my life.”

The article lists the things that the man learned from Larry Elder’s speech:

He said he had no idea that (according to a 2004 Thomas B. Fordham Institute study) 44% of Philadelphia public school teachers send their own school-age kids to private school. Yet the Democratic Party adamantly opposes school vouchers, which would give K-12 children of urban parents a chance at a better school.

He did not know that Democrats, including President Barack Obama, tried to end the Washington, D.C., Opportunity Scholarship Program. It is a lottery that allows fortunate parents to opt out of their local public school for a better private school. The program is so popular that there are far more parents who want to participate than there are seats. “What’s more important, ” he asked me, “than making sure are kids are well educated?”

He did not know that, in 1965, 25% of Black kids were born outside of wedlock, versus 70% today, a phenomenon that cannot be attributed to slavery and Jim Crow. He did not know that Barack Obama once said, “Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”

…He did not know that, according to Harvard economist George Borjas, illegal immigration creates winners and losers. But the big losers are low- and unskilled American workers of color who compete against low- and unskilled illegal immigrant workers — who place downward pressure on the wages of the native-born.

The man did not know that, according to The Washington Post, in recent years, more unarmed whites have been killed by the police than unarmed Blacks. He was unaware of studies, including one by a Black Harvard economist, that found the police more hesitant, more reluctant, to pull the trigger on a Black suspect than on a white suspect. He did not know that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, police killings of Blacks declined almost 80% from the late ’60s through the 2010s, while police killings of whites have flatlined.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. We need to remember that bias in reporting is not only reflected in the way things are reported, it is also reflected by the things relevant to a story that are not mentioned.

This Is The Goal

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Freedom in America has been seriously limited over the past year because of the coronavirus. Some of the rules imposed have made sense, and some have not. Now we are hearing rumbles about a ‘vaccine passport,’ truly one of the worst ideas ever. Reminiscent of totalitarian governments saying, “Papers, please.” So what is the end game here? Well, someone accidentally gave that away.

Yesterday Red State reported the following:

Sometimes tyrants just come right out and say what they mean. Last night was one of those nights.

Chris Cuomo and Leana Wen appeared together to bat around an absolutely insane idea, and it shows just how far the left in this country are willing to go to exact their will. In this case, Wen says that vaccinations should be tied to “freedoms,” denying them to those who haven’t yet gotten the shot.

The article continues:

There’s a lot of irony in a “my body, my choice” proponent saying this. Remember, Wen is the former head of Planned Parenthood. Her entire schtick is that people should have such bodily autonomy that they can kill their own child if they want. Yet, now she wants to force people into lockdowns and punish them if they don’t inject their bodies with a specific substance. Makes sense, right?

It’s also scientifically illiterate. Those in age groups that are not at any real statistical risk of death have no reason to be prioritized for vaccination right now, and it would be tyrannical and asinine to force them to stay locked up until then. That also slows our path to herd immunity down.

And what about the tens of millions of people who have already had the virus in the United States? Science continues to show that anti-body immunity is effective and we’ve yet to see any large number of re-infections, even going back to those who had it over a year ago. The proof of that can be found in a complete lack of reporting of such incidents. The occasional anecdote will be shared, but that only drives the statistical case home harder. If immunity for those previously infected wasn’t long-lasting, we’d have seen huge spikes among those people by now.

I have had the virus and have no intention of getting the shot. I will be tested for antibodies to make sure that I am protected. However, that may not be enough for those pushing the vaccine. Already I am getting notices from places I would normally attend to discourage me from attending because I have not had the vaccine. That is truly discouraging to me. I wonder when I will be forced to wear a label that identifies me as not vaccinated.

 

Major League Baseball Strikes Out

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John Hinderaker posted an article at Power Line Blog today about the moving of the baseball All-Star Game out of Georgia because of the changes to Georgia’s election laws. He asks one very relevant question, “What about boycotting the Beijing Olympics?.”  We have video evidence that the Chinese are running concentration camps for minorities, they have taken most of the freedom away from Hong Kong (in violation of the treaty they signed), and we are worried about Georgia’s voting laws? Makes no sense.

