NEVADA: Washoe County, Clark County are Counting DUPLICATE Voters, Contested Ballots, Unregistered Voters

/in , , , , /by


From Systems IT and Data Integrity specialist did this study after reading of Nevada’s corrupted numbers.
“All sources are listed all data should be available at the links.”

Bottom line, up front they are counting duplicated ballots; at least in Washoe County, NV.
Their own data says they are to those that are looking at it. Attached is the list of duplicate votes that were counted as of the 9 November 2020. There is no other way to explain it; there are 26 daily files listed where you can look back to the numbers reported if they are still available to the dates and these duplicate votes are still recorded.”

I am trying to get this data to someone that might be able to do something.  My background I am an auditor by profession.  Most of my audit experience revolves around systems and data integrity dealing with large scale data analysis. E.g. millions of records.
What I am going to say I can prove and I can prove with public files that were and hopefully still are available to anyone.  (I have a set of these files that are unmodified from download as well)
Sources:
https:// www. washoecounty.us/voters/files/20_general_ab_ev_files/[File_Name_Goes_Here]
**Note: [File_Name_Goes_Here] = one of the file names mentioned below
File Types and Names:
General Election Voter registration Files:
ab_ev_file_MM_DD_YY.xls
These are daily general election voter registration and ballot files for that date.
The files will show the date and time they were created when downloaded and will also show who they were last saved by for example Deanna Spikula.  Not sure who it is but it is the name of the person that saved the files.
ab_ev_file_10_12_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_14_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_15_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_16_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_17_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_18_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_19_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_20_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_21_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_22_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_23_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_24_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_25_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_26_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_27_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_28_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_29_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_29_20.update.xlsx
ab_ev_file_10_30_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_11_2_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_11_5_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_11_6_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_11_7_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_11_8_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_11_9_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_11_10_20.xlsx
ab_ev_file_11_11_20.xlsx
Inactive Voter Files:
These are the lists of inactive voters by date.
inactive_voters_9_17_20.xlsx
inactive_voters_9_19_20.xlsx
inactive_voters_9_24_20.xlsx
inactive_voters_10_1_20.xlsx
inactive_voters_10_22_20.xlsx
Primary Election Voter File:  This is the registered voters for the primary election dated 21 May 2020.
av_multi_file_5_21_20.xlsx
Test Summaries:
Voters that voted in the Primary Election who where moved to inactive voters:
(This is derived from using Washoe county file ‘av_multi_file_5_21_20’ crossed to ‘inactive_voters_10_1_20’)
A total of 12,476 registered voters removed; of the 12,476 registered voters removed 10,562 of them were challenged ballots in the primary election.  IN the general election 1,452 (11.64%) of the voters removed were added back.  Then of those added back 1,452 voters added back 1,188 (81.81%) were challenged votes in the primary election.
New Registered Voters by Date:
This looks at the net number of voters registered on a date using the file ab_ev_file_11_9_20.xlsx (test was done on 10 November 2020).  I closed the gap to go from 01 January 2017 forward.  (Note: It there is also another date anomaly in 1 January 1991 )
There are 24 days where the daily new registered voters were over 3 Standard Deviations (up to 10 standard deviations).
In those 24 days, 23,201 voters were registered of which 18,381 voted. So that is 7.77% of the votes cast.  Of those registered voters 7,477 were 50 or older.
Additionally, the county is using an inconsistent method to add inactive voters back to the registered voters.  What I mean is in some cases the voter registration date stays the same and in some cases they change the to a different date (No clear rhyme or reason for this).
Voter Registration date to ballot received:  
This is just looking at the date the individual was added to the voter registration file data set to the date they registered to vote and to the date their ballot was received.
File Used: ab_ev_file_11_9_20.xlsx
Then there are 2,038 voters that were entered into the ‘system’ prior to their registration date.  OF the 2,038 voters 422 (20.71%) of them had ballots received and counted prior to being registered to vote.
Duplicate Voters:
This looked for duplicate voters in the list by voter ID number.  File used: ab_ev_file_11_9_20.xlsx was used.
In that file you will see 7,637 duplicate votes (based on Voter ID Number):
3,757 ‘people’ voted 2 Times
40 ‘people’ Voted 3 Times
1 ‘person’ voted 4 times
Non Verified Voters or Votes (unsure of the field meaning, but from what I can tell it looks like votes not voters):
File used: ab_ev_file_11_11_20.xlsx
In this file 236,452 votes showing as received.  Of the 236,452 votes 130,398 (55.15%) are classified as verified and 106,054 (44.85%) are classified as not verified.
General Election Voter File changes by date:
This looks at changes in the daily file to see what was in a previous date file and not in a prior date file.
Files Used: ab_ev_file_10_12_20.xlsx forward three days to the end

