Tag Archives: The Heritage Foundation

The Monster Under The Bed

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I guess screaming that President Trump is a threat to our democracy has not worked as well as predicted (we are a representative republic) since he is not the one jailing his political opponents and ignoring the rulings of the Supreme Court, so the Democrats need a new fear. The new monster under the bed is Project 2025. Project 2025 is simply a conservative wish list put out by the Heritage Foundation that would bring America closer to the country our Founding Fathers envisioned.

The Project 2025 website notes:

“Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” offers both specific proposals for addressing every major issue facing the country and a blueprint for how to restructure each agency to solve those issues.

Among the recommendations in this edition:

    • Restore the integrity of the Department of Justice to ensure accountability by giving the FBI a hard rest, ensuring consistent litigation decisions, and enforcing immigration laws.
    • Solidify our border by restructuring the Department of Homeland Security and its priorities in ways that streamline the immigration process, end unclear immigration visas, and create a more secure immigration process.
    • Break up the Department of Education to strengthen education freedom, enhance parental rights in education, and protect taxpayers from student loan “forgiveness.”

Which of those ideas is objectionable?

The Heritage Foundation posted an article about the effectiveness of the Department of Education in 2019. The article states:

Federal government efforts to improve education have been dismal.

The fact that Common Core didn’t catalyze improvements in the U.S. isn’t surprising. Large-scale government programs rarely, if ever, do. 

The sooner we can acknowledge that improvements will not come from Washington, the sooner we’re likely to see students flourishing in learning environments.

…Heritage’s Jonathan Butcher and I detail Yuval Levin’s theory of government failure in “The Not-So-Great Society.” Levin explains that large-scale government programs fail for three reasons:

    1. “Institutionally, the administrative state is ‘dismally inefficient and unresponsive, and therefore ill-suited to our age of endless choice and variety.’”
    2. “Culturally and morally, government efforts to ‘rescue the citizen from the burdens of responsibility [have] undermined the family, self-reliance, and self-government.’”
    3. “Fiscally, large-scale federal programs supporting the welfare state are simply unaffordable, ‘dependent as it is upon dubious economics and the demographic model of a bygone era.’”

Federal government efforts to improve education have been dismal. Even if there were a constitutional basis for its involvement—which there isn’t—the federal government is simply ill-positioned to determine what education policies will best serve the diverse local communities across our vast nation.

The sooner we can acknowledge that improvements will not come from Washington, the sooner we’re likely to see students flourishing in learning environments that reflect their unique needs and desires.

Let’s restore “equal justice under the law,” secure the border, and bring education back to the local district where it can be properly guided. These are not radical ideas, but don’t expect the mainstream media to tell you that.

Anything the government touches gets worse.

To quote Milton Friedman:

“If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.”

The Sky Is Falling! The Sky Is Falling!

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The mainstream media is desperate to distract the public from the failing health of our current President. I honestly feel sorry for the man, but I also believe it is time for him to retire–NOW–not in the future. I understand the consequences of that, but he’s obviously not running things right now. All his retirement would mean is replacing Jill Biden with Kamala Harris. So what is the shiny object put forth to distract us–Project 2025, a suggested policy framework for the Trump administration if President Trump is elected. The lies are flying fast and furious.

On Tuesday, The Daily Signal listed some of the current lies:

1. ‘Terminates the Constitution’

Ironically, the Biden campaign claims that Project 2025 “terminates the Constitution.” While the campaign backs up some of its claims on the website with drop-down menus and explanatory bullet points, it doesn’t even bother backing up this particular claim.

Contrary to Biden campaign spin, Project 2025 actually represents an attempt to restore the Constitution, not terminate it.

Bringing the administrative state more firmly under the control of the president, whose authority traces directly from the Constitution, could not be further from terminating this quintessential founding document.

2. Gives Trump ‘More Power Over Your Daily Life’

With no sense of irony, the Biden campaign claims Project 2025 aims to “give Trump more power over your daily life.”

That’s completely false. Project 2025 aims to weaken the bureaucracy that churns out tens of thousands of pages of rules every year. A more restrained administrative state translates into less control over Americans’ daily lives, not more.

3. ‘Guts Democratic Checks and Balances’

The Biden campaign claims Project 2025 “guts democratic checks and balances on presidential power,” but the fine print on the website makes a consequential admission about these checks on Article II powers.

The website claims that the project will empower a president “to fire and replace independent civil servants across the government with extreme MAGA loyalists—turning independent government employees with specialized technical expertise, such as the people who keep our food safe, working for the American people into political creatures implementing his extremist agenda.”

The article concludes:

The Biden campaign’s lies come across as a desperate attempt to distract Americans from the president’s horrific debate performance last month and from the many ways that the Left has twisted the administrative state to its purposes.

Biden is so insistent on defending the status quo because the Left has already done what he claims Trump is trying to do—leverage the “expertise” of the administrative state to shove its agenda down Americans’ throats without a single vote. Contrary to his spin, reversing this is both democratic and constitutional, not to mention in the best interests of the American people.

Please follow the link to the article for further details. The current mainstream reporting on this is fear-mongering, and we need an informed public to make sure it doesn’t work.

What Is Project 2025?

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On Wednesday, The Dossier posted an article detailing some of what is in Project 2025, a framework for the Trump administration created by The Heritage Foundation..

The article notes:

Democrats are attempting to make the Project 2025 agenda analogous to the dystopia observed in The Haindmaid’s Tale (now the go-to book for liberal references. Their previous #1 in Harry Potter has been sidelined, given that J.K. Rowling has pushed back against the trans agenda), declaring that women, racial minorities, and the LGBT people will become second class citizens under the Project 2025 framework.

…Last week, President Trump took to Truth Social to declare that Project 2025 has nothing to do with him, using aggressive language to distance himself from the operation. The former president has made it clear in the past that he doesn’t want outside entitites overstepping their role in his policy agenda. It seems that this is what motivated his decision to speak out, and not the idea that the initiative, which is staffed by many of his former White House personnel, is somehow at odds with his campaign policy framework.

I don’t think that in the Trump administration anyone will doubt who is in charge.

Here is some of what is included in Project 2025:

The Project 2025 initiative is broader than just a policy guidebook. It is based on four pillars:

    1. the aforementioned document, which is called the Mandate for Leadership.
    2. A personnel database to attract like-minded thinkers for jobs in the Trump Administration. (This is essential in a town like D.C. with so many hostile political animals seeking power.)
    3. The Presidential Administration Academy, which serves as an online education tool
    4. A “playbook” designed for a most effective transition from the time President Trump wins to the day he is inaugurated.

Here are some of the specifics:

On the policy front, here’s a speed overview (and some commentary) of what Project 2025 stands for, from what I’ve gathered via some quick research.

