The Time for School Choice Is Past Due

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An old story tells of a big, successful store with a plaque in the employees’ lounge which read:

“Rule #1. The customer’s always right. Rule #2. If you ever think the customer is wrong, reread Rule #1.”

I bring this up because the public school education establishment (to be distinguished from the rank and file teachers, many of whom are dedicated public servants), often treat their customers as if they’re wrong and as if the education elites know better than the dumb parents.
School choice is the ultimate answer to America’s education crisis, and there ought to be bipartisan agreement on it. School competition makes education better, and gives all parents more options for their children. But the Left opposes it adamantly, though even a liberal newspaper surprisingly spoke out recently in favor of school choice.
Foxnews.com reports (7/9/2021):

“The liberal Washington Post editorial board on Thursday broke rank with the left and pondered why Democrats are so opposed to giving poor children a choice in schooling.”

The Washington Post opined,

“For 17 years, a federally funded K-12 scholarship program has given thousands of poor children in D.C. the opportunity to attend private schools and the chance to go on to college. And for many of those 17 years, the program has been in the crosshairs of unions and other opponents of private school vouchers…Their relentless efforts unfortunately may now finally succeed with House Democrats and the Biden administration quietly laying the groundwork to kill off this worthy program.”

What a tragedy. And who will suffer the most? Inner-city families.
The Left is all about power. But true public service is always about empowerment—empowering others, regardless of their socio-economic background—so that people can fulfill their God-given destiny.
The pandemic over the past year-and-a-half showed how the teachers unions held hostage many schools from re-opening in person.
During the shutdown, many parents discovered the option of homeschooling. In an interview for Christian television, Mike Donnelly of the Home School Legal Defense Association told me, “The U. S. census bureau issued a report recently that showed that homeschooling households doubled from about five and a half percent, before the virus, to over almost 12%.”
Homeschooling is not as radical as it sounds. Many of our founding fathers and key American leaders, like Abraham Lincoln, were home-taught.
In August 2020, Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, observed, “If there was one positive outcome I could point to from the Coronavirus Pandemic…was the fact that public schools were shut down and kids were at home. Parents were to a larger degree, involved in what their kids were learning ….And I’ve heard from a number of parents, who are now rethinking education in terms of how they’re going to go about it post Coronavirus Pandemic.”
Fast forward to the present time and we see many parents revolting against some of what the education establishment is trying to cram down their throats, such as Critical Race Theory (CRT), a racist set of doctrines disguised in anti-racist garb.
CRT is a Marxist attempt to destroy America from within by teaching that white people always oppress minorities. Always.
When parents learn about CRT-type curricula in their schools, they have spoken out against it. Even many minority parents and parents in heavily-Democratic areas have opposed it. It certainly flies in the face of the goals of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., that America become color-blind and judge people according to the content of their character not the color of their skin.
But the major teachers’ unions have not backed down from the teaching of CRT. With the unions’ blessing, about 5000 teachers recently pledged to teach CRT, even if it’s illegal.
For example, President Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, promises to “legally defend” members of their union who teach CRT, even if in that particular school district it is illegal.
CRT has different manifestations in our schools. Gary Bauer notes in his End of Day (7/9/2021): “For example, at least 25 school districts around the country are using a book called ‘Not My Idea.’ Here’s how Amazon describes the book: ‘Not My Idea’ is the only children’s picture book that roots the problem of racism in whiteness and empowers white children and families to see and dismantle white supremacy.”
School choice seems to be the best answer to our education crisis, of which CRT is just the latest manifestation. And yet the Democrats are trying  to shut it down, as in the poor sections of the District of Columbia.
Ironically, those who claim to champion “choice,” by which they mean killing preborn babies, want a one-size-fits-all approach to education in a diverse country like America.
I think the teachers unions need to reread Rule #1.
©Jerry Newcombe. All rights reserved.

‘I’m from the Government, and I’m Here to Vaccinate’

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Most people were shocked when the president wanted to go door-to-door with his vaccine campaign — but that’s only the half of it. According to a Pentagon spokesman, the White House is also planning to go barracks to barracks — requiring the men and women of our voluntary military to involuntarily surrender their freedom and take an unproven shot some of them don’t want.
Frankly, Obama Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told CNN, “I think the president ought to issue an order requiring everybody in the military to get a COVID-19 shot — period. That’s an issue involving our national security,” he argued. “The last d— thing you need is to have those in the military that are our warriors unable to respond to a mission because they’ve gotten COVID-19. There’s no excuse for that.” Interesting, considering that the same military leadership has been cheerleading the troops’ gender reassignment surgery, which renders patients completely undeployable for months. Apparently, it’s no problem if you skip out on your job for the extreme LGBT cause. But if you have a personal objection to the vaccine, well then, a handful of potential sick days is unacceptable.
Republicans, who’ve been absolutely outraged at the government’s heavy-handedness, introduced a bill to stop the Pentagon from forcing the shots, which have not yet received final FDA approval, on our troops. Although the vaccination rates are high across every branch, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) says he’s been contacted by members of the military who vow to quit if the COVID shots are forced on them. And it’s no wonder, Congressman Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) explains. “Keep in mind,” he told listeners on “Washington Watch,” “it’s not received final approval from anybody.” And there are enough new red flags with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine to make young people think twice.
As deadly as the virus has been, Brooks points out, certain age groups are in more danger than others. “That’s not to say there’s no risk, but it is substantially lesser [for] the people who are serving in our military. So right now, I very much prefer that our military personnel have the right to choose for themselves, exercise their free will, exercise their liberty to decide for themselves which risk they want to accept” — whether that’s the risk of the virus or the vaccine. “I hope that they’ll make the right decision,” Brooks added, “but it ought to be their decision. Because it is a life and death one.”
In the Marines, where I got more immunizations than I could count, no one was ever ordered to get a flu shot. And essentially, that’s what this is. It’s not a vaccine in the traditional sense, because it won’t protect people from the virus forever. That’s not to say it doesn’t have value — it offers protections to people, especially in the high-risk categories. But the fact that the Defense Department has its fingers on the trigger of a mandate, as they alluded in the last few days, ought to be concerning to everyone. Brooks says he finds it “disconcerting” that the military would have this kind of order “already drafted and ready to unleash, particularly insofar as it relates to a vaccine that has not been thoroughly vetted and tested.” When the FDA gives its blessing, that’s one thing. But there’s still the issue, he points out, of “taking the vaccine versus the risk associated with the youth catching COVID. And I much prefer that we defer that to the liberty and freedom and good judgment of our military personnel, all of whom are adults. And I believe that they are mature enough to be able to make that decision for themselves.”
Regardless, this idea that the government feels entitled to dictate what’s best for us ought to sound all kinds of alarm bells. Just this week, the White House doubled down on the idea of vaccine mandates, arguing that it’s the “right” of local officials and employers to demand it. As for Biden’s widely panned door-to-door intimidation campaign, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) warned over the weekend where it could lead. “Think about what those mechanisms could be used for. They could go door-to-door to take your guns. They could go door-to-door and take your Bibles.”
That’s also crossed the mind of former Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (and FRC Board Chairman), who told Fox News on Saturday that every American should go out and buy a “No Trespassing” sign at their local hardware store “because the government has zero business to do this. Zero. And what they’re wanting all of us to do is to check our Bill of Rights, our civil liberties, at the door.” The whole point of this country, she argued, “is based upon the fact that we have rights against the government. And they want us, just as a matter of idea, [to] give up all of our [freedoms].” Don’t be deceived, she warned. “There will be a database — and everybody will be in that database. And it’s not just vaccine status, it will be your entire medical history. It will be connected to your finances. This is going to get bigger, bigger, bigger, so stop it now, and don’t give any information to the government official at your door.”
And yet, Dr. Anthony Fauci insists that Americans should have less personal choice. “… I do believe, at the local level, there should be more mandates,” he insisted. “… We have got to put aside this ideological difference thinking that somebody is forcing you to do something… Vaccinations have nothing to do with politics.” Tell that to 2020’s Democrats, who spent months sowing doubts about the shots, just because they were created while Donald Trump was president. At one point Biden openly questioned whether a vaccine approved by Trump’s agencies would be safe. They are the ones who stoked fears and undermined the scientific progress. Now, suddenly, they want to flip a switch, undo that damage, and blame all of the hesitancy on conservatives. You can’t have it both ways. It was their politicking that put people’s lives at risk. And now, their heavy-handedness threatens to do the same — to our freedoms.
COLUMN BY

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is Family Research Council’s fourth and longest-serving president, joining the organization in August of 2003. Described as a legislative pioneer by the national media, Tony has established himself as an innovative pro-life and pro-family policy and political leader since first being elected to office in 1996.
EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Ohio GOP Attorney General WINS Lawsuit Against “Biden Relief” Bill UNCONSTITUTIONALLY Bars Tax Cuts

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Democrat communist fiat averted.
Obscene legal plunder impeded …. for the moment.

