Tag Archives: Washington

In Case You Were Wondering Where The Holdup Was…

Posted on by

Breitbart posted an article today about Congress’ attempt to deal with the coronavirus epidemic. As usual, Washington is playing politics and not getting things done.

The article reports:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said on Sunday that she has decided to move forward with her own emergency coronavirus relief package.

Pelosi spokes just hours before the Senate was scheduled to take a procedural vote that would lead towards a final vote on a bipartisan economic relief package. The bill would provide economic relief after the coronavirus epidemic ravaged the country’s economy.

“From my standpoint, we’re apart,” she said.

Subsequently, Senate leaders decided to delay a planned vote to 6 p.m. Sunday.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said on the Senate floor on Sunday that he intended for the legislation to be bipartisan and aimed at helping the American people.

“What we have is a compromise product which contains ideas, contributions, and priorities on both sides and which could become law as soon as tomorrow,” he said. “In other words, it’s just about time to take yes for an answer.”

…Pelosi said that Republicans and Democrats are still “talking” but that there is no need to meet McConnell’s Monday deadline for a Senate vote on the coronavirus package.
Senate Republicans and the White House have insisted that they will continue to push for the $1.6 trillion economic relief package, which would include $350 billion in support for small businesses and $250 billion for unemployment insurance. The package would also include direct cash payments to individuals around $1,200 per individual, with additional funds going to families with children.
Politico reported Sunday that “it’s not clear how Pelosi’s plan would work — committee chairs have been frenetically compiling ideas for a legislative package, but are not yet ready for legislative text.”
Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-SD) said this weekend, “The Democrats are getting some of the things they’ve asked for. They’re getting what they wanted on unemployment insurance.”
It seems as if Washington is functioning as usual. Congress will continue to work and get paid while many Americans lose their source of income because of the coronavirus. They are playing politics rather than doing what they can to help Americans in a crisis.

The Homeless Are A Danger To Themselves And To The Rest Of Us

Posted on by

The once beautiful streets of San Francisco are now littered with needles and human waste. The homeless commit crimes to support various drug habits. Diseases that we have not seen in America for decades are appearing in the community. Who knows how the coronavirus will impact these people. The city does not seem to be able to deal with the problem. Where do you start?

On Tuesday The City Journal posted an article about the homelessness problem. The article reminds us that new data undermines the idea that homelessness is the result of high rents and lack of economic opportunity.

The article reports:

But new data are undermining this narrative. As residents of West Coast cities witness the disorder associated with homeless encampments, they have found it harder to accept the progressive consensus—especially in the context of the coronavirus epidemic, which has all Americans worried about contagion. An emerging body of evidence confirms what people see plainly on the streets: homelessness is deeply connected to addiction, mental illness, and crime.

Homeless advocates argue that substance abuse is a small contributor to the problem, and that no more than 20 percent of the homeless population abuses drugs. Last year, when I suggested that homelessness is primarily an addiction crisis—citing Seattle and King County data that suggested half of homeless individuals suffered from opioid addiction—activists denounced me on social media and wrote letters to the editor demanding a retraction. But according to a recent Los Angeles Times investigation, 46 percent of the homeless and 75 percent of the unsheltered homeless have a substance-abuse disorder—more than three times higher than official estimates from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority.

In the interest of preventing “stigmatization,” progressives downplay the connection between schizophrenia, severe bipolar disorder, and homelessness. In general, cities have claimed that roughly 25 percent to 39 percent of the homeless suffer from mental-health disorders. As new data from the California Policy Lab show, it’s likely that 50 percent of the homeless and 78 percent of the unsheltered homeless have a serious mental health condition. For residents of cities like San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle, this should come as no surprise. The people smashing up property and yelling in the streets are clearly suffering from mental illness. The numbers confirm the ground-level reality.

The article concludes:

Residents in the most progressive enclaves of West Coast cities have quietly begun to demand policy changes to address the obvious causes of the homelessness crisis. In San Francisco, city leaders have launched a new initiative to focus on the 4,000 individuals who suffer from the “perilous trifecta” of homelessness, addiction, and mental illness. Mayor London Breed has spoken frankly about the human causes of homelessness, and Anton Nigusse Bland, a physician and director of mental health reform for the city, has pledged to “develop a strategic approach to mental health and substance use services for people experiencing homelessness in San Francisco.”

This is a small but promising step. Especially now, with the threat of an infectious disease becoming a national crisis, it is imperative that city leaders come to grips with the dangers of letting people live in encampments that lack even rudimentary sanitation. We can only hope that this new awareness extends to other cities. For now, more than 100,000 people in California, Oregon, and Washington continue to languish in the streets.

Rhode Island has put in place a program that has been successful in dealing with the problem of homelessness. The problem includes counseling, drug rehabilitation, reintegration into the community and reintegration into family units. The program is a public-private partnership that has been successful in getting many of the homeless reintegrated into society. Similar programs need to be instituted on the west coast. It is a disgrace that America has not done more to help those among us living on the street. Throwing money at the problem or ignoring it is not the answer. It takes a commitment to helping the homeless deal with the mental problems that have resulted in their living on the street.

Questions That Need To Be Asked

Posted on by

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article with the following headline, “A Letter to the 2,000 Anti-Trump Ex-DOJ Lawyers: Where’s Your Outrage to These 27 DOJ-FBI Crimes?” That is a very good question.

The article explains:

In response to the anti-Barr outrage letter, a legal assistant in Orange County, California, by the name of Selma Kerren, is demanding the lawyers in question release an equally outraged letter condemning the 27 crimes and frauds perpetrated by the FBI and DOJ against the American people; many of which were begrudgingly declassified by FOIA requests and exposed by the recent Horowitz Report.

Here is a partial list:

1. Judge Amy Berman-Jackson poisoned Roger Stone’s jury pool by:

a.  Throwing out a conservative juror because she worked for the Reagan campaign “30 years ago.”

b.  Accepting a juror who is MARRIED to one of the lawyers working on the Mueller case against Trump.

c.  Accepting juror, Tomika Hart, a well-known attorney and former Democrat candidate, who posted anti-Stone/anti-Trump statements on social media, before, during and after the Stone case. Hart lied on her jury questionnaire.

d.  Accepting juror, Seth Cousins, a well-known, Democrat activist whose anti-Trump rants were also easily found on social media.

(Suspicously, Berman-Jackson also seems to sit on every anti-Tump, wet-dream case!)

2.  U.S. intelligence agents, Halper and Mifsud were sent to Europe to target George Papadopoulos. They tell Papadopoulos the Russians have Hillary’s emails. Papadopoulos tells the Australian … but only George gets arrested.