Meanwhile, a lot of what has been reported about the Georgia voting laws is false. On Tuesday, Heritage Action posted the following:

Myth vs. Fact: The Georgia Election Law

The Left and their media allies have used the new Georgia election law (SB 202) signed into law last week as a pretext for their election takeover with HR. 1, leaning heavily on misconceptions, half-truths, and flat-out lies about the bill to make their case for a massive federal takeover of state election systems. Here are the facts:

Myth 1: The Georgia election law discourages voting/suppresses votes

FACT: The bill actually preserves or expands ballot access in several important ways: It requires that large precincts with lines more than an hour long take steps like adding voting machines and election personnel for the next election to reduce wait times. It does not change the number of total early voting days, and actually increases the mandatory days of early weekend voting. Compared to 2020, 134 of 159 counties will offer more early voting hours in future elections under the new law. It codifies election drop boxes, which did not exist prior to 2020. Voters can continue to vote absentee with no excuse(unlike states like Delaware, New York, and Connecticut, which require an excuse to vote absentee).

Myth 2: The Georgia law eliminates voting on Sunday to suppress African-American votes

FACT: Georgia law was silent on Sunday early voting days prior to SB 202, and in 2020 only 16 of 159 counties offered early voting on Sundays. The new law explicitly provides the option of holding early voting on two Sundays for all localities. It actually increases the mandatory days of early weekend voting across the state.

Myth 3: The Georgia election law suppresses the vote with onerous voter ID requirements

FACT: The law requires a driver’s license or free state ID number, which 97% of registered voters already have. Anyone without a valid ID can easily obtain one for free. The voter ID requirement replaces the state’s controversial signature match program that led to the disqualification of thousands of votes in 2020.

The law’s voter ID requirement for absentee ballots is overwhelmingly popular in Georgia across the board. According to an AJC poll in January, 74% of Georgia voters support it, including 63% of black voters, and 89% of those making under $25K/year.

Myth 4: The bill eliminates drop boxes for absentee voting

FACT: The drop boxes used in the last election did not exist a year ago. They were first utilized in 2020 as a pandemic precaution. This bill makes them an official part of Georgia elections, and they will be available in all 159 counties in Georgia and under supervision to protect against tampering.

Myth 5: The bill lets Republicans throw out any county votes they don’t agree with

FACT: The bipartisan State Election Board can do performance reviews of local election supervisors who fail their area’s voters with things like long lines and unfulfilled absentee ballot requests. The board will not overturn election results; the law simply provides a process to review and ensure officials are technically competent and complying with state laws and regulations . This process requires a high burden of proof over multiple elections, and the State Elections Board may only suspend up to four election supervisors at any given time, which guards against using this process to try to influence election outcomes.

Myth 6: The bill bans drinking water for voters while waiting in line

FACT: Like the countless other states that have very specific laws against electioneering near polling places, Georgia has codified rules preventing political groups from handing out food or water to voters in line as an incentive to vote, but specifically allows poll workers to make water available to anyone who wants it. The law will also directly cut down wait times, meaning refreshment for people waiting in line will be less necessary.

The facts about the law were totally misrepresented and the cancel culture reacted. It would be in the best interests of our country to end the cancel culture quickly.

Another Misnamed Bill

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Yesterday Ed Morrissey posted an article at Hot Air about the Biden administration’s infrastructure bill. Just as the Covid Relief Bill was not about Covid relief, the infrastructure bill is not about infrastructure.

The article quotes The Wall Street Journals description of the bill:

Most Americans think of infrastructure as roads, highways, bridges and other traditional public works. That’s why it polls well, and every President has supported more of it.

Yet this accounts for a mere $115 billion of Mr. Biden’s proposal. There’s another $25 billion for airports and $17 billion for ports and waterways that also fill a public purpose. The rest of the $620 billion earmarked for “transportation” are subsidies for green energy and payouts to unions for the jobs his climate regulation will kill. This is really a plan to build government back bigger than it has ever been.

The magnitude of spending is something to behold. There’s $85 billion for mass transit plus $80 billion for Amtrak, which is on top of the $70 billion that Congress appropriated for mass transit in three Covid spending bills. The money is essentially a bailout for unions, whose generous pay and benefits have captured funds meant for subway and rail repairs. …

Note the political irony of all this. Mr. Biden says “public investment” has fallen as a share of the economy since the 1960s, and he has a point. But the main reason is that government spending on social welfare, entitlements and public unions have squeezed out public works. Now he’s redefining social welfare as public works to drive more social-welfare spending, which will further crowd out money for public works and government R&D to compete against China.

