Tag Archives: Just The News

When You Are Over The Target, The Flak Increases

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Just the News is reporting today that a Washington, D.C., court has suspended the law license of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

The article reports:

A District of Columbia court has suspended the law license of former New York City Mayor and President Trump personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, following a similar move by a New York court.

The suspension was announced Wednesday by the D.C. Court of Appeals, which cited the two-page decision last month by the New York court. 

“On consideration of a certified copy of an order of the Supreme Court of New York, Appellate Division, First Judicial Department, suspending respondent from the practice of law pending further disciplinary proceedings in that state, it is ORDERED pursuant to D.C. Bar Rule XI, 11(d), that the respondent is suspended from the practice of law in the District of Columbia pending final disposition of this proceeding, effective on the date of entry of this order,” the court order reads.

The suspension (of course) is due to statements Mayor Giuliani made following the 2020 presidential election. The Mayor claimed that there had been widespread fraud that needed to be investigated.

The article also notes:

Giuliani’s New York residence and office were raided in the effort to gather evidence. His lawyers called the New York court decision “unprecedented” and said they believed their client will eventually be reinstated.

If what Mayor Giuliani said was false, why was it necessary to raid his residence and his office? If there was no real evidence as was claimed, what were they looking for?

The Democrats Are Still Going After Single-Family Housing

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Just the News reported yesterday that the budget bill the Democrats in the House of Representatives are currently drafting may include the Democrat’s plan to “eliminate exclusionary zoning” for single-family homes in America’s cities. This is the bill that the Democrats plan on passing in the Senate by using the reconciliation process, meaning that the Republicans have no way to stop it.

The article reports:

A portion of President Biden’s $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan offers grants to cities that “take concrete steps” to end “exclusionary zoning” for single-family homes.

Under a section titled “Eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies,” Biden’s jobs plan argues that “for decades, exclusionary zoning laws — like minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements, and prohibitions on multifamily housing — have inflated housing and construction costs and locked families out of areas with more opportunities.”

According to the White House fact sheet on the plan, which has not been formally drafted into legislation yet, Biden is “calling on Congress to enact an innovative, new competitive grant program that awards flexible and attractive funding to jurisdictions that take concrete steps to eliminate such needless barriers to producing affordable housing.”

The article notes:

The $1.2 trillion infrastructure agreement that a bipartisan group of senators reached with the White House does not mention exclusionary zoning. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Democrats would seek to pass the parts of Biden’s jobs plan and $1.8 trillion American Families Plan that are left out of the bipartisan framework on infrastructure.

Michigan Democrat Sen. Debbie Stabenow, chair of the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee, said the Democrat-led Congress should enact Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda instead of only focusing on the bipartisan agreement on physical infrastructure spending.

“It’s not just a slogan, we want to come out of this stronger than ever, and the bipartisan effort on infrastructure is one piece of that,” said Stabenow, a member of the Senate Budget Committee. “But we need to do the rest of what needs to be done in the jobs plan and the family plan to really meet the needs of our economy and our families.”

It should be noted that the tax and spend programs that the Democrats are trying to pass will ultimately hurt American families. As inflation increase, the spending power of every American decreases. As the price of a gallon of gasoline increase, it is essentially a tax increase on every American. The current policies being supported by the Democrat party will negatively impact the American economy and all Americans.

Hidden In The Infrastructure Bill

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I have written before about the Biden administration’s plan to end single-family housing (article here). Because home ownership is historically part of the American dream, I have no idea why this is a goal. However, hidden in the infrastructure bill is an item that will begin to end that dream.

Just the News posted an article (updated today) about the infrastructure bill.

The article reports:

The largest item in President Biden’s originally proposed $2.3 trillion infrastructure bill “is intended to literally eliminate local zoning, single-family zoning,” former N.Y. Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey told the John Solomon Reports podcast. 

“[P]eople spend a lifetime dreaming that they’re going to have a home with a plot of lawn around it,” said McCaughey. “They can let their kids play on the lawn, go out and mow the lawn, it’s a way of life. And the Biden administration wants to eliminate that. Their message is, ‘You can’t have that unless everybody can have that.’

“So unless you have multifamily units, you know, some sort of apartment building, on the same street in the same neighborhood — it’s not the same town because all towns now have areas for apartment dwellers, you know. But no, that’s not good enough for them. They want to put bus lines on all the little streets, and that’s going to change the way of life.”

…The Biden administration negotiated a $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure framework on Thursday, which does not include affordable housing, according to Business Insider.

However, afterward, Biden said that the rest of the original infrastructure plan will go through as a budget reconciliation bill in addition to the bipartisan version. Upon learning this, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Biden can “forget” the bipartisan bill. “Most Republicans could not have known that,” he said. “There’s no way. You look like a f–ing idiot now.” 

We need to pray for some patriotic Senators who are willing to vote to protect the American dream of owning your own home.

Looking For A Few Patriotic Democrats In The Senate

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Remember the campaign promise by President Biden that he would bring back unity. Well, his definition of unity is when everyone does what he wants them to do. There is no room for any other action or opinion. That is becoming very obvious in the way the infrastructure bill is being handled.