3. FBI’s Peter Strzok and Lisa Page reportedly huddled with McCabe in his office to concoct “Andy’s Insurance Policy.”

4. The FBI interviewed the dossier Russians, who said … “We heard that stuff about Trump over beer at a bar! It was only meant in jest! We didn’t think the FBI would actually use it.”—Horowitz Report.

5. Obama State Official Kathleen Kavalec sent a memo to the et al, warning the dossier was fake but they used it, anyway.

6. Comey, Rosenstein and Yates signed four (4) FISA warrants using the dossier, which Comey admitted before Congress was ridiculous and never certified by Intel.

7. FBI Agent Kevin Clinesmith CONCOCTED an email to frame Carter page, which is tantamount to “planting evidence” on a defendant.

8. Although Clinesmith planted evidence against Carter Page, he was allowed to continue working for the FBI another 2.5 years, collecting a salary funded by tax-payers.

9. Bruce and wife Nellie Ohr funneled information against Trump to the DOJ and FBI, concocted by Fusion GPS.

10. Andrew McCabe was acquitted after admitting to lying under oath but Roger Stone may face 9 years in prison for a process crime?

11. Horowitz disclosed that Carter Page worked for the CIA, which the FBI willfully hid from the FISC, in order to get the Spy Warrants.

As you can see, at present we have a very skewed justice system operating in Washington. It is time to clean that up. Please follow the link above to the article to read the rest of the list.

Just In Case You Are Currently Feeling Safe And Comfortable…

Posted on by

Today’s New York Post posted an article with the following headline,”The next mega disasters that could happen at any moment (and kill us all).” Comforting, isn’t it?

Just in case you are still sitting comfortably in your chair, here are a few of the ‘pending disasters’ listed:

Yellowstone National Park quietly sits on top of a supervolcano that is 44 miles wide. Even scarier, it’s still active and could blow at any time. Its last big eruption was 630,000 years ago, but as “End Times” author Bryan Walsh wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times, an eruption of this supervolcano “would be like nothing humanity has ever seen“ and be an “ultra-catastrophe” that “could lead to global devastation, even human extinction. …

…The land of volcanos, Indonesia is no stranger to eruption — with Mount Merapi last exploding in 2018. But there’s a bigger threat to the countries of Southeast Asia: The Lake Toba Supervolcano — the “forgotten volcano.” Lake Toba is a volcanic lake that sits on top of a huge caldera (a volcanic crater) — which is still considered to be in a stage of “resurgence.” An eruption 75,000 years ago caused a “bottleneck” effect in human development — in which the world’s population dramatically shrank — according to scientists.

…On the south slope of Hawaii’s Big Island lies the infamous Hilina Slump — where every now and then there is a landslide that creates horrid tsunamis. According to The Independent, “there is evidence that a similar collapse at nearby Mauna Loa around 120,000 years ago generated a tsunami with a run-up height of over 400 meters. Even as recently as 1975, movement of the Hilina Slump generated a smaller, yet destructive tsunami that reached California.”

…The San Andreas Fault has caused havoc and devastation in the past — and it’s predicted to do so again. The United States Geological Survey has increased the probability of the likelihood of a magnitude 8.0 or larger earthquake hitting California within the next few decades — and let’s not forget the volatile Cascadia Subduction Zone that covers most of Oregon and Washington state.

…Another West Coast earthquake disaster waiting to happen is in Chile, on the west coast of South America. According to volcanologist website Temblor, “it is clear to many of us that the Coquimbo region [in central Chile] has an unusual, increasing seismicity that may be preparing the area for a very large earthquake near the end of the present century.”

You get the picture. Follow the link to the article to read the rest of the impending disasters awaiting mankind. Just for the record, it would do us all well to remember that we are here by the grace of God and will continue to be here because of that grace. It’s not as if we have any real control over any of these ‘pending’ events. However, give Congress time–they will find a way to convince us that higher taxes and higher government spending will prevent any natural catastrophe!

A Disturbing Comment

Posted on by

The Center for Security Policy posted an article today with the headline, “‘Thank God for the deep state’: Former CIA chief says anti-Trump forces ‘responding to a higher call.’”

Wow. The deep state believes that it is their job to overthrow a duly-elected President. What manner of pride and self-importance (and treason) is this?

The article reports:

Former CIA acting Director John McLaughlin expressed his gratitude for the “deep state” and their effort to get President Trump impeached.

McLaughlin, who was the acting director in 2004, embraced the idea of a “deep state” with the intent of ending the Trump presidency at an event on Wednesday hosted by the Hayden Center.

“There is something unique you have to agree that now the impeachment inquiry is underway, sparked by a complaint from someone within the intelligence community, it feeds the president’s concern, an often-used term about a ‘deep state’ being there to take him out,” Margaret Brennan, the moderator for the event hosted, asked McLaughlin.

“Thank God for the ‘deep state,’” he responded.

McLaughlin went on to praise the intelligence community whistleblower who came forward to file a complaint regarding Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, which led to the impeachment proceedings that are currently going on in the House of Representatives.

“Everyone here has seen this progression of diplomats and intelligence officers and White House people trooping up to Capitol Hill right now and saying these are people who are doing their duty, who are responding to a higher call,” said McLaughlin. “With all of the people who knew what was going on here, it took an intelligence officer to step forward and say something about it, which was the trigger that unleashed everything else.”

They are not responding to a higher call–they are undermining an elected President. They are not the Commander-in-Chief. They did not run for office and win an election. They are delusional to believe that they should have more power than the President just because he is upsetting their apple cart. In a world where we had an objective media and equal justice under the law, these people would be tried for treason.

Holding The Media Responsible

Posted on by

Yesterday Breitbart reported that a federal judge has reversed his previous ruling and allowed Covington Catholic pro-life student Nick Sandmann to proceed with his defamation lawsuit against the Washington Post.

The article reports:

Judge William O. Bertelsman of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, a Jimmy Carter appointee, partially reversed his previous ruling in which he dismissed Sandmann’s $275 million lawsuit. The reversal will permit the Covington student’s lawsuit to proceed, reported LifeSiteNews.

Following the March for Life in Washington, DC, in January, many media outlets alleged a video depicted Sandmann, wearing a red “Make American Great Again” cap, and fellow students from Covington Catholic High School, as intimidating Native American activist Nathan Phillips near the Lincoln Memorial.

As Breitbart News reported, Sandmann “became the focus of the anti-Trump media” as an extended video and additional in-person reports of the confrontation showed it was Phillips who had intimidated Sandmann while the teen and his fellow classmates were simply performing school cheers as a group of Black Hebrew Israelites shouted racist insults.

The article concludes:

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, said in a statement to Breitbart News that, each day, her organization “defends the free speech rights of students to stand for life in public in what is supposed to be a free society.”

She continued:

The mistreatment of students as they attended the March for Life should offend all Americans who believe that each of us is protected when we act on our own consciences. It’s a good thing when a judge decides to respect students’ rights to be heard and to be seen with respect.