    • Rejecting the climate narrative and embracing reliable forms of energy
    • Rolling back government interventions in the economy and lowering taxes
    • Mixed bag on tariffs policy. Heritage has historically been a pro free trade organization, but in the era of Trump, they’ve sought to take a more pragmatic approach to trade
    • Defunding leftist propaganda in academia
    • Minimizing the power of the administrative state and its bureaucrats, and bringing forward initiatives to make it easier to fire them
    • Mixed bag on foreign policy, rallying around the idea of maintaining American qualitiative military superiority. Some hybrid of a “peace through strength” Reaganesque approach while also taking into account the president’s non-interventionist instincts.
    • Reforming but not eliminating entitlement programs. This is the key area where Heritage has placed itself in a vulnerable position, given how deeply politically unpopular it is to even mention the entitlement behemoth, which consumes the majority of U.S. spending.
    • “Arresting, detaining, and removing immigration violators anywhere in the United States.”
    • Taking on the DEI & ESG agenda in schools and the workplace.
    • Reforming, but not necessarily eliminating, several three letter agencies
    • “Enact the most robust protections for the unborn that Congress will support.” This is a bit of a departure from President Trump’s position, which involves leaving abortion to the states.
    • Getting climate hoax policy out of transportation and infrastructure initiatives

This project is a major threat to the power of the deep state. That is what the hysteria in the mainstream media is about. This project will bring us closer to the government our Founding Fathers created–not the elite deep state we currently have. Don’t believe the lies you are currently hearing.

Lying Or Simply Ignorant?

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Watching President Biden these days is sad. It’s also aggravating because many of us knew in 2020 that he was not running on all eight cylinders. Now we have reached the point where when he continually repeats a lie, we don’t know if he believes the lie or if he has forgotten that it has been debunked. The mainstream media is very quick to accuse President Trump of anything they can think of only to have their accusations disproved. However, many people hear the accusation but not the truth that comes out later. That’s where we are right now.

On July 5th, Townhall posted the following:

On Thursday, President Joe Biden spent part of the 4th of July holiday giving brief remarks for military families gathered at the White House. He was pretty much the same Biden he’s been, which involved stumbling around angry and confused. We also learned that evidently no day or event is too sacred when it comes to this president trying to bring up the debunked “losers” and “suckers” hoax about former and potentially future President Donald Trump.

“You know, I was in that World War I cemetery, in France,” Biden said. “The one that my–one of our colleagues–the former president didn’t want to go and be up there,” he continued, slowing down his words and coming across as confused. “I probably shouldn’t even say it, any way,” Biden said from there, prompting laughter from the audience. “We gotta just remember who in the hell we are,” he added, his voice rising to an angry tone. “We’re the United States of America,” Biden said to cheers.

And why shouldn’t Biden be saying as much? Did he go off script? Is he aware that to claim Trump called fallen soldiers “losers” and “suckers” is a hoax? Did he recognize that it wasn’t the time or place to get into political jabs against Trump?

The article concludes:

As of Friday morning, the White House has yet to put out the official transcript of Biden’s remarks at the event, brief though they were. He actually spoke for only about four minutes. There is, however, a transcript of the first lady’s remarks, who spoke just before Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and the president. This looks to be a pattern, that it takes much longer for the official transcript of Biden’s transcript to be shared.

The Biden-Harris HQ X account was arguably even worse in how it commemorated the holiday, putting out a post warning that the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is supposedly so evil that it will turn American into “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

As time goes on, it is going to get harder to transcribe President Biden’s remarks–between the slurred speech, the things that don’t make sense, and the non-sequiturs, it’s like playing anagrams.

There Is A Legal Aspect To Changing The Democrat Candidate For President

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On Saturday, Fox News posted an article about some of the legal problems involved in replacing President Biden as the Democrat presidential candidate.

The article reports:

A major conservative activist group is preparing for legal battles in case the Democratic Party chooses to pull President Biden out of the running before or after he becomes the nominee.

The Heritage Foundation, one of the United States’ most prominent and well-connected conservative activist groups, is laying the groundwork in case a sudden switch-up in the Democratic roster sparks a legal war.

“We are monitoring the calls from across the country for President Biden to step aside, either now or before the election, and have concluded that the process for substitution and withdrawal is very complicated,” Executive Director of The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project Mike Howell said in a statement. “We will remain vigilant that appropriate election integrity procedures are followed.”

Heritage has already identified multiple states in which a switch away from Biden before or after the nomination could mean serious trouble for the Democratic Party.

In a separate statement, the Oversight Project warned, “If the Biden family decides that President Biden will not run for re-election, the mechanisms for replacing him on ballots vary by state. There is the potential for pre-election litigation in some states that would make the process difficult and perhaps unsuccessful. 

Theoretically, the Democrats can change candidates only if their candidate is ruled mentally unfit or dies. Otherwise, the results of the primary elections have to be respected. Putting a new candidate in at the last minute disenfranchises the primary voters. There was a time in America not too long ago when candidates were chosen by the party elite in smoke-filled rooms. Sometime in the last century, it was decided to let people vote in primary elections. In 1972 that was a problem for the Democrats–George McGovern won the primaries, but he was unelectable–he won only Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. At that point the Democrats put in place a policy of naming enough superdelegates to their conventions that the party (rather than the voters) controlled the nomination.

I think it is possible that President Biden will withdraw from the presidential race. I am not sure it is likely. Stay tuned.

What Four More Years Of Bidenomics Would Look Like

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On May 14th (sometimes it takes me a while to get to things), Stephen Moore posted an article at BizPac Review detailing some of the economic plans the Biden administration has if they win the election in November. If you like trying to stretch your dollar because of inflation, you will love the new challenges.

The article reports some of the plans:

1. Tax rates on investment up to 70%.

2. $2 trillion in new debt spending.

3. A “net zero” energy policy eliminating production of nearly all our abundant fossil fuels.

4. An end to state “right-to-work” laws in 26 states.

5. The antitrust assault against Silicon Valley and corporate mergers ramps up.

The article also concludes:

There is more to worry about under Bidenomics in a second term. One worry is that Dems will agree to eliminate checks and balances in our system of government by overturning the filibuster rule of at least 60 votes in the Senate to pass legislation. Another concern is that Dems will lock in their electoral strength by making Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico states to add four more Democratic senators. Remember Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of Pennsylvania heroically voted to save the filibuster — but they won’t be around in January 2025 to stop the court packing.

Could American businesses and families survive getting smashed by these gale-force winds of another Bidenomics hurricane in 2025 without capsizing the ship of state? I wouldn’t bet on it.

Stephen Moore is a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a senior economic advisor to Donald Trump. His latest book is: “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government Is Devouring Our Economy.”

Your vote counts. We need enough votes against Joe Biden to overcome the fraud that is already being planned.

In Case You Doubted “The Plan”

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On Wednesday, The Daily Signal posted an article about some of the information being given to the people who are illegally crossing our southern border.

The article reports:

The “vote for President Biden” flyers found at a center for migrants in Mexico constitute foreign meddling in U.S. elections, congressional Republicans say. 

Amid the ongoing crisis of illegal immigration at the southern border, the lawmakers decried flyers posted at the migrant services center near Brownsville, Texas, that tell illegal aliens: “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States.”

“Joe Biden has sacrificed our nation’s safety and security in his pursuit to get as many people here as possible. Why? Because he believes these are future Democrat voters,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., told The Daily Signal. 

“This is election interference orchestrated at the highest levels. We have to get our hands around this—Americans have to have complete confidence in their elections,” Marshall said. “Any NGO receiving federal funds and pushing illegal get-out-the-vote efforts for Joe Biden should be stripped of their funding immediately.”