Just the News is reporting today that the bipartisan infrastructure bill that was worked out that did not include the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan will be modified to include the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan and then passed by reconciliation in the Senate. If you are not familiar with the Cloward-Piven strategy, this would be a really good time to look it up.

The article reports:

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal told Just the News that there will be a filibuster-proof reconciliation bill passed in the Democratic-led House that includes President Biden’s entire American Families Plan.

The article concludes:

Neal was asked if he thinks the entire American Families Plan will be weaved into a reconciliation bill if it’s left out of the bipartisan infrastructure framework congressional negotiators have reached with the White House.

“Yeah, it seems to be as though, based on some of the early comments the president had that it looks to me, not knowing all the details yet, that there’s going to have to be a reconciliation bill,” Neal said on Thursday. 

The $1.2 trillion bipartisan framework does not include the new spending programs that would be created if Biden’s American Families Plan is enacted. 

Essentially, the bi-partisan agreement that was worked out is going to be scrapped in favor of what the Democrats wanted in the first place. Hopefully there might be a Democrat in the Senate that would vote against this, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Your Tax Dollars Are Paying Dead People Social Security

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On Saturday, Just the News posted an article about a final audit report of the Social Security Agency by the agency’s Office of Inspector General.

The article reports:

This week’s Golden Horseshoe goes to the Social Security Administration, which paid an estimated $79 million to the deceased in just three states over a 10-year period, according to a final audit report by the agency’s Office of Inspector General. 

“We estimate SSA issued approximately $79 million in payments after death to 1,127 beneficiaries and four representative payees who died in Alabama, Georgia, or Illinois between January 1978 and December 2018,” the report found.

The watchdog identified an additional 53,486 deceased non-beneficiaries in those states whose death information was not in the SSA’s Numerical Identification System.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes examples of payments made to people who have been dead for years.

The article notes:

“In October and November of 2020, we referred to SSA all identified beneficiaries and representative payees who may have received improper payments after death,” the IG reported. “Identifying and correcting these discrepancies will prevent approximately $14 million in additional improper payments after death over a 12-month period.”

The audit was conducted from April to November 2020. As of April 2021, the SSA terminated payments to 832 deceased beneficiaries and four deceased representative payees. 

The agency has initiated the recovery of $35 million in improper payments it sent out, the IG reported.

The SSA established the Electronic Death Registration for states to electronically submit death reports to the agency to prevent payments after death. Once states submit through the EDR, if the deceased data matches the agency’s records, then SSA posts the information to its Numident file and terminates payments. SSA also receives death information from other sources aside from EDR, including family members and funeral directors.

It is time for the government to stop wasting taxpayers’ money. If the people who work for the government cannot do a better job of keeping track of who is receiving payments, they should either get a new computer system or new employees. No private company would tolerate that kind of wasteful spending.

This Is Not Surprising

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Yesterday Just the News reported that Smith & Wesson has announced record gun sales for this fiscal year.

The article reports:

Storied U.S. gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson this week announced a record-setting fiscal year amid an ongoing gun-and-ammunition frenzy in the United States that has persisted since last year.

Company CEO Mark Smith said in a company earnings call on Thursday that the gun manufacturer in the past fiscal year “surpass[ed] $1 billion in sales for the first time in our 169-year history.”

Smith said the company also posted “fourth quarter revenue of nearly $323 million,” which he said was “the highest quarter ever on record and marks the fourth consecutive record-breaking quarter for the company.”

He said the record year allowed the company to “completely pay off our $160 million debt, return over $8 million to shareholders through dividends and reduce our outstanding shares by over 14%.”

So what are the record gun sales about? It’s political and societal. As America watched lawlessness in our major cities escalate during last summer, many people felt the need to be able to protect themselves. As some people began to push for decreasing the police presence and activities in major cities, many people felt the need to be able to protect themselves. After President Biden was elected, many Democrats indicated that they were planning to limit the gun rights of Americans. Many people decided that now might be a really good time to buy a gun.

There is nothing wrong with having an armed citizenry. It actually is a deterrent to criminal activity when criminals know that their victims might be armed. Also, the idea of taking guns from law-abiding citizens does not make sense–unless you begin by taking guns away from criminals, you are going to create more crime–not less crime. It’s time for individual states to stand up to any possibility of limiting the Second Amendment. Many states already have. It needs to be all states.

Inflation Rears Its Ugly Head

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Just the News is reporting today that the U.S. consumer price index rose 5% in May compared to the same time a year earlier.

The article reports:

The index represents the average change in prices of goods and services such as food, energy, housing costs, and others. It rose 5% in May compared to the same time year earlier. The increase was higher than expected, with the Dow Jones forecasting a slightly lower of 4.7% rise, according to CNBC.

The increase is the largest since 5.3% rise In 2008, just before the financial crisis causing the worst recession since the Great Depression.

The goods with the highest price increases were used cars and trucks, with prices surging 7.3%. Airline tickets were a close second, with prices climbing 7% from a year earlier as the pandemic cut air travel substantially. Food prices have stayed similar to those a year ago, up only 2.2%.

The article concludes:

People are also concerned over the rise of inflation that could be caused by President Joe Biden’s nearly $2 trillion COVID relief package and similarly priced proposed infrastructure package.

