Monthly Archives: March 2022

A Bridge Too Far

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On Tuesday, The Hill reported that Senator Joe Manchin has stated that he does not support President Biden’s plan to tax the unrealized gains of billionaires, which would set a new precedent by taxing the value an asset accrues in theory before it is actually sold and converted into cash.

The article quotes Senator Manchin:

“You can’t tax something that’s not earned. Earned income is what we’re based on,” he told The Hill. “There’s other ways to do it. Everybody has to pay their fair share.”

“Everybody has to pay their fair share, that’s for sure. But unrealized gains is not the way to do it, as far as I’m concerned,” he added.

Manchin’s opposition means Biden’s proposal is likely dead only a day after the White House unveiled it.

It could be significantly restructured to avoid taxing unrealized gains, which would pose the big challenge of trying to make up the lost revenues.

The article notes:

The problem with taxing just the regular income of billionaires is that many of the nation’s richest individuals, such as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, have been able to pay little or nothing in income tax by not declaring income.

Instead, the ultra-rich often can take out loans secured by the value of their assets to finance their lavish lifestyles.

“Here’s what they do. They go to their accountant. They tell their accountant, ‘Make sure I don’t make any income, any salary.’ And then they say, ‘Make sure I can buy, borrow and die.’ And nobody knew anything about that years ago, and now people are pretty up on it,” said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), who has announced his own proposal to tax the unrealized gains of billionaires.

Wyden says that imposing a minimum 20 percent tax on billionaires is about making sure they pay a similar percentage of their wealth in taxes as middle-class Americans.

Raising taxes does not generate revenue–lowering taxes generates revenue. All that raising taxes does is give Washington bureaucrats more money and thus more power. The Democrats need to study the Laffer Curve.

Incompetent Or Political?

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On Tuesday, America got a chance to see how badly the FBI has handled the Hunter Biden laptop case. This article is based on two articles–one posted by The New York Post on Tuesday and one posted by The U.K. Daily Mail on Tuesday and updated on Wednesday. At this point, I would like to note that The U.K. Daily Mail does a better job of reporting on politics in America than most of the American media.

The U.K. Daily Mail reports:

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) got into a heated spat over the whereabouts of Hunter Biden‘s laptop during a House Judiciary hearing on oversight of the FBI‘s Cyber Division on Tuesday. 

The Republican firebrand used his allotted time to grill the division’s assistant director Bryan Vorndran, who repeatedly told Gaetz he didn’t have any information on where the hard drive belonging to President Joe Biden‘s son is currently located.

At one point Gaetz tried to enter the hard drive into the Congressional record but was blocked by House Judiciary Chair Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), who changed his mind a short while later.

The New York Post reports:

Material from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop was entered into the Congressional Record on Tuesday at the request of Rep. Matt Gaetz.

The Florida Republican made the move during a hearing on oversight of the FBI’s Cyber Division after its assistant director, Bryan Vorndran, testified that he didn’t “have any information about the Hunter Biden laptop,” which the bureau seized from a Delaware repair shop in December 2019.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) initially blocked Gaetz’s request but relented a short time later.

Nadler’s change of heart came after what Gaetz described as “consultation with majority staff.”

“I seek unanimous consent to enter into the record of this committee, content from, files from and copies from the Hunter Biden laptop,” Gaetz said.

Nadler responded, “Without objection.”

Now that the information from the laptop has been entered into the Congressional Record, is it public information? If it is, does anyone want to wager how many of the American news media outlets will cover the story?

An Interesting Turn Of Events

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North Carolina residents have voted for some form of voter ID twice. Both times the courts have overturned the will of the people. The second time we voted for voter ID, the vote was for an amendment to the North Carolina Constitution that would require voter ID. The court struck that amendment down as unconstitutional. Wow. Well, on Tuesday there was some good news about the citizens of North Carolina’s quest for voter ID.

On Tuesday, The Carolina Journal reported the following:

North Carolina’s 2018 voter ID law complies with the state constitution and should survive a legal challenge. That’s according to briefs submitted in the N.C. Supreme Court from state legislative leaders and the N.C. Justice Department.

Both briefs urge the Supreme Court to reverse a trial court’s 2-1 ruling from September 2021 in the case titled Holmes v. Moore. Two Democratic judges overruled a Republican colleague in deciding that the law, originally Senate Bill 824, violated the N.C. Constitution.

“Election legislation in North Carolina is often contentious,” wrote attorney Nicole Moss, representing Republican state legislative leaders. “In the fall of 2018, the People of North Carolina — by a 55.49% to 44.51% margin — adopted a constitutional amendment requiring photo voter ID and directing the General Assembly to enact implementing legislation.”

“The General Assembly at that time could have enacted a voter-ID law without any Democratic votes or any Democratic input whatsoever,” wrote Moss, referencing Republicans’ veto-proof supermajorities in both chambers of the General Assembly in 2018. “But that is not what the General Assembly did with S.B. 824. Instead, the Republican supermajority worked closely with Senator Joel Ford, an African American Democrat, who co-sponsored the bill; adopted the majority of amendments offered by Democrats; obtained several Democratic votes for the bill; and otherwise engaged with Democrats every step of the way, garnering thanks even from the bill’s opponents.”

The article notes:

The state’s brief also criticizes the trial court. “Contrary to what Plaintiffs contend in their brief, throughout the trial court majority’s analysis in this case, it shifted the burden of proof to Defendants and failed to adhere to the presumption of legislative good faith,” Steed wrote.