Ohio GOP attorney general prevails in lawsuit alleging Biden relief bill unconstitutionally bars tax cuts

By: Zachary Halaschak | Washington Examiner | July 02, 2021:
A federal judge has ruled that a provision in President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 relief bill limiting state tax cuts is unconstitutional, handing a victory to Republicans.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost had filed a federal lawsuit against the Treasury Department and its secretary, Janet Yellen, alleging that a provision in the $1.9 trillion Democratic spending package that prohibits states from using relief funds to offset tax cuts or credits “directly or indirectly” is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Douglas Cole issued the permanent injunction against what Yost dubbed the “tax mandate” on Thursday, ruling that the provision exceeds the federal government’s power over states.
“The federal government has to stay in their lane, and if they don’t, we’re prepared to bump them up against the guardrail and keep them where they belong,” Yost told the Washington Examiner in a Friday morning phone call.
Cole ruled that the tax mandate “falls short of the clarity” that Supreme Court precedent requires for the Constitution’s spending clause as it relates to conditional grants to states. The judge also rejected Yellen’s argument that Treasury Department regulations clear up the ambiguity of the provision.
“Accordingly, the Court finds that the Tax Mandate exceeds Congress’s power under the Constitution,” Cole concluded. “The Court further finds that Ohio has met the conditions for injunctive relief to prevent the ongoing harm that this constitutional violation is causing.”
It is likely that the federal government will appeal the ruling. A spokesperson with the Treasury Department told the Washington Examiner after the decision that the department disagrees with Cole’s opinion and is exploring options regarding the next steps.
“We are confident that the act is constitutional and Treasury is committed to implementing it in a manner consistent with Congress’s direction so we can continue to promote a robust and equitable recovery,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Yost touted the ruling as “a huge win for our federalist system” and pointed out that while Democrats might be disappointed with the decision, they might see it differently in the future. He said he sees the judgment as having broader implications than just this one provision.
“The progressives are going to be howling right now because they don’t like the idea that the federal government can’t tell Ohio what to do with its tax policy, but they’ll be quoting this decision soon enough to a Republican president who might want to tell a blue state how to run their state,” Yost said.
While Ohio was the first to sue the Biden administration over the tax mandate, it is not alone in its litigation on the matter.
Several other states have joined another federal lawsuit contending that the mandate violates the 10th Amendment, the conditional spending doctrine, and the anti-commandeering doctrine. Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich also filed a lawsuit attacking the provision.
Yost said that while the ruling in his case won’t directly affect the other lawsuits, he thinks that Cole’s ruling will be closely examined by judges across the country.
“It’s a really well-reasoned opinion by Judge Cole, and I think other federal judges will read it and find it well reasoned,” he said. “So, it doesn’t have any direct power, but it is very persuasive.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
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We Just Got Even More Proof that Stay-At-Home Orders Lethally Backfired

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A new study finds that lockdown orders didn’t reduce overall mortality, and may have even increased it.

WATCH: SENATE TESTIMONY: Child Suicide & Lethal Lockdown Consequences

Life under lockdown was hard for all of us. From economic destruction to social isolation, the costs of restrictive government policies intended to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 have been steep. But now, yet another study suggests that the benefits wrought by our collective sacrifice were negligible at best—and that stay-at-home orders may even have increased overall mortality.
In a new paper, economists from the University of Southern California and the RAND Corporation examined the effectiveness of “shelter-in-place” (SIP) mandates, aka stay-at-home orders, using data from 43 countries and all 50 US states. The experts analyze not just deaths from COVID-19, but “excess deaths,” a measure that compares overall deaths from all causes to a historical baseline.
The authors explain that lockdown orders may have had lethal unintended consequences in their own right, such as increased drug overdoses, worsened mental health problems, increased child abuse, deadly delays in non-COVID medical care, and more. So, to find out whether stay-at-home orders truly helped more than they hurt, examining excess deaths, not just pandemic outcomes, is key.
The results aren’t pretty.
“We fail to find that shelter-in-place policies saved lives,” the authors report. Indeed, they conclude that in the weeks following the implementation of these policies, excess mortality actually increases—even though it had typically been declining before the orders took effect. And across all countries, the study finds that a one-week increase in the length of stay-at-home policies corresponds with 2.7 more excess deaths per 100,000 people.
The lockdowns simply didn’t work.
“We failed to find that countries or U.S. states that implemented SIP policies earlier, and in which SIP policies had longer to operate, had lower excess deaths than countries/U.S. states that were slower to implement SIP policies,” the authors explain.
And their finding is no outlier. A number of other credible studies have similarly concluded that lockdowns were ineffective at slowing the spread of COVID-19. Plus, other research now shows that most COVID-19 spread occurred at home, not out in the world, making stay-at-home orders all the more absurd in hindsight.
Of course, there is tremendous resistance to acknowledging the fact that the sacrifice we all, to varying extents, endured evidently accomplished nothing—and may have even left us worse off.  But we must acknowledge and grapple with this painful truth to ward off similar mistakes in the future.
The takeaway here is not just that stay-at-home orders are an ineffective public policy. It’s that politicians will always claim they can solve our problems if just given enough centralized power. But we must not fall for their rhetoric and focus only on the seen, tangible benefits of government action—like potentially slowing the spread of COVID-19—we must also consider the unseen and unexpected second-order effects and consequences.
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

BlackRock, GiaxoSmithKline and the Great Reset

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“If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.” – Henry A. Wallace, 33rd Vice President of the United States
“All who wish to hand down to their children that happy republican system bequeathed to them by their revolutionary fathers, must now take their stand against this consolidating, corrupting money power, and put it down, or their children will become hewers of wood and drawers of water to this aristocratic ragocracy.” – President Andrew Jackson
“The system shaves the dice on the side of those with money and power, and anyone who believes otherwise deserves anything that happens to him.” – James Lee Burke, author
“The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people.” – Tom Clancy

In a previous article, I mentioned BlackRock, Inc.  Not many took notice or mentioned it, but now, BlackRock is finally hitting the news big time.  And they have influence, unbelievable influence with world leaders. In less than 30 years, this American financial firm has grown from nothing to becoming the world’s largest and most trusted manager of other people’s money.
Created in 1988, BlackRock gained its current power in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. With the fall of Lehman Brothers, Wall Street was in the throes of free-fall: no one knew what thousands of their financial portfolios contained, what was hidden behind the derivatives, what was toxic and what was not, what was dangerous and what wasn’t.  They are the financial leviathan that bears down on Europe’s decisions and America’s.  The assets left in their care are more than $8.7 trillion American dollars.

BlackRock, Tom Donilon and Biden

In a recent article by The Conservative Tree House (CTH), i.e., The Last Refuge website, they exposed BlackRock’s connections to the illegitimate Biden administration.  The CTH author, Sundance, summarized the article, The Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, the guy who tells the $8.7 trillion investment firm BlackRock where to put their money, has a brother who is the Senior Advisor to Joe Biden; has a wife who is the White House Personnel Director; and has a daughter who is now on the National Security Council.
BlackRock’s Chairman is none other than Tom Donilon whose literal job description for BlackRock is to: “leverage the firm’s expertise and generate proprietary research to provide insights on the global economy, markets, geopolitics and long-term asset allocation.”
Conflicts of interest and insider information.
Thomas Donilon is a member of the globalist Council on Foreign Relations and is Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute and Senior of Counsel at the international law firm of O’Melveny & Myers.  Like BlackRock’s owner, Donilon is a Democrat who has supported and advised every democrat president and candidate from Jimmy Carter to Hillary Clinton.
The connections are extremely telling.  However, what few people know is that BlackRock, among others, is buying every single-family house they can find, paying 20-50% above asking price and outbidding normal home buyers, especially in Florida, but other Red States as well. Corporations, pension funds and property investment groups are snapping up single-family houses, and even entire neighborhoods, to rent out or flip and are competing with American families –accounting for 25% of the sales in some cities.  Raw control by big money is the wholesale takeover of the housing market.
BlackRock is the world’s largest asset manager and the leading proponent of The Great Reset. They’re looking to redistribute $120 Trillion in housing wealth. Why does this matter?  Because for the lower and middle class, owning a home is the most major part of any financial success, and ensures their future upward mobility. This is wealth redistribution from the American middle class. Salt of the earth wealth heading into the hands of the world’s most powerful entities and individuals. The traditional financial vehicle called home ownership gone forever.
Permanent capital is now competing with young couples trying to buy a home. That’s going to make U.S. housing permanently more expensive and likely impossible.

GSK and BlackRock, Inc.

BlackRock, Inc is based in New York City and owned by Democrat Larry Fink.
They have filed an SC 13G/A form with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosing ownership of 377,284,263 shares of GlaxoSmithKline plc (US: GSK). This represents 7.5 percent ownership of the company. In their previous filing dated 2020-02-05, BlackRock Inc. had reported owning 376,159,235 shares, indicating an increase of 0.30 percent.
With stock in GSK, BlackRock is now in the development and manufacture of mRNA first generation Covid-19 “vaccines.”
GlaxoSmithKline plc (LSE/NYSE: GSK) and CureVac N.V. (Nasdaq: CVAC) announced a new $179 million collaboration, building on their existing relationship, to jointly develop next generation mRNA “vaccines” for Covid-19 with the potential for a multi-valent approach to address multiple emerging variants in one vaccine.
Emma Walmsley, Chief Executive Officer, GSK, said: “We believe that next generation vaccines will be crucial in the continued fight against COVID-19. This new collaboration builds on our existing relationship with CureVac and means that together, we will combine our scientific expertise in mRNA and vaccine development to advance and accelerate the development of new COVID-19 vaccine candidates.
Yikes!
GSK will also support the manufacture of up to 100 million doses of CureVac’s first generation Covid-19 vaccine candidate CVnCoV in 2021.
In 2018, Soros Fund Management also dramatically boosted its shares in BlackRock Inc., overseeing $6 trillion by nearly 60 percent to 12,983 total shares in the second quarter of 2018.  How lovely!
BlackRock, Inc. also manages the French AXA, a French multinational insurance firm who strongly backs climate control.  Axa has called for the creation of a “net zero underwriting alliance” that would see member companies from across the insurance sector align their business activities with the 1.5 Celsius (carbon dioxide removal) warming pathway required under the Paris Agreement, fundamentally reshaping the global economy.  In late 2019, BlackRock, Inc. named Sebastien Herzog, a senior official at French insurer Axa’s investment management arm, as its operations director for France, Belgium and Luxembourg.
Larry Fink is in agreement with the French AXA. He even wrote a letter to the CEOs “highlighting issues that are pivotal to creating durable value” issues such as capital management, long-term strategy, purpose, and climate change. We have long believed that our clients, as shareholders in your company, will benefit if you can create enduring, sustainable value for all of your stakeholders.”
Realize all of this nonsense is about money and taxes…not about global warming or climate change, all of which is normal and cyclical. Link  The climate change comrades, the spiderwebs of big pharma control and the Great Reset are all wrapped up in one putrescent and treasonous package with BlackRock at the head of the pack.