The Federal Reserve has not expressed alarm about the increases. Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said he expects the pressure on prices to be temporary as the economy reopens after the pandemic, according to Fox News.

Increased government spending will cause inflation. At some point the interest on our national debt is going to cripple our economy. At that point the dollar will be devalued to pay off the debt and the average American will be left with worthless money. The solution to this is to elect people to Congress who will be fiscally responsible. Currently there are actually a few Congressmen who are fiscally responsible, but not enough to make a difference.

Wasteful Spending In Washington

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On Saturday, Just the News awarded its Golden Horseshoe award to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. This is the organization that was created by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to protect pension benefits and is responsible for more than 34 million workers and retiree pension plans.

The article reports:

This week’s Golden Horseshoe award goes to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC), the nation’s pension bailout agency that is still reeling from revelations its chief of contracting engaged in a bribery scheme that steered $4.8 million in fraudulent business to a vendor in return for more than $1 million in personal benefits.

The bribery scheme involving the now convicted director of PBGC’s Procurement Department was possible because the agency suffered from several vulnerabilities, including reduced competition among vendors, missing legal reviews and sole-source contracts that evaded bidding designed to get taxpayers the best bargain, the PBGC’s inspector general reported.

“His actions were enabled by internal control weaknesses; specifically, inadequate oversight of PD procurements and a lack of a control mechanism to ensure that PD sent all requisite contract actions for legal review,” the inspector general reported. “Although PBGC began requiring that more contract actions receive legal review after the PD Director resigned in February 2020, it does not have a mechanism to ensure PD complies with this requirement.”

The internal watchdog said it also found “internal control deficiencies allowed PD to avoid competition requirements when awarding five other contracts, three of which were for PD support. Four of the contracts were awarded on a sole-source basis, including three using small business set-aside programs.”

The weaknesses are particularly concerning because PBGC, which normal funds itself through insurance payments from employer pension plans, just received its first ever infusion of tax dollars to replenish coffers that were on track to be insolvent by 2026, the IG noted. 

Please follow the link above to read the details. This is disgusting. The amount of fraud is disgusting and the fact that our tax dollars were used to fund this agency to allow further fraud is even worse. Our tax dollars at work.

Good Idea

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The cancel culture often hurts the people it claims to want to help. Well, some of the people recently cancelled have decided to fight back.

Just the News posted an article on Monday about a lawsuit brought against Major League Baseball by a group of Atlanta business owners.

The article reports:

A small business group on Monday evening sued Major League Baseball, its commissioner Rob Manfred and the head of professional baseball players union Tony Clark alleging their efforts to move this summer’s All-Star game from Atlanta to protest Georgia’s new election integrity law unlawfully inflicted “staggering” damages on businesses in the region.

The suit filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan by the Job Creators Network alleges MLB violated the Klu Klux Klan Act of 1871 and committed “tortious interference” in business by canceling the game over a political matter.

It seeks damages of at least $100 million for the businesses of Atlanta as well as an order to restore the game this summer to the Atlanta Braves home stadium, Truist Park.

“MLB Defendants intended to punish Georgians because their state enacted a reasonable ballot-integrity statute and to coerce Georgia and its duly elected government to surrender Georgia’s sovereignty in our federal system,” the lawsuit charged.

It said the true victims were small businesses who spent money and made plans for two years to host the All-Star Game based on MLB’s promise, only to see it canceled.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article which includes a link to the complaint. The decision by Major League Baseball was based on faulty information and should be met with a lawsuit.

The Story You Weren’t Told

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On Tuesday, Just the News posted an article about Nikole Hannah-Jones, the creator of The New York Times’ 1619 Project.

The article reports:

The creator of The New York Times’ 1619 Project is joining the University of North Carolina journalism faculty in July, funded by a Knight Foundation grant.

The academic world has not greeted the news with jubilation, but rather outrage — because Nikole Hannah-Jones was not given tenure to start.

“Political pressure from conservatives,” particularly a North Carolina-focused education think tank, led the university to offer Hannah-Jones a fixed five-year term, according to NC Policy Watch, a project of the progressive North Carolina Justice Center. 

Evidently that is not the reason Ms. Hannah-Jones was denied tenure.

The article continues:

The UNC trustee who oversees lifetime appointments, Charles Duckett, postponed the tenure review for Hannah-Jones in January, three months before UNC announced the hire, board chair Richard Stevens told reporters last week.

Duckett “asked for a little bit of time” to ask Hannah-Jones to clarify her background, since she does not have “a traditional academic-type background,” according to Stevens. She accepted the five-year term, which lets her continue as a New York Times journalist, before the full Board of Trustees voted.

Asked what he specifically wanted to know from Hannah-Jones, Duckett told Just the News no one had asked for his side until now. “I cannot comment today due to issues outside my control,” he said. “I normally do not respond at all but appreciate the question.”

The article notes a possible explanation:

A spokesperson for the journalism school told Just the News last week it wasn’t sure why the board “did not act on her tenure package” but was told “there was reluctance to grant tenure” to a non-academic.