Translated from Spanish, The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project notes, the flyers posted at the nongovernmental organization Resource Center Matamoros in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas say: “Reminder to vote for President Biden when you are in the United States. We need another four years of his term to stay open.” 

“Democrats want permanent power and they are willing to import a new electorate to get it,” Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., told The Daily Signal in a written statement after his office was asked about the flyers. 

The article concludes:

The discovery of the “vote for Biden” flyers in Mexico is more evidence of the need for voter ID laws, Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said.

“Like Iowa, every state in the union should require IDs and proof of citizenship in order to vote,” Ernst told The Daily Signal. “American elections are for Americans, not whoever manages to show up at Joe Biden’s open border. We must secure election integrity and secure the border.”

The pro-Biden flyers, discovered by Muckraker and shared with the Oversight Project, were found throughout Resource Center Matamoros, including on the walls of portable toilets, a video shows. 

The city of Matamoros in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas borders Brownsville, where Biden spoke in February about the crisis of illegal immigration at the southern border that has grown since he became president in January 2021.

Federal law bans foreign nationals, or non-U.S. citizens, from voting in federal elections. On Friday, former President Donald Trump endorsed proposed legislation by House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., that would require proof of citizenship to vote in U.S. elections.

It is long past time to make sure that the people who vote in our elections are the people who are legally entitled to vote in our elections. Any illegal vote cancels out the vote of a legal voter.

Government Intrusion Into The Election Process

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On Tuesday, The Daily Signal posted an article about the collaboration between the federal government and left-leaning get-out-the-vote organizations.

The article reports:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is working with a left-wing advocacy group to boost voter turnout as part of President Joe Biden’s executive order directing federal agencies to get involved in elections.

The USDA worked directly with Demos, a New York-based group that helped draft Biden’s Executive Order 14019, according to records obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s news outlet.) 

Biden signed his order on agencies and voter registration in March 2021. On Aug. 9, 2021, Demos’ Adam Lioz emailed USDA officials, many in the office of Secretary Tom Vilsack, under the subject line: “Demos Meeting on Voting Rights EO.”

“Team USDA, with apologies for the delay, I wanted to follow up and thank you all for all your time and a productive conversation,” wrote Lioz, who was Demos’ senior counsel and political director before departing in September 2021. “As we noted, we’ll have our ‘best practices’ slides ready in the next 1-2 weeks and in the meantime, y’all had asked for data on voter registration at the state level, which I’ve pasted below.” 

Just for the record, the Hatch Act of 1939 prohibits civil servants in the Executive Branch of government (except the President and Vice-President) from engaging in some forms of political activity. The goal of the law is to stop the federal government from affecting elections or going about its activities in a partisan manner.

The article concludes:

Biden’s initiative includes the Department of Homeland Security’s registration of voters during naturalization ceremonies, the Department of Education’s promotion of voting at high schools and colleges, and agencies’ work with private, nonprofit organizations to increase voter turnout. 

Many congressional Republicans have joined government watchdog groups in expressing concern about agencies’ engaging in partisan political activity under Biden’s executive order, in violation of laws such as the Hatch Act. 

The records obtained by Heritage’s Oversight Project include the USDA’s directions to employees on how to avoid violating the Hatch Act. 

Neither the Department of Agriculture nor Demos responded to inquiries from The Daily Signal before publication of this report. 

The effort to steal the 2024 election has already begun.

Bribing Schools To Accept Transgender Policies

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The problem with federal money is that it always comes with strings attached. Our local school boards no longer have the freedoms they once had because many of their decisions are determined by the federal Department of Education and linked to grants and funding. The Biden administration is using grants and funding in order to advance its radical agenda on child sexuality.

On Sunday, Just the News reported the following:

A new Biden administration rule forces schools to comply with progressive ideology on gender and sexuality or risk losing the federal aid for free and reduced-price school lunches.

Legal observers say this is just the first in a slew of new rules on the horizon tying federal education funding to far-left policies on gender and sexuality.

The school lunch funding controvesy began in May 2022, as The Center Square previously reported, with an announcement from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which handles federal help for school lunches.

The USDA said at the time it would change its longstanding interpretation of Title IX, the law broadly governing discrimination protections in education. USDA said it would expand its previous prohibition against discriminating based on sex “to include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

School lunch funding goes through the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of USDA.

The article notes:

“This is a significant departure from what Title IX has always been interpreted to be,” Sarah Perry, a lawyer at the Heritage Foundation and expert on this issue, told The Center Square.

With an ever-growing number of orientations and gender identities, and despite the political divide on the issue, schools will now be forced to comply on the complex and highly politicized gender and sexuality issue.

“This is no small change,” Perry said. “This is a significant interpretation to say that sex equals sexual orientation and gender identity when Title IX, we know, dates back to 1972 and the women’s liberation movement, and at the time there was an entire campaign by LGBTQ activists to be included in anti-discrimination law indicating that they themselves did not believe that they were protected in these particular contexts.”

Is there anyone is Congress who is willing to stand up to this? This is not a law–it’s a regulation. Does anyone in Congress have the courage to propose a law that will prevent this from happening?

What Was He Hiding?

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On Tuesday, The Daily Caller reported that they have received a response to their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for access to Biden Vice Presidential records pertaining to the creation of Vice President Biden’s alias/pseudonym email accounts.

The article reports:

“We have performed a search of our collection for Vice Presidential records related to your request and have identified approximately 731 electronic files of potentially responsive records that must be processed in order to respond to your request. Please keep in mind that these totals are an estimate and that all material processed may not be applicable to your specific topic,” the letter continues.

NARA confirmed to the Daily Caller it has identified 731 files of “potentially responsive records” for the Heritage Foundation’s FOIA request. The records will be reviewed by NARA in accordance with the Presidential Records Act (PRA) and the agency will determine if the records are responsive.

NARA discovered 82,000 pages of potential records related to Joe Biden’s suspected email accounts, according to a status report NARA filed in October alongside the Southeastern Legal Foundation (SLF) for an unrelated FOIA lawsuit. As part of the SLF lawsuit, NARA previously disclosed its possession of up to 5,400 potential email records tied to Joe Biden’s apparent aliases.

So I guess it’s okay to use aliases and secret servers if you are a Democrat. Hopefully the documents discovered will eventually make their way into the public square so that people can draw their own conclusions about how the Biden family created their immense wealth with no visible product or service.

 

 

 

Looking Behind The Obvious Numbers

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On Saturday, Trending Politics posted an article about the latest jobs numbers (which are being praised by the Biden administration).

The article reports:

President Biden and other top Democrat leaders have taken a victory lap over the latest jobs report that “soared past expectations” by showing that the U.S. added 336,000 jobs in September. While the Biden Administration has hailed the report as a win for “Bidenomics,” an economist with the Heritage Foundation took to X to explain why the report is actually “very troubling.”

…Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni analyzed the findings further in a lengthy X thread, however, explaining why the report is “very troubling.”