“As someone who works every day to defend the rights and needs of mothers and their preborn children, I know that the media often ignores and mischaracterizes pro-life Americans,” Hawkins added. “But our system of justice should protect the rights and freedoms of Americans who stand for the weakest among us, those whose life exists in the womb and who don’t have a voice or a vote.”

Hopefully the courts will hold the media for their total mischaracterization of the Covington High School students.

This Might Explain A Lot

Posted on by

The Washington Free Beacon posted an article today that stated that more than one-fifth of of all U.S. newsroom employees live in the liberal strongholds of New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. New York has 12 percent and Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. each have 5 percent. The article notes that 13 percent of Americans live in these three cities–7 percent in New York, 4 percent in Los Angeles, and 2 percent in Washington, D.C.

The article notes:

All three cities are known for their strongly progressive bent. A Republican has not won New York City in a presidential election since 1924, or won Los Angeles County since 1984. No Republican has ever won Washington, D.C., in a presidential election.

According to Pew, only New York and Washington are home to a greater share of newsroom workers than workers overall. Given their significance in media and politics, those two cities are the broadcasting sites for every major show on cable and national network news.

Pew also found that 41 percent of newsroom employees who work in internet publishing live in the northeast, while just 18 percent of all workers live in the region overall. Thirty-seven percent of all workers live in the south, but it’s home to just 21 percent of newsroom employees who work in internet publishing.

Think about how where you live affects your worldview. Do you see poverty everyday? Do you see dirty streets and high crime? Do you see friendly people or stressed people? Is driving to work a grinding task or a reasonable chore? What are the views of the people you spend your time with? What are the values of the people around you?

I’m not a deplorable from flyover country where people cling to their God and their guns–I’m a deplorable living in a conservative stronghold in the southeast. But I wonder if the people in the newsrooms of the major media spent some time with the deplorables in various places, would their attitude and focus change? The bottom line here is whether or not the people charged with reporting the news to Americans can get past the their group biases against anything not liberal. If not, their industry will soon die from lack of relevance and from the consequences of biased reporting.

One Of Many Reasons Government Spending Keeps Increasing

Posted on by

On September 24, The Daily Signal posted an article about some recent comments made by Senator Joni Ernst. The Senator highlighted the practice of ‘Christmas in September’ spending by government agencies. There are some problems with the way our federal government’s budgeting system works. There is something called ‘baseline budgeting.’ This simply means that your starting point for your yearly budget is how much you actually spent of last year’s budget. Therefore, unless you want your budget to be cut this year, you had better spend all of the money you had in your budget last year. This means that as the fiscal year draws to a close, government agencies have the incentive to spend wildly. It also results in statements that actually make no sense but are widely accepted as fact. For instance, if I ask for a ten percent increase in my budget and only get a five percent increase, I will complain that my budget was cut five percent. In any other world, I got a five percent increase. In the world of government, I got a five percent cut. That is the reason that even though you are reading that the federal budget got cut, the spending actually increased. Unfortunately, to Washington it is all a game. Wild spending of taxpayer money is not a problem to our Congress–only to the taxpayers who have to pay the bill.

The article at The Daily Signal reports:

The fourth-ranking Republican in the Senate called on colleagues Tuesday to pass her legislation to reduce wasteful government spending and rein in agencies’ spending practices.

“Government agencies are going on their annual ‘Christmas in September’ use-it-or-lose-it shopping spree,” Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said in remarks prepared for delivery on the Senate floor.

“If not spent by midnight on Sept. 30, leftover dollars expire and can no longer be used,” Ernst said. “Rather than returning the money to taxpayers, binge-buying bureaucrats are wasting billions of taxpayer dollars needlessly.”

The federal government’s fiscal year ends Sept. 30, and Ernst’s legislation, called the End of Year Fiscal Responsibility Act, would end agencies’ annual 11th-hour sprints to spend all their budgeted money before the fiscal year runs out.

Her bill would curb how much an agency could spend in the last two months of the fiscal year to no more than what the agency usually spends each month on average during the rest of the year.

…“This bill won’t end all wasteful spending, but it will force agencies to put more thought into long-term planning and curtail the bad habit of out-of-control impulsive spending,” Ernst said.

Ernst said “spending sprees” in the past have included almost $12,000 for a commercial foosball table; $4.6 million for lobster tail and crab; $2.1 million for games, toys, and wheeled goods; over $53,000 on table china; and over $40,000 on clocks.

“With our national debt now surpassing $22 trillion, Washington should be looking for ways to save by canceling or delaying unnecessary expenses, rather than splurging on end-of-year wish lists,” Ernst said.

Another piece of legislation pushed by Iowa’s junior senator would keep her colleagues from returning home until they passed a budget.

“Through my No Budget, No Recess Act, members of Congress would be prohibited from leaving Washington if we fail to pass a budget by April 15 or approve regular spending bills by Aug. 1,” she said.

The government must stop enabling agencies to spend money that shouldn’t be spent, Ernst added:

I think Senator Ernst has some really good ideas.

Some Comments On Today’s Events

Posted on by

The following interview is from Fox Business News:

We are watching the last of an attempted coup. The Deep State, which included the upper echelon of the Department of Justice, in collusion with the Hillary Clinton campaign and aided by the mainstream media attempted (and is continuing to attempt) to unseat a duly-elected President because they don’t like him and they lost. Actually it’s more serious than that. President Trump represents a serious threat to the current status quo that has enriched Washington insiders for generations. Rather than lose the gravy train they are accustomed to, Democrats and some Republicans want him gone. They are not particularly fussy about following the Constitution in accomplishing their goal. Hopefully those who participated in this attempted coup with be dealt with appropriately.

 

Rules??? What Rules?

Posted on by

The Federalist posted an article yesterday listing five times the Mueller Probe broke basic prosecutorial rules.

The article lists the rules broken:

1. Using Leaks And Press Conferences to Trash Un-charged Targets

Rule 3.8 of the American Bar Association’s rules of professional responsibility for prosecutors provides,

A prosecutor shall, except for statements that are necessary to inform the public of the nature and extent of the prosecutor’s action and that serve a legitimate law enforcement purpose, refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused and exercise reasonable care to prevent investigators, law enforcement personnel, employees or other persons assisting or associated with the prosecutor in a criminal case from making an extrajudicial statement that the prosecutor would be prohibited from making under Rule 3.6 or this Rule.

2. Using Their Power to Crush Client-Attorney Privilege

Rule 3.8 also provides,

A prosecutor shall not subpoena a lawyer in a grand jury or other criminal proceeding to present evidence about a past or present client unless the prosecutor reasonably believes:

(1) the information sought is not protected from disclosure by any applicable privilege;

(2) the evidence sought is essential to the successful completion of an ongoing investigation or prosecution; and

(3) there is no other feasible alternative to obtain the information;

3. Prosecuting Despite Knowing They Can’t Prove Their Case

Rule 3.8 also provides “The prosecutor in a criminal case shall: refrain from prosecuting a charge that the prosecutor knows is not supported by probable cause.”