“The University and the journalism school very much wanted Nikole to join us, and she was offered a Professor of the Practice 5-year fixed term contract,” Susan King, dean of the journalism school, said in a statement.

The 1619 Project has been denounced as an opinion piece rather than an accurate reporting of history. To grant tenure to someone who has no academic background and has published opinions as fact would not be a good move for a university.

Be Cautious In Giving The Coronavirus To Your Teenage Children

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Young people do not seem to get seriously ill if they contract the coronavirus. They are generally not part of the ‘at risk’ population. Therefore in making a decision to have your child vaccinated, you need to carefully consider the risk/benefit aspect of giving your child the shot..

Just the News posted an article yesterday reporting on some of the adverse effects of the coronavirus vaccine on adolescents and young adults.

The article reports:

A relatively small number of individuals have reportedly experienced myocarditis after receiving COVID-19 vaccinations, according to a post on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website pertaining to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Technical (VaST) Work Group.

The relatively infrequent reports of heart muscle inflammation seem to have taken place “predominantly in adolescents and young adults;” “more often in males than females;” and more often after the second vaccine shot. The discussion pertains to the mRNA vaccines, which would include the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

“Most cases appear to be mild, and follow-up of cases is ongoing,” according to a statement regarding the matter. “Within CDC safety monitoring systems, rates of myocarditis reports in the window following COVID-19 vaccination have not differed from expected baseline rates. However, VaST members felt that information about reports of myocarditis should be communicated to providers.”

The article quotes a doctor in a New York Times article saying that this could simply be a coincidence because so many people are getting vaccinated right now. I don’t think I would be willing to take that chance if I still had teenagers living at home.

I understand the need to vaccinate those people who are at risk from serious complications from the coronavirus. However, I don’t understand the push to vaccinate those who are not at risk or those who have already had the coronavirus. There is simply too much we do not know. I fear that at some point in the next five years of so we are going to learn a lot more about the consequences of strongly encouraging people to be vaccinated.

Leadership Decisions Have Consequences

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On Friday, Just the News posted an article about President Biden’s first 100+ days in office.

The article notes:

President Biden entered the Oval Office nearly four months ago and immediately signed dozens of executive orders and made sweeping legislative proposals aimed at rolling back the policies of former President Donald Trump. Early in the Biden presidency, the United States is now facing a series of emerging crises that critics attribute directly to these reversals of Trump-era policies and positions.

“Weak leadership is the cause of all of these crises,” freshman Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) told the John Solomon Reports podcast, citing the surge of illegal immigration, the disabling Colonial Pipeline hack, and the flare-up of violence in the Middle East.

The article notes the actions President Biden took regarding America’s southern border:

…The legislation Biden has sent to Congress suggests he may wish to create a system that offers a pathway to citizenship to the illegal immigrants that have flooded into the country since January.

The number of people who would be granted citizenship without necessarily understanding the history or culture of America could change our country drastically. In the past, we have strongly encouraged immigrants to assimilate. The number of immigrants currently crossing the border illegally would be very difficult for America to take in and help resettle.

The article also notes the impact of the Biden administration’s policies on the American economy:

The strength of the economy was the crowning achievement of the Trump presidency, at least until the pandemic. President Biden inherited high rates of joblessness, mostly caused by continued COVID-19 restrictions that depress economic activity. In theory, job creation should increase as restrictions are lifted. However, last week’s dismal jobs report coupled with a current annual inflation rate of 4.2%, according to the White House Council of Economic Advisers, indicate that Biden’s economic policy measures may be misfiring across the board.

…Biden has repeatedly said that he does not believe the enhanced benefits had a “measurable” impact on the jobs numbers. Yet, even as he is dismissing widespread concerns about the disincentivizing effects of the enhanced benefits, he promised earlier this week that his administration is “going to make it clear that anyone collecting unemployment who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits.”

“It’s just not a good deal for these workers to go back on the job,” said economist Stephen Moore.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. The policies of the Biden administration are not working for the benefit of all Americans. Simply ending the policies of President Trump has not been a wise governing strategy.

 

We Might Want To Consider This As We Negotiate With Iran

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Just the News is reporting today that the U.S. Navy has seized a vessel in the North Arabian Sea carrying a cache of weapons.

The article reports:

“The cache of weapons included dozens of advanced Russian-made anti-tank guided missiles, thousands of Chinese Type 56 assault rifles, and hundreds of PKM machine guns, sniper rifles and rocket-propelled grenades launchers. Other weapon components included advanced optical sights,” according to the Navy.

“USS Monterey and its embarked U.S. Coast Guard Advanced Interdiction Team (AIT) discovered the illicit cargo during a routine flag verification boarding conducted in international water in accordance with customary international law,” the Navy noted. “The original source and intended destination of the materiel is currently under investigation.”

The article notes that a U.S. Defense official noted that the weapons seized were similar to weapons seized in the past that were traveling from Iran to Yemen.

Details to follow as they become available.

When Science Goes Political

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about a spending program by the Biden administration that will award grants through the National Science Foundation to address what it calls “systemic racism” in the country and to advance “racial equity” in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) education.

This is getting ridiculous.