Conclusion

Top dogs, stakeholders at the top of the communist revolutionary heap, those who committed treason to steal the election and destroy America from within…those whose gain-of-function and connection to Wuhan brought us the controlling and devastating destruction of small businesses in America…you think they weren’t culpable?  Think again…big money is in control.  The American people are being destroyed.  The American dream is being slaughtered in front of our eyes.
Wake up now and fight, or wake up later in a gulag when all is lost.
©Kelleigh Nelson. All rights reserved.

DOJ Warns States About Second Amendment Sanctuaries

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Meanwhile immigration sanctuary policies are lauded and emulated.

On June 17, 2021 AOL published an Associated Press report under the title, Justice Dept.: Missouri governor can’t void federal gun laws.  This report began with this excerpt:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is warning Missouri officials that the state can’t ignore federal law, after the governor signed a bill last week that bans police from enforcing federal gun rules.
In a letter sent Wednesday night and obtained by The Associated Press, Justice officials said the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause outweighs the measure that Gov. Mike Parson signed into law Saturday. The new rules penalize local police departments if their officers enforce federal gun laws.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton said the law threatens to disrupt the working relationship between federal and local authorities, they said in the letter, noting that Missouri receives federal grants and technical assistance.
“The public safety of the people of the United States and citizens of Missouri is paramount,” Boynton wrote in the letter.
The DOJ did not have to wait long for a response.  Just hours later, as reported by ABC News, Missouri responds defiantly to Justice Dept. over gun law, which noted, in part:
Similar bills were introduced in more than a dozen other states this year, including Alabama, Arkansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Wyoming, New Hampshire, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia and Iowa. In Texas, the governor has called for the state to become a so-called Second Amendment sanctuary.
Wow!  A new form of “Sanctuary policies” enacted by state governments and the federal government under Mr. Biden’s “leadership” is upset!
Having uttered the magic word “Sanctuary”, we cannot ignore that over the past several decades a growing number of cities and states, almost invariably led by radical leftists, have implemented so-called “sanctuary policies” that, to varying degrees, hamper cooperation between local and state police and federal immigration law enforcement authorities.
Certainly, our nation’s immigration laws are serious laws that were enacted to protect national security, public safety, public health and the jobs and wages of Americans.
Frequently these sanctuary policies have increased to the point where detainees lodged by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) personnel have been blatantly ignored so that aliens who have serious criminal histories were released from custody rather than be turned over to ICE so that could be deported from the United States.
A few of these cases received attention from the media, but in reality a huge number of such criminal aliens who should have been removed (deported) from the United States were permitted to roam freely in towns and cities across the United States, all too frequently, with tragic results.
Consider the horrific case of 32 year old Kate Steinle who was shot to death by Jose Ines Garcia-Zarate, a citizen of Mexico who was illegally present in the United States and had and extensive criminal history in the United States.  He had been previously deported from the United States five times, so that his mere presence in the United States constituted a felony under a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA): 8 U.S. Code § 1326.
On December 1, 2017 Business Insider published a report about this case, Kate Steinle’s death at the hands of a Mexican national became a flashpoint in the immigration debate — here’s the story behind her killing.  Here is an excerpt from this report:
At the time of Steinle’s death, Garcia Zarate had been convicted of nonviolent drug crimes and deported five times since the early 1990s.
He faced a sixth deportation in 2015, and was in Justice Department (DOJ) custody that March after serving 46 months in prison for a felony re-entry into the US, but instead of transferring him into the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation, the department transferred him to the San Francisco County Jail for prosecution of a 1995 marijuana charge.
San Francisco prosecutors, who had long ago deprioritized marijuana charges, dismissed the decades-old charge and released Garcia Zarate on April 15, 2015. Due to San Francisco’s policy of limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities — which some refer to as a “sanctuary” policy — the city did not inform ICE when they released Garcia Zarate.
There is a huge number of similar cases around the United States, where “sanctuary policies” that contradict federal immigration law has resulted in the death and injury of thousands of victims at the hands of aliens who were illegal in the United States, subject to deportation but were shielded, aided and abetted by the jurisdictions who declared themselves to be “sanctuaries” for illegal aliens, in apparent violations of a number of laws, beginning with 8 U.S. Code § 1324 that begins with the following:
(a) Criminal penalties
(1)
(A) Any person who—
(i) knowing that a person is an alien, brings to or attempts to bring to the United States in any manner whatsoever such person at a place other than a designated port of entry or place other than as designated by the Commissioner, regardless of whether such alien has received prior official authorization to come to, enter, or reside in the United States and regardless of any future official action which may be taken with respect to such alien;
(ii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, transports, or moves or attempts to transport or move such alien within the United States by means of transportation or otherwise, in furtherance of such violation of law;
(iii) knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that an alien has come to, entered, or remains in the United States in violation of law, conceals, harbors, or shields from detection, or attempts to conceal, harbor, or shield from detection, such alien in any place, including any building or any means of transportation;
(iv) encourages or induces an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law; or
(v)
(I) engages in any conspiracy to commit any of the preceding acts, or
(II) aids or abets the commission of any of the preceding acts,
When President Trump acted to end sanctuary policies that harbor and shield illegal aliens, out of his well-founded concerns about public safety and national security, he was rebuffed in the courts and by globalists who complained that his efforts were based on “xenophobia” and God knows what else!
Did the bi-partisan 9/11 Commission that we keep so much about by Nancy Pelosi suffer from racism and xenophobia?  Pelosi has repeatedly called for a “9/11-style commission” to investigate the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Back on December 21, 2004, the Congressional Research Service issued a wide-ranging report that must be made mandatory reading for every political leader of the United States.  The title of the report was: 9/11 Commission: Legislative Action Concerning U.S. Immigration Law and Policy in the 108th Congress Updated December 21, 2004.
Here is the summary of this report began:

Summary

Reforming the enforcement of immigration law is a core component of the recommendations made by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the 9/11 Commission). The 19 hijackers responsible for the 9/11 attacks were foreign nationals, many of whom were able to obtain visas to enter the United States through the use of forged documents. Incomplete intelligence and screening enabled many of the hijackers to enter the United States despite flaws in their entry documents or suspicions regarding their past associations. According to the Commission, up to 15 of the hijackers could have been intercepted or deported through more diligent enforcement of immigration laws.
The 9/11 Commission’s immigration-related recommendations focused primarily on targeting terrorist travel through an intelligence and security strategy based on reliable identification systems and effective, integrated information-sharing. As Congress has considered these recommendations, however, possible legislative responses have broadened to include significant and possibly far-reaching changes in the substantive law governing immigration and how that law is enforced, both at the border and in the interior of the United States.
The next time Nancy or her disciples invoke the 9/11 Commission, they need to be pointedly asked if they read the 9/11 Commission Report and how they and the Biden administration can blithely ignore the clear and present danger the Biden administration’s immigration policies (actions and lack of action) create for America and Americans.
Our nation’s Constitution and laws are not a menu from which picky eaters can decide what to order or not order.  It is hypercritical and beyond outrageous that the DOJ would attack Sanctuary policies regarding the Second Amendment while not only sanctioning immigration sanctuary policies, but actually emulating those extremely dangerous policies in clear violation of standing federal law and in direct opposition to the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.
©Michael Cutler. All rights reserved.

“Biden’s” Crushing Tax Proposal Means That 60% of Americans Will Pay More

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Here are the dire numbers:

Biden’s tax proposal means that 60% of Americans could pay more: Here’s how much

Under Biden’s tax proposals, a small burden would be borne by some middle-income families
By Megan Henney, FOX Business, June 21, 2021:
President Biden repeatedly pledged during the 2020 campaign to not raise taxes for Americans earning less than $400,000, but a new analysis suggests that nearly 60% of taxpayers would pay more under his proposals.
Findings from the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, show that while most of Biden’s proposed tax increases would be paid by those earning more than $800,000 annually, a small burden would also be borne by some middle-income families.
Three-quarters of households earning between $75,000 and $100,000 annually would face pay an additional $440 per year in taxes under Biden’s tax hikes, according to the data.
At the same time, about 69% of those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 would see their tax bill rise by $830 on average, while 83.7% of those earning between $200,000 and $500,000 would see an increase of $2,040 on average.
Still, that pales in comparison to the tax bite that the richest Americans would pay: The analysis shows that about 99.8% of those earning between $500,000 and $1 million would pay $8,810 more each year in taxes. Americans earning more than $1 million would have a tax bill that’s on average about $265,939 higher.
Biden has called for a slew of tax hikes, including raising the corporate tax rate to 28% from 21%, nearly doubling the capital gains tax rate to 39.6% from 21%, restoring the top individual income tax rate to 39.6% from 37% and taxing capital gains at death.
That new top rate – which reverses part of the Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act – would apply to single individuals with taxable income of more than $452,700 and married couples with joint taxable income of $509,300, according to the president’s $6 trillion budget proposal released in May.
Heads of households earning more than $481,000 and married individuals filing separate tax returns with income over $254,650 would also pay the higher rate.
As a result, while Biden is not directly raising taxes on those earning less than $400,000, some low- and middle-income Americans would see their tax bill rise indirectly due to the higher rates imposed on corporations.
So while workers making $75,000 annually would not pay a higher individual income tax rate under Biden’s proposal, they would see a share of their income shrink due to lower investment earnings and compensation – a byproduct of the higher corporate tax rate, according to the Tax Policy Center analysis.
“For those looking to see if Biden kept his promise to not raise taxes for those making $400,000 or less, the answer is: Mostly, but not entirely,” Howard Gleckman, a senior fellow at the think tank, wrote. “Including corporate tax increases, most households would pay more in 2022. About three-quarters of middle-income households would face a tax increase averaging about $300. But nearly all would be a result of those higher corporate taxes.”
That’s also not to mention the tax credits included in Biden’s tax and spending proposals: While most Americans would see their tax bill incrementally rise, many would also benefit from the expanded child tax credit and the earned income tax credit.
Factoring in the tax credits and the tax hikes, those earning between $100,000 and $200,000 a year would on average pay about $110 less to the government. Americans earning between $75,000 and $100,000 would pay about $240 less on average, while those earning between $50,000 and $75,000 would pay about $540 less.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.
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New Harvard Data [Accidentally] Reveal How Lockdowns Crushed the Working Class While Leaving Elites Unscathed