“September nonfarm payrolls jump 336k; Unemployment rate flat at 3.8%; Labor force participation rate remains depressed at 62.8%; Those not in the labor force rose to roughly 5 million more than pre-pandemic – this is artificially pushing down unemployment rate,” Antoni wrote. When adjusting for true labor participation rate, Antoni pegged the actual unemployment rate between 6.3 and 6.8 percent.

…Antoni also pointed out that roughly 22 percent of jobs created came from the government, “an unsustainable increase.”

“Remember that private sector workers have to support those public sector jobs,” he continued.

The economist also noted that every single job created was part-time, pointing out that 1.2 million part-time jobs have been created over the last three months. Full-time jobs actually dropped by 700,000 over the same period, the highest figure since COVID-19 lockdowns.

In addition, double counting of multiple jobholders accounted for 37 percent of supposed gains.

…Antoni concluded by pointing out that the massive increase in part-time jobs is slowing down wage growth. “Lastly, the loss of full-time jobs and their replacement w/ part-time work is helping slow wage growth, which is then negative after adjusting for inflation – real weekly earnings fell dramatically until Jun ’22 and have moved sideways since,” Antoni wrote.

“People [are] supplementing incomes w/ part-time jobs are goosing the headline numbers while underlying economic fundamentals remain weak; people absent from workforce pushing down unemployment rate; earnings not keeping up with inflation; don’t expect the job gains to last.”

It will be interesting to see if this ‘favorable’ jobs report results in the Federal Reserve raising interest rates. The Biden administration is also claiming that inflation is under control–tell that to the people who have recently gone shopping or filled up their gas tank.

Please follow the link to the article. It includes a number of graphs and lots of additional information.

Is Anyone Surprised?

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During the Congressional hearings regarding the Biden family corruption, Attorney General Merrick Garland stated that he gave U.S. Attorney David Weiss ultimate authority over the Hunter Biden investigation. However, there are currently questions as to the accuracy of that statement.

On Thursday, The Federalist reported:

Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, and shared exclusively with The Federalist, reveal a glaring gap in the documentation maintained by the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office: There is nothing memorializing the authority Attorney General Merrick Garland claims he gave U.S. Attorney David Weiss for the Hunter Biden investigation. 

For more than a year, Garland represented to Congress that Weiss held ultimate authority over the Hunter Biden investigation — which the eventual appointment of Weiss as special counsel contradicted. But now there is more evidence — or rather a lack of evidence — indicating the claimed authority was always a charade. 

The Friday before the long holiday weekend, the DOJ provided the Heritage Foundation with the second batch of documents it was ordered by a federal court to produce in response to Heritage’s FOIA lawsuit. This installment concluded the DOJ’s production of the non-exempt documents in Weiss’s custody which concerned his authority for investigating Hunter Biden. But none of the documents produced addressed Weiss’s authority or any authority promised by Garland.

Mike Howell, the director of the Heritage Oversight Project and a co-plaintiff in the FOIA lawsuit against the DOJ, stressed the significance of this omission to The Federalist.

“The DOJ lives on paper.” Anything as important as granting Weiss ultimate authority over an investigation or promising to give him authority to bring charges in another venue, if necessary, “would have been written down,” Howell explained. To Howell, this last batch of documents constitutes an admission by Garland that “there was nothing written down at the DOJ and sent to Weiss, indicating Weiss had any of the authority that Garland claimed he did.”

The thing to remember when evaluating all of the information that is currently coming out about the Biden family business is that the media, the Department of Justice and the Democrat party are all in control of what you hear and when you hear it. There are some serious questions as to whether or not the Democrats want President Biden to run for a second term. Releasing a lot of information about some of his questionable business dealings may be the way to prevent him from running. Indictments against the Biden family will not have the same impact as indictments against President Trump. There is a strong possibility that the Biden family actually did things that were illegal.

I suspect that the Democrats are desperate to take over the House of Representatives to stop the current investigations.

What Has Happened To The FBI?

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On Tuesday, The Federalist reported the following:

Emails obtained by the Heritage Foundation following a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, and shared exclusively with The Federalist, reveal that lies leaked to The New York Times about the origins of damning evidence implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal were fed to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss. 

As I previously detailed, The New York Times reported those lies in its Dec. 11, 2020, article, “Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden” — just a week after Americans first learned of the investigation of the now-president’s son. The Times’ reporting was “replete with falsehoods and deceptive narratives,” but “Americans just didn’t know it at the time.” 

However, earlier this year, thanks to “whistleblower revelations and statements by former Attorney General William Barr,” the country learned that the Times’ claims — that evidence implicating the Bidens was derived from Giuliani — were false. Rather, a separate investigation had uncovered reporting from a “highly credible” FBI confidential human source (CHS) implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal.

Now the FOIA-produced emails reveal even more: The FBI lies, laundered through The New York Times, were fed directly to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss.

Until we begin to hold those in the FBI who are responsible for the lies and the leaks accountable, the bad behavior will continue. Meanwhile, the American public is being treated to public lynchings done by the mainstream media and the Justice Department working together.

The article concludes:

The Federalist has also learned from a source with knowledge of the matter that the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office kept the Hunter Biden laptop secret from the Pennsylvania-based U.S. attorney’s office, which surely limited the investigators’ ability to assess the credibility of the evidence it was screening for disinformation.

Nonetheless, through its independent investigation of the CHS’s reporting, Pittsburgh corroborated several details of the FD-1023 and briefed Wolf on those details, telling her they believed the CHS’s information warranted further investigation.

But did Wolf tell that to Weiss? Did anyone tell that to Weiss? Or did Weiss’s team, after sharing The New York Times’ false narrative that Brady was on a political witch hunt of the Bidens and demanding an investigation into Giuliani disinformation, remain mum? Or did Weiss know about the FD-1023 and do nothing?

The emails don’t answer those questions, but they do confirm that Weiss and his top deputies were fed the Times story. Which leads to a final question: Which FBI agent(s) fed the Times the lies?

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things

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On Thursday, Issues & Insights posted an article about the impact the Biden administration has had on the pocketbooks of Americans. It’s not a pretty picture.

The article notes:

In one of the most memorable presidential debate moments, Ronald Reagan asked voters if they were better off in 1980 than they were when Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976. The obvious answer was, for most, a resounding “no.” Whoever runs against the Democratic nominee next year needs to bring back that question, because it’s a certainty that in the fall of 2024, we’ll still be worse off than we were in pre-pandemic 2020.

And for that, we can thank, or rather blame, Joe Biden.

In a poll taken earlier this year, 41% of Americans said they were financially worse off than they were two years earlier when Biden took office, the highest number in “ABC News/Washington Post polls dating back 37 years.” Only 16% said they were better off, the lowest number since 2009, when only 8% said their financial situations were better.

At roughly the same time in Donald Trump’s term, only 13% said they were worse off than when he became president while a quarter said their finances had improved.

An America struggling under Biden is not a new development. In a survey conducted in the spring of 2022, 52% said they were worse off than a year earlier; 39% said they expected to be worse off in one year than they were when they were asked the question in June.

Last year’s New York Times|Momentive Poll further discovered that “The number of people who expect periods of widespread unemployment or depression to occur in the next five years has risen to 71%, another new high,” while 41% said “now is a bad time to make large purchases.” This was “up from 36% in April and slightly” exceeded “the 39% that number reached in April 2020 at the start of the COVID pandemic.” 