File 1 File 1 Records File 2 File 2 Records Voters In File 1 and Not File 2 Ballots in File 1 and Not File 2
14-Oct-20              296,375 17-Oct-20              298,779                 244                   37
17-Oct-20              298,779 20-Oct-20              299,262                 108                   19
20-Oct-20              299,262 22-Oct-20              299,692                 118                   30
22-Oct-20              299,692 25-Oct-20              300,796                 127                   27
25-Oct-20              300,796 28-Oct-20              302,169                 104                   21
28-Oct-20              302,169 2-Nov-20              303,959                 148                   30
2-Nov-20              303,959 5-Nov-20              303,988                   29                     8
5-Nov-20              303,988 8-Nov-20              303,745                 269                   40
8-Nov-20              303,745 11-Nov-20             303,679                   81                   38
            1,228                 250

Net minimum number of voters added: 8,532  [7,304 from file record changes + 1,228 from dropped records]
Ballots cast that vanished: 250 (This is also the minimum number)
Other Odd items:
File used: ab_ev_file_11_11_20.xlsx
There are three ‘people’ that are 120 years old that voted: ( 1.ASTELLANOS-RAMIREZ, DARLA MARY / 2. SHAMIM, ZOAYLA NAIMA / 3. PUSZKIEWICZ, HUNTER RENEE)
Multi County Registered Voters:
File used: ab_ev_file_11_11_20.xlsx, Clark County Voter Registration Files from their website, Elko County Voter Files from their website.
Elko and Washoe County have an fairly easy to identify 40 or so individuals that are registered to vote in both counties.
Washoe and Clark County have a large number that need to be looked into.  From a first name, middle name, last name, and birthdate/year cross  there are 478.  Some of these have the same addresses listed but flipped.  Etc.
The Affidavit field for registered voters is not done in a constant manner.  (file: ab_ev_file_11_11_20.xlsx) There are multiple people that have the same affidavit number.  That number should the form of ID used to register and some type of serial number.
Also regarding the affidavit, there are people using a federal form used for military voters to vote when those individuals are clearly not in the military (out of state voters; and in some cases in state voters).
Why is the birthplace in this file not being consistently used?  Example: 36,126 registered voters that cast ballots in the general election… Washoe county does not even know where they are born???
Logic Test:
This is just the logic test to why the above is important.
The last time I checked the news is saying (Politico):
Biden: 126,098
Trump: 114,614
Total Votes: 240,712
(Source Politico 2020 Election Results for NV; 09 NOV 20)
File ‘ab_ev_file_11_9_20.xlsx’ was showing a total of 236,473 Ballots Received.  What that means is they are counting duplicate voters in those numbers and they are counting contested ballots in those numbers and they are counting unregistered voters in those numbers.
Votes cast: 236,473
Duplicate Votes <7,637>
Challenged Votes <13,275>  * Note: Up to because some of the duplicate votes were caught as challenged.
Other min County duplicates <500> *note just rounding
Removed after primary vote challenge <1,188>  This one should have everyone scratching their head
Added prior to registering  <2,037>
Net first glance Questionable <24,638>  (10.42% of 236,473)    
(Note: Politico is showing a 11,368 vote spread…. So those are over twice the number of the spread)
Votes after questionable: 211,835

I am sorry but this is, in my opinion, is unacceptable.  This is one the worst sets of data that I have seen in my life, in terms of any of it being creditable.  There are clearly no controls in place.  If there are no controls in place the data does need to be audited.