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Founding father and the second president of the United States John Adams once said that “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” What he meant was that objective, raw numbers don’t lie—and this remains true hundreds of years later.
We just got yet another example. A new data analysis from Harvard University, Brown University, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation crunches the numbers on how different levels of employment have been impacted during the pandemic to date. The findings reveal that government lockdown orders devastated workers at the bottom of the financial food chain but left the upper tier actually better off.
The analysis examined employment levels in January 2020, before the coronavirus spread widely and before lockdown orders and other restrictions on the economy were implemented. It compared them to employment figures from March 31, 2021.
The picture painted by this comparison is one of working class destruction.
Employment for lower-wage workers, defined as earning less than $27,000 annually, declined by a whopping 23.6 percent over the time period. Employment for middle-wage workers, defined as earning from $27,000 to $60,000, declined by a modest 4.5 percent. However, employment for high-wage workers, defined as earning more than $60,000, actually increased 2.4 percent over the measured time period despite the country’s economic turmoil.
The data are damning. They offer yet another reminder that government lockdowns hurt most those who could least afford it.
Some critics argue that the pandemic, not government lockdowns, are the true source of this economic duress. While there’s no doubt the virus itself played some role, government lockdowns were undoubtedly the single biggest factor. It’s pretty intuitive that ordering people not to patronize businesses and criminalizing peoples’ livelihoods would hurt the economy. This intuition is confirmed by data and studies showing as much. And don’t forget the fact that heavy lockdown states have consistently had much higher unemployment rates than states that took a more laissez-faire approach.
Others might insist that the mitigation of the spread of COVID-19 accomplished by lockdowns justifies this economic fallout. But this argument fails to account for the many peer-reviewed studies showing lockdown orders did not effectively slow the pandemic’s spread, or the painfully inconvenient fact that most COVID-19 spread occurred not in workplaces, restaurants, or gyms but at home. (Making “stay-at-home orders” seem like an astonishing mistake in hindsight.)
So, all lockdowns really seem to have accomplished is at best a mild delay in the pandemic’s trajectory in exchange for a host of lethal unintended consequences such as a mental health crisis and skyrocketing drug overdoses. And, as we now know, a highly regressive economic fallout for the working class.
Of course, Ivy League researchers almost certainly did not intend to expose the failings of big government pandemic policies when they set out to catalogue employment data. But, as Adams said, facts are stubborn things.
COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Marriage works. Why won’t politicians back it?

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Among parents in the top socio-economic groupings three quarters are married by the time their children are born.

Marriage Foundation, a UK charity, recently surveyed 2,000 young adults for Marriage Week 2021 and found that over 80 percent of 18-30s want to marry.
So why won’t our politicians back marriage?
I am the Research Director of Marriage Foundation. For at least two decades, I have been a strong advocate for marriage, not out of some sense of loyalty to outdated traditions, but because the psychology of marriage and the evidence about the effects of marriage go so strongly with the grain of human nature.
Study after study suggests that marriage works more than it doesn’t for most people, despite what many people assume about divorce rates.
The better-off know this.
Among parents in the top socio-economic groupings, for example, three quarters are married by the time their children are born. Among cabinet members in the UK, 85 percent (23 out of 27) are married for the first time. The Prime Minister is unusual in being the only person on his second or more marriage, in his case about to begin his third.
So why are our politicians and policy-makers such fans of marriage in their private lives and yet so reticent to back marriage in public policy?
If you doubt me, when did you hear a cabinet member give a speech on the importance of marriage? When did a cabinet member say that the £250 married couples allowance was not nearly incentive or reward enough? Or when did any of them comment, assuming they are even aware, that couples stand to lose up to £10,000 a year in universal credit if they marry their partner?
Maybe they won’t back marriage in public because they don’t think the public are interested.
Surveys suggest otherwise. In 2018, the Centre for Social Justice found that 93 percent of teenage young men said they expected to marry at some point. In 2008, a survey of young adults under 30 by Anastasia de Waal at Civitas found much the same.
But clearly there’s a need for an update. So we commissioned our own survey of 2,000 adults under 30, the Tik Tok generation.
What we found is that the vast majority of young adults still want to marry:

  • More than eight out of 10 young unmarried women and men want to get married. 86 percent of unmarried women and 80 percent of unmarried men under 30 in a relationship say they would “like to get married at some point” in their life, while 76 percent of women and 77 percent of men under 30 say they “expect to get married at some point”.
  • Nor does age dull the desire to marry appreciably, with slightly fewer women wanting to marry, falling from 89 percent of 18-24s to 83 percent of 25-30s, whereas slightly more men want to marry, rising from 78 percent of 18-24s to 81 percent of 25-30s.
  • Nor does social class, with 91 percent of women and 83 percent of men in the top tercile wanting to marry compared to 81 percent of women and 82 percent of men in the bottom tercile.

You can download our paper here. The verdict is clear.
Young adults overwhelmingly want to marry.
We invite government to affirm this strong desire to marry by backing the annual celebration of Marriage Week, and to motivate development of a fearless policy that promotes and distinguishes marriage in line with the evidence.
COLUMN BY

Harry Benson

Harry Benson is Research Director of the Marriage Foundation, a UK charity championing marriage for the good of society. More by Harry Benson
EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

President Trump to Visit Southern Border With Texas Gov. Greg Abbott

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Brilliant!

Trump to Visit Southern Border With Texas Gov. Greg Abbott

By US News, June 16, 2021
Former President Donald Trump will accompany Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on a trip to the southern border at the end of the month, he announced Tuesday evening in a statement that criticized the Biden administration’s handling of immigration.
The trip is the latest in a series of high-profile moves by Abbott putting immigration in the spotlight, and it will put Trump on familiar ground – both literally and figuratively. Trump’s pledge to build a border wall helped propel him to the presidency in 2016 and immigration remained one of Trump’s signature issues during his term.
Abbott, a Republican, has focused intensely on immigration in recent months and has put himself and the state of Texas squarely in opposition to the Biden administration on the issue. Most recently, Abbott ordered the state to yank the licenses of shelters that care for unaccompanied migrant children in the custody of the federal government. He also last week announced that Texas would build its own border wall after Biden halted construction on Trump’s structure – though Abbott has not provided any details on when or how this wall will be built.
Abbott is up for reelection in 2022 and nabbed Trump’s endorsement at the start of the month.
Trump, who has begun making appearances and holding rallies after months out of the public eye, said in a statement Tuesday that Abbott invited him on an official trip to the border on June 30 and he accepted. He railed against the Biden administration, repeating familiar conservative talking points on the issue and calling the border region an “unmitigated disaster zone.”
President Joe Biden has kept largely in place a restrictive Trump-era public health order that allows border agents to immediately expel migrants caught crossing the border – though Biden formally exempted unaccompanied children from the policy. Border encounters rose in 2020 under Trump and have climbed more sharply under Biden this year, though recidivism has skyrocketed because of the border order, making it difficult to estimate the actual number of migrants who have attempted to cross into the country.

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Companies Nationwide are Leading the Way to Ending Mask Mandates

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RELATED VIDEO: Fauci, China and the W.H.O…Trish Demands to Know: What is Everyone HIDING?!

At long last, some of the nation’s largest companies are easing mask mandates at their store locations. As COVID-19 cases continue to decline, more and more people feel ready to return to normal life – and these companies are leading the corporate charge to support the reopening of America.
Companies like Walmart (1.33), Costco (2.33), Publix (2.33), and Trader Joe’s (2.67) were some of the first to stop requiring customers to wear masks. Since then, others like Chipotle (2.33), Target (1.50), Starbucks (1.17), and CVS (3.72) followed suit, dropping the mask requirement for customers who have been vaccinated.
None of these companies have announced any plans to check their customers’ vaccination status. We’re grateful they won’t be acting like the COVID police, but are instead allowing people to use their best judgment. After all, getting back to normal means not having to constantly think about pandemic measures. After a year of restrictions, letting people make their own decisions is the right move.
Of course, all of the above companies must defer to state and local law. Twenty-two states have not yet lifted their mask requirements for businesses. And some companies, like Home Depot (3.47) and Gap (2.00), continue to require masks regardless of local regulations. As cases continue to drop nationwide, these states and companies should be encouraged to ease their mask mandates to help send the message that pre-pandemic life is on the way.
When it comes to employees at these companies, the picture is more complicated – but still encouraging. Target, for example, no longer requires fully vaccinated employees to wear masks, but CVS and Chipotle still require masks for their staff no matter what. Employers should end mask mandates for their employees as soon as reasonably possible so that their employees can also return to normal life.
Companies nationwide are making good progress on ending mask requirements. They should keep it up and be leaders in helping America return to normal.
EDITORS NOTE: This 2ndVote column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