A few months after those poll results were released, the Heritage Foundation published an analysis that determined the average American had lost $4,200 in annual income since Biden stumbled into the Oval Office.

It’s where we are, folks. I will make a calculated guess that most Americans want the economy to improve. Unfortunately, under the Biden administration, the economy will not improve. When the economy tanks in the next month of two, the Democrats will blame the Republicans for not raising the debt ceiling. That’s how Washington works. A recession is coming. The only way the Democrats can avoid being blamed is if the Republicans refuse to raise the debt ceiling–then the Democrats can blame the Republicans. Refusing to raise the debt ceiling will not be the cause of the recession, but Americans who watch the mainstream media will not know that. Hang on to your hats–the next two years is going to be rough, and if a Democrat is elected to the White House in 2024, the next six years are going to be very rough.

The Omnibus Spending Bill

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Kevin Roberts, The Heritage Foundation President released the following statement on Wednesday regarding the Omnibus Spending Bill:

“Americans are tired of the elites in Washington playing political games and using cheap tricks to pass massive spending bills that will only increase our debt and further drive inflation. Both parties in the House and Senate are working together this week to pass a $1.5 trillion omnibus bill that spends more money that we simply do not have, and they are playing games with our national security to do so. 

“Instead of following a transparent appropriations process, the House is using a procedural stunt to separate the 2,700-page omnibus bill into two divisions. This move is designed purely to secure enough votes to pass the bill in the House and send it to the Senate as one package, allowing House and Senate leadership to have full control over the outcome. 

“The national security spending in this bill is necessary, but it shouldn’t be used as leverage for a laundry list of far-left domestic priorities. The American people need relief from soaring inflation, higher prices, and a national debt that increasingly threatens their financial futures. Congress is showing that they still don’t understand this basic reality and are intent on causing more hardship for working Americans across this country.  

“It’s time for Congress to end the political games and govern responsibly. If Republicans are serious about governing like conservatives next year, they should start by rejecting this irresponsible approach to the people’s money.” 

It’s time to go back to the real budget process where every government department submits a budget to Congress for Congressional approval.

Someone asked the website Quora when the last federal budget was passed using the conventional budget process.

The website posted the following answer:

Usually a President’s first year in Office is under the previous President’s budget. However knowing that Barack Obama was winning, the Congressional Democrats used Continuing Resolution to push the budget forward. With Obama in Office, they passed the full budget in April 2009. I think since then we have only operated in a world of continuing resolutions and an omnibus budget. After gaining the control of the congress in 2014, Republican promised to return to regular order and it hasn’t happened yet.

To answer your question, the 2007–08 budget was probably the last regular budget passed.

We need to elect people who will return to the normal budget process.

Ranked Choice Voting

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On Wednesday, Just the News reported that a legislative committee in California is about to hear a proposal to ban ranked choice voting in the state.

Fair vote has posted a map showing where ranked choice voting is in use in America:

The Heritage Foundation has one of the best explanations for Ranked Choice Voting that I have heard:

Think about what ranked choice voting destroys. It destroys your clear and knowing choices as a political consumer. Let us call it the supermarket contemplation. In reality, you are choosing one elected official to represent you, just like you might choose one type of steak sauce to buy when you are splurging for steaks. At the supermarket you ponder whether to buy A1, Heinz 57, HP, or the really cheap generic brand you have never tried.

In the real world, you compare price, taste, mood, and maybe even the size of the bottle and then decide on your steak sauce. You know nothing about the generic brand, so you rank it last among your choices, while A1 is ranked a distant third. In your mind, it comes down to Heinz or HP, and you choose the Heinz. You buy that bottle and head home to the grill.

Now imagine if, instead, you had to rank-order all the steak sauces—even the ones you dislike—and at checkout the cashier swaps out your bottle of Heinz 57 with the cheap generic you ranked dead last. Why? Well, the majority of shoppers also down-voted it, but there was no clear front-runner, so the generic snuck up from behind with enough down ballot picks to win. In fact, in this ranked choice supermarket, you might even have helped the lousy generic brand win.

Just the News reports:

The proposal (to end Ranked Choice Voting), contained in Assembly Bill 2808, would prohibit ranked choice voting in state and local elections. A ranked choice voting system allows voters to rank candidates based on preference, having voters indicate their first choice, second choice and so on.

The bill’s author, Assemblymember Patrick O’Donnell, said in a statement that ranked choice voting “allows an election to be gamed.”

“Our democracy and our recent elections may be under heightened stress and scrutiny right now, but our long-established voting system is strong,” O’Donnell said. “We are a model for the world. We must not abandon our voting principles to chase the election flavor of the month.”

If passed, the proposal would shift how elections are completed in several areas across the state. Berkeley, Oakland, San Leandro and San Francisco adopted a ranked-voting system in the early 2000s and have used it for more than a decade to elect city officials, according to Fair Vote, an advocate of ranked choice voting. Additionally, Albany, Eureka and Palm Desert were set to begin using a ranked-voting system for local elections starting in November 2022.

…This bill is not the first time lawmakers have backed measures to prohibit ranked choice voting. Tennessee recently moved forward with its own ban on ranked choice voting earlier this week. Gov. Bill Lee signed legislation on Monday prohibiting the system from being used in state and local elections.

O’Donnell’s bill could be heard in committee on March 21, according to the state’s legislative tracker.

This is something to keep an eye on. We do not want ranked choice voting to become a national fad.

The Real Cost Of An Open Southern Border

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The Heritage Foundation posted an article today about the real cost of the open-border policies of the Biden administration.

The article reports:

Six months into the Biden administration, the president’s border crisis has become far more than a national-security, humanitarian, and constitutional crisis. It represents one of the most substantial public-health crises facing the United States as we struggle to recover from the pandemic.

Driven by politics and ideological hubris, the administration remains committed to a nonsensical, inconsistent, and anti-science open-borders agenda that not only encourages record levels of illegal immigration but also needlessly jeopardizes the lives of American citizens.

In short, the administration is knowingly seeding border towns and cities with individuals who are actively carrying and transmitting the virus—people who have defied our laws and broken into our country while ignoring almost all basic guidance concerning COVID.

The article notes:

Under the direction of Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a 17-year-old from anywhere in the world who illegally crosses our southwest border will be released and transported to any city in the U.S. where they can find a “sponsor,” regardless of their COVID status.

Yet while the country is navigating new COVID variants and rising infections, the Biden administration continues to play a dangerous political game with American lives. As the Rio Grande Valley area is reporting a 900 percent increase in COVID cases, the administration is currently releasing, on average, 80 percent of the families illegally entering the U.S. This fiscal year, Mayorkas has directed the release of more than 170,000 family members into local communities without testing for COVID, forcing those communities to take on the responsibility.

McAllen, along with local NGOs, has been forced to establish temporary shelters to address the massive flood of illegal aliens into their communities. McAllen’s mayor recently declared the city overwhelmed and over capacity. The COVID-positive rate among the illegal aliens released into McAllen is 15 percent.