The article reports:

“Persistent racial injustices and inequalities in the United States have led to renewed concern and interest in addressing systemic racism,” reads a synopsis of the Racial Equity in STEM Education Program on the NSF website. “The National Science Foundation (NSF) Directorate for Education and Human Resources (EHR) seeks to support bold, groundbreaking and potentially transformative projects addressing systemic racism in STEM.”

Although these grants are funded by the federal government’s primary source of support for basic science research, the agency emphasizes that proposals are to be developed by and reflect the perspective of aggrieved groups and individuals who perceive themselves as victims of undefined “inequities” assumed in advance to be caused by “systemic racism.”

We are moving farther and farther away from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, statement, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

The article notes:

The NSF stipulates that research funded by these grants should be designed to produce predetermined outcomes that benefit those engaged to conduct the research.

“The proposed work should provide positive outcomes for the individuals and communities engaged and should recognize peoples’ humanity, experiences, and resilience,” according to the program description.

The grant work should also consider systemic barriers to opportunities and benefits and show how these barriers impact access to and success in STEM education and research.

A synopsis on the government’s grants.gov website shows $30 million will be awarded to an expected 45 grantees beginning in July.

Since Biden took office, the NSF has awarded millions in grants related to equity, diversity and inclusion, a review of government spending by Just the News showed.

This is government-subsidized racism.

The Real Story On Voter ID

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about support for voter id laws. The information is surprising if you depend on the mainstream media for your news.

The article reports:

A coalition of black leaders on Friday came out strongly in support of voter ID laws, arguing that most black voters feel the same way and rebuking what they said was the “oblivious” and “opportunistic” denial of those opinions by progressive leaders. 

The coalition — which includes U.S. Rep. Burgess Owens, former Florida Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll, former Texas state Rep. James Earl Wright, and former mayor of Cincinnati and U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Commission on Human Rights Ken Blackwell — declares at RealClearPolitics that “liberal orthodoxy” dictates that “all Blacks think alike, and all Blacks support Black Lives Matter, and all Blacks oppose the recently enacted Georgia Election Integrity Act,” one that in part mandates voter ID at the polls.

I believe that every American wants every legal voter to be able to vote and to have their vote counted. Unfortunately, every illegal vote cancels the vote of a legal voter.

The article continues:

Yet the writers note that a recent Rasmussen Reports poll “found that 69% of Blacks and 82% of nonwhite minorities support voter ID,” while another recent poll “found that a full two-thirds of Blacks in Georgia support voter ID.”

At this point, you begin to wonder who is actually opposing the Georgia law and why.

The article notes:

“The data seems clear: A majority of Black Americans support voter ID laws,” they argue. Yet, they claim, “opportunistic activists like Stacey Abrams pretend the entire Black community stands behind them and the radical Democrat Party,” crafting a narrative in which black people “are either opposed to voter ID or, even more offensively, that Blacks are incapable of obtaining IDs.”

Realistically, most Americans know that an id of some sort is pretty much required to function in America today. You can’t buy cigarettes or liquor without an id, you can’t fill a prescription without an id, you can’t open a bank account or cash a check without an id, and you can’t receive medical care without an id. Do you know anyone who has not at some point engaged in one of the above activities? I don’t.

Voter id makes it harder to cheat. Why are some politicians opposed to that? That is the question.

 

I Think Most Of Us Suspected This

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Just the News posted an article today about the news story that was circulating during the 2020 Presidential campaign that the Russians had put a bounty on American soldiers and were paying the Afghani soldiers to kill Americans. The media questioned the fact that President Trump had not placed sanctions on Russia for those actions and declared that the President was soft on Russia because he was Putin’s puppet. Well, the truth eventually does come out.

The article at Just the News reports:

On Thursday, the leaders of President Biden’s intelligence agencies declared they held little confidence in a New York Times’ story from last June that claimed Russia put bounties on American troops in Afghanistan.

It was the latest setback for the famous newspaper, which has seen its reporting on the now-debunked Russia collusion scandal be eviscerated by the FBI and its hit podcast series Caliphate retracted. 

Ashley Rindsberg, author of “The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times’ Misreporting, Fabrications and Distortions Radically Alter History,” said Thursday’s setback follows a decades-long pattern of journalism failures. He questioned what the Times will do next with the Afghanistan fallout.

The article notes that there is a history of this sort of creating a false narrative and being slow to change the narrative once the truth is discovered:

“That’s what’s happened time and again: the big story break, and there’s a lot of hoopla, and there’s a lot of coverage, and the narrative gets cemented. And when the story turns out to be false, or mistaken, or what have you, there’s either a very small correction that’s printed at the bottom of the article that very few people will pay attention to, or nothing at all,” he said. “So I think in this case, we’ll see what happens, and hopefully the Times will do the right thing.”

I can pretty much guarantee that if you are still depending on the mainstream media as your primary news source you are either misinformed or uninformed or both.

The Truth Evidently Doesn’t Matter If You Are Raising Campaign Money

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about a campaign email put out by the group 3.14 Action. The email was signed by Senator Raphael Warnock.  The email was about the new Georgia election law and contained false information. A spokesman for Senator Warnock’s campaign has explained that the Senator signed the email before the bill was actually drafted into law and that was the cause of the misinformation.