DeSantis Signs Law Allowing Users to Sue Big Tech for Censorship

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CATHOLIC VOTE NEWS FEED // Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-FL, signed legislation Monday that will allow Florida residents to sue Big Tech platforms for unfair censorship.
The new legislation, set to take effect in July, will create new fines of up to $250,000 per day to be imposed on social media companies that “deplatform” political candidates.
It will also require social media companies to publish clear standards for users and to apply them equally — an effort to curb what DeSantis called Big Tech’s tendency to use “vague” rules which they enforce in order to “discriminate” against those who don’t conform to the progressive ideology that predominates in Silicon Valley.
With this bill, Florida showed itself to be “once again” a “trailblazer” on an issue that matters to millions of Americans, DeSantis said.
America’s founding fathers were “smart” to take measures to protect against “concentrations of power” which always threaten to curtail ordinary people’s freedoms, DeSantis said. Big Tech holds more monopolistic power today than the monopolies of the early 20th Century did, he added, and those monopolies “led to a lot of trust busting” legislation.
DeSantis said the bill is meant for “everyday Floridians.”
“Florida’s Big Tech Bill gives every Floridian the power to fight back against deplatforming and allows any person to sue Big Tech companies for up to $100,000 in damages,” DeSantis tweeted. “Today, we level the playing field between celebrity and citizen on social media.”
At the end of a Monday press briefing about the bill, a reporter asked DeSantis a pointed question which some saw as an attempted “gotcha” meant to frame the legislation as partisan politicking rather than a defense of ordinary Americans’ free speech.
“You’re a loyal supporter of former President Donald Trump,” the reporter said. “Of course Donald Trump is now a resident in Florida. And he was deplatformed. Is this bill for him?”
“The bill is for everyday Floridians, which is what we said,” DeSantis replied. “But I think that is another issue…. When you deplatform the President of the United States but you let Ayatollah Khomeini talk about killing Jews, that is wrong.”
Readers can watch that exchange below.


©Catholic Vote. All rights reserved.

Biden Administration Ramps Up IRS Enforcement — While encouraging massive immigration law violations.

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It is hardly a secret that I have been critical of the efforts by a succession of administrations to fairly but effectively enforce our nation’s immigration laws and secure our borders against the un-inspected entry of huge numbers of aliens into the United States.
My testimony at numerous congressional hearings conducted in the House and Senate provides incontrovertible  evidence of my grave concerns about multiple failures of a succession of administrations, from both political parties, to secure our nation’s borders, enforce our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States and, in general, imbue our immigration system with true integrity to protect America and Americans while honoring America’s proud tradition of being a nation built by immigrants.
I have been equally vocal in expressing my concerns about so-called “Sanctuary” policies of numerous cities and even some states that are in apparent violation of Title 8, U.S.C. § 1324.
Several years ago, when I was a guest on the Fox News program, Your World With Neil Cavuto, Neil asked me what it would take for me to be satisfied that our immigration laws were being enforced adequately.
Neil’s question caught me by surprise but I quickly reflected on his question and then said that I would be happy with immigration law enforcement efforts if aliens in the United States were as concerned about receiving correspondence from the DHS, as Americans are about receiving correspondence from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Neil quickly agreed, saying that my answer was profound and very fair and reasonable.
Therefore it was with a bit of bemusement and frustration that I noticed that on May 16, 2021 The Hill reported, Lawmakers bicker over how to go after tax cheats.
This report begins with the following statement:

Lawmakers are debating President Biden’s pitches to strengthen tax enforcement against high-income individuals and businesses as Congress considers different ways to pay for infrastructure legislation.
Democrats and Republicans both say they want to narrow the gap between taxes paid and the amount owed, suggesting that going after tax cheats could garner bipartisan support as a potential revenue stream.

The Hill article went on to report:

Biden has called for providing the IRS with an additional $80 billion over the next decade to ramp up enforcement, update technology and improve customer service at the agency. He has also proposed requiring banks to include new info on account activity in annual reports to the IRS so that the agency can better target its audits.
The administration estimated that its proposals would lead to a net gain of $700 billion over 10 years.
“A robust and sustained investment in the IRS is necessary to ensure it can do its job of administering a fair and effective tax system,” the Treasury Department said in a fact sheet about Biden’s proposal late last month.
Biden said that he wants to beef up tax enforcement as a way to offset the cost of his $4.1 trillion infrastructure and social spending proposals, with other funding coming from higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

So, the same Biden administration now seeks $80 billion to ramp up the enforcement of our nation’s tax laws against Americans continues to make an abject mockery of border security and the enforcement of our immigration laws.  Biden’s succession of Executive Orders that have hamstrung both the Border Patrol and ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) from securing our borders and enforcing our immigration laws, has induced and encouraged the largest influx of “undocumented” aliens in history!
Let me be clear, anyone who violates any of our nation’s laws, including our tax laws, should be found and prosecuted.  But the dangerous message that is currently being sent around the world when it is clear that the federal government is determined to enforce one set of laws while aiding and abetting the violations of other laws- particularly the laws that foreign nationals are most likely to encounter when they seek to enter the United States?
The Oaths of Office that are administered to members of our armed forces, to our law enforcement officers and our elected politicians call for all to defend the Constitution in its entirety and enforce all of our laws, not just the provision of the Constitution we like or the laws we agree with.
Nevertheless, far too many politicians, on all levels of government, have come to treat our Constitution and our laws like items on a restaurant’s menu, arbitrarily and capriciously deciding which laws should be enforced and which laws they will blatantly ignore and perhaps. even obstruct, not unlike the way that patrons of a restaurant decide which items on the menu they want to order and which items they will not order, ordering the salad while rejecting the soup of the day.
Our immigration laws are the prime example of laws that are being rejected by increasing numbers of cities and states around the United States and, most disturbingly, by the Biden administration, in apparent violation of a section of law I noted previously, Title 8, U.S.C. § 1324 which begins with the following paragraph:

Title 8, U.S.C. § 1324(a) defines several distinct offenses related to aliens. Subsection 1324(a)(1)(i)-(v) prohibits alien smuggling, domestic transportation of unauthorized aliens, concealing or harboring unauthorized aliens, encouraging or inducing unauthorized aliens to enter the United States, and engaging in a conspiracy or aiding and abetting any of the preceding acts. Subsection 1324(a)(2) prohibits bringing or attempting to bring unauthorized aliens to the United States in any manner whatsoever, even at a designated port of entry. Subsection 1324(a)(3).

Additionally it would appear that these actions also violate Article IV Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States which states:

“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.”

My concerns have only increased and, indeed increased exponentially, in the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 and following a succession of other terror attacks by other international terrorists.
My concerns about the nexus between immigration failures and national security and the threat of terror attacks launched by radical Islamic terror organizations have increased drastically since Biden selected Alejandro Mayorkas (pictured above) to head up the DHS, as I noted in my article, Biden’s DHS: Department of Homeland Surrender.  As I noted in excerpt from my earlier article about Mr. Mayorkas:

On March 24, 2015 ABC News reported, “Top Homeland Official Alejandro Mayorkas Accused of Political Favoritism Alejandro Mayorkas oversaw controversial $500,000 visa program.”
The above-noted report was preceded by two ABC News reports that were published on February 3, 2015 which illustrate a clear nexus between these visas and national security:
“Whistleblowers: US Gave Visas to Suspected Forgers, Fraudsters, Criminals Internal documents show feds ignored warnings from FBI.”  This report began with this excerpt:
Officials overseeing a federal program that offers an immigration short-cut to wealthy foreign investors have ignored pointed warnings from federal agents and approved visas for some immigrants suspected of having committed fraud, money laundering, and even one applicant with alleged ties to a child porn website, an ABC News investigation has found. The shortcomings prompted concerns within the Department of Homeland Security that the boutique immigration program would be exploited by terrorists, according to internal documents obtained by ABC News.
“It is shocking,” said Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican. “Particularly when you have F.B.I. and other law enforcement agencies that are saying national security could be compromised or is being compromised — that’s enough for us to be concerned.”

“Feds Investigating Iran Ties to Firm Involved in US Visa Program Documents: Iranian operatives may be abusing program to “infiltrate” U.S.”  This report began with these excerpt:

Federal agents in Los Angeles are investigating an L.A. shipping firm and its Iranian-born owner who for years have participated in and promoted an obscure U.S. immigration program — allowing the company to recruit wealthy foreign investors to receive visas and potentially Green Cards, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
The company’s name surfaced in a confidential Department of Homeland Security government document, which raised “concerns that this particular visa program may be abused by Iranian operatives to infiltrate the United States.”
Whistleblowers inside the federal agency that oversees the immigration program told ABC News they have been deeply frustrated by an inability to de-certify the company, even after they became aware of the investigation and saw the company’s name surface in an alarming internal Department Homeland Security memo. The memo, shared with ABC News, outlines concerns that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have attempted to exploit the visa program “to infiltrate the United States.”

It would appear that cheating on immigration applications by committing immigration fraud, a major vulnerability that was identified by the 9/11 Commission as the key method of entry and embedding for international terrorists, is not an issue for Mayorkas, while tax cheats, on the other hand, had better watch out!
The fact that Mayorkas is the head of Biden’s DHS reminds me of an apt Yiddish saying that when translated states, “When the fish goes bad, it smells from the head”
©Michael Cutler. All rights reserved.

How They are Sneaking Health Passports in Through Back Doors

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Our friend Leo Hohmann, who has been investigating and reporting steadily for months about the connection between the Chinese virus, The Shot, and more globalist control of society, tells us to fight back.
If you love this country and the freedom and liberty that has been our birthright, and even if you have been ‘vaccinated,’ do not take the easy way out and ever give your vaccination status as a price of entry to anyone for any reason. Your health decision choices are still yours and yours alone.
Coincidentally, as I read Hohmann’s latest, Gateway Pundit tells us that the state of Oregon is already dropping the hammer.