Notwithstanding that the key collusion allegation had already been disproven before Mueller first turned on the lights in the special counsel’s office, for nearly two years Mueller has been trying President Trump in the court of public opinion. This is more than a mere expression. The venue for trying the president is in the Senate under Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution, and the constitutional framers always intended that senators make their decisions based in part on the opinions of the electorate they represent.

4. Special Counsels Aren’t Supposed to Be a Partisan Hit Squad

Federal law regarding the “Independence of the Special Counsel” says: “An individual named as Special Counsel shall be a lawyer with a reputation for integrity and impartial decisionmaking, …. The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government.”

Mueller should not have been selected as the special counsel, due to his close personal relationship with Comey. Further, his entire staff was clearly not impartial.

As one example, the prominent attorney Jeannie Rhee worked for the Clintons to keep Hillary’s emails out of public view only months before joining the Mueller team to investigate Hillary’s political opponent. Clinton might face legal consequences for secretly starting the Russia collusion hoax using campaign funds.

5. Rosenstein Used His Government Position to Protect Himself

Federal conflict of interest law (28 C.F.R. § 45.2 (a)) says:

Unless authorized under paragraph (b) of this section, no employee shall participate in a criminal investigation or prosecution if he has a personal or political relationship with: (1) Any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution; or (2) Any person or organization which he knows has a specific and substantial interest that would be directly affected by the outcome of the investigation or prosecution.

The article concludes:

The get-Trump crowd has been carrying the scorpion of the Mueller investigation on their backs for nearly two years. The damage this has done to America may never be undone. The zealots claiming Trump to be a threat to the rule of law have proven themselves right by using their outrage to trample important constitutional principles such as the presumption of innocence, the right to defend oneself from criminal accusations, attorney-client privilege, and the right to be free from unreasonable searches.

None of that seemed important if we truly had a Russian agent occupying the White House. But we don’t. The anti-Trump zealots, not Trump, threatened these cherished principles that ensure equal treatment under the law for all Americans, even the president, regardless of political party.

The people responsible for the abuse of the role of the Special Counsel need to be held accountable. Otherwise, anytime someone the deep state disapproves of is elected, we will go through this entire scenario again. Rules were broken, attorney-client privilege was totally disregarded, and innocent people had their lives ruined simply because they tangentially worked with President Trump. That is unacceptable. The price paid by those who engineered and carried out this travesty needs to be so high that no one will ever attempt it again. This truly was an attempted coup. Those responsible need to pay the appropriate price.

A Further Step In The Wrong Direction

Posted on by

The media likes to think they elect Presidents. Although they have a lot of influence, they can be overcome. If Americans support President Trump, they may have to deal with an even more biased media than they did in 2016. Fox News has gone over to the dark side.

The Conservative Treehouse quotes a NewsMax article:

The parent company of Fox News has hired a former top aide to Joe Biden as its chief lobbyist in Washington.

On Tuesday the new Fox Corp., a spin-off of 21st Century Fox which just merged with Disney, became a standalone public company, controlling television assets such as Fox News and the Fox television network.

Broadcasting & Cable reported that new Fox “hit the ground running on day one” with its Washington lobbying operation headed by Danny O’Brien, a well-known Democrat.

O’Brien was brought on last October as executive vice president and head of government relations for the Fox Corp.

Previously, he had served as Senator Joe Biden’s chief of staff and went on to head Biden’s 2008 presidential campaign.

This is another indication that Fox Corp. is moving left and that Fox News may no longer be the source of objective news for conservatives. There are three obviously conservative shows left on Fox News, two of them are in the top three of the ratings for all networks. It would seem to me that if Fox News wants to keep those ratings, if is not moving in the right direction.

The article at The Conservative Treehouse explains why the hiring of Danny O’Brien is important:

Danny O’Brian now steps conveniently into the role of emissary between the Big Club and the DC political influencers, just as the Club prepares the landscape for Joe Biden.

As we said, nothing the club does is organic.

Biden will have access to unlimited financial support from the multinational Wall Street community. However, Biden’s weakness in 2020 is the same as Jeb’s weakness in 2016, a lack of grassroots support. That’s why Bernie and Beto are currently data-mining the electorate to gather up the contact info (data harvesting) for later Club deployment.

Now things are coming into greater focus…

2020 for the DNC club is shaping up identically as 2016 was for the RNC club. Again, not to beat a dead horse, but the clubs never change the playbook, only the portfolio cover.

There’s still a possibility Biden is not the DNC club’s ‘chosen one’; but the odds of that are diminishing. We keep watching…

The swamp is planning on regaining and staying in power. The only thing that will stop it is educated voters who turn out in 2020.

 

Legislation That Will Be Harmful To Americans

Posted on by

Yesterday The Hill reported that Senator Cory Booker has introduced a bill in the Senate to legalize marijuana nationwide. The bill, S 597, is listed at Congress.gov, but the listing as of now does not include either the text of the bill or a summary of the bill.

The Hill reports:

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) introduced a bill Thursday to legalize marijuana across the country.

The 2020 presidential hopeful has made criminal justice reform and social justice issues central to his campaign and is framing the marijuana legalization bill as such.

“The War on Drugs has not been a war on drugs, it’s been a war on people, and disproportionately people of color and low-income individuals,” Booker said in a press release announcing the legislation. “The Marijuana Justice Act seeks to reverse decades of this unfair, unjust, and failed policy by removing marijuana from the list of controlled substances and making it legal at the federal level.”

A House version of the bill was introduced by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), who is co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus.

The bill, known as the Marijuana Justice Act, would remove marijuana from the federal list of controlled substances, where it is currently a Schedule I drug in the same class with heroin and LSD.

In case you think this is a wonderful idea, please read the following article posted on this site on January 26, 2019. Marijuana is not a harmless substance. The main reason for the push for legalization is the money involved. As states lose tax money from the sale of tobacco products, they can make up that loss by taxing marijuana sales. Just as tobacco proved harmful to public health, marijuana will prove detrimental to public health as well.

The article concludes:

Several of Booker’s most prominent challengers for the Democratic presidential nomination from the Senate are co-sponsors on the bill, including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

Ten states as well as Washington, D.C., have already legalized the recreational use of marijuana, with many more states legalizing its medicinal use.

Booker’s bill would also incentivize states to loosen their marijuana laws by using federal funds.

From the rightwinggranny.com article cited above:

After an exhaustive review, the National Academy of Medicine found in 2017 that “cannabis use is likely to increase the risk of developing schizophrenia and other psychoses; the higher the use, the greater the risk.” Also that “regular cannabis use is likely to increase the risk for developing social anxiety disorder.”