Essentially the bill is a place to park all of the legislation the Democrats want passed, but know won’t pass if correctly named.

The article concludes:

That’s not an accident. That’s by design. Rather than stick to real infrastructure needs, Biden wants to use this bait-and-switch to aggrandize power within the Beltway and make everyone more dependent on grants from lawmakers. It is precisely on the same curve as Biden’s entire political career, including his record on honesty and transparency.

Never read the titles of bills–they never tell the truth!

Fighting Back

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Yesterday Trending Politics reported that 13 states are suing the Biden administration because of the clause in the Covid Relief Bill that prevents states from lowering taxes if they receive aid.

The article quotes The Daily Caller:

The Daily Caller reports: “The 13-state coalition argued that the provision included in the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package preventing states from cutting taxes if they accept relief from the federal government is unconstitutional. The coalition, led by Republican West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, filed the federal lawsuit Wednesday evening in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.”

In a statement released on Wednesday, Morrisey said, “Never before has the federal government attempted such a complete takeover of state finances. We cannot stand for such overreach.”

…The lawsuit explains that the tax provision is “one of the most egregious power grabs” in U.S. history, adding that the Tenth Amendment doesn’t allow the federal government to stretch their authority like the Biden Administration is doing.

The lawsuit is needed. The provision in the bill is definitely government overreach.

Insanity Reigns

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Om Wednesday, The Washington Examiner posted an article about some of the benefits given to those who cross our border illegally.

The article reports:

The Biden administration is granting thousands of illegal border crossers one-year renewable permits to stay in the United States to apply for asylum, a process that can take years.

What’s more, according to a new report, they are allowed to receive Social Security cards, paving the way to government benefits and jobs.

Immigration expert Todd Bensman, who has been embedded in the process for the Center for Immigration Studies, said in a new report that an estimated 34,000 recent border crossers have already been distributed around the country with the documents.

He said that if the migrant qualifies to stay, and most do under the Biden rules, they are given a COVID test then documents to stay before being guided to a privately run service that buses them around the country.

I guess this is one way to bankrupt Social Security–how many illegal immigrants will be claiming benefits without having put much into the system?

The article concludes:

Before Biden took office, nearly all asylum-seekers and potential border crossers stayed in Mexico while their papers were processed. Many turned around and went home. Former President Donald Trump, with Mexico’s help, instituted that process because a majority of those who had entered the country during prior administrations never appeared for their court hearings on their application.

Now the older system is back in operation, said Bensman, and migrants are being sent to cities in Texas, Florida, New Jersey, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Indiana, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, and Kentucky.

“On the bank of the Rio Grande in Del Rio recently,” Bensman wrote, he “happened across a family of four who had just crossed and turned themselves in to a Border Patrol agent. They were seated on the ground next to his agency truck. Asked where they were from and where they expected to go next, the parents answered that they were from Venezuela and were on their way to join relatives in Florida.”

“They should be there inside of a week.”

We are giving away our country while neglecting the needs of America’s veterans and America’s poor.

 

The Absurdity Is Temporarily Suspended

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Yesterday The Epoch Times reported that Iowa Democrat Rita Hart has conceded the Iowa 2nd Congressional District election to Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks. Representative Miller-Meeks had won the election by six votes. The results were recounted and certified by the State of Iowa. Ms. Hart decided to bypass the state procedure for contesting the results and went to the U.S. House of Representatives instead. Speaker Pelosi gladly took up her cause. Thankfully, there were a few Democrats who realized the dangerous precedent overturning a certified election would create and were not willing to go along with the plan to unseat Representative Miller-Meeks. I suspect that when Speaker Pelosi realized that she did not have the support of her party, she quietly asked Ms. Hart to withdraw the challenge.

The article reports:

Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate also sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and called on her “to reject any attempts to overturn the will of Iowa voters.”

Pate said that the “Hart campaign signed off on the recount procedures and results in all 24 counties” and said that “the bipartisan State Canvassing Board unanimously accepted the results and officially certified the election,” noting that Miller-Meeks defeated her opponent by six votes.

“Ms. Hart has stated that her reason for failing to give Iowans a voice in this process is that Iowa law does not allow for sufficient time to review her claims,” Pate wrote.