IT BEGINS: Fully Vaccinated People in Oregon Must Show Proof of Vaccination Status in Order to Enter Businesses Without a Mask

Oregon has gone from a liberal hell hole to 1930s Germany overnight.
The Oregon Health Authority is now requiring businesses and religious institutions to enforce mask mandates by forcing people to show proof of vaccination.

Don’t patronize any business, or even your church, if demands are made for this outrageous price of entry.
Here is Hohmann:

It’s D-Day in the battle against globalized digital health passports that will mark you for life

The worst nightmare for patriots and freedom lovers throughout the world may be about to come true.
The push is on to sneak health passports into America and other Western democracies through back-door channels.
Big corporations and universities are testing the waters to find out how many Americans will accept this latest intrusion as an unavoidable part of life in the “new normal.”
They have baited the trap, promising this will be your ticket to reclaiming your former freedoms. All you have to do is submit to this little app on your phone that informs businesses whether you’ve been vaxxed or not. How many will walk into that trap, surrendering their health privacy and eventually all of their personally identifiable information, remains to be seen.
We have a very short window in which to stand and reject this attempt by big business, in collusion with big government, to impose the most invasive, intrusive and coercive measures ever seen on people of the free world since the conclusion of World War II and the Nuremburg trials.
[….]
Biden threatened unvaccinated Americans in a speech this week, saying they “will pay the price.”
Biden says the “rule is simple.” Get the shot, or continue to wear the mask.
News flash: This is America. We don’t get up in the morning and check in with you, Mr. Biden, or any other government official, to get our “rules” for the day. That’s just not the way a constitutional republic works.
But if we accept this new normal and submit to health passports, then we have in essence given up on America and its time-honored, bedrock principle that has made this country special, the idea that individual freedom takes precedence over collectivism, which always leads to tyranny. We have taken that grand idea and thrown it in a pile of excrement. We have spit on the Constitution and said we no longer want it to serve as the highest law in the land.
We have conceded to globalist tyranny coming down from the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency funded by Bill Gates and dominated by the Chinese Communist Party.

Much more here.
By the way, on immigration issues how often have we been derided for furthering division by promoting the concept of ‘otherness’ which the Leftists say is bad, very bad, and yet here they are creating further division in America using The Shot to create otherness.
EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: Is the Biden Administration Coming After Your Air Conditioner?

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GUESTS AND TOPICS:

MICHAEL BUSLER, PH.D.
Michael Busler, Ph.D. is a public policy analyst and a Professor of Finance at Stockton University where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in Finance and Economics. He has written Op-ed columns in major newspapers for more than 35 years. His op-ed columns appear in Townhall, Newsmax. You can find Michael at, “Funding Democracy, the economics of freedom” on Facebook.
TOPIC: Inflation in April skyrockets. And it will get worse!
BEN LIEBERMAN
Ben Lieberman is a senior fellow who specializes in environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Lieberman has returned to CEI after serving seven years as a senior counsel on the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce. As a congressional staffer, he worked on a number of issues related to fuels and vehicles, including the Renewable Fuel Standard and Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Lieberman has published hundreds of op-eds and articles, including in the New York Post, Chicago Sun-Times, The Washington Post, Weekly Standard, and National Review. He has appeared on a number of radio and television programs on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg, and CNBC.
TOPIC: Is the Biden Administration Coming After Your Air Conditioner?
©Conservative Commandoes Radio. All rights reserved.

DHS Created ‘Operation Sentinel’ To Combat Human Trafficking but it should be renamed “Operation Back Rub.”

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On April 27, 2021 the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a press release, DHS Announces Operation to Target Criminal Smuggling Organizations, that heralded the creation of what was described as a new multi-agency anti-smuggling effort, “Operation Sentinel.”
Here is how the press release began:

WASHINGTON — Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas today announced a new counter-network targeting operation focused on transnational criminal organizations affiliated with the smuggling of migrants.
“Transnational criminal organizations put profit over human life, with devastating consequences,” said Secretary Mayorkas.  “With the help of our federal and foreign partners, we aim to cut off access to that profit by denying these criminals the ability to engage in travel, trade, and finance in the United States. We intend to disrupt every facet of the logistical network that these organizations use to succeed.”

The new anti-smuggling effort, called Operation Sentinel, is a collaborative effort with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the U.S. Department of State, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Drug Enforcement Administration of the U.S. Department of Justice.
It is hard to imagine that the Biden administration is sincere about its desire to combat human trafficking and alien smuggling, because, as I noted in my recent article, “Biden Amps Up The Immigration Delivery System,” The refusal to declare a border crisis is more than a matter of semantics.
Could it be that the administration created the illusory Operation Sentinel to respond to the concerns of the American public but not to actually combat the smugglers who are part of the immigration delivery system?
On April 19, 2021, roughly one week before the DHS issued the press release about the creation of Operation Sentinel, The Hill published an opinion piece, “Biden’s border polls lower than bottom of Rio Grande,” that began with the following:

Despite the best efforts of the Biden administration to dismiss criticism or shift blame to the previous president, the American people are increasingly dissatisfied with Biden’s border fiasco.
A recent Heritage Action poll in sixteen “battleground districts” finds that the White House’s policies on the border and immigration are underwater. The most stunning part of these results is the spreading dissatisfaction across region and party. Everyday Americans are looking through the spin and seeing an administration that is ideologically driven, incapable of effectively dealing with a crisis, and working against the interests of everyday Americans.

When parents are confronted by screaming children, especially in the middle of the night, they generally seek to calm the child so that he/she will go back to sleep and so that they themselves, can go back to sleep. Frequently these harried parents gently rub the upset child’s back, perhaps offer them some slightly warm milk and talk to them in a soft and soothing tone of voice to calm and reassure the agitated child that everything is really okay.
Therefore, perhaps, “Operation Sentinel” should be more appropriately be named “Operation Back Rub.”
Clearly the White House understands that millions of Americans are extremely unhappy with the crisis on the U.S. Mexican border, that these irate Americans needed to be soothed, and their understandable concerns assuaged — hence “Operation Sentinel” was created to placate agitated Americans.
Simply declaring the creation of an operation can be utterly meaningless if adequate resources are not committed to the effort and there is a lack of meaningful oversight.
To determine just how sincere the administration is about addressing human smuggling, we need to consider a number of questions to peel back the curtain on Operation Sentinel and find out if the administration is going to commit meaningful resources to this operation.
Here are a few such questions:

  1. How long will this operation run?
  2. How many agents from each member agency are to be assigned to this operation? Are they to be exclusively dedicated to Operation Sentinel or will they carry collateral assignments?
  3. Are full-time prosecutors also being assigned to this operation? If so, how many?
  4. How many analysts and other support personal will be assigned to Operation Sentinel?
  5. How much money is going to be dedicated for various operational expenses associated with this operation?
  6. How will oversight be conducted and what will the critical elements of the agents a’ job description and evaluations of those assigned to this operation include? (In other words, what constitutes “success”?)

These questions that address the resources that will be brought to bear in this new operation are important and are the questions that true journalists must ask, but there is another overriding question that causes me to believe that in reality, Operation Sentinel is nothing more than a public relations ploy that is not only doomed to fail, but was designed, from the outset, to fail.
But before we get to that “show stopper” we need to understand that for Biden and his globalist supporters, the immigration system has become a delivery system that delivers an unlimited supply of cheap and exploitable labor, an unlimited supply of foreign tourists, an unlimited supply of foreign students and, to the delight of immigration lawyers of both the Democrat and Republican Parties, an unlimited supply of clients for immigration law firms.
The immigration delivery system also delivers a huge supply of potential union members, and tenants who will force the price of housing through the roof — increasing the wealth for those in the real estate and banking industries.
That is good news for those who are feeding at the very lucrative immigration trough, literally and figuratively “making out like bandits; not, however, good news for the growing population of the homeless Americans resulting from housing prices soaring through the stratosphere while Americans face job loss and wage suppression.
Consider that the policies of the Biden administration that encourage and embolden aspiring illegal aliens from all over the world, to head for the United States, are still in place even after DHS announced the creation of a multi-agency task force to supposedly combat human trafficking.
Such a task force is certainly a good idea, but to be successful, the administration must begin by turning off the powerful magnets that draw these aliens from around the world to the United States in the first place.
Sanctuary polices of cities and states further undermine and counter any efforts to combat these smuggling operations.
While the DHS press release claims: “We intend to disrupt every facet of the logistical network that these organizations use to succeed,” that statement ignores the most critical facet: the smuggled aliens and the incentives for them to come to the United States by whatever means they choose, knowing that ICE has been essentially ordered to “stand down” and the Biden administration has terminated all of the successful measures implemented by the Trump administration to gain control over our nation’s borders.
Now here is the “Show Stopper”: How can the Biden administration be serious about dismantling alien smuggling operation while ignoring the smuggled aliens themselves, who are at the heart of these criminal operations?
This would be the equivalent of creating an operation that targets narcotics trafficking organizations but then seizes no illegal drugs found during the course of the investigation, instead actually allowing the drugs to be sold on street corners.
Biden’s immigration policies severely restrict ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents from arresting illegal aliens unless the aliens in question are aggravated felons.
Speaking from my own personal experience as a former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) agent, generally immigration agents build cases against human trafficking organizations by arresting illegal aliens and then questioning them about the way that they managed to enter the United States.
Eventually enough aliens are arrested who are willing to cooperate with the ongoing investigation to identify the smugglers and provide addresses of safe houses and other such facts that lead to a successful investigation and subsequent prosecution.
Under Biden’s restrictions, however, ICE agents today are not able to arrest illegal aliens who may have the information that is required to conduct successful investigations into alien smuggling and human trafficking
In the past ICE agents encouraged such illegal aliens to cooperate with their investigations and become cooperating witnesses and informants by offering these aliens the opportunity to remain in the United States for a limited period of time with permission to lawfully work. When their cooperation was of a sufficient importance, aliens could be rewarded with visas that would enable them to become permanent residents of the United States and thus have their immediate family members join them in the U.S. as lawful immigrants.
However, by executive order, the Biden administration has implemented a de facto amnesty which further hobbles any efforts to identify and dismantle alien smuggling operations. As a result, under Biden’s policies, illegal aliens have no incentive to cooperate with law enforcement authorities or abide by any of our laws.
It has been said that we only have one chance to make a first impression. For millions of people around the world the first impression of the United States is how we enforce or fail to enforce the first American laws they are likely to encounter — our immigration laws.
Biden’s message is clear: violations of these vital laws, that are supposed to protect national security, public health, public safety and the jobs and wages of Americans, will not only be tolerated, but richly rewarded.
This is why, in my view, DHS’ “Operation Sentinel” should be renamed “Operation Back Rub.” Perhaps, Biden could set up kiosks around the country to serve up some slightly warm milk for concerned Americans, to go with the press release that serves as the predication for my commentary today