That is probably true, but it raises some questions. Why did the Senator sign the email before the bill was passed? Could he have not waited to see what was actually in the bill that was passed? Why was the focus of the email on the controversial items (that eventually got taken out of the bill)?

The article notes:

The email said that the legislation nixed no-excuse mail voting and restricted early voting on weekends, according to the Washington Post. However, those part of the legislation were in early proposals and never became law.

Georgia Republicans who drafted, passed and enacted the law say it attempts to secure the state’s voting system. Critics say the law, which now requires ID to request an absentee ballot, restricts voting, particularly for minorities.

Meanwhile as a result of Georgia’s attempt to promote election integrity, Major League Baseball has moved its All-Star Game to a place with more voting restrictions than the state it left. It moved the Game to a place with a less diverse population, hurting minority businesses in Georgia. That seems an odd move for people who were claiming that the Georgia voting law was racist.

 

Acceptable Return On Investment?

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Yesterday Just the News reported that the jobs plan that is proposed by President Biden could cost taxpayers more than $666,666 per job created. The cost of the proposal is $2 trillion. Seems like a lot of money to pay for the creation of one job. The obvious question here is ‘how much does each job pay and where is the rest of the money going?’.

The article reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that House Democrats hope to draft the formal legislation for the American Jobs Plan by May and finalize it by July 4. The White House fact sheet about the plan includes a description of key parts of the proposal but does not list the specific infrastructure projects the bill would fund. 

Democrats are considering using budget reconciliation to move the bill through Congress to avoid the filibuster in the Senate. Democrats used that strategy for the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that Biden signed last month.

If you are not yet familiar with the Cloward-Piven strategy, now would be a really good time to look it up.

The article concludes by reminding us of some past history:

Biden oversaw the implementation of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009. The Obama administration estimated that the bill would “create or save” 3.5 million jobs by the end of 2009. Politifact rated former President Obama’s claim in May 2009 that the bill “saved or created” 150,000 jobs as “mostly false.”

At the time, Republicans as well as some political and economic analysts argued that it was difficult to measure how many jobs a piece of legislation could “save.” In the end, the Congressional Budget Office estimated in November 2010 that the number of saved or created jobs fell somewhere between 1.4 million and 3.6 million.

Déjà vu all over again.

Regaining Our Right To The Free Exercise Of Religion

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Yesterday Just the News reported that the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has determined that three University of Iowa officials can be held personally liable for derecognizing a Christian student club over its leadership requirements.

The article reports:

The law is “clearly established” that government officials cannot practice viewpoint discrimination, as administrators did by enforcing a “human rights” policy against Business Leaders in Christ but not other student groups, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined.

It’s exceedingly rare for courts to deny “qualified immunity” to public actors for violating constitutional rights. Litigants must point to court precedents that officials should have known were binding on their specific behavior, making it unlawful.

Yet the University of Iowa is likely to suffer a second loss on qualified immunity in a closely related case involving a different Christian club, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Oral arguments for each case were four months apart, and both went badly for the university.

The three-judge panel upheld two constitutional claims by Business Leaders in Christ but divided on the third claim, on whether administrators should have known they were violating the club’s free exercise rights.

In a concurrence and dissent, Judge Jonathan Kobes said all three claims should have been upheld.

“The law is clear: state organizations may not target religious groups for differential treatment or withhold an otherwise available benefit solely because they are religious,” he wrote. “The individual defendants may pick their poison: they are either plainly incompetent or they knowingly violated the Constitution.”

I suspect this may not be the end of these lawsuits.

There Is A Humanitarian Crisis At Our Southern Border

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about what is currently happening at our southern border. When the Biden administration opened the floodgates at the border, they created a humanitarian crisis of nightmarish proportions.

The article reports:

The Biden administration’s policies on the U.S.-Mexico border are inhumane to the illegal immigrants and harmful to America, says former acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Mark Morgan.

Regarding border protection, Morgan told the John Solomon Reports podcast, “This administration is absolutely — has dismantled everything, and everything that they’re doing is against the nation’s best interest, and I believe it’s for perceived political gain.”

The Trump administration’s border policy was working. There was no reason to change it other than it was connected to President Trump.

The article continues:

According to unofficial statistics of illegal border crossers, Morgan said, “I think within the last 10-11 days, they actually had a single-day encounter of over 6,000. Have you seen that officially? Has anyone in [the Department of Homeland Security] reported that? No. Six thousand! They’re averaging, now, anywhere between probably about 4,500 to 5,000 a day.”

“But here’s the truth, and here’s the stat they’re not presenting officially: 75% of the so-called unaccompanied minors are older teenagers — 15, 16, 17 years of age,” Morgan said. “They’re not being ripped from their parents. They’re making a tough decision on their own to leave simply because they want a better job in the United States.”

I don’t blame them for that, but they need to come legally. If that is too difficult, Congress needs to work together to improve America’s immigration policies.

The article concludes:

“In November of 2020, we had less than 800 in our CBP facilities,” he said. “Now the number is 10,000 and growing every day.”

The humanity of incentivizing illegal immigration is also concerning, Morgan said.