“That assertion is in stark contrast to the fact that Iowa’s Judicial Branch has always gone above and beyond to issue expeditious rulings in cases concerning election law. The Hart campaign should have exhausted all state avenues before asking a federal chamber controlled by her party to make the final determination. Iowans should have the final say in all Iowa elections, not Washington, D.C., politicians.”

Pelosi and other Democratic leaders earlier this month said that the House has the capacity to overturn contested elections. Under the Constitution, the House does have the power to make the final call in certain cases, and Hart appealed to the lower congressional body to review the results of her razor-thin race against Miller-Meeks.

Not all of the Democrats were on board with this effort.

The article notes:

But some moderate Democrats rejected efforts to overturn Miller-Meeks’s win.

“I want to see what compelling reasons there are for the feds to get involved in this,” Rep. Lou Correa (D-Calif.) told CNN earlier this month. “I think these are issues that right now are probably best left at the state level.”

There may be hope for our nation yet.

Dogs Are Amazing

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Yesterday Sara Carter reported that Border Control canines found $60k worth of fentanyl pills hidden inside burritos.

The article reports:

A Yuma Sector Border Patrol canine uncovered almost $60,000 worth of the drugs in the backpack of a man crossing a checkpoint near Arizona, U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a press release Tuesday.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection stated the following in their press release:

A canine handler referred the male driver of a Chevrolet Tahoe to the checkpoint’s secondary inspection area at approximately 3 p.m., after his canine partner alerted to the vehicle. While in secondary, the canine alerted to a black backpack that was located inside the vehicle. Agents searched the backpack and discovered several small packages containing fentanyl pills that were stuffed inside breakfast burritos.

The packages of fentanyl had a combined weight of just over five pounds with an estimated street value of nearly $60,000.

A 37-year-old Lawfully Admitted Permanent Resident was arrested and the fentanyl was seized and processed per CBP guidelines.

Smugglers are under the false assumption that they can disguise drugs within food to throw off canines and their handlers. On the contrary, canines have the ability to detect a target odor among a myriad of other odors.

Our local sheriff one commented that a person might walk into a house and notice that there was beef stew cooking. A dog’s sense of smell is so acute that he would be thinking ‘you left out the carrots.’ Thank God for our men at the border and the dogs that work alongside them.

The Media Is Telling You What To Believe

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On Monday, Newsbusters posted an article about the media reporting after a tragedy involving a gun.

The article reports:

In the aftermath of the tragic shooting in Boulder, the Big Three (ABC, CBS, NBC) network evening and morning shows sinisterly depicted Republicans, conservatives and gun owners as a “wall of opposition” and “resistance” to “common sense” gun control measures that would save lives. 

In just four days (March 23 through March 26) of coverage, the networks filled their morning show and evening programs with statements favoring gun control over gun rights by a ratio of roughly 14 to 1.

It’s become commonplace for the networks to quickly seize on a mass shooting to champion the Left’s longstanding anti-gun agenda. After the December 2012 killings in a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school, NewsBusters found the networks slanted their coverage 8-to-1 in favor of the gun control agenda.

In the wake of the 2016 mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub, the spin was an equally-lopsided 8-to-1. TV coverage of the killings in Las Vegas in 2017 was slanted five-to-one against gun rights, while in the wake of the February 2018 shootings at Parkland High School the networks tilted 11-to-1 in favor of anti-gun activists.

And after the 2019 shootings in El Paso, Texas, the networks tilted an even more lopsided 17-to-1 to the Left.

The article summarizes the numbers:

MRC analysts reviewed all statements that took a position on overall gun policy by anchors, reporters, guests and soundbites, beginning with the morning of March 23 (the morning after the Boulder shooting) through the morning of March 26, and found time spent arguing in favor of more gun control (36 minutes, 11 seconds) overwhelmed time devoted to supporting gun rights (2 minutes and 31 seconds.)  

How are Americans supposed to get a fair picture of any issue when our media is so lopsided? This is ridiculous.

None of the laws currently proposed by Democrats in Congress to ‘save lives’ would have been relevant in most of the shootings that have occurred in America in recent years. Limiting the rights of law-abiding gun owners does nothing to prevent criminals from obtaining guns and using them. Has it occurred to anyone in Congress that criminals do not follow laws?