Nothing presented during a trial showed that the ID law would block any eligible votes. “Plaintiffs failed to establish any of the Plaintiffs would be unable to vote under S.B. 824, and in fact, the evidence at trial showed they would have multiple ways to vote under S.B. 824,” Steed added. “Even more telling, … they have never identified a form of ID, or any combination of IDs for that matter, which would create a lesser disparate impact than S.B. 824.”

“In Plaintiff’s view, no form of a voter ID law, no matter how ameliorative, would ever be acceptable to them. This evinces a fundamental flaw with Plaintiffs’ position, given the legislature is under a constitutional mandate to pass a voter-ID law.”

Voter ID will not solve all of our voter integrity problems, but it is a step in the right direction.

Making A Bad Situation Worse

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During the 2020 presidential campaign, former President Obama warned us about the ability of former Vice-President Biden’s ability to mess things up. I am not posting the actual quote because this blog is family friendly, but you can find it in a search engine if you want to read it. It begins, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability…” On Tuesday, The Daily Caller posted an article that illustrates that point.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden’s budget proposes to scrap more than $45 billion in fossil fuel subsidies, his administration’s latest attack on the beleaguered industry.

The White House budget will remove more than a dozen fossil fuel industry tax credits, increasing the federal government’s revenue by an estimated $45.2 billion between 2023-2032, according to the proposal published Monday. The administration explained that the proposal was written to prevent further fossil fuel investment.

“These oil, gas, and coal tax preferences distort markets by encouraging more investment in the fossil fuel sector than would occur under a neutral system,” the Department of the Treasury wrote in its general budget explanation.

“This market distortion is detrimental to long-term energy security and is also inconsistent with the Administration’s policy of supporting a clean energy economy, reducing our reliance on oil, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” the department added.

…“This budget is basically a $45 billion tax increase on the oil and gas industry,” Mike Palicz, the federal affairs manager at Americans for Tax Reform, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “This is more targeting oil and gas for provisions that are just good tax policy that any industry should be able to take advantage of.”

“This is a clear effort to continue to try and paint (the oil and gas industry) as the villain,” he continued.

The article concludes:

Republicans, who have doubled down on calls for the Biden administration to incentivize domestic energy production in recent months, slammed his tax proposal Monday.

“President Biden wants to spend more taxpayer dollars on his green energy schemes instead of increasing American energy production to solve the energy crisis he created,” Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the top Republican on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in a statement. “The president’s priorities could not be more out of touch with families in Wyoming and across the country.”

“This budget is dead on arrival. Republicans will focus on what Americans care about most: national security, energy security, and economic security,” he continued. “That means tackling inflation, unleashing American energy production, and keeping Americans safe.”

The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.

If by some horrible miracle this budget passes, every Congressman who votes for it should be voted out of office in the midterms. The average middle-class American cannot afford what will happen to gas prices if this passes. The average middle-class American cannot afford to buy an electric car–regardless of the government rebate. This is an attack on the average American.

That’s Not His Job

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On Tuesday, The Epoch Times posted an article about a recent claim made by a former CIA officer.

The article reports:

One of the former CIA officers who signed a letter claiming stories about a laptop allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden were disinformation says he helped swing the 2020 election away from former President Donald Trump.

“I take special pride in personally swinging the election away from Trump,” John Sipher, who served for decades as a senior operations officer at the CIA, wrote in a recent post on Twitter. “I lost the election for Trump? Well then I [feel] pretty good about my influence.”

Sipher and 50 other former U.S. intelligence officials signed the letter on Oct. 19, 2020, alleging that the effort to distribute its contents “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” despite not knowing whether the laptop was legitimate.

The letter was at the core of a story from Politico that claimed the New York Post story about the laptop was “Russian disinformation.”

The Post was the first to report about emails on the laptop, which was dropped off at a computer repair store and never picked up by then-presidential candidate Joe Biden’s son, according to the store’s owner.

It has since been proven that the laptop was real and the letter was in fact Democrat disinformation. Meanwhile, John Sipher is bragging about influencing an election by lying about something he really did not know. What kind of people are running (or have been running) our government?

The article concludes:

Sipher got into arguments with former acting DNI Richard Grenell and others on Twitter, where he later said his claims of helping Trump lose were sarcasm.

He also wrote that “the letter didn’t say the laptop was disinformation,” but, in May 2021, posted a link to the Politico story that did say that.

Nick Shapiro, once a top aide to former CIA Director John Brennan—both Shapiro and Brennan signed the missive—and who provided it to Politico, hasn’t responded to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.

Most of the other signers didn’t respond to requests for comment or declined the requests, the Post reported.

Former DNI James Clapper told the paper that he stands by the statement “made AT THE TIME.”

“I think sounding such a cautionary note AT THE TIME was appropriate,” Clapper said.

“The letter explicitly stated that we didn’t know if the emails were genuine, but that we were concerned about Russian disinformation efforts,” said Russ Travers, former acting director of the National Counterterrorism Center. “I spent 25 years as a Soviet/Russian analyst. Given the context of what the Russians were doing at the time (and continue to do—Ukraine being just the latest example), I considered the cautionary warning to be prudent.”

What garbage.

The Social Police Are Coming For All Of Us

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On Monday, The Wall Street Journal posted an article about a new policy in Walmart.

The article reports:

Walmart Inc. is ending cigarette sales in some U.S. stores after years of debate within the retail company’s leadership ranks about the sale of tobacco products, according to people familiar with the matter.

