Inquiring Minds Want To Know

Every now and then a Senator has the nerve to actually ask a question that the American public wants answered. Generally, efforts will then be made to either marginalize or remove that Senator. Sorry for the cynicism, but I have been watching Republicans for years and wondering if they actually had spines.

On Tuesday, Townhall reported the following:

Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn cornered FBI Director Christopher Wray Monday afternoon about the failure of the Bureau to release the client list of convicted sex trafficker and abuser Jeffrey Epstein. Wray was also pressed about why the FBI ignored accounts of victims. The exchange took place during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on oversight of the FBI. 

…Last week Democratic Committee Chairman Dick Durbin blocked the release of the flight logs to Epstein’s famous island where women and underaged girls were sex trafficked to high profile men. Former President Bill Clinton was a longtime friend of Epstein before he “committed suicide” in a New York City prison. 

“They don’t want to have a conversation about the estate of Jeffrey Epstein to find out the names of every person who participated in Jeffrey Epstein’s human trafficking ring,” Blackburn released in a statement. 

We can all draw our own conclusions as to why the list has not been released. I am sure that the fact that Ghislaine Maxwell is serving her prison time in a luxury prison in Florida is in no way connected to the fact that the list has not been released.

Please follow the link to the article–it includes the exchange between Senator Blackburn and Director Wray.

 

Why Are We Just Learning This?

On Tuesday, The Gateway Pundit reported that Hamas is currently blocking about 500 Americans stranded in Gaza from leaving.

The article reports:

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) spoke the plain truth about the nearly 500 Americans in Gaza not being allowed to leave by Hamas: They are being held hostage by the Islamist Palestinian terrorist group. The nearly 500 are in addition to the “less than ten” Americans known to have been taken hostage in the October 7 terror attack by Hamas on Israel. The Biden administration has said Hamas has been making demands for their release that the U.S. is not prepared to meet.

Only two American have been allowed to leave Hamas-controlled Gaza since the October 7 attack that saw 1,400 Israelis and 33 Americans killed. Over 200 Israelis and “less than ten” Americans were taken hostage in the attack and are being held by Hamas. Four hostages have been released: the two Americans referenced above and two Israelis. One Israeli was rescued this week by the IDF and Shin Bet.

…Blackburn followed with a statement calling on National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan to resign, “Hamas is preventing 500 American citizens from being able to leave Gaza. These Americans are considered hostages under federal law. @JakeSullivan46 needs to resign immediately.”

The article also notes:

Blackburn signed on to a letter by a group of Republican senators denouncing Joe Biden’s proposal for $9 billion in “humanitarian assistance” for Gaza that said in part, “there is no way for the U.S. to have proper oversight over the billions of dollars that the administration intends to funnel to Gaza when Gaza is being ruled by a terrorist organization.”

I know that we have Americans working in Gaza–running schools and helping the poor, but 500? It’s time to destroy the people running Gaza. There will be civilian casualties, but the status quo is unacceptable.

Foreign Interference In Our Government In Plain Sight

PJ Media posted an article yesterday with the following headline, “Dems Block China Investigation Even After Communist Regime Threatens U.S. Senators by Name.” Great. We have another country threatening our Representatives if they do their job.

The article reports:

“Coronavirus Committee Dems won’t let us investigate China’s cover-up,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) tweeted. “Why? – China’s lies caused global suffering & economic devastation – China undermined our efforts to combat the virus – China is reportedly trying to steal our vaccine research They must be held accountable.”

The article notes:

If Democrats are going to investigate President Trump’s response to the coronavirus crisis, they should also investigate China’s malfeasance. Just last week, Chinese officials threatened “serious consequences” for members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate, along with two state attorneys general. The officials named Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Martha McSally (R-Ariz.), and Rick Scott (R-Fla.), along with Reps. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) and Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas).

“The Chinese government is lashing out at those in the U.S. who are appropriately trying to hold them accountable for intentionally misleading us about the nature of the novel coronavirus, where it was spreading and how quickly things were getting out of control. I consider their threats a badge of honor,” Banks replied.

Attorney General Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) filed a lawsuit last month demanding tens of billions of dollars in damages due to China’s coronavirus malfeasance, which allegedly violated Missouri law. Attorney General Lynn Fitch (R-Miss.) filed a lawsuit allowing Mississippians to bring claims against China.

We need to remember that the communist government of China is not our friend. They are not anyone’s friend.

The article lists some of the destructive actions of China relating to the coronavirus:

China received 2.4 billion pieces of PPE from other countries. Yet when countries asked China for PPE, the Communist Party extorted them — only sending valuable medical aid if political leaders agreed to publicly praise Beijing. Chinese companies also sent faulty medical gear and coronavirus antibody tests to European countries, and an Associated Press investigation revealed the prevalence of counterfeit masks in America, likely tracing back to a major Chinese factory. Meanwhile, the Communist Party also prevented U.S. companies from shipping their own medical gear back home, where it is sorely needed.