“What is humane about a United States actively participating in encouraging, facilitating illegal immigration, where independent studies have showed up to 30% of them are abused on their way up here, they’re traveled through COVID hotspots?” Morgan asked.

“They’re shoved in overcrowded, unsanitary stash houses and tractor trailers, left in the middle of the Rio Grande and desert environment by the coyotes to fend for themselves and they often die or have to be rescued by the Border Patrol. How is that humane? And the answer is, it’s not.”

This was a totally avoidable crisis.

The Truth Eventually Comes Out

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John Solomon posted an article at Just the News today that details some of the recent court decisions involving questionable practices that were instituted during the 2020 election.

The article reports on activities in a number of battleground states:

The latest ruling came this month in Michigan, where the State Court of Claims concluded that Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s instructions on signature verification for absentee ballots violated state law.

…In neighboring Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court handed down a significant ruling in December when the justices concluded that state and local election officials erred when they gave blanket permission allowing voters to declare themselves homebound and skip voter ID requirements in the 2020 elections.

In a case challenging the practice in Dane County, one of Wisconsin’s large urban centers around the city of Madison, the state’s highest court ruled that only those voters whose “own age, physical illness or infirmity” makes them homebound could declare themselves “indefinitely confined” and avoid complying with a requirement for photo ID.

…Meanwhile in Virginia, a judge in January approved a consent decree permanently banning the acceptance of ballots without postmarks after Election Day, concluding that instructions from the Virginia Department of Elections to the contrary in 2020 had violated state law. An electoral board member in Frederick County challenged the legality of the state’s instruction and won though the ruling came after the election.

The article concludes:

Several more legal challenges remain in states, as well as two audits/investigations of voting machine logs that are pending in Georgia and Arizona. And while there has been no proof the elections were impacted by widespread fraud, there are still significant disputes over whether rule changes and absentee ballot procedures in key swing states may have been unlawful.

In addition, the Thomas More Society’s Amistad Project on election integrity is pursuing litigation over whether hundreds of millions of dollars donated by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and routed to local election officials in several battleground states may have unlawfully influenced the election, according to the project’s director, Phill Kline.

“We’re expanding our litigation,” Kline told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Wednesday. “I still have suits that are active in Michigan and Georgia on this, and you’ll see us take new action in Wisconsin. And we will renew action in Pennsylvania. And, and our involvement in Arizona will take a little bit of a different tack, but will involve this. The Arizona legislature is going to do an audit and we want this within the scope.”

There is some value in the lawsuits being pursued–hopefully they will put states on notice not to be involved in similar actions in the future. Assuming that we manage to stop HR1 in Congress (a law that will end any common sense regulations on voting), these lawsuits provide a template for filing whatever lawsuits are necessary to preserve election integrity in the next election. The lawsuits just need to be filed well in advance of the election (as soon as election laws are violated).

Hidden Inside The Covid Relief Bill

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about the tax increases hidden in the recently passed Covid Relief Bill.

The article reports:

There is more than $57 billion worth of hidden tax increases in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill, Just the News has learned.

The final version of the legislation expands the number of employees who are covered by the $1 million limitation on the deductibility of executive compensation.

According to National Law Review, section 162(m) of the tax code “generally prohibits a public company from deducting more than $1 million in compensation paid to a current or former covered employee in a taxable year,” and under current law “the covered employees are the chief executive officer, chief financial officer, and the three other highest compensated officers for the taxable year.”

The executive compensation deduction change in the stimulus bill covers 5 more of a company’s highest paid employees.

“TCJA [Tax Cuts and Jobs Act] included such a limit, but Dems essentially doubled it to make it more draconian,” a House Ways and Means Committee minority spokesperson said. “Dems are under no illusions that their bill is about growth, so them putting a cap on executive pay is just political messaging.”

A $500,000 limit on the amount of losses that “passthrough corporations” can use to get liquidity is also tucked inside the bill, according to a Joint Committee on Taxation document obtained by Just the News.

The Joint Committee on Taxation spokesman also noted that the above provision that the Democrats have ended was what allowed small businesses to get the fast tax refunds from the IRS that kept many of them alive during the lockdowns.

The article continues:

Another tax provision in the stimulus, the second largest rescue package in U.S. history, involves new limitations on the interest expenses that multinational corporations can deduct on tax returns.

This change makes doing business in America less attractive and will return us to the days when American corporations moved overseas.

Aside from the cost of the Covid Relief bill, it is a bill that will stifle the growth of the American economy. That growth would have at least provided some of the money needed to fund the bill. We are headed back to the days of very slow economic growth or no growth at all.

This Needs To Be Investigated In All States Where The Policy Was Put In Place

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Just the News is reporting the following today:

A Michigan county prosecutor on Thursday laid out his effort to review Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s policies on COVID health-safety policies on nursing homes, in response to a high number of deaths in such facilities over roughly the past year.

An estimated 5,537 people have died in long-term care facilities in the state since the pandemic started about a year ago, which is about 35 percent of all COVID-related deaths in Michigan over that time period. 

Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido said he’s effectively reviving a roughly 68-year-old review board, formed to protect children, to look into Whitmer’s policies.