We’ve learned in recent days of thousands of illegal aliens being detained under bridges in Texas, in unsanitary, overcrowded conditions, because CBP lacks the capacity to hold them anywhere else. These are among the most intense “super-spreader” events. Other pictures from inside CBP facilities show illegal aliens crammed into small areas like sardines, creating what amounts to an active COVID petri dish.

The article concludes:

According to the Reuters COVID-19 Tracker, COVID cases are spiking across Central and South America, the region driving the mass increase in illegal immigration. In Honduras, infections are at 99 percent of peak rate, with not even 10 percent of Hondurans vaccinated. Cases in Guatemala are around 72 percent of peak rate, with even fewer individuals vaccinated than in Honduras (about 7.2 percent). Only about 3 percent of Nicaragua’s population has received a vaccine.

Meanwhile, cases in the U.K. are falling, and more than 64 percent of the population is vaccinated. Cases are also falling in countries such as the Netherlands, Portugal, and the Czech Republic. Even in European nations where cases are rising, either the rate is low (Germany, 9 percent of peak rate; Poland, less than 1 percent of peak rate) or at least half the population is vaccinated.

The Biden administration has sparked an unprecedented crisis on our southern border. It has undone the effective policies of the previous administration that created the most secure border in American history.

Not only do the massive numbers of illegal aliens being apprehended at the border every month overwhelm our Border Patrol, but many are subsequently released into the interior because CBP simply does not have the capacity to detain, process, and deport them.

The Biden administration’s policies regarding immigration at the southern border have essentially been seeding the Covid epidemic in the United States. If every illegal immigrant with Covid infects 10 people, you will have a repeat of the pandemic. Even if the new variants are not as lethal as the original, that’s still a lot of Covid cases.

Bad Ideas On Gun Control

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On March 1st, The Heritage Foundation posted an article about the debate on gun control. The article lists four faulty ideas currently being discussed. Please follow the link to read the entire article.

The four ideas:

1) Banning ‘Assault Weapons’

2) Banning ‘High-Capacity Magazines’

3) Background Checks On All Gun Sales

4) Eliminating Immunity for Gun Manufacturers

Even if they were to pass constitutional muster, none of these are good ideas.

In 2004, the Updated Assessment of the Federal AssaultWeapons Ban: Impacts on Gun Markets and Gun Violence, 1994-2003 was released. The purpose of this report was to study the impact of the Assault Weapons Ban that Congress had passed in 1994.

The article at Heritage notes the conclusions of that study:

Even assuming that every criminal turned in his or her “assault weapon” and never obtained a different type of firearm to commit the same crimes in the future, there would be likely be no noticeable drop in gun-related crime as a result of this policy.

That is, in fact, exactly what the official study of the original federal assault-weapons ban found in 2004.

The article notes the current liability laws regarding gun manufacturers:

It’s important first to understand what the law currently is with respect to gun manufacturers and immunity.

Under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, gun manufacturers (as well as sellers and distributors) are still liable for selling defective products, for failing to abide by numerous federal regulations regarding safety, sales, and records, for false advertising, and for a wide array of other widely recognized tort claims.

The law only protects them from lawsuits claiming that they are liable whenever a third party criminally misuses a firearm that the company manufactured and sold in compliance with the law.

To hold a manufacturer liable for the misuse of their product is ridiculous. Are the manufacturers protected if they put a warning label on their guns that says “Not intended to be used to shoot people”?

The Founding Fathers put The Second Amendment in The Bill of Rights for a reason. The Bill of Rights was written to limit the power of government. The Second Amendment is part of that limitation–it is intended to limit the power of government–not the power of the people. Losing our Second Amendment rights would be a huge step toward government tyranny.

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The End Of Honest Elections

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HR 1 is titled “For the People Act of 2021.” It is anything but ‘for the people.’ The bill passed the House of Representatives on March 3rd with a 220 to 210 vote. All the Republicans voted against the bill and one Democrat, Representative Bennie G. Thompson of Mississippi, voted against it. The bill was received in the Senate on March 11th.

So what does this bill do?

The Heritage Foundation has a good summary. Here are some of the highlights:

Under H.R. 1 / S. 1 (the Corrupt Politicians Act), massive amounts of elections-related power would be transferred from the states to the federal government. The bill interferes with the ability of states and their citizens to determine qualifications for voters, to ensure the accuracy of voter registration rolls, to secure the integrity of elections, to participate in the political process, and to determine the district boundary lines for electing their representatives.

This massive centralization of power into the hands of incumbent lawmakers is D.C. politicians’ way of trying to make sure the game is rigged in their favor. But politicians already in Washington should not be choosing who goes to Washington—voters should!

Here is the list of objectionable items:

Publicly funds political campaigns— H.R. 1 / S. 1 will use public funds to create a six-to-one match on political contributions up to $200. This would force the American people to spend millions of dollars to fund the campaigns of political candidates. (source: starting on page 604, line 1)

Candidate campaign salaries would be publicly funded— Candidates that take a salary out of their campaigns would now be able to be paid with public funds provided by the previously mention six-to-one match program. (source: starting on page 604, line 1)

Requires political non-profits to disclose donors — This provision is not about transparency, but giving militant Leftists the names and addresses of conservative donors. Leftist activists have repeatedly shown their willingness to dox conservatives, threaten their families, and pressure employers into firing them. H.R. 1 / S. 1 would further empower this dangerous cancel culture. (source: starting on page 515, line 3)

Sabotages state voter ID laws — When arriving at the polls, voters will not be required to show ID and can simply sign a statement in which they claim to be who they say they are. This undermines many states’ voter ID laws, which were enacted to combat impersonation fraud, voter registration fraud, duplicate voting, and voting by ineligible individuals, such as illegal aliens. (source: starting on page 43, line 21)

Mandates same-day registration — States will be required to immediately register a person to vote upon request, even on the day of an election. With no buffer-period to verify personal information, this provision enables voter fraud. (source: starting on page 78, line 6)

Automatically registers ineligible voters — States will be required to automatically add to voter registration rolls every person—regardless of voter eligibility—who partakes in certain government programs, such as receiving welfare or obtaining a driver’s license. Other provisions of H.R. 1 / S. 1 then restrict the ability of states to verify eligible voters and remove ineligible voters from voter registration rolls. This provision will automatically enroll ineligible voters such as illegal aliens. (source: starting on page 47, line 15)

Unconstitutionally requires states to restore the ability of felons to vote — Upon release from prison, every felon would immediately be restored the ability to vote. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution allows states to restrict voting rights to those who have participated in “rebellion, or other crime.” States have the constitutional authority to decide when or if to restore that right, as long as they do so in a manner that is not racially discriminatory. H.R. 1 / S. 1 would attempt to unconstitutionally overrule the 14th Amendment with a statute. (source: starting on page 142, line 21)

Violates the First Amendment — H.R. 1 / S. 1 deters political free speech by inserting a provision that makes it a criminal offense to provide “materially false” information that will “impede or prevent” someone from registering or voting. This provision is so vague that it would likely interfere with free speech and other legitimate activities. (source: starting on
page 122, line 13)

Requires ballots be counted outside of the voter’s precinct — This removes the integrity of the local government to verify voter rolls and oversee elections and gives the power to count votes entirely to the federal government. (source: starting on page 166, line 2)

Creates unaccountable redistricting committees — Currently, congressional district lines are drawn by state governments that are accountable to their constituents. Allowing unelected officials to determine congressional districts is a nakedly political ploy to draw more Democratic districts. (source: starting on page 286, line 12)

Alters Federal Election Commission into a partisan organization — Currently, the FEC has six members (three from each party), preserving its bipartisan nature. H.R. 1 / S. 1 would reduce the number to five, giving one party a majority and the opportunity to weaponize the FEC for their party’s benefit. (Source: starting on page 644, line 6)

Basically the bill enshrines all of the questionable practices that enable election fraud. That is not good news for election integrity.