Wuhan was not put under lockdown until January 22-23. On January 26, Wuhan’s mayor admitted that 5 million people had already left the city. Chinese President Xi Jinping said he had “issued requirements for the prevention and control of the new Coronavirus” as early as January 7. He could have acted to shut down Wuhan as early as January 7, two weeks before the city was shut down. A University of Southampton study found that if strict quarantine measures had been introduced three weeks earlier, the coronavirus’s spread would have been reduced by 95 percent.

As the coronavirus spread across the globe, China’s Communist Party put out a video encouraging Italians to hug Chinese people to prove they weren’t racist — while China was lying about the true danger of the virus.

According to the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, the Chinese Communist Party is also attempting cyber espionage on American attempts to create a coronavirus vaccine and cure. Chinese officials are also refusing to cooperate in the search for the coronavirus’ origins.

It is definitely time to put trade restrictions on China and move American manufacturing out of China. We need to start shopping for ‘made in America’ products.

Two Very Different Solutions To A Problem

Lifesite News reported yesterday that United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, has announced the creation of a fund for addressing the global coronavirus pandemic. Isn’t that nice? He is asking nations to contribute the equivalent of at least 10 percent of the annual income of the entire planet to a massive “human-centered, innovative and coordinated stimulus package” that would be administered at the international level. The United Nations is so well managed that we are going to give them more money? I don’t think so.

The article reports:

Guterres also wants 100 billion USD for the World Health Organization, whose president has been blamed for helping to cause the coronavirus pandemic by repeating in January the Chinese government’s false claim that COVID-19 is not transmissible to humans.

He also wants the same organization to build an “interconnected Global Health Emergency System for data, workforce, and supplies.”

The same WHO that told us that the coronavirus was not transmitted person-to-person and that China has done an excellent job of handling the virus? Again, I don’t think so.

There is, however, another suggestion that I think puts the responsibility where it belongs. Breitbart reported yesterday that Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) believes that China should consider waiving some of that debt given the communist nation’s role in the spread of the COVID-19/coronavirus.

The article reports:

During an interview that aired on Huntsville, AL radio WVNN’s “The Jeff Poor Show,” when asked, Blackburn explained ways to hold China accountable for the global pandemic, noting her effort to officially recognize China’s role and the debtor relationship the United States has with China.

“Indeed there is,” Blackburn replied. “One of the things is my Senate Resolution 553, which it expresses the sense of the Senate — that we know this came from Wuhan, China, and that they hid the information and were not transparent, that they blocked the World Health Organization and the CDC from coming into help. They tried to blame it on the U.S. military. And we hold them accountable.”

For the losses accrued from the pandemic, Blackburn called on China to forgive a portion of the debt owed to them.

“I will tell you I think we need to look at the fact that China owns over a trillion dollars of our debt,” she said. “They like investing in us. Why do they like that? Because we are a safe debt for them — a safe place for them to put their money. And knowing that they have made a global pandemic worse than it ever would have been because of their action — they should waive some of our debt. They have caused us a tremendous amount of loss of life, loss of businesses, suffering, inconvenience, shutting down our economy.”

Another component the Tennessee Republican argued for on the accountability front was to bring elements of manufacturing back from China to the United States.

“These are all things that we should take into consideration — bringing our manufacturing back, not only our pharmaceutical manufacturing — I was working with one of my colleagues today,” Blackburn explained. “There are other things we can bring back and put America back in the manufacturing business.”

For those who want to investigate the role of Chinese propaganda in the spread of the coronavirus, today The Center for Security Policy posted a timeline of events surrounding the beginning and spread of the coronavirus. It’s a rather long timeline, but it illustrates the role that the tyrannical Chinese state played in spreading the virus by misstating information and lying about the numbers of people in China impacted by it. The fact that the global migration that occurs around the Chinese New Year went on as usual without any government warnings has a lot to do with the worldwide pandemic we are currently seeing. The fact that the World Health Organization was sharing Chinese propaganda rather than valid health information is also a concern.

There needs to be a financial penalty placed on China for their behavior during the outbreak of the coronavirus. Had the Chinese acted quickly to contain the virus and accepted the help offered to them by other countries, the virus might be a thing of the past by now.

A Really Good Idea

On October 24, The Federal Times posted an article about relocating some of the Washington bureaucracy. What a great idea. We need to move some of the people in charge of government agencies closer to the people they are supposed to serve. We also need to break up the concentration of power that is the Washington swamp.

It is not a coincidence that many of the wealthiest counties in America are suburbs of Washington, D.C.

According to Wikipedia (a questionable source, but I suspect this is correct):

Presented below are the 25 highest-income counties (with populations of 65,000 or greater) in the United States by median household income according to the 2016 American Community Survey[4] prepared by the US Census Bureau. Five of the counties are located in the state of Maryland, five are in Virginia, four in California, three in New Jersey, two in New York, and one each in: Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Tennessee, and Texas. (Disclaimer: This only includes counties that participated in this single survey)

The Federal Times reports:

The Trump administration’s decision to move three agency components outside the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area has spurred a sizeable amount of controversy, but Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., want to keep going with that trend.

The two senators introduced a bill Oct. 23 that would move about 90 percent of the workforce at the headquarters for 10 federal agencies to other states around the country and pop the “bubble” of D.C. federal employment.