Good governance is a matter of life and death. That has been proven in the past year–Florida probably has one of the highest elderly populations in the country and yet managed the virus very well. They protected the elderly and pretty much let the rest of the population go on with their business. Many of the states led by Democrats locked down their states but sent coronavirus patients into nursing homes where the most vulnerable residents of their state lived.

The article notes:

Lucido, following up on statements Monday calling on residents to ask for medical records of family members who died in a nursing home, then file a police report. He said Thursday that residents should give local law enforcement such information as when and where the death occurred. He also said the name of the attending physician should be included.

He said earlier that his efforts have been slowed by such records are protected under so-called HIPAA laws that protect patient information.

Whitmer said amid complaints that her administration has not been forthcoming with data related to virus deaths in nursing homes told a local TV station: “I’m proud of the work that we did. We can parse through different angles of statistics and compare ourselves with other states but … I think that it sometimes can be a fool’s errand because the way that we are congregating data varies from state to state. When there’s never a national strategy, (it’s) hard to really compare apples to apples.”

It is possible that the Governors in the states that sent coronavirus patients into nursing homes did not understand the risk. However, when the risk became apparent, the policies should have been quickly changed. Governor’s who did not change their policy after it became obvious what was happening need to be removed from office.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

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Right now I am part of a book study of the book, The 5000 Year Leap. The book deals with the progress made by mankind after the principles of liberty were put in place that allowed men to be free and to prosper according to their efforts. These are the principles that result in the survival of a republic. The first principle cited as a principle of freedom is the concept on Natural Law. One of the principles of Natural Law is justice by reparation, or paying for damages.  Under Natural Law, a criminal who stole something would have to make restitution to the person he stole from. Unfortunately our current justice system does not do that–if the thief is put in jail, the victim pays his room and board in addition to whatever loss he suffered. Congress, in their infinite wisdom, has recently made that system worse.

Just the News reported the following today:

The Senate recently approved the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package which includes $1,400 checks for eligible individuals, but some lawmakers are displeased that prisoners will also receive the monetary payments.

The package, which cleared the Senate on a party-line vote Saturday, must still be approved by the House prior to heading to President Biden’s desk, but according to Fox News inmates will be able to receive the individual payments under the legislation, as they were under prior coronavirus relief bills that included $1,200 and $600 payments for eligible individuals.

“The IRS had tried to withhold stimulus checks from incarcerated individuals, but a court forced their hand to offer the checks in October,” Fox reported. “There was nothing written in the previous two relief bills or the one passed Saturday against inmates receiving checks.”

The article continues:

GOP Sens. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas offered an amendment to the current stimulus bill to bar federal and state prisoners from getting a payment, but the amendment failed on a tight 50-49 vote, according to Fox News. Cassidy’s press release indicated that the proposal would have saved taxpayers about $1.9 billion.

“Prisoners have all their living and medical expenses paid for by the taxpayer,” Cassidy said during remarks about the proposed amendment. “They don’t pay taxes. They don’t contribute to the tax base. They can’t be unemployed. In other words, inmates are not economically impacted by COVID, and inmates cannot stimulate the economy. But under this bill, Democrats are giving prisoners, again sometimes incarcerated for heinous crimes, a $1,400 stimulus check.”

Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois argued against the amendment, saying that it would “cause harm to the families of incarcerated individuals.” 

There is nothing I can add to that last remark!

Words Matter

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We have routinely heard the events at the Capitol on January 6th described as an armed insurrection. That has been the narrative of the mainstream media. However, it seems that there is a basic problem with that narrative.

Just the News posted an article yesterday about the Congressional hearings regarding the event.

The article reports:

No firearms were recovered on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 during the riot, and no shots were fired by the demonstrators, an FBI official on Wednesday told Congress.

“To my knowledge we have not recovered any [firearms] on that day from any of the arrests at the scene at this point,” said Jill Sanborn, assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division. “No one has been charged with a firearms violation.”

Sanborn made her comments during a joint oversight hearing in the Senate to examine the breach of the U.S. Capitol. In addition to Sanborn, witnesses included the commander of the Washington, D.C. National Guard, and civilian officials from the Pentagon.

During testimony, Sanborn responded to questions from Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, who asked whether firearms were present or used during the siege.

“How many shots were fired that we know of?” Johnson asked.

“The only shots fired were the ones that resulted in the death of the one lady,” Sanborn said, referencing Ashli Babbitt, a protester who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer during heightened tension inside the building.

The article also notes:

Other testimony examined the timeline of when the National Guard was dispatched to help an overwhelmed civilian police force during the siege on the Capitol.

The National Guard was dispatched to the riot more than three hours after Capitol Police made a desperate call for help with a “dire emergency,” a two-star general testified Wednesday before Congress.

Major Gen. William Walker, who commands the District of Columbia National Guard, told senators that the 1:49 p.m. call for help from the guard on Jan. 6 was approved in a message that reached him after 5 p.m. At that point, troops who were waiting on buses sped to the Capitol, and helped to secure a perimeter, Walker said.

There is something very wrong with both the actions of a few people on January 6th and the response to the events both as they unfolded and later. There is no reason that the area around our nation’s Capitol Building should look like the green zone in Baghdad.