Cigarettes are being removed in various markets, including some stores in California, Florida, Arkansas and New Mexico, according to the people and store visits. In some of these stores, Walmart has rolled out a design with more self-checkout registers, as well as other items such as grab-and-go food or candy sold near the front of stores in place of Marlboro, Newport and other tobacco products.

Walmart, which has more than 4,700 U.S. stores, is removing tobacco products from select locations where the retailer has decided to use the space more efficiently, a spokeswoman said. “We are always looking at ways to meet our customers’ needs while still operating an efficient business,” she said. She declined to say how many locations will continue to sell cigarettes but said Walmart isn’t halting all tobacco sales.

I am not a smoker and hate the smell of cigarette smoke. However, tobacco is a legal substance. People are addicted to it, but it is a legal substance. Any retail outlet has the right to sell or not to sell any product it wants to; however, I wonder if this is a portent of things to come. Will bookstores stop selling conservative books (many already avoid putting them in prominent places)? Will grocery stores decide meat is bad for you and stop selling it? Will drug stores stop selling over-the-counter pain medication because some people become addicted? The decision by Walmart may lead to equally bad decisions by other retail outlets.

The article also notes:

As with tobacco, Walmart has pulled back on sales of firearms in recent years after similar internal discussions. It raised the age to purchase guns to 21 after the 2018 high-school shooting in Parkland, Fla., and discontinued sales of ammunition used in semiautomatic weapons and handguns after a 2019 shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas.

At Walmart, sales of cigarettes are generally less profitable than some other items sold near the front of stores such as candy, according to the people familiar with the situation. It is also an operationally complex sale, eating into profits. Tobacco is kept in a locked case or blocked from shoppers. Food and Drug Administration regulations require that an employee make the sale. At Walmart, that employee must be over a specific age based on local laws and trained in tobacco sales. Theft is high throughout the supply chain, said some of these people.

Was this a decision based on principle or profit?

A Really Bad Tax Proposal

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Whenever the Democrats want to raise our taxes, they always cry that the rich do not pay their fair share. That claim is totally contradicted by the actual facts, but that has never stopped them. On Sunday, Hot Air posted an article about their latest scheme to ‘tax the rich.’

The article comments on the Biden administration’s plans for a ‘billionaires tax’:

This isn’t technically a “billionaire’s tax” because it hits anyone making more than $100 million. That’s a staggering amount of money for most of us, but not everyone who brings in $100 million actually has a billion dollars in wealth laying around. That’s sort of a nitpick, I admit, but it’s worth pointing out.

Just as a reminder, under the current system, the top ten percent of earners in the United States (those making more than $151K per year) pay more than 70% of the taxes collected by the government. The top one percent (making more than $546K) pay nearly 40% by themselves. The idea that high earners aren’t “paying their fair share” is simply a display of intentional ignorance.

Another detail of the proposed tax hike should also run into opposition and a likely court challenge. The description of the amount of “income” to be taxed includes the phrase “unrealized investment income.” In other words, if the shares comprising your retirement plan or your stock portfolio go up by a given percentage, that increase will be treated as income and you’ll be taxed on it even though you haven’t cashed it in yet.

So why should I leave money in the stock market if I have to pay taxes on it whether I cash it out or not? Why should I invest in a home if it is going to cost me money each year in addition to the real estate taxes and expense of owning a home? What is that going to do to the stock market and the real estate market?

The article concludes:

Here’s another thing to remember about those people with incomes at those levels. They don’t just pay a lot of taxes. They also tend to be max donors to political campaigns and to PACs as well, including to Democrats. I imagine they will all be watching closely to see how each member of Congress plans to vote on this and those planning to vote for it probably shouldn’t expect those donors to be whipping out their pens and checkbooks for them in the midterm races.

Manchin and Sinema have already come out against any big tax hikes while the nation is reeling under the current Bidenflation levels. It would be stunning if you could find a single Republican to vote for it. This sort of “eat the rich” tax proposal is the stuff of dreams on the left, intended to make the Democratic Socialists sequel with delight. But it’s not a serious proposal and you probably shouldn’t start getting your hopes of seeing it pass into law too far up just yet.

I hope the author of the article is right. The Democrats may get desperate to do something as they watch to polling about the approaching mid-terms.

Parents Need To Pay Attention

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On Monday, The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about a video shown as part of a social studies class in a New Jersey public middle school.

The article reports:

As part of a social studies class, a New Jersey public middle school forced students to watch a video about a transgender man’s hormone treatment—all without notifying parents.

The video, “Ten Years on Testosterone,” details the transition of LGBT activist Aydian Dowling through hormone injections. Teachers and administrators at Pearl R. Miller Middle School in Kinnelon, N.J., did not notify parents about the lesson, which included slideshows with definitions of different gender ideologies, beforehand.

…Dowling later spoke at a school-wide assembly as part of the school’s “Stories Of Adversity & Resilience Program,” about which administrators notified parents ahead of time, giving them the option to opt out their children. Concerned parents flocked to a school board meeting last Thursday, where board members admitted parents should have similarly been informed about the hormone therapy video.

“I felt as if I was blindsided,” Loren Malfitano, whose two sons were shown the video, told the Washington Free Beacon. “They’re learning about this ideology of gender before they even have classes on the actual biologies of males and females.”

The article notes:

New Jersey is set to enact updated health standards in September pushed by Democratic governor Phil Murphy that teach second-graders about genitalia, reproduction, and “gender expression.” Fifth-graders will be required to define masturbation and differentiate between sexual orientation and gender identity, and eighth-graders will have to define gender identity, gender expression, vaginal sex, oral sex, and anal sex. The governor-appointed New Jersey Board of Education adopted the standards in 2020.