…These new patterns of use have caused problems with the drug to soar. In 2014, people who had diagnosable cannabis use disorder, the medical term for marijuana abuse or addiction, made up about 1.5 percent of Americans. But they accounted for eleven percent of all the psychosis cases in emergency rooms—90,000 cases, 250 a day, triple the number in 2006. In states like Colorado, emergency room physicians have become experts on dealing with cannabis-induced psychosis.

Is legalizing marijuana in the best interest of Americans?

How Much Did This Cost The Taxpayers?

Posted on by

The Daily Wire posted an article today about the final required filing on Friday by Robert Mueller on the Paul Manafort case.

The article reports:

Mueller and his team made their final required filing in Manafort’s case late Friday, submitting a “government sentencing memorandum” to the United States District Court in Washington, D.C., justifying their request for a harsh, 17-year prison sentence against Manafort.

In it, the government argues that Manafort “chose repeatedly and knowingly to violate the law— whether the laws proscribed garden-variety crimes such as tax fraud, money laundering, obstruction of justice, and bank fraud, or more esoteric laws that he nevertheless was intimately familiar with, such as the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA),” both before and after he was under scrutiny by the Special Counsel.

Manafort’s portfolio of crimes include incidents going back more than a decade to 2005, to when Manafort was a lobbying the federal government on issues involving Russia and Ukraine. They run all the way up to last year, when Manafort was discovered to have engaged in witness tampering, even after he was indicted on tax fraud charges.

But what the government sentencing document — and Manafort’s apparent list of transgressions — doesn’t include is evidence of actual collusion with Russia during the course of the Trump for President campaign, the actual focus of Mueller’s investigation. Instead, the filing simply says that Manafort committed some of his crimes while under the “spotlight” of the campaign.

The filing is 25 pages long and barely mentions President Trump’s campaign. Collusion between candidate Trump and the Russian government is never mentioned.

The article concludes:

One item does seem to be from the correct era — an instance of “false statements to the Department of Justice” in late 2016, just before the presidential election — but those statements appear, based on the filing, to relate to Mueller’s (and before him, the Justice Department’s) investigation of his work with Ukraine. Instead of lying about something new, it seems Manafort was still covering for actions he took years earlier.

Mueller’s report is expected in early March, but so far, it seems, may have little in the way of evidence that the Trump campaign is guilty of collusion, as a number of Democrats desire.

Keep in mind that eight years ago Paul Manafort was investigated (and cleared) of most of the charges currently against him. The prosecutor that led the exoneration was Rod Rosenstein. Paul Manafort may not be as pure as the driven snow, but I strongly suspect the charges against him have more to do with the “insurance policy” discussed by the FBI than any actual crimes.

A Representative Speaks About The Border And The Shutdown

Posted on by

On Saturday, The Alpha News, posted a column by U.S. Representative Jack Bergman.

Representative Bergman wrote:

For those of us who call the Upper Peninsula and northern Michigan home, the discussion around border security is often different than what we see on the nightly news. The challenges for U.S. Customs and Border Patrol Agents and other federal, state and local law enforcement in the Soo vary greatly from those of their southern border counterparts. The commonality is we share the same goal: the safety and security of our citizens.

As the national debate rages on, we must remember that our nation is a welcoming nation and built by immigrants. I know firsthand — my grandparents immigrated from Sweden to the Upper Peninsula to start a new life.

Though, equally as true as the aforementioned: We are a nation of borders, as well as law and order. But our immigration system is broken — and to argue otherwise would be dishonest. From an ineffective visa system to porous borders, decades of disinterest, lazy legislation, and bureaucratic opposition have encouraged bad actors to take advantage of our current system. It’s not fair to put the needs of our citizens or of those who come here legally below those who enter illegally.

President Donald Trump is right to call this a crisis, and we have a unique opportunity right now to address these issues head on. Fixing our immigration system starts first and foremost with secure borders. Without that, everything else falls apart. While most are hoping to enter our country for a good reason, we can’t turn a blind eye to the facts. Over the past two years, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested close to 300,000 criminal illegal immigrants in our country — 3,900 on murder charges, 27,000 on sex-related charges, 99,000 on assault-related charges, and over 160,000 on criminal traffic charges, such as driving under the influence.

Congress has the constitutional duty and obligation to provide for the safety and security of our citizens, and it’s time we put aside partisan games and secure our borders. U.S. Customs and Border Patrol have identified the need for 234 miles of physical barrier (read: wall) on our southern border.

Yet, Nancy Pelosi and many other “leaders” have radically dismissed the notion of walls being a necessary part of securing a border.

This is not campaign rhetoric or pandering for votes. This is a crisis of our own making. We are in the longest — and most avoidable — government shutdown in U.S. history. Those most vital to protecting our borders, coasts, and ports have now missed at least one paycheck, with little to no progress being made in Washington.

It’s time to end this shutdown, secure our borders, and get our government open and working for the people.

Come to the table Democrats.

U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman, R-Watersmeet, represents Michigan’s 1st Congressional District, covering the northern Lower Peninsula and all of the Upper Peninsula.

Well spoken, sir.

 

 

Have We Truly Lost A Government Where All Men Are Equal?

Posted on by

Victor Davis Hanson posted on article at American Greatness yesterday which illustrates what has happened in America over the past decade or so.

The article begins with an interesting scenario:

Imagine the following: The IRS sends you, John Q. Citizen, a letter alleging you have not complied with U.S. tax law. In the next paragraph, the tax agency then informs you that it needs a series of personal and business documents. Indeed, it will be sending agents out to discuss your dilemma and collect the necessary records.

But when the IRS agents arrive, you explain to them that you cannot find about 50 percent of the documents requested, and have no idea whether they even exist. You sigh that both hard copies of pertinent information have unfortunately disappeared and hard drives were mysteriously lost.

You nonchalantly add that you smashed your phone, tablet, and computer with a hammer. You volunteer that, of those documents you do have, you had to cut out, blacken or render unreadable about 30 percent of the contents. After all, you have judged that the redacted material either pertains to superfluous and personal matters such as weddings and yoga, or is of such a sensitive nature that its release would endanger your company or business or perhaps even the country at large.

You also keep silent that you have a number of pertinent documents locked up in a safe hidden in your attic unknown to the IRS. Let them find it, you muse. And when the agents question your unilateral decisions over hours of interrogatories, you remark to them on 245 occasions that you have no memory of your acts—or you simply do not have an answer for them.

Anyone reading this scenario realizes that after doing all this, they would be sitting in a jail cell hoping someone would bake them a cake with a file in it.

The article goes on to list the various misdeeds of government officials in the past two or three years. It’s a well-known list–you can follow the link to the article to read it. But somehow no one is in jail.