If at first glance I see 10.42% are highly suspicious there is an issue.
This does not even include the magical numbers of records that just appear in this file on the same second.
This does not include the number of voters that are using the same phone number or same addresses.  The out of proportion batch processing of ballots where there are groups that have an average age of 72.
Someone needs to be looking at the data and questioning it.  They need to be pulling those ballots and looking with their own eyes.
If the country knew the above what do you think they would believe?  Do you think that they would have any faith in the system with the data LITERALLY SHOWS THE NEWS AND THE COUNTY ARE COUNTING ALL VOTES AS BEING VALID.
Final Washoe Election Results… https://gis.washoecounty.us/agolHost?id=ElecGEN2020
Those duplicate votes are counted and have been counted this whole time… to included the unvalidated votes and the unvalidated challenged votes.
If you want a systemic issue I literally just handed it to you.  Everything above literally says this is a systemic issue.  I can send the lists of what I have if you are interested.  You can literally recreate everything I said using the referenced data listed.

RELATED ARTICLES:
CORRUPT Chicago Dominion: Dem-Socialist David Orr Illegally Gave DOMINION $32 Million Contract Breaking State Rules
“KRAKEN” is a CIA Hacking Program
LOOK Who Owns Dominion Voting Systems: Politically Motivated PRIVATE Equity NY Hedge Fund
Dominion Radicals: Screenshots of Their Scrubbed LinkedIn Accounts
Team Trump Counsel Powell: Georgia Gov Kemp, Sec. of State Took Bribes From Dominion, “Georgia is probably going to be the first state I’m going to blow up ..”
EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Domestic Violence More Than Doubled Under Lockdowns, New Study Finds

/1 Comment/in , , , , , , /by


New research shows that domestic violence surged during quarantine.

The unintended consequences of the COVID-19 lockdowns have been severe: mass unemployment, increased drug overdoses and suicides, and widespread social unrest are but a few of them.
On Monday, the National Bureau of Economic Research released a paper detailing another: increased domestic violence.
Analyzing government-mandated lockdowns in India, researchers Saravana Ravindran and Manisha Shah found evidence of a 131 percent increase in complaints of domestic violence in May 2020 in “red zone districts,” or districts that experienced the strictest lockdown measures, relative to districts that had less strict measures (“green zones”).
The researchers, who used a difference-in-differences empirical strategy, found the increase in domestic violence complaints was consistent with a surge in Google search activity for terms related to domestic violence over the same period.
The authors’ findings “contribute to a growing literature on the impacts of lockdowns and stay-at-home policies on violence against women during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The findings, which also found a decline in reported sexual assaults because of decreased mobility, are similar to those from research that found lockdowns led to a 100 percent increase in intimate partner violence calls in Mexico City. A study analyzing data from police departments in four US cities showed smaller increases in domestic violence, 10-27 percent, during lockdown periods.
Globally about one-third of women experience “intimate partner violence” (IPV), which negatively impacts female earnings, labor participation, earnings, mental health, and household consumption.

The global increase in domestic violence during the lockdown period has received relatively little attention, though CNN recently reported on the increase south of the US border.
In Mexico, federal lawmakers shut down most of its economy on March 23, urging people to stay indoors. Activists told the network the action spurred “an onslaught of domestic violence,” and data show 911 calls for domestic violence are up 44 percent from the same time the previous year.
“The lockdowns triggered violence in so many ways,” Perla Acosta Galindo, Director of Más Sueños A.C., a women’s community center, told CNN. “People can’t work, there’s alcoholism, overcrowding; it’s a lot.”