Why are schools spending so much time of this sort of thing while the SAT scores of their students are dropping drastically. Is there anyone in the education hierarchy who is actually concerned with educating our children in the skills that will help them succeed in the future?

Do The Fact-Checkers Actually Check The Facts?

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On Sunday, Forbes posted an article about fact checkers. The article specifically focuses on the fact-checkers who ‘check facts’ in the areas of Covid-19 and climate change, two of the more controversial topics of the day.

On the subject of Covid-19, the article notes:

Over two years into the pandemic, some of the most basic questions remain contentious, and even questions of data integrity remain mired in controversy. Are covid deaths over-reported since many may have died with covid rather than of covid? Did lockdowns and masks make any discernible difference to public health? Are there viable early treatments for the disease available or are vaccines approved under Emergency Use Authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) the only way to go? Are covid vaccines safe and effective? To each of these questions, the overwhelming majority of the fact checking sites (or fact checking departments of the legacy media) support the reigning narrative articulated by big pharmaceutical companies, government agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the FDA, and key government officials such as Dr. Anthony Fauci. The Biden administration welcomes this, and goes further in calling social media companies such as Facebook to partner with the White House to “fight misinformation” about covid-19.

When three distinguished medical people released the Great Barrington Declaration which contradicted the administration’s policies, their ideas were immediately squelched without debate. That’s not how science is supposed to work.

The article also discusses the climate-change fact-checkers:

Like the media coverage of covid-19, climate change headlines in the mainstream media for the past three decades have been overwhelmingly one-sided. The basic premise is that the “science is settled” as in a tweet by then U.S. President Barack Obama in 2013: “Ninety-seven percent of scientists agree: climate change is real, man-made and dangerous” with the obvious subtext: “Who are you to challenge this?” And, as in the covid-19 context, the marginalization of climate sceptics has a long track record.

Two examples suffice how fact checks and editorializing serve to ensure that sceptics need not apply for access to the wider public. The first relates to the London-based BBC, fondly known as “beebs”, for its authoritative news broadcasts around the world as it emerged from the ashes of World War II. The British media giant was known and praised not only for its balanced news features but also for its nature documentaries. And in this space, two celebrities with the same first name – David Bellamy and David Attenborough – emerged in the 1970s, directing fascinating TV programs on nature and the environment from every corner of the globe into tens of millions of homes. As British commentator James Dellingpole wrote in his eulogy to Bellamy who died in 2019, “both were superstars…both were well on their way to becoming national treasures.”

Yet, while one, Attenborough, basks in the glow of international fame and is invited to many of the climate conferences as star speaker and delegate, the other claimed he had become a pariah as soon as he rejected group-think on global warming – describing climate change as “poppycock”. Though his climate scepticism killed his media career he remained utterly unrepentant. The BBC itself has made it clear to its staff that it will not invite climate sceptics to its interviews and panel discussions to balance debates because the “science is settled”

The article concludes:

Without getting into details about the claims of the so-called factchecker, the key point here is to note the perversions of truth in representing the arguments critiqued in such “fact checks”. Perhaps this is best revealed by the fact that Facebook argued in its legal defence that its cited fact check was “just opinion” when faced by a lawsuit brought by celebrated journalist John Stossel who had posted two climate change videos.

Readers and viewers beware of this peculiar twist to the caveat emptor clause: the “fact checks” used by the mainstream news outlets and social media to police what you read and watch are just opinions.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. We are being played.

Bringing Back The Swamp

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One of the things that the Trump administration attempted to do was drain the Washington swamp. That’s why the inside-Washington types hated him so much. As we go through year two of the Biden administration, President Trump’s attempts to drain the swamp are become more obvious because of the contrast between the two administrations.

On Friday, Just the News posted an article illustrating the Biden administration’s efforts to bring back some of the swamp President Trump had attempted to drain.

The article reports:

The Biden administration quickly rehired senior officials fired for serious security and financial lapses in the waning days of the Trump administration, according to documents reviewed by Just the News.

Why are we not surprised?

The article continues:

The U.S. Agency for Global Media, home to the Voice of America and funder of nonprofit broadcasters targeting Europe, Asia and the Middle East, also rehired an official who resigned shortly before his investigation was complete.

The media portrayed them as whistleblowers protecting journalistic integrity from political appointees who wanted to dictate their coverage. Official summaries of their investigations by an outside law firm, recently entered into the Congressional Record, complicate that narrative.

Many alleged violations were related to the agency’s continued performance of background investigations on workers — often foreign nationals — for several years after it lost its “delegated authority” from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

The rehired officials were also granted their security clearances during that time, investigators from McGuireWoods law firm wrote in Dec. 9, 2020 memos. McGuireWoods was the law firm retained to perform an investigation into mismanagement or worse at USAGM.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It details some of the people and actions that caused the firings by President Trump. There is no way these people should have been rehired unless you were seeking individuals who would follow orders regardless of any ethics involved.

This Would Not Be A Good Thing For America

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On Sunday, Townhall posted an article about the MORE Act. This Act will federally legalize marijuana throughout the country.