The article concludes:

To this day, we have no idea which officials in government leaked the unmasked names of surveilled Americans to the media, or leaked the transcripts of a conversation between the Russian Ambassador and Gen. Michael Flynn. I say we have no idea, because no one in government has any interest in finding out, because for the few, who might, to do so would earn them media and partisan venom.

The message from the Clinton email scandal, the Mueller investigation, and the careers of Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and McCabe seems to be that if the government wishes a document then do not provide it. If you are finally forced to surrender it, either erase or destroy what you can reasonably get away with hiding. Or barring that, insist that it be heavily redacted, according to your own judgment, for the sake of America. If asked to explain such behavior or allegations of leaking information to the press, either deny or claim faulty memory.

Do all of that and be of the correct political persuasion and of Washington repute, and there is little chance of criminal exposure.

Such exemption so far is the message that we’ve learned from the behavior of high officials of the Obama Justice Department, CIA, FBI and National Security Council. Or put another way, our illustrious government officials are reminding us Americans, “We are better than you.”

We will not have equal justice under the law until all lawbreakers are prosecuted, regardless of their political standing.

Thank You, Goernor Ducey

Posted on by

Fox91 in Arizona announced today that Governor Doug Ducey has appointed Representative Martha McSally to replace U.S. Sen. Jon Kyl in the U.S. Senate seat that belonged to Sen. John McCain. Senator Kyl had only agreed to serve until the end of 2018.

Just as an aside, we have lost the vision of our Founding Fathers when Senators hold a Senate seat long enough to die while in office and have the Senate seat they vacated referred to as their seat. It wasn’t John McCain’s seat any more than the seat in Massachusetts was Ted Kennedy’s seat. However, these men had been in office for so long it was as if they owned the seat. That is not what our Founding Fathers intended–Congressmen were supposed to serve one or two terms and then return to public life to live under the laws they passed. In 1992, former Senator George McGovern wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal about what he had learned since leaving office. Please follow the link and read the letter. It perfectly illustrates our current problems in Washington.

The article at Fox91 reports:

McSally is a two-term congresswoman who was long considered for the Senate by the state’s GOP establishment. The first female combat pilot, McSally rose to the rank of colonel in the Air Force before entering politics. She got a taste for it through working for Kyl’s office as a national security aide.

McSally represented a swing district in Tucson that voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. She carved out a reputation as a moderate who could win tough elections. That went out the window during her Senate campaign this year. She had been critical of President Donald Trump in 2016 but praised him during the midterm election. Facing a primary challenge from her right, McSally embraced a tougher stance on immigration.

Hopefully Ms. McSally will vote with the President to keep our country’s borders secure.

Fact Meets Theory

Posted on by

John Sexton posted an article at Hot Air today about some parents who decided to try to raise their children ‘without feeling a lot of cultural pressure related to gender.’ It was an interesting experiment–eventually nature took over.

The article reports

At a time when more kids and teens are raising questions about the meaning of gender, Bonnie and Brian made a point of bringing up their children — Eliot and his sisters Toni, now 10, and Lena, 7 — in relatively gender-neutral ways. “It irked me when people said you can’t play with that because it’s a boy toy, or you can’t play with that because it’s a girl toy,” Bonnie says. They didn’t dress the girls in fancy pink baby clothes, for instance.

But no matter what Bonnie and Brian did, what happened looked a lot to them like nature taking over. The first time the family went to the local children’s museum, the parents laughed as 3-year-old Toni discovered princess dresses for the first time. She pulled them on with astonishment, as if to say, “Can you believe this?” Eliot, not yet able to talk, toddled away from her and right over to the train table.

“It’s funny,” Brian says. “I feel like I read stuff and listen to interviews with people that are like ‘Disney executives are driving little girls to want princess dresses!’ And I’m like, ‘Nope, little girls love this, and Disney’s making money off it.’ ” He laughs. “They just gravitated toward those things. They like what they like.”

Obviously not all little girls or all little boys will gravitate toward the same toys, but it is interesting to know that in most cases, there are some very basic differences between boys and girls. We need to recognize that all children are different and although they will have different strengths, there is more to the concept of gender than just a label.

Congress Is Hearing From The Grass Roots

Posted on by

Yesterday I attended the Rally for the Republic in Washington, D.C., sponsored by Freedom Works. I boarded the bus to Washington at 1 am. I arrived home at about 11 o’clock last night. I mention that because I am a person who loves my sleep, but the rally was important enough to me to give up a lot of that sleep to attend.

Here are two pictures from the rally:

It was a hot, humid day. Two people were carried away by ambulance because of problems related to the heat. I have no idea how many people were there, but there were a lot of people, and they were angry about the circus the confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh has become.

The rally had two main focuses–the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh and the election of Jim Jordan as Speaker of the House. Both causes were enthusiastically supported by the crowd that attended.

The average American recognizes a smear when he sees it. Professor Ford may have been assaulted, but there is some real question as to the accuracy of her memory of the incident and as to the guilt of Judge Kavanaugh. Because there is no pattern that continued into adulthood, I believe he needs to be given the benefit of the doubt. We might also remember that innocent until proven guilty is one of the foundational blocks of our justice system. Evidently there are many people who feel that Judge Kavanaugh should be confirmed.

It is time to move forward and confirm Judge Kavanuagh.

 

Now This Begins To Make Sense

Posted on by

Michael Cohen has changed his testimony regarding President Trump a number of times. Either he can’t make up his mind or his memory just isn’t working properly. Or maybe someone has entered the picture that has altered the way Mr. Cohen looks at things.

The DC Whisperer posted an article yesterday that provides some insight into what is going on.

The article reminds us:

Weeks earlier D.C. Whispers warned readers of Lanny Davis’s sudden appearance at the side of former Trump personal attorney Michael Cohen. Mr. Davis is a longtime Clinton operative and as recently as 2016 was helping to manage Hillary Clinton’s presidential run. His longstanding ties to the Clintons affords him strong ties with both the Democrat and Republican establishments, vast D.C. lobbying powers, and media moguls. In short, he is as Deep State as Deep State gets. 

Now he’s using Michael Cohen to add manufactured fuel to the “get President Trump” fire as the Clintons sit back and watch and wait…

Remember Hillary Clinton’s illegal private server troubles that had her staff destroying evidence and lying to the FBI? 99.9% of the population would have faced some very serious charges for those violations. Not Hillary. Then there are the even more serious money laundering allegations tied to the Clinton Foundation and again – no formal charges from the government.

And guess who was acting as the mediator between the Clintons’ interests and the FBI and DOJ back in 2015 and 2016?

That’s right – Lanny Davis.

Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein, both longtime Deep State operatives, push for an investigation into Michael Cohen. Raids on Cohen’s homes and offices follow. Charges are manufactured. Cohen is isolated, afraid, and eventually, all too willing to do whatever necessary to save himself.