To some degree, the COVID pandemic has been portrayed as a morality play. Some would have you believe those who care about people support lockdowns; those who don’t care about people oppose them. We’re presented with false choices: we can support the economy or protect American lives.
These types of arguments only serve to divide. They can also obscure a basic truth: there are human costs to lockdowns, besides the economic ones, that can ravage lives just as badly as any disease.
The Washington Post, for example, recently reported on ”a hidden epidemic within the coronavirus pandemic”: drug overdoses. One Ohio coroner said he can’t process the bodies fast enough.
“We’ve literally run out of wheeled carts to put them on,” Anahi Ortiz told the paper.
Statistics suggest the trend is national in scope. Data from the Overdose Detection Mapping Application Program show that overdoses were up 18 percent in March, 29 percent in April, and 42 percent in May from the same periods the previous year.
These statistics should come as no surprise. Social scientists have been writing about the deadly consequences of social isolation for years.
It’s not just higher stress levels, disrupted sleep patterns, and altered immune systems. One 2015 study determined that social isolation substantially increased the risk of stroke (32 percent) and heart disease (29 percent).
Social isolation is also linked to suicide. While there is no comprehensive 2020 data on suicides, anecdotal evidence suggests many are struggling to cope with quarantine life. In May, during the peak of the lockdowns, one California doctor told local media his hospital has seen “a year’s worth of suicide attempts in the last four weeks.”

As the French economist Frédéric Bastiat stressed, every policy, “produces not only one effect, but a series of effects.” The immediate and intended effects are what he calls “the seen,” while the indirect, unintended consequences are “the unseen.” “The seen” usually gets all the attention, while “the unseen” often goes neglected.
In this case, “the seen” are the victims of the virus and those who hopefully avoid spreading or catching the disease because of the lockdowns. They are, without a doubt, worthy of our care and attention.
But we also must not ignore “the unseen”: the millions of human beings who, as a result of the lockdowns, have become victims of domestic violence, drug overdoses, depression, suicide, and more.
As Antony Davies and James Harrigan wrote, “The uncomfortable truth is that no policy can save lives; it can only trade lives.” It may one day be determined that the lockdowns saved more lives than they destroyed, although recent evidence suggests the correlation between lockdown severity and COVID-19 deaths is weak. But let’s not underestimate the devastating human toll of this policy.
The lives ruined or snuffed out by the lockdowns deserve better than that. They deserve to be seen.
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.
RELATED ARTICLES:
4 Life-Threatening Unintended Consequences of the Lockdowns
The Lockdowns Crushed Minority-Owned Businesses the Most
Another Deadly Cost of COVID-19 Lockdowns: “A Hidden Epidemic” of Drug Overdoses
CDC: A Quarter of Young Adults Say They Contemplated Suicide This Summer During Pandemic
Social Isolation Is Damaging an Entire Generation of Kids
Four Newborns Die After Being Denied Heart Surgery because of COVID Travel Restrictions
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: THE LIE — It will be proven false.