The article reports:

If passed, the MORE Act will federally legalize marijuana throughout the country. Despite failed efforts to advance this bill in the past, a Democratic majority in Congress and control of the Presidency now portend a high likelihood that this Act could pass. While marijuana advocates, lobbyists, and legislators push this bill, the MORE Act’s statutory shortcomings pose an immediate and dangerous threat to the regulatory power of states and localities. If passed, the MORE Act could wipe out state and local laws prohibiting and criminalizing marijuana, leaving states and localities unable to address local concerns about marijuana issues.

The article concludes:

As written, the MORE Act poses an immediate threat to state and local marijuana laws because it establishes myriad federal social services programs, taxation systems, expungement programs, commercial licensing systems, and grant and trust fund programs. With all of these wide-ranging federal programs, the MORE Act creates a federal framework and regulatory scheme that could imply congressional intent to preempt state and local marijuana laws. And according to Roberts, Supreme Court precedent provides for preemption of conflicting state and local laws when federal acts create federal regulatory systems of this nature.

In sum, the MORE Act poses a major threat to state and local regulatory power and removes the issue of marijuana policy from democratic debate at the state and local level. Congress must act immediately to expressly address, in the MORE Act itself, whether it intends to reserve to the states the power to regulate marijuana. Without the inclusion of an express statutory provision, the states, localities, and the People will be left powerless to address marijuana policy concerns in their local area.

Marijuana is not as benign as we are being told. When used by teenagers, it negatively impacts their social development and their ambition. I am not going to argue whether or not it is a gateway drug–but I know that the marijuana users I have come in contract with have gone on to other drugs. I have also personally seen marijuana totally ruin a young person’s future. I don’t think legalizing it is a good idea.

It is interesting to me that one of the voices currently supporting the legalization of marijuana is former Speaker of the House John Boehner. During his time as Speaker, John Boehner opposed the legalization of marijuana, but since leaving Congress he has joined the marijuana industry in a consulting capacity. I suspect he is doing some serious lobbying for the passage of the MORE Act. That is sad.

They’re Only “Woke” When It Is Convenient

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Recently American corporations have been trying to “outwoke” each other. Recently The Daily Wire posted an article about the hypocrisy of this effort.

The article notes:

There is a rising trend in corporate America to make businesses more “socially conscious” — at least in the minds of Western consumers.

Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria are “a set of standards for a company’s operations that socially conscious investors use to screen potential investments,” according to Investopedia. For instance, a company may emphasize its use of green energy, association with LGBTQ suppliers, or otherwise arrange its operations such that producing shareholder value is inseparable from a leftist agenda.

Elon Musk warned just a few weeks ago that “ESG rules have been twisted into insanity.” This year’s ranking of the “World’s Most Ethical Companies” by Ethisphere — the “global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices that fuel corporate character” — helps to explain why. 

The article lists the five “woke” companies that benefit from Uyghur slave-labor in China.

Here is the list:

1. Apple  — a one-time honoree on the “World’s Most Ethical Companies” list — has multiple firms in its supply chain that utilize forced labor.

2. Sony  — a four-time honoree on the “World’s Most Ethical Companies” list — also procures many of its devices from Chinese facilities using Uyghur labor, including O-Film, Highbroad, Dongguan Yidong, and Foxconn.

3. Dell Technologies — a ten-time honoree on the “World’s Most Ethical Companies” list — also procured from O-Film, Highbroad, and Foxconn, as well as Sichuan Mianyang Jingweida Technology Co.

4. General Motors — a three-time honoree on the “World’s Most Ethical Companies” list — is also associated with O-Film and Dongguan Yidong.

5. Microsoft — a twelve-time honoree on the “World’s Most Ethical Companies” list — has links to O-Film, Dongguan Yidong, and Foxconn.

The article concludes:

President Joe Biden signed the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act into law in December. Sponsored by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR), the legislation stipulates that no goods made with slave labor from Uyghur Muslims in the Xinjiang province will make it to the United States. However, the legislation was passed despite a lobbying push from firms like Nike, Coca-Cola, and “World’s Most Ethical Companies” designee Apple.

How should Western companies respond to their tainted supply chains? ASPI recommends that each company should “conduct immediate and thorough human rights due diligence on its factory labour in China, including robust and independent social audits and inspections.” Any factories implicated should then be reformed or abandoned.

And in the meantime, we should avoid lauding these companies for their compassion.

It’s very easy to yell at Americans for our past misdeeds while ignoring the current misdeeds of foreign countries. American corporations need to consider bringing their manufacturing operations back to America, regardless of the cost.

A Great Idea

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On Friday, Fox Business reported that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has signed legislation requiring high school students in Florida to take a financial literacy course in order to graduate. The law includes teaching them how to fill out their tax forms (which might turn them into conservatives).

The article reports:

The bill, titled the Dorothy L. Hukill Financial Literacy Act, requires students to take a half-credit in personal financial literacy and money management. The legislation requires that the course cover basic skills, such as how to manage a bank account, balance a checkbook, complete a loan application and compute federal income taxes.

The article concludes:

According to a study by financial literacy non-profit Next Gen Personal Finance, nearly 7 out of 10 high school students in the U.S. had access to a standalone personal finance class in 2021, but only 1 in 5 were guaranteed to take such a course in order to graduate.

Next Gen’s director of educational outreach, Yanely Espinal, told FOX Business several other states are considering legislation requiring personal finance courses, including Michigan, Georgia and South Carolina.

Espinal hailed Florida‘s move.

“Florida ranks 3rd in the nation for K-12 Achievement and is a leader in the education space,” she said. “This financial literacy bill will have a ripple effect on other states, especially because it passed unanimously in both the Senate and House showing it is truly a bipartisan matter.”