“Every year Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars fund federal agencies that are mainly located in the D.C. bubble. That’s a big part of the problem with Washington: they’re too removed from the rest of America,” said Hawley in a news release.

“The HIRE Act will move policymakers directly into the communities they serve, creating thousands of jobs for local communities and saving taxpayers billions of dollars along the way.”

Under the proposal, the Department of Agriculture would move to Missouri, Commerce to Pennsylvania, Education to Tennessee, Energy to Kentucky, Health and Human Services to Indiana, Housing and Urban Development to Ohio, Interior to New Mexico, Labor to West Virginia, Transportation to Michigan and Veterans Affairs to South Carolina.

Obviously there are objections to this idea. The swamp is not enthusiastic about being split up!

The article concludes:

About 20 percent of D.C. residents are employed directly by the federal government, according to OPM and population data, while each of the 10 states slated for agency relocation under the bill have about .3 to one percent of their populations working for the federal government.

But Washington has an incredibly small population when compared with these states, and even if the entire D.C. federal workforce were to be relocated equally across the 10 states, the state with the lowest percent of federal workforce, Michigan, would only move from .3 percent to .4 percent.

The bill is bound to get strong pushback not only from the Democratically controlled House, which has been opposed to many of the Trump administration’s smaller moves, but also from the Virginia and Maryland members of Congress, whose states and districts would be likely to lose a number of jobs due to a relocation.

Relocation might also clear up the incredible traffic jam that is Washington, D.C. I suspect that it also would be cheaper to run government agencies in places where renting or owning office space would be considerably lower.

This will probably never happen, but it is a great idea.

Following The Money

The good news is that Congress has chosen a panel to look into Planned Parenthood‘s fetal tissue practices. The bad news is that today’s Washington Times reports that the six Democrats named to the investigative panel have received more than $81,000 from PACs affiliated with Planned Parenthood. I am sure their investigation will be totally unbiased despite the amount of money received. Yeah, right.

The article reports:

More than half of those donations, or $43,362, came in the 2012 and 2014 election cycles, according to LifeNews.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi assigned the Democrats to the panel Wednesday, saying she was “proud to name six strong champions of women, families and facts to stand up against the latest Republican assault on women’s health.”

The Democrats are Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York, Rep. Diana DeGette of Colorado, Rep. Jackie Speier of California, Rep. Suzan DelBene of Washington and Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman of New Jersey.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee‘s Select Investigative Panel, chaired by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, is charged with examining “medical procedures and abortion business practices” stemming from allegations raised by recent hidden-camera videos involving fetal-tissue procurement from Planned Parenthood.

Anyone who has watched the videos of abortionists harvesting fetal tissue has very little doubt as the humaneness of this practice, much less the legality. Even if you are willing to defend the practice of abortion-on-demand in the latter stages or pregnancy, I do not understand how you can condone the actions depicted on the videos. The fact that this matter is even being discussed is a truly sad commentary on the value our culture places on the lives of the most innocent among us.

ObamaCare Has Caused More Problems Than It Has Solved

Today’s Daily Caller posted a story about Emilie Lamb, an accountant who suffers from lupus. She is now working a second job to cover a calculated $6,000 increase in out-of-pocket health care costs per year. She will watch the State of the Union address as a guest of Representative Marsha Blackburn.

The article reports:

She was forced to purchase a more expensive plan after her old policy with CoverTN was canceled. The federal government had denied CoverTN’s request for a waiver to grandfather her plan into Obamacare three times.

Even with a small federal subsidy, her premiums increased from $57 to $373 per month.

Ms. Lamb explained that she voted for President Obama in 2012 because she hoped that ObamaCare would help her with her medical care.

Please follow the above link to the story, which includes a video of Ms. Lamb telling her story.

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Is The Government’s Treatment Of Gibson Guitars Encouraging Employment ?

Gibson guitar SG Standard 1969

Image via Wikipedia

Yesterday the Washington Examiner reported that Representative Fred Upton, R-Mich., Representative Mary Bono Mack, R-Fla., and Representative Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn. have sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services Director Daniel Ashe questioning the two raids on the Gibson Guitar factory by federal agents. The spokesman for the Justice Department declined to comment to the Washington Examiner on the raids.

The letter pointed out that although the American government was investigating whether Gibson Guitar imported ‘sawn wood’ from India, the Indian government was satisfied that the requirements to export the wood to America had been met.

The Washington Examiner posted part of the letter:

We are deeply troubled by the suggestion that if Gibson had the skilled work done in India, using the same wood, instead of here in America, then the importation would have been legal and the Department of Justice would not have carried out this heavy-handed enforcement action.  If this is true, it is hard to conclude anything other than the fact that your agencies and this Administration are actively pursuing regulatory and legal policies that discourage job growth in the United States and encourage shipping those very same jobs overseas, through the selective enforcement of laws enacted over one hundred years ago.  This is unwise in the extreme.

The idea that the Obama administration suggested that Gibson should send work overseas at a time when the Obama administration is condemning corporations for sending work overseas is amazing. If the goal of the Obama administration actually is to create jobs, this is not the way to do it.

 

 

 

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