Bringing Common Sense To The Census

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Hans A. von Spakovsky at The Heritage Foundation posted an article today about the Supreme Court case dealing with who should be counted in the 2020 census.

The article reports:

In Trump v. New York, the Supreme Court should be looking only at the constitutional and statutory issues: whether President Donald Trump was within his legal authority to direct that noncitizens in the country illegally be excluded from the population used for congressional apportionment. The policy issue is very important, of course. What the president did was fundamentally fair. And, under the Supreme Court’s precedent in Franklin v. Massachusetts, Trump was also within his legal authority to do so.

First on the policy issue and the question of fairness. For the past four years, the political arena has been filled with claims of Russian “interference” in our elections. Special Counsel Robert Mueller actually indicted a number of Russians for involvement in those efforts. If you were to ask members of the public if they believe that any one of the indicted Russians should be allowed to make a political donation to a federal candidate—be it Trump or someone running for Congress—if he were here illegally, I have no doubt they would uniformly say “no.”

If you then ask whether that same Russian should be allowed to be a candidate for Congress, you would receive the same adamant answer. And if you ask whether that Russian should be able to vote in federal elections, including congressional elections, the answer would still be a resounding “no.”

So why would the state of New York or any of the other Democratic-controlled state and local governments who are challenging the president’s action argue that Russians (and other noncitizens) who are not here legally should be included in the population used to apportion the political power of the House of Representatives? Only one reason: to distort the House and give states with large illegal immigrant populations more members of Congress (and more political influence) than they are entitled to receive according to their citizen population. This gives states an incentive to obstruct federal immigration law in order to boost the number of illegal immigrants residing in those states.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. The article also includes constitutional and  logical arguments as to why the census should make a distinction between citizens and non-citizens.

Know Your Sources

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Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon posted an article about the British magazine the Economist.

The article reports:

The Economist provided sympathetic coverage of a Chinese tech giant widely considered a national security risk without disclosing the publication’s lucrative business relationship with the firm that spanned nearly a decade.

Huawei Technologies commissioned the Economist‘s business consulting division to advance its policy agendas and deflect cybersecurity concerns raised by Western governments. The influential British magazine produced reports on a wide range of subjects—including a report on broadband access in the United Kingdom that Huawei credits to have influenced British policy. The publication has also run numerous Huawei advertisements, and its editors have cohosted several global forums with the company, helping the tech firm boost its public image as it faced growing scrutiny from the developed world for its close ties with the Chinese government.

The Economist defended Huawei in a front-page cover story in 2012—the year the publication’s consulting division started working with the company—that accused Western countries of using cybersecurity concerns as a pretense to oppose legitimate competition from Huawei. The publication’s coverage of the tech company has become less overtly pro-Huawei in recent years, but the Economist‘s coverage of the company is seen as friendly enough that Huawei’s PR division has cited several of the magazine’s articles to deflect criticism.

The article concludes:

While the Economist‘s coverage of Huawei has become more skeptical of the Chinese firm over the years, the magazine continues to criticize U.S. efforts to sanction Huawei. The company has been all too happy to cite some of the Economist‘s coverage in its “facts” section, which seeks to assuage concerns about Huawei. Its CEO, Ren Zhengfei, also gave open-ended interviews with the publication in December 2019 and January 2020, the latter with the Economist‘s editor in chief.

None of the Economist‘s coverage of Huawei mentioned the publication’s long-standing business relationship with the tech firm.

Nile Gardiner, a foreign policy expert at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that Huawei’s relationship with the Economist appears to be part of its multifaceted campaign to influence British and European public opinion.

“Huawei has a large propaganda operation in Europe and invests vast sums of money to influence thinking in Europe,” he said. “It is very disappointing that some European media organizations and businesses chose to collaborate with an entity that is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.”

This relationship is important to note because it illustrates one way the Chinese Communist Party peddles influence. All of the shenanigans we see going on between the Biden family and the CCP generally relate to gaining access and peddling influence. The CCP uses its money and businesses to infiltrate western media and politics to gain advantages in trade and policy decisions. The thing to remember is that no business is successful in China unless it follows the wishes of the Communist Party.

 

The Root Of The Problem

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The Daily Signal posted an article today about the connection between Alicia Garza, one of three founders of the Black Lives Matter organization, and the left-wing San Francisco group known to carry water for China: the Chinese Progressive Association. Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy at The Heritage Foundation, was interviews for the article.

Mike Gonzalez reports:

It’s best to think of her (Alicia Garza) as somebody who sits a top an expansive global revolutionary network. She founded the main Black Lives Matter organization. In fact, she came up with the slogan.

The other two women who co-founded Black Lives Matter are Patrisse Cullors and Opal Tometi. All three of them are committed Marxists, anti-capitalist. Alicia Garza has said many times that she wants to smash capitalism, that one cannot reach liberation in capitalism.

And one of the adventures that she has is the Black Futures Lab. The Black Futures Lab is a fiscally sponsored project of the Chinese Progressive Association of San Francisco.

That is an outfit that was created in 1972 at the height of the Cultural Revolution by a … paramilitary group called I Wor Kuen. I Wor Kuen was a Maoist outfit, created the Chinese Progressive Association in San Francisco. And from the start, the Chinese Progressive Association promoted the thoughts of Mao and the ideas of China’s revolution and the Cultural Revolution.

…if you click on the button of the Black Futures Lab, it tells you that the Black Futures Lab is a fiscally sponsored project of the CPA San Francisco.

A lot of the Black Lives Matter organizations do this. They’re fiscally sponsored projects of other groups that affords the Black Lives Matter organization a great deal of flexibility in not having to disclose how they spend their money. That’s at least what the critics say.

But the connections between Garza and the people who run the CPA San Francisco are stronger than that. Garza, for example, spoke at a LeftRoots meeting in 2015. I think she’s a member also of LeftRoots, I’ll have to double check that. And Pam Tau Lee, one of the founders of CPA San Francisco is also a member of LeftRoots.

…the Black Futures Lab does say it on its website, that it partners up with Black Lives Matter. Everything under Alicia Garza is the same, as I said, they’re ventures of the same empire. And the Black Futures Lab, I believe, is kind of a lobbying arm of the whole entire thing.

Black Lives Matter, I’m talking about the organizations—obviously, nobody disagrees with the sentiment—I’m talking about the Black Lives Matter Global Network partners with the Movement for Black Lives, partners with the Black Futures Lab, they all crisscross and coordinate their moves. And the Black Futures Lab says that on its website, that it helps the Black Lives Matter organization.