“Everyone agrees that our students need and deserve 21st century relevant financial skills,” Espinal added.

Learning financial skills will also help them become educated voters. Teaching financial literacy is a really good idea.

The Conflict Between Going Green And The Mid-term Elections

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The Daily Caller posted an article on Friday about the mixed messages the Democrats are sending out about energy policy.

The article reports:

  • Democrats and White House officials have pushed for both greater domestic fossil fuel production and less reliance on fossil fuels over the last 24 hours.
  • President Joe Biden announced a deal with the European Union on Friday morning to export an additional 15 billion cubic meters of liquefied natural gas (LNG) to member nations in 2022.
  • But Biden noted at a press conference that the deal called for “reducing Europe’s demand for gas overall,” even as the plan itself forecasted greater LNG exports to the continent.

What in the world do those ideas have in common? They have very little in common, but they are the result of the approaching mid-term elections. If the Democrats lose Congress in the mid-terms, it is quite possible that America will again become energy independent. It will take a bit to rev up the oil drilling and remind the banks to lend to fossil fuel companies, but it will happen. If the Democrats retain control of Congress or have enough power to stop an override of a Presidential veto, we can expect more hardship for the average America.

Some of the conflicts noted in the article:

But Biden noted at a press conference that the deal called for “reducing Europe’s demand for gas overall,” even as the plan itself and Sullivan forecasted greater LNG exports to the continent. In addition, the president said the Ukraine crisis, which has led to a U.S. ban on Russian oil imports and a promise from EU nations to ditch Russian energy, proved the need for the world to “double-down on our clean energy goals.”

…Meanwhile, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), a Democratic-majority U.S. agency that regulates pipelines, made a sudden reversal to a climate policy announced in February. On Thursday, the commission struck the policy, which mandated a more stringent environmental review of pipelines and other fossil fuel projects, saying it would now consider the policy a “draft.”

…In another reversal, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said Thursday that the global transition to clean energy “must be accelerated” during a meeting with the International Energy Agency in Paris. However, during a March 9 speech at the energy industry CERAWeek conference, Granholm said the U.S. was on “war footing” and needed to “increase short-term supply” of fossil fuels.

Who does she think caused the decrease in the short-term supply of fossil fuels? Anyway, elections have consequences–even before they occur.

 

The Corruption Only Gets Worse

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We all know about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the scandal surrounding the reporting of the laptop and its contents. Many of us have suspicions about the amazing prices people are paying for Hunter Biden’s artwork. But there is a new Hunter Biden scandal being exposed by The U.K. Daily Mail.

In an exclusive report, The U.K. Daily Mail reports:

  • The Russian government held a press conference Thursday claiming that Hunter Biden helped finance a US military ‘bioweapons’ research program in Ukraine
  • However the allegations were branded a brazen propaganda ploy to justify president Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and sow discord in the US
  • But emails and correspondence obtained by DailyMail.com from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show the claims may well be true
  • The emails show Hunter helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases
  • He also introduced Metabiota to an allegedly corrupt Ukrainian gas firm, Burisma, for a ‘science project’ involving high biosecurity level labs in Ukraine 
  • The president’s son and his colleagues invested $500,000 in Metabiota through their firm Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners 
  • They raised several million dollars of funding for the company from investment giants including Goldman Sachs 

The article also notes:

But emails from Hunter’s abandoned laptop show he helped secure millions of dollars of funding for Metabiota, a Department of Defense contractor specializing in research on pandemic-causing diseases that could be used as bioweapons.

The article includes screenshots of various emails to Hunter Biden regarding the business deals involved.

The article concludes:

In another sign of the deep ties between Metabiota and the Department of Defense, Hunter’s RSTP business partner Rob Walker said he would ‘have a friend reach out to DoD on the down low’, in order to prove the company’s bona fides to top prospective investors Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley in October 2014.

RSTP was a subsidiary of Rosemont Capital, an investment company founded by Hunter and former Secretary of State John Kerry’s stepson Chris Heinz in 2009.

Metabiota also has close ties to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), suspected to be the source of the COVID-19 outbreak.

WIV was a hotspot for controversial ‘gain of function’ research that can create super-strength viruses.

Chinese scientists performed gain of function research on coronaviruses at the WIV, working alongside a US-backed organization EcoHealth Alliance that has since drawn intense scrutiny over its coronavirus research since the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers from the Wuhan institute, Metabiota and EcoHealth Alliance published a study together in 2014 on infectious diseases from bats in China, which notes that tests were performed at the WIV.

Shi Zhengli, the WIV Director of the Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases who became dubbed the ‘bat lady’ for her central role in bat coronavirus research at the lab, was a contributor to the paper.

Metabiota has been an official partner of EcoHealth Alliance since 2014, according to its website.

I wonder when the American media will cover this story.

Repeating A Lie For Political Advantage

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I think one of the things that consistently makes Americans mad is the idea that they are being lied to. A lot of Americans have reached the point where they do not believe anything a political figure says. That may or may not be justified, but it is unfortunate. A lie that is consistently told by the political left to smear President Trump is making the rounds again courtesy of President Biden.

Breitbart posted an article about the lie on Thursday.

The article reports:

President Joe Biden repeated the infamous “very fine people hoax” on Thursday evening in Brussels, Belgium, falsely claiming that his predecessor praised neo-Nazis who rioted in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

The president was speaking at a press conference to close the NATO summit on Ukraine. A European reporter asked the president how he could be sure that his successor in 2024 would not undo his diplomatic approach to NATO. (President Trump irked European powers by demanding that they live up to their NATO commitment of spending at least 2% of gross domestic product on defense. Germany belatedly agreed, finally, to meet its commitment only after Russia had invaded Ukraine.)