©Michael Cutler

An Open Letter on Critical Race Theory to Florida Gov. DeSantis and Comm’r of Education Corcoran

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by Keith Flaugh and Pastor Rick Stevens
Thank you, Governor DeSantis and Commissioner Corcoran, for your bold and courageous leadership. Your determination to protect Florida’s children from harmful ideologies is commendable and inspiring!
Governor, we all breathed a sigh of relief when you announced that the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Florida and similar theories are “wacko” and unacceptable in Florida. You have been very clear that embracing a traditional American education focused on reading, writing, math, and civics is the only acceptable way forward. What a seemingly wonderful thing that Florida students would once again be getting a great education. However, with FL DOE-approved materials now being adopted and purchased in addition to the US DOE order to provide CRT grants directly to Florida School Districts, how wrong we were! We all must remember that Communists NEVER stop.
Governor DeSantis, on behalf of over 110,000 active Florida Citizens Alliance supporters and many of our over 100 partner groups, we are urging you to issue a joint Executive Order immediately that:
1) Stops the adoption of ELA textbooks until the FL DOE can be 100% confident that all the textbooks and teacher editions are completely free of Critical Race Theory and its many tentacles (The solution is original sourced materials and classical literature already in the B.E.S.T. ELA Standards.)
2) Strictly prohibits any school district in Florida from accepting a direct federal grant related to Critical Race Theory or its many tentacles.
Use your Executive power as Florida’s Governor and the 10th Amendment to just say NO!
If NOT, Critical Race Theory will be a huge embarrassment to you and all of Florida; and it will be infused into our classrooms for the next 4-6 years!
To be clear on what Critical Race theory is, here are recent quotes from Hillsdale’s Imprimis:
“Critical race theory is fast becoming America’s new institutional orthodoxy… built on the intellectual framework of identity-based Marxism. There are a series of euphemisms deployed by its supporters to describe critical race theory, including “equity,” “social justice,” “diversity and inclusion,” and “culturally responsive teaching.” Critical race theorists, masters of language construction, realize that “neo-Marxism” would be a hard sell. Equity, on the other hand, sounds non-threatening and is easily confused with the American principle of equality…. It has been injected into government agencies, public school systems, teacher training programs, and corporate human resources departments in the form of diversity training programs, human resources modules, public policy frameworks, and school curricula.” [link to complete Hillsdale assessment]
As we write this letter, Florida School Districts are adopting ELA Textbooks. Florida Citizens Alliance supporters and our extended team are just beginning to assess ELA adoption processes taking place in all Florida counties. What we are finding is unacceptable. It is another effort by the large publishers to promote their progressive agenda. These ELA materials continue to reflect the principles of Common Core (i.e., Social Emotional Learning, Equity, Social Justice, Diversity, and Inclusion and worse), and these materials will be in our schools for the next 4-6 years! They completely undermine the great work done by the FL DOE to create the B.E.S.T ELA and Math Standards. However, standards without supporting content are worthless.
An honest, academic, traditional American education is the most important gift we can give our children. A moratorium must be immediately declared to stop all 67 counties from purchasing materials that embrace Critical Race Theory, 1619 Project, and BLM Marxist materials. We should be embracing original sources and truly classical content. These are public domain and available at $.10 on the dollar for mere printing. In addition, it must be clear that an activist teacher bringing supplemental materials into the classroom that undermine our principle Judeo-Christian and original Constitutional values will NOT be tolerated.
Under a different name with new adjectives and nouns, CRT is concealed, shrouded, veiled, or disguised in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) ELA curriculum.  With the use of subtle messages and euphemisms, teachers are guided to teach Social Emotional Learning (SEL), Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, etc. Feelings are more important than facts.
One of the major contributors to the Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt (HMH) texts is Dr. Tyronne C. Howard. He is an “expert” in CRT from the University of California. Why is Florida approving textbooks from California or these global publishing companies that are still wedded to Common Core?
Examples:

  • See SRC Attachment 1 taken from the Kindergarten curricula from HMH approved by the FL DOE and found in Santa Rosa County ELA teachers editions of materials being adopted. By the time these children graduate, they will not be able to read, but they will be great activists who hate their families, GOD, and America.  What a horrible thing to do to a child.
  • HMH also uses the theories of their Happiness expert Podcast: The Future of Happiness and Education Feat. Tal Ben-Shahar
  • See IRC Attachment 2 found in Indian River County from materials being adopted. We must never forget the Globalists are communists with a singular objective to control the masses. The less educated, the easier to control.
  • The End of Basic Education: Biden Issues Universal Public School Critical Race Theory Order

FLCA has asked our supporters to check in their district to see if these textbooks and programs are part of their curriculum being adopted. The CRT case is building. Much more to come, but school districts are buying now, and once the $$ are spent, this cannot be undone.
“Leaders of Florida Citizens Alliance just finished a review of the standards to be adopted in Civics, Holocaust, and Character.  As a former teacher and Dean, I can tell you standards are meaningless. The curriculum and text are the only things that matter.  What are the students reading?  What is the teacher saying?  Why are character standards void of mention of family, God, and morality?
I have spoken with Floridians who are reviewing textbooks in their county. In some districts, the School Board is refusing to provide access to student and teacher editions. I was sent the summer curricula and reading list for Palm Beach County from a teacher. This is under a taxpayer grant system given to summer camps.  All is CRT.  See PBC attachment 3
And here are recent specifics in Broward County See BC Attachment 4:
Repeatedly, I have been told from those who have responded so far, all they get from their School Board is, “It’s on the FL DOE approved list.”  Yes, it is on the approved list.  So, I asked, ‘”How is it possible that these publishers continue to be approved in spite of the Governor’s statement condemning CRT?? Who makes these decisions? Since CRT and related theories are a national progressive agenda and national publishers were complicit in Common Core, it is more than certain that the other approved publishers have similar unacceptable content.”   Karen Schoen and fully supported by FLCA.
We will continue to find and expose multiple examples, but the most critical question to ask is, “what can be done NOW to stop this child abuse our education system is forcing on our 2.8 million public school children?”
Governor DeSantis and Commissioner Corcoran, we do not believe that you are aware of the devastating progressive content in these ELA materials that the 67 Counties are adopting.
Governor DeSantis, you are an amazing champion for liberty and an education system based on Judeo- Christian and original Constitutional values. School districts are spending real tax dollars as we speak, and these materials will be in Florida Classrooms for 4-6 years. It is imperative you both stop this immediately! Otherwise, this will be a debacle equal to or greater than the magnitude of the Common Core deception.
Please refer to the embedded links and details we have identified so far. We offer this all in the constructive and best interest of our students and parents.
Respectfully,
Keith Flaugh and Pastor Rick Stevens
Managing Directors Florida Citizens Alliance
Note: Here is the link to the “2020-2021 K-12 English Language Arts Instructional Materials Adoption
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Why Indiana’s ‘Red Flag’ Law Failed to Stop the FedEx Shooting

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The failure of Indiana’s gun law to prevent the FedEx shooting reveals the inherent problems with red flag laws.

Last week 19-year-old Brandon Hole did the unthinkable. He stormed into an Indianapolis FedEx facility with a Ruger AR-556 semi-automatic rifle and killed eight people.
He then took his own life.
CNN recently pointed out that Indiana is one of several US states that have so-called “red flag” laws—also known as Extreme Risk Protection Orders—that allow courts to seize firearms from individuals suspected of being a danger to themselves or others. Furthermore, it was revealed that Hole, who was interviewed by the FBI last year, was allowed to purchase a firearm months after being served with an Extreme Risk Protection Order.
“[Hole’s] mother told law enforcement in March 2020 that her son told her he would attempt ‘suicide by cop,’” CNN reported. “At the time, officials took a shotgun found at his home into custody, Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears said Monday. And yet, later that year, Hole was able to legally purchase assault rifles.”
The revelation cast a shadow over Indiana’s red flag law, a policy that lawmakers have argued is essential to stopping mass shootings.