Once again, enter Lanny Davis who takes Cohen by the hand and leads him to a “say anything” plea deal with wording scripted by Clinton and Obama-appointed prosecutors in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York. The prosecutor leading the case against Cohen is Robert S. Khuzami whose ties with the Clintons date back to the 1990’s.

Please follow the link to read the entire article. It explains exactly how the deep state is working to protect its interests and keep the swamp that is Washington operating as usual.

The article concludes:

Far-fetched you say? Consider this – Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to non-crimes as they relate to Donald Trump. He has tax issues, fraud issues, but what Davis was most concerned with is the alleged “hush money” payments that Cohen now says were directed by then-candidate Trump in 2016. That is the only legal item that involves the president directly regarding the Cohen plea – and it isn’t a crime. It’s a fake charge but Cohen is playing ball with the prosecution because of the other charges he is facing. This is how the U.S. government works. It can manufacture anything to go after anyone at any time and no entity has done this more often and more aggressively than the Clinton Crime Syndicate.

Washington Has Lost Its Bearings

Posted on by

Fox News is reporting today that a D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commission (ANC 4C) is supporting a petition to pull the Trump International Hotel’s liquor license — citing D.C. law that only individuals of “good character” qualify for a liquor license. This has to be the dumbest thing I have heard in a long time.

The article reports:

“Donald Trump, the true and actual owner of the Trump International Hotel, is not a person of good character,” the petition, filed by a group of D.C. residents including two former judges, a pastor and a rabbi, reads.

The complaint, filed in June, cites Trump’s “long history of telling lies,” his alleged lack of integrity in dealings with others and his “failure to abide by the law and to repudiate associations with known criminals.” It goes on to call for a show cause hearing to judge whether the license should be revoked.

“What the complaint says is that the owner of the Trump International Hotel doesn’t meet that definition and so ABRA, the Alcohol Beverage Regulation Administration, should take action,” Zach Teutsch, ANC Commissioner 4C, said. He denied that the move was a political stunt.

I daresay that Donald Trump’s character is at least as good as many of our elected leaders.

The article concludes with a bit of common sense:

However, the commission representing the area in downtown Washington, ANC 2C, reportedly has no plans to weigh in on the complaint. Chairman John Tinpe told The Washington Post that it’s a slippery slope to comment on a licensee’s character and could lead to a rush of similar protests.

“Now, if there is criminal activity, that is different,” Tinpe said. “But the subject of character is something different.”

Fox 5 reports that not everyone is on board with the move in D.C., with some local residents arguing that the swipe at Trump will only hurt bartenders and servers at the hotel and hurt the tax take from the hotel.

Washington definitely has its own brand of crazies.

The Law Of Unintended Consequences

Posted on by

On Friday Investor’s Business Daily posted an article about a recent bill sponsored by Washington, D.C.’s city council.

The article reports:

On Tuesday, 7 of the 13 members of Washington’s city council sponsored a bill to jettison the wage hike for tipped workers that 56% of D.C. voters had approved by a ballot initiative less than a month before.

Under Initiative 77, the workers would see their minimum wage climb from the current $3.89 an hour to $15 an hour by 2026, erasing the difference between tipped and nontipped workers.

Keep in mind that D.C. is about as heavily Democratic as you can get. It went for Hillary Clinton by a 91%-4% margin.

But the D.C. council members came to understand what economists — and D.C. restaurant workers themselves — already know. Sharp increases in the minimum wage will cost lost hours, lost jobs and lost income.

The article concludes:

This wage mandate, just like the one the council is trying to repeal, will also end up hurting the very people it’s supposed to help.

That’s not speculation. It’s what happened in Seattle, which four years ago decided to gradually hike the city’s minimum to $15. Researchers from the University of Washington found that the average low-wage worker lost $125 a month as the mandate took effect and employers cut back on hours and jobs.

Other parts of the country are catching on as evidence rolls in of the job-killing side effect of these mandated wage hikes. The mayor of heavily Democratic Baltimore vetoed a minimum-wage bill last year. The city council in Flagstaff, Ariz., decided to scrap the planned hike to $12, and cap it at $10.50.

“Fight for $15” makes a good bumper sticker. But as Democrats are finding out first hand, it makes bad public policy.

Maybe the answer is not raising the pay for minimum-wage jobs, but in better educating our children so that when they enter the workforce at minimum jobs, they are able to learn skills and progress to better paying jobs. In many cases, companies have responded to increases in the minimum wage by replacing workers with machines. Minimum-wage jobs are valuable–they teach workers entering the workforce the basic principles of holding a job–showing up, working hard, being courteous to fellow employees and customers, and being dependable and on time. Drastically increasing the minimum wage will result in many minimum-wage jobs being eliminated.

The Smelly Swamp

Posted on by

Breitbart posted an article today with the following headline:

Russian Lobbyist at Don Jr. Meeting Says He ‘Might’ Have Seen John McCain at Summit Where Senator Learned of ‘Pee’ Dossier

Wow. What an incredible coincidence.

The article reports:

Russian-born Washington lobbyist Rinat Akhmetshin says he might have spoken to McCain and the senator’s assistant David J. Kramer at the Halifax International Security Forum in 2016. However, Akhmetshin claimed that he did not discuss the dossier with McCain or Kramer, and that he didn’t know about the existence of the controversial dossier.

The information raises immediate questions about the possibility of dirty tricks in arranging the infamous Trump Tower meeting. This considering a recent Breitbart News report that email transcripts and other information disclosed in Akhmetshin’s testimony reveal a significant relationship between the lobbyist and the controversial Fusion GPS firm that produced the infamous, largely discredited anti-Trump dossier.

It was at the security conference in Canada in November 2016 that McCain says he was approached by Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow and friend of ex-British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier.

Wood briefed McCain and Kramer, a former State Department official and longtime McCain associate who agreed to meet Steele in London for a fuller briefing on the dossier contents.

The Washington Post reported in February that after meeting with Steele, Kramer went to Washington and received the dossier document directly from Fusion GPS. McCain then passed the dossier to FBI Director James Comey.

In a New York Times oped in January, GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritch wrote that they helped McCain share their anti-Trump dossier with the Obama-era intelligence community via an unnamed “emissary.”

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It is becoming obvious that members of both parties were involved in the ‘insurance policy’ to derail the Trump administration. This actually makes sense when you realize the threat President Trump is to both parties–if an outsider who is not part of the ‘in crowd’ can be successful in Washington, the power of both political parties will be diminished. Most of the people in Congress are there to increase their power–not to have it diminished. We can only hope that the few members of Congress who love America more than they love their own power can drain the smelly swamp Washington has become.