Biden, claiming that he did not think about his foreign policy decisions in purely electoral terms, referred to the familiar original story that he has told since 2019 when claiming that Charlottesville motivated him to come out of retirement and run for president.

I made the commitment, when I ran this time, I wasn’t going to run again, and I mean that sincerely, I had no intention of running for president again, until I saw those folks coming out of the fields in Virginia carrying torches and carrying Nazi banners, and literally singing the same vile rhyme they used in Germany in the early twenties, or thirties I should say, and then the gentleman you mentioned [Trump] was asked what he thought and a young woman was killed, a protester, and he was asked what he thought, he said there were “very good people”‘ on both sides. And that’s when I decided I wasn’t going to be quiet any longer.

For nearly two years, Biden stood by the hoax, even when presented personally and directly with evidence that it was false:

…As Breitbart News and others, notably cartoonist Scott Adams and political commentator Steve Cortes, have demonstrated for years, President Trump said he condemned the neo-Nazis “totally.“ When Trump used the term “very fine people,“ he was referring explicitly to peaceful protesters on either side of a dispute about the removal of a local confederate statue.

The transcript of Trump’s remarks is clear: he said that when he referred to “very fine people,” he was talking about peaceful protesters, and “not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally.”

Trump also specifically condemned the murder of protester Heather Heyer, saying it was potentially “terrorism.”

The Charlottesville “very fine people hoax” was shattered in full public view last year when former President Trump’s defense lawyers exposed it as a fraud during Trump’s second impeachment trial.

…Biden also falsely claimed that police officers were killed in the capital riot last January.

This sort of lying is one of many reasons most Americans do not believe anything a politician says.

Pay Attention When You Give To Charity

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On Saturday, The New York Post posted an article about the administrative expense of the Beau Biden Foundation.

The article reports:

The Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children raked in $3.9 million in 2020, but spent only a fraction of that on its purported mission to help kids, The Post has learned.

The Delaware-based charity, which was started in honor of President Biden’s late son, got an infusion of $1.8 million from the Biden Foundation before that group shut down in 2020, according to the charities’ latest tax filings. The Biden Foundation was started by Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, to champion “progress and prosperity for American families.”

The Beau Biden charity also took in $225,000 from entities tied to a top political donor and bundler to President Biden.

Despite the $2 million-plus windfall, the organization put only $544,961 in 2020 toward its stated purpose of protecting children from abuse, according to tax filings.

The Charity Navigator includes a graph of how the money given to the foundation was spent:

Notice that the chart is based on 2019 numbers. The charity navigator gives the foundation an overall rating of 82. I wonder if that rating will change when Charity Navigator gets the 2020 numbers.

Compare that rating with Samaritan’s Purse:

Which charity would you be most likely to contribute to?

 

 

We Were Hoodwinked

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How many Democrats came out and declared that the Hunter Biden laptop was Russian disinformation designed to help President Trump win reelection? How many news outlets refused to report on the laptop? How many media outlets have still not apologized for their mistake? On Friday, NewsMax reported the results of a recent Rasmussen Poll that reveals why the Democrats and their media supporters reported the laptop story (or didn’t report it) the way they did.

The article reports:

More than half — 66% — of likely voters in the U.S. say they believe the story of Hunter Biden’s laptop is important, according to a new Rasmussen Reports poll.

The New York Post said the laptop — apparently abandoned at a Delaware repair shop — contained emails, text messages, and financial documents exchanged between Hunter Biden, his family, and business associates.

…Here are how the poll results break down:

    • 48% say if the media had fully reported the laptop story prior to the 2020 elections, it is unlikely Joe Biden would have been elected president. Almost half — 45%— don’t believe the story would have impacted the results.
    • 69% says they have closely followed news reports about Hunter Biden.
    • 65% believe Joe Biden was consulted about and perhaps profited for his son’s overseas business deals.
    • 73% of Republicans  believe it is very likely that Joe Biden was consulted about or perhaps profited from his son’s foreign business deals.
    • 23% of Democrats say it is very likely that Joe Biden was consulted or even profited from the deals.
    • 51% of independents believes it is very likely that Joe Biden was consulted or even profited from the deals.

The poll, conducted March 21-22, surveyed 1,000 likely voters in the U.S. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

 

Rewriting History–One Confirmation Hearing At A Time

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On Wednesday, The Washington Post reported that Republicans have treated Biden SCOTUS nominee ‘worse’ than Democrats treated Kavanaugh. Wow. I guess I must have missed the women in their handmaiden costumes and the people screaming in the hearing room. On Friday, The Western Journal posted an article about the claim.

The Western Journal notes:

In an editorial published Wednesday, The Washington Post editorial board claimed that Republicans have treated current Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson “worse” in her confirmation hearing than Democrats treated Brett Kavanaugh.

The editorial said Republicans “have smeared Judge Jackson based on obvious distortions of her record and the law” in what it described as “clownish performances.”

Meanwhile, in the previous hearings, “it was Mr. Kavanaugh who behaved intemperately, personally attacking Democratic senators and revealing partisan instincts that raised questions about his commitment to impartiality,” the board said.

The article then goes on to compare the two hearings:

In 2018, then-President Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh was an established judge who had undergone six FBI background checks in the previous 25 years without any serious allegations against him, according to the Heritage Foundation.