The failure of Indiana’s gun law to prevent the FedEx shooting “shows the limits” of the state’s red flag, Marion County prosecutor Ryan Mears told CNN.
In the Hoosier State, people who have their firearms seized are not automatically designated as violent or mentally unstable. Instead, the state has two weeks to file a petition requesting the court to designate the offender mentally unsound or violent. In Hole’s case, the firearm had been secured and the family made no effort to reclaim the weapon, so prosecutors determined they had “achieved” the law’s objective.
The seizure of the weapon did not stop the crime, however. And the failure highlights two reasons I’ve argued Americans should be wary of red flag laws. For starters, there is little evidence to support the claim that red flag laws reduce gun violence.
“The evidence,” The New York Times reported in 2019, “for whether extreme risk protection orders work to prevent gun violence is inconclusive, according to a study by the RAND Corporation on the effectiveness of gun safety measures.”
There’s a reason for this. As Indiana’s law shows, red flags are complicated. In many cases, the laws appear to be more about providing political window dressing than reducing gun crime.
For example, California’s red flag went effectively unused for years after its passage in 2016, The Washington Post reported. Washington, D.C.’s law went entirely unused, the Post said. Meanwhile, states such as Maryland and Florida have seized hundreds of firearms—yet it’s unclear if these confiscations actually stopped a shooting.
This leads to my second point. Red flag laws are essentially a form of “pre-crime,” a theme explored in Philip K. Dick’s sci-fi novella The Minority Report (which Steven Spielberg adapted into a pretty great movie in 2002).
In the book, police exploit precognitive powers to stop crimes before they happen. In the real world, of course, authorities do not have the power of precogs to help them fight crime, yet that has not stopped them from trying—even though Dick’s story explores the serious ethical problems of using the law against people who have not committed any crime (but might!).

Some argue that Indiana’s red flag failure isn’t evidence that red flag laws don’t work, it’s simply evidence that this particular law didn’t have enough teeth.
“In Indiana, they have the red flag law … but they don’t have the mechanism to make it difficult to get out and get more guns,” Michael Lawlor, a professor at the University of New Haven, told CNN.
Lawlor, who in 1999 helped write Connecticut’s red flag law—the first in the United States—as a member of the state legislature, said it should have been a “no-brainer” in Connecticut to prevent a person like Hole from purchasing a firearm.
In other words, we simply need a more effective bureaucracy. This is, of course, a perennial rejoinder from those who believe the state would run smoothly if only the proper managers were executing the plan. But as the economist Ludwig von Mises has observed, this is a fantasy.
“It is a widespread illusion that the effi­ciency of government bureaus could be improved by management engineers and their methods of scientific management,” Mises noted in Bureaucracy. “What they call deficiencies and faults of the management of administrative agencies are necessary properties.”
In other words, per Mises, these types of inefficiencies and dysfunction are inherent in bureaucracies, which lack the incentive structure that makes markets so efficient.
“A bureau is not a profit-seeking enterprise; it cannot make use of any economic calculation, Mises wrote. “It is out of the question to improve its management by reshaping it ac­cording to the pattern of private business.”

Mises’s point is actually driven home by CNN. The network points out there have been numerous instances of red flag laws failing in precisely the manner seen in Indiana, including in November 2018, when a gunman killed 12 people and injured more than a dozen more at a bar in California not long after he was visited by law enforcement authorities for erratic behavior. Authorities could have easily executed a red flag law, but they did not.
Still, for the sake of argument, let’s say the system does work and a would-be shooter is denied a firearm purchase. What is to prevent that person from simply obtaining a firearm on the black market?
The reality is that black markets do exist. And an abundance of research shows that the vast majority of the people committing gun crimes are not lawful gun owners. One University of Pittsburgh study, for example, found that lawful gun owners accounted for just 18 percent of gun violence.
“The top-line finding of the study — that the overwhelming majority of gun crimes aren’t committed by lawful gun owners — reinforces a common refrain among gun rights advocacy groups,” The Washington Post said of the study. “They argue that since criminals don’t follow laws, new regulations on gun ownership would only serve to burden lawful owners while doing little to combat crime.”
It’s difficult to fathom that a person determined enough to kill strangers in cold blood will be deterred after being denied a firearm purchase at the local gun store.
The bottom line is that Brandon Hole was a deeply disturbed person whose bizarre interests and behavior reportedly included an obsession with “Bronies,’ a subculture of the internet for male fans of My Little Pony.
His life ended tragically and claimed the lives of others in an even more tragic fashion. But to think that his crime could have been prevented if only the bureaucratic system had worked more efficiently defies reason and empirical evidence.
Moreover, if we convince ourselves that bureaucracy can truly prevent crimes before they happen if we only push a little harder against civil liberties, we don’t just delude ourselves.
We may end up creating a world that’s even more terrifying than Philip Dick’s dystopian vision.
COLUMN BY

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden Infrastructure Plan Would Hurt Economy in 3 Ways over Long Run, Ivy League Analysis Finds

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The president’s rhetoric is optimistic—but these new long-term projections aren’t. 

President Biden is pitching his $2.7 trillion+ “infrastructure” plan, chock full of items unrelated to traditional transportation infrastructure, as key to restoring the economy and putting Americans back to work. It’s right in the name: the “American Jobs Plan.”
“This is the moment to reimagine and rebuild a new economy,” Biden said in introducing his plan. “The American Jobs Plan is an investment in America that will create millions of good jobs, rebuild our country’s infrastructure, and position the United States to out-compete China.”


The president’s rhetoric is quite optimistic—but his plan’s long-term prospects are not. A new Ivy League analysis concludes that Biden’s plan would actually shrink the economy in the long run.

Analysts at the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania weighed the potential benefits the proposed spending would have against the costs incurred by higher government debt and higher business tax rates. They find that while sending piles of cash flying out the door might seem stimulative at first, the long-term effects would all be net negative.
By 2031, Wharton projects that the size of the economy’s total output will have shrunk by 0.9 percent as a result of the “jobs plan.” The analysts also predict a 3 percent decrease in the “capital stock,” a measure of the nation’s productive resources such as machinery, buildings, etc.
Why will the massive government spending reduce the capital stock? Because the proposal is financed by raising corporate taxes, which directly reduces private sector investment, and because it involves incurring massive amounts of government debt, which “crowds out” private sector investment.

Here’s where things get ugly for workers under this “jobs plan.”
Reduced capital, aka productive tools, means lower worker productivity. Investments in improved machinery, for example, allow assembly-line workers to produce more in output per hour worked. And productivity is inextricably linked to worker wages.
“More investment of capital means: to give to the laborer more effi­cient tools,” Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises lucidly explained. “With the aid of better tools and machines, the quantity of the products increases and their quality improves. As the employer consequently will be in a position to obtain from the consumers more for what the em­ployee has produced in one hour of work, he is able—and, by the competition of other employers, forced—to pay a higher price for the man’s work.”
Of course, if capital—and hence productivity—is decreased, the opposite effect occurs and workers earn less over time. So, it’s not surprising that Wharton concluded the massive multi-trillion “jobs plan” will, by 2031, actually lead to a 0.7 percent decrease in average hourly wages. The analysts also note that there will be almost no increase in employment, as measured by total hours worked.

Similar negative effects play out over an even longer time frame, Wharton projects, with net negative results from the “jobs plan” in 2040 and 2050.

Image Credit: Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania 

President Biden’s sweeping “infrastructure” proposal is just the latest example in a long history of ambitious political rhetoric masking mediocre results. Politicians often point to the proposed benefits of their policies, often tangible and easy to see, and make their case for big government spending based on the benefits alone.
But while rhetoric can be rosy, real-life involves trade-offs; the weighing of benefits and costs. And when we do this honestly for Biden’s infrastructure proposal, the results are grim indeed.
COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Policy Correspondent at the Foundation for Economic Education.
RELATED ARTICLE: Biden’s $2 Trillion Infrastructure Plan Is Loaded With Corporate Welfare
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Biden’s handlers say visa applicants denied under Trump’s ‘Muslim Ban’ can now reapply

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What could possibly go wrong? Here’s a hint: Somali Muslim migrant Mohammad Barry in February 2016 stabbed multiple patrons at a restaurant owned by an Israeli Arab Christian; Ahmad Khan Rahami, an Afghan Muslim migrant, in September 2016 set off bombs in New York City and New Jersey; Arcan Cetin, a Turkish Muslim migrant, in September 2016 murdered five people in a mall in Burlington, Washington; Dahir Adan, another Somali Muslim migrant, in October 2016 stabbed mall shoppers in St. Cloud while screaming “Allahu akbar”; and Abdul Razak Artan, yet another Somali Muslim migrant, in November 2016 injured nine people with car and knife attacks at Ohio State University.
Seventy-two jihad terrorists had entered the U.S. from the countries listed in Trump’s initial immigration ban before it was instituted. But once the travel bans came into effect, suddenly we didn’t see as much of this as we had before. Yes, this was no coincidence.
There are warning signs from Europe as well. All of the jihadis who murdered 130 people in Paris in November 2015 had just entered Europe as refugees. Numerous other Muslim migrants since then have committed “lone wolf” jihad attacks on the streets of several European countries.
But to consider such matters is now officially “racist” and “Islamophobic.” The problem with virtue-signaling by our moral superiors in Washington, however, is that they never have to deal with the consequences of their actions; ordinary Americans do.
“U.S. says visa applicants denied due to Trump ‘Muslim ban’ can reapply,” Reuters, March 8, 2021:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Most U.S. visa applicants who were denied because of former President Donald Trump’s travel ban on 13 mostly Muslim-majority and African countries can seek new decisions or submit new applications, the State Department said on Monday.
President Joe Biden overturned Trump’s so-called Muslim ban on Jan. 20, his first day in office, calling it “a stain on our national conscience” in his proclamation.
State Department spokesman Ned Price said applicants who were refused visas prior to Jan. 20, 2020, must submit new applications and pay a new application fee. Those who were denied on or after Jan. 20, 2020, may seek reconsideration without re-submitting their applications and do not have to pay additional fees, Price said….
Since December 2017, after a revised version of the original travel ban was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, some 40,000 people have been barred from entering the United States under the ban, according to State Department data.
During the Trump administration some countries were added and others dropped from the list. At the end of Trump’s presidency it comprised Myanmar, Eritrea, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Libya, Nigeria, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Venezuela and Yemen.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

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