There Really Are Not Two Parties In Washington

Posted on by

The Conservative Treehouse posted an article today that erases any illusion anyone might have had that there are two political parties in Congress. There are two political parties in Washington–the anti-Trump agenda party and the pro-Trump agenda party, but the Republican and Democratic parties in Congress are generally one and the same despite the show they put on that they are different.

The article reports:

Now, a stunning discovery surfaces of Paul Ryan’s Congressional Leadership SuperPAC, congressionalleadershipfund.org, actually campaigning for the Democrat, Conor Lamb, in the recent PA18 congressional race.

As evidenced by Big League Politics the Paul Ryan SuperPAC sent a mailer to Pennsylvania CD-18 voters touting Lamb’s favorable position on gun ownership rights:

This is the mailer:

The article explains:

The real motive, based on an honest review of history, is the professional UniParty apparatus knew that Democrat Conor Lamb needed a lift to offset the cross party voting that was reflected in the district voting (by over 20 points) for Donald Trump in 2016.

The DC Republican apparatus is quite comfortable losing their majority position so long as they are not forced to support Trump policies which are entirely against their financial interests.  [How Mitch McConnell Crushed The Tea-Party]

It really is about money–in Washington power is measured by how much money you control. The more of taxpayers’ money Washington can seize and control, the more power they have. That’s why the establishment opposes the tea party movement and that is why the establishment opposes President Trump.

The article concludes:

The only threat to the financial interests of the GOP is President Donald Trump remaining in office and having to actually face carrying out a conservative Trump agenda in 2019 and 2020.  That Trump agenda is entirely against their “establishment republican” interests.

The Paul Ryan mailer to elect a Democrat is just another example of how corrupt the entire UniParty political apparatus is within Washington DC.

Another illustration of the opposition to President Trump is seen in the number of Libertarian and new Republican primary candidates in the current primary season. Many of these candidates are funded by the Republican establishment and are there to replace conservative Republicans who support President Trump with candidates the Republican establishment can control. President Trump is not the perfect President, but he is not part of the Washington establishment and is not controlled by it. If you want to see things change in Washington, you need to support the people who will support the President’s policies. Otherwise, we will have more of special interest fleecing the American taxpayer.

The Entry-Level Job Is Going The Way Of The Starter Home

Posted on by

Investor’s Business Daily posted an article today about the impact of raising the minimum wage. Traditionally the minimum wage job has been a place for those young people who are just entering the workforce to learn the basic principles of holding a job–showing up on time, being there when you are supposed to, treating people with respect, integrity, etc. Most of these concepts should have been covered during the school years, but many of them are not. The entry-level job was the last place a potential employee would be able to learn them. An entry-level job was supposed to encourage the employee to work hard in order to get a better paying job and advance his/her career. Well, I guess that concept has gone out the window.

Investor’s Business Daily reports:

Twenty-one states and Washington, D.C., will raise their minimum wage this year, under the misbegotten notion that it will help the poor, in particular struggling minority youth. It won’t.

As a new study from the American Action Forum shows, not only will most workers not be better off, they will take a huge hit.

Why? Common sense tells you that when you raise the cost of something, anything, less of it will be used or consumed. It’s a fundamental precept of economics. And labor is no different.

Coercive minimum-wage hikes this year, the AAF estimates, will kill 261,000 jobs held mostly by poor, undertrained, undereducated, young suburban millennials and minority teens.

But it’s even worse than that: Once the minimum-wage increases are fully phased in, some 1.7 million jobs will be lost. As the Daily Caller helpfully notes, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated last year that the U.S. economy will add 11.5 million jobs over the next 10 years. So that’s roughly 15% of a decade’s worth of jobs destroyed.

The complaint has been that you can’t support yourself on the current minimum wage. You’re not supposed to—you are supposed to use the opportunity of a minimum-wage job to become a better worker and be promoted or educate yourself and move on to a better job.

The article concludes:

Yes, some people will do better because of the “Fight for $15,” the organizing shibboleth used by activists who want a national minimum wage. But many small businesses struggle to stay open. Labor is their No. 1 cost, taking up more than two-thirds of total costs. If you raise the minimum wage sharply, they have to lay off people or raise prices to stay in business. And some won’t make it.

The job losses are already happening. Just last month, the food chain Red Robin announced it would eliminate busboys at 570 restaurants to “address the labor increases we’ve seen.” For “labor increases,” read “minimum wage hikes.”

Other restaurant chains take a slightly different approach, automating to offset rising labor costs. Neighborhood mainstays Chili’s and Applebee’s,  for instance, are replacing front-end wait staff with computer tablets for placing orders. Since a tablet entails a one-time expense of roughly $200, the investment pays for itself in a little over 13 hours at minimum wage.

It’s sad that just as the tax-cut boom gets going, one big group is going to be cut out of the action entirely. Whenever government sets the price of anything, distortions occur. In this case, the “distortion” is millions of lost jobs. It’s cruel, racist and devastating to lower-income people who depend on entry-level jobs to make ends meet.

Behind The Protests

Posted on by

Yesterday The Daily Caller posted an article about the recent protests against the Republican tax reform bill.

The article reports:

Organizers with the left-leaning group Housing Works told protesters they must “risk arrest” in order to be reimbursed for airfare to Washington, D.C., according to an internal email obtained by The Daily Caller News Foundation.

“We will transport, house and feed you, and deal with all legal support. Caveat: if you are far away from DC and expensive to transport, we can probably only fly you if you can risk arrest,” the internal email told supporters.

The article includes a screenshot of the email.

The article further states:

Housing Works is based out of New York City, and aims to further the health of the LGBTQ community, according to the group’s website.

“Housing Works fights for funding and legislation to ensure that all people living with HIV/AIDS  have access to quality housing, healthcare, HIV prevention, and treatment, among other lifesaving services,” the group asserts.

Since the organizers are based in New York, officials were forced to organize nearly every aspect of the protester’s lives during their stay in D.C. The protesters will be housed in a local church’s basement and will be provided sleeping bags, as well as free meals and a place to shower in the morning, according to the group’s email.

Organizers on either side of the aisle sometimes attempt to coordinate logistics for their teams, but the requirement that an individual need to risk arrest in the District in order to qualify for aid is unique, especially given the fact that hundreds of protesters are facing decades of prison time for violently protesting President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

There are a few obvious questions here. Why is the group protesting tax cuts that will put more money in American tax payers’ pockets and boost the economy? What kind of a church houses paid protesters? What has tax reform got to do with HIV/AIDS? What we have here is an example of the fact that the left has the ability to get splinter groups to work together. How many times have you seen the homosexual community out protesting to support abortion rights? Obviously, they don’t have a horse in that race, but they are there to show solidarity with leftest causes. The ability to bring various leftest groups together to protest issues makes the protest group appear to be larger than it actually is. Paying the protesters also increases the number of protesters. This is not grassroots–this is astroturf!