Nonetheless, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California received an unsubstantiated allegation of sexual assault against Kavanaugh from a woman named Christine Blasey Ford.

She hid the letter for over six weeks until just before Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, and then she briefed only her Democratic colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee about the letter.

By the time the hearings started, many Senate Democrats had already decided Kavanaugh was guilty. They spent most of their questioning time trying to force him to admit guilt despite his insistence that he was innocent.

Some Democrats went as far as to bring out calendars from 30-some years prior, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota even questioned Kavanaugh about his college drinking habits.

…In its opinion article, the Post’s editorial board said Ford “credibly accused Mr. Kavanaugh of sexual assault.” In reality, her allegations were proven to have no credibility at all.

According to the Heritage Foundation, the Senate Judiciary Committee said after its investigation in 2019 that it “found no witness who could provide any verifiable evidence to support any of the allegations brought against.”

The article cites the way Judge Jackson is being treated:

Compare that to the supposedly horrible treatment Jackson has been subjected to this week.

Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri were among those who questioned the nominee about her record of sentencing child pornography offenders to less time than the guidelines recommended.

“Every single case, 100 percent of them, when prosecutors came before you with child pornography cases, you sentenced the defenders to substantially below not just the guidelines, which are way higher, but what the prosecutor asked for on average of these cases, 47.2 percent less,” Cruz said.

Somehow I think how a judge has ruled on cases in the past is much more relevant than a judge’s college drinking habits. This is a smokescreen designed to distract the Washington Post’s readers from the problems with the nominee. The nominee will probably be confirmed, but that doesn’t mean that she should be.

Who Wins In The War On Coal?

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On Wednesday, The Conservative Review posted an article about the war on coal and natural gas that is being waged by the Biden administration.

The article reports:

Oil is king when it comes to energy policy, but coal and natural gas are just as important. In the case of all three fossil fuels, Western governments have engaged in an all-out war on exploration, production, and generation, banned Russia’s exports of those products, and then gave a monopoly to China, inducing the worst possible outcome for the American consumer and our national security.

Despite the two-decade war on coal by the climate Nazis, coal is still the largest source of electricity around the globe and is the second-largest source of energy in general. In the U.S., coal was once king, composing roughly half of our electricity source just 15 years ago, but has dropped precipitously because of the natural gas boom and because of destructive eco policies. Yet it still accounts for 21% of our electricity source, so shocks to the system are going to harm American consumers.

The article includes the following chart showing the rise in the price of thermal coal:

So who is making money on the increase?

The article notes:

…Given that coal accounts for 35% of global electricity use and Europe gets 70% of its coal from Russia, the coal crisis is now worse than the oil crisis. And guess who stands to benefit? China, of course. Thanks to the disdain for our own coal by our own politicians, the evil communist regime is now the global champion of coal production and exports.

America is the Saudi Arabia of coal, but the environmentalists are not willing to let us produce coal. Instead other countries use the same amount of coal as they would if we produced it, except it’s not from us.

The article includes the following chart showing the changes in coal production:

The article concludes:

Between the war on leasing and restrictions on fracking, transportation, pipelines, and export terminals, this administration is stifling the cleanest, most efficient fuel that could lower prices of electricity and serve as a bulwark against China and Russia. Thus, LNG prices remain unnaturally high because the climate Nazis would rather we feel the pain than actually end dependence on bad actors.

Much as with COVID, where we saw a government that cried over the human death toll but downright declared war on anyone who would treat the virus early, those who complain about the energy crisis are the ones inducing it. Crushing the American consumer is not a bug of their plan, it is the primary feature, greasing the skids for the next step in the “Great Reset.”

Please follow the link above to read the entire article.

 

 

 

Chevy Silverado’s Next Ad

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The following video is posted on YouTube:

This is the video of the red Chevy Silverado being picked up by a tornado, flipped, and then being driven away by the driver. It’s an amazing video. The report says that the driver had a few scratches. If Chevy wants to sell its trucks with the idea that they are indestructible, I would recommend this as an advertisement.

Still Searching For The Truth

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On Tuesday, The Western Journal reported that the Arizona Attorney General’s Office sent a letter to the Maricopa County recorder and the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors requesting the voter signature files along with other information.

The article reports:

The Election Systems Integrity Institute (ESII) released a report this month concluding that the Maricopa County, Arizona, mail-in ballot signature verification process used during the 2020 general election was deeply flawed.

The study, overseen by systems engineer Shiva Ayyadurai, found that the county allowed approximately 200,000 ballot envelopes with mismatched signatures to be forwarded for counting without further review.

Ayyadurai, who has multiple degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, testified last fall before the Arizona Senate regarding the findings of the Maricopa County 2020 general election audit.

That study resulted in the request. The article notes:

“In the study, it is alleged that over 250 of those sampled ballot affidavits on the envelopes to did not appear to match the voter’s signatures,” Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Wright, with the office’s Elections Integrity Unit, wrote in the letter.

The article also reports:

ESII researchers reported that 11.3 percent of the approximately 1.9 million mail-in ballots should have gone through the curing process, rather than the 1.31 percent that did.

That translates to more than 215,000 needing to be cured versus the “upwards of 25,000” identified by Maricopa County.

“I found it fascinating that they didn’t give us an exact number. They just said up to 25,000,” Ayyadurai told The Western Journal, noting the county called it a “rigorous signature verification process.”

The bottom line here is simple–we will never truly know who won the election. However, we need to do everything we can to protect election integrity in future elections.