Please follow the link to read the rest of the article. Black lives do matter, but the organization by that name is not a positive influence on our political debate.

Why Voting By Mail Is A Really Bad Idea

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Today The Daily Signal posted an article about voter fraud in America.

The article reports:

All-mail elections have received heightened attention in the media these past few weeks. Prominent liberals highly endorse the idea, claiming it allows people to do their patriotic duty without risking being infected by the coronavirus.

In reality, without rigid safeguards to prevent fraud, misuse, and voter intimidation, absentee ballot fraud—while it may occur sporadically—already has affected the outcome of elections in states and counties across the country. 

Just look at the 2018 congressional race in North Carolina that was overturned by the state election board. Or the mayor of Gordon, Alabama, who was removed from office last year after his conviction for absentee ballot fraud.

Although talk of voter fraud may be increasing because of the stakes in the 2020 election, The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database has been around for four years. With the addition of our latest batch of cases, we are up to 1,285 proven instances of voter fraud.

…This sampling of cases illustrates the existence and effect of voter fraud. Most importantly, the public must understand that fraud can occur throughout the entire process of registering and voting.

Examples include impersonation fraud at the polls; false voter registrations; duplicate voting; fraudulent absentee ballots; vote buying; illegal assistance and intimidation of voters; ineligible voting, such as by aliens; altering of vote counts; and ballot petition fraud.

A recent Heritage fact sheet offers a quick summary of the dangers of voting by mail and the necessary safeguards to ensure an election’s integrity. Another Heritage report details how Wisconsin successfully conducted its recent primary election–including in-person voting—and how other countries such as Liberia have conducted an election successfully during a health crisis.

Voting by mail makes it easier to commit fraud, intimidate voters, and destroy the protections of the secret ballot. It puts elections into the hands of the Postal Service. Without the oversight of election and polling officials, ballots can be lost, disqualified, and even stolen.

Keep in mind that these are only the proven cases. How many cases were ignored or not discovered?

The article concludes:

This is not a partisan issue. Heritage has documented elections overturned or elected officials removed on account of fraud that involved both Democrats and Republicans.

Securing the integrity of elections should not become wrapped up in partisan politics. Yet since the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic (and some would argue even before then), many leading Democrats have scoffed at the reality of voter fraud and the importance of election integrity–even though it is their own voters and supporters who often are affected by such fraud.

It is important that we take reasonable steps to make it hard to cheat in elections while making it easy for legitimate voters to vote. 

Elected officials and party leaders, regardless of political affiliation, should put their ambitions aside and understand that election integrity is of the utmost importance in self-government and maintaining a functioning democratic republic. 

I think I would rephrase that first sentence–it shouldn’t be a partisan issue, but it is. The continuation of our republic requires election integrity. Mail in voting undermines that integrity. It is not a good idea.

Recognizing A Long-Standing Problem

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The Washington Examiner posted an article today about America’s dependence on Chinese manufacturing for inexpensive products.

The article reports:

American companies that produce essential goods in China should plan to shift their operations back to the United States or other Western countries, according to a senior Republican lawmaker.

“We’re staring into a significant, significant crisis of supply chain,” Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner told the Washington Examiner. “Cheap labor or cheap manufacturing be damned if you are reliant on them for your life and livelihood.”

Gardner’s warning was spurred by the shortage of hospital masks in the United States, a dearth driven by Beijing’s refusal to allow American companies that make the products in China to ship them out of the country amid the coronavirus pandemic. And he’s not alone in that sentiment, raising the possibility that anger over China’s self-interested response to the coronavirus outbreak could produce one of the most dramatic alterations of global economics in decades.

“Because of the coronavirus problem, people are recognizing that any supply chain that has single points of failure is incredibly vulnerable,” the Heritage Foundation’s Dean Cheng, a senior research fellow in the organization’s Asian Studies Center, told the Washington Examiner. “China is going to be very concerned about decoupling, offshoring, [or any] redirection of investments out of China.”

Obviously, the coronavirus has caused American companies to rethink outsourcing manufacturing to China, but the threats by the Chinese government have not helped the situation.

The article notes:

That suspicion of China reflects the degree to which the coronavirus pandemic has exacerbated the tensions between the world’s two largest economies. American officials are angry that Chinese Communist officials censored the early warnings that a new virus had emerged in Wuhan. In response, fuming Chinese diplomats have accused the U.S. Army of starting the pandemic while reminding the West that China controls key parts of the medical supply chain.

“There could be nothing more ham-handed and catastrophic than for the Chinese to talk some more about ‘how the U.S. created coronavirus, and, by the way, maybe we’ll cut off pharmaceuticals,’” Cheng said. “You want to have a situation where there really is that kind of a backlash, where the U.S. actively tries to not only decouple but move specifically away from China? That’s inviting that kind of a backlash.”

America can’t afford to outsource its drug manufacturing to a country that threatens to cut off the supply. It’s time to bring drug manufacturing home and employ American workers.

The Human Cost Of Socialized Medicine

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On Thursday, The Daily Signal posted an article which illustrates how thankful Americans should be for the health care we receive. The article tells the story of James Schmitz, a member of the Young Leaders Program at The Heritage Foundation. Mr. Schmitz suffers from West syndrome, a severe form of epilepsy.

The article reports:

After graduating college, I had an opportunity to work for a think tank in London. There, I’d be just hours away from the wonders of mainland Europe.

Britain is a historian’s paradise, so naturally as a history major, I was soaking it up. The idea of also going to Pompeii or Rome was spectacular.

The only thing standing in my way was a doctor to treat me abroad.

As an epileptic, I needed a steady supply of anti-seizure drugs and visits to the doctor about every three months to make sure everything was working as it should. I also needed a doctor to be available within a week’s time if necessary.

I didn’t know how hard it would be to find a doctor in Britain. I remember having a very difficult conversation with a general practitioner. It was the moment my dream of staying abroad was crushed.

It was a Friday. After work, I walked into an urgent care clinic to set up an appointment with a neurologist.

I knew how easy it is in the United States to see a doctor, so I thought this would be no different. I would go in, get a recommendation, and walk out with a name and number to call on Monday for an appointment possibly in two weeks’ time.

Sadly, that was not the case. The doctor said, verbatim: “I can recommend a neurologist for you. I will say, she’s pretty booked so you won’t see her for at least nine months.”

I was shocked. I felt as if I’d been blindsided. She wasn’t even guessing. She worked at a nearby National Health Service hospital right down the street on the weekends, so she knew.

I asked if there was anything I could do to expedite the waiting process. In response, all I got was: “I’ll call my colleague and see if she could maybe squeeze you in maybe three to four months from now.”

Disheartened by the news, I knew staying in the U.K. was out of the question. I had to return to the U.S. in order to keep accessing the routine medical care that had saved my life so many years before.

A month later, I packed my bags and left for Heathrow Airport having spent less than three months in the country. It’s a shame, because Britain is an amazing country and I would have loved to stay longer. Health care should not be a reason to have to leave a modern, First World country.

And that is how things work under socialized medicine. There may be no cost, but there is also no availability. Healthcare isn’t worth much if you can’t get it.