/in , , , , , /by



TRANSCRIPT
Church Militant (a 501(c)4 corporation) is responsible for the content of this commentary.
All the cheats and liars are issuing calls for unity and peace now that they appear to have the upper hand.
On the political scene, it was fake-Catholic Joe Biden’s primary point in his speech to the nation on Saturday night. Meanwhile, those who do and will control him — like Occasional Cortex as just one example — are saying things like lists need to be created of Trump supporters so they can be shut out of society once the Marxists assume power.
And yes, that’s exactly what she said: Keep a database of Trump supporters to ensure they don’t get hired later on. She also took to Twitter saying, “Is anyone archiving these Trump sycophants for when they try to downplay or deny their complicity in the future?”
And if that’s not enough, the blacklist is being pushed by an ex-Obama sportsperson as well. But some stalwarts on the right like the chairman of the American Conservative Union, Matt Schlapp, took to Twitter and said this about the fake calls for getting along: “For Democrats calling for unity, you may want to actually stop counting illegal votes in Nevada first.”
And he could have continued on much more extensively from there — illegal votes and counting are occurring in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Arizona.
On this matter, according to a survey released this morning by Rasmussen, two weeks before the election, only 6% of voters thought their votes would be counted correctly. Today, that number has more than quadrupled to a whopping 28%. More than a quarter of the U.S. population has serious doubts that their vote was treated fairly.
Add to that that findings from Monday show 70% of Republicans believe the election was neither fair nor free. These are gigantic numbers, and they reflect the reality that if Biden is sworn in, a large number of Americans will regard his presidency as illegitimate — because he and the Marxist Democratic machine (which has control of nearly all the states in question) simply cheated and cheated on a grand scale.
For more than four years, Americans were dragged through the daily bombardment of a pack of lies about Trump and anything they could pin on him — Russia, Ukraine, COVID, racism, rioting, the economy. If it could stick, they threw it at him.
The Democrats traffic in lies and so too do a number of Republicans who are in league with them in the swamp. And speaking of the swamp, the U.S. bishops as a body have been just as despicable, actually more so.
And the release yesterday of the long-awaited McCarrick Report drives that point home even further. Pope Francis is completely exonerated from any guilt or complicity in resurrecting McCarrick. So too are the closest associates of McCarrick, who are believed unquestioningly when they claim they were “shocked” to learn of this for the “first time” in the Summer of Shame.
It was all the fault of a canonized saint, the report concludes — and a handful of dead guys and Abp. Vigano. The report goes on for huge portions about the details of McCarrick’s foul deeds, like we all didn’t know that already, salacious details aside.
But when it comes to revealing certain things like the network that protected him, cooperated with him, personally profited by protecting him with their silence, it falls completely silent, except of course for naming the dead guys. And Vigano.
The report is, as long suspected, a giant whitewash, admitting mostly what was already known and reported by outfits like Church Militant (as well as many in the secular media).
For example, it speaks of McCarrick being well known for his cash payments — the “envelope culture” it’s called — detailing that he used to hand out envelopes full of large cash payments, but it steers very clear of saying whom he gave those to.
McCarrick handed out cash payments — large sums of money — for decades, especially to many in Rome. He used to carry that cash in his diplomatic pouch while traveling. But it’s certainly strange that the report confesses that again (since it is already well known) but deliberately fails to say who got the cash.
Likewise, the most well-known victim of “Uncle Ted,” a man who endured almost two decades of reprehensible abuse, James Grein, is never mentioned by name. His entire life is reduced to a mere footnote near the end of the report, and only then in reference to John Paul.
To have assembled a report on McCarrick with no reference to Grein whatsoever would be like issuing a study on the Scriptures without writing one syllable about the Holy Spirit. Unless you are a person fascinated with details about something you already have a working knowledge of, this report is a waste of time.
The very information so urgently sought of Pope Francis simply is not there. It can’t be. His inner circle, those who owe their careers to McCarrick, are the very ones advising and counseling the Pope — and Pope Francis knows that.
So what’s the relationship between the lies coming from the political Left and the deception coming from Rome? They are both pretending to want unity, but they despoil the word. Faithful Catholics and conservative Americans have simply lost trust in the respective institutions and those who run them.
Giant tech, Joe Biden, news media, higher education, you name it: They are no longer to be trusted. Likewise with Rome, a cesspool of deceit and cover-up. And neither camp is ever held to account — in this life, that is.
They want a phony unity, built on the lie. And what is the lie? The lie is that what matters is this world and this world alone, with no reference to God. The political Marxists out and out deny God and instrumentalize the good of the earth.
The theological Left doesn’t out and out deny God, but they instrumentalize the things of God. But each group is serving the Devil. Period. There is no such thing as unity built on a lie. Unity can only be had when it is built on truth.
The Vatican as well as Washington, D.C. have placed themselves in the service of the lie — both politically and theologically. This must be resisted with every fiber of your being. You must fight this evil — even if you have to die in the fight. But surrender is not an option.
Compromise with the Devil (in politics and especially morality) is how a person’s earthly life and, most especially, eternal life are doomed.
©Church Militant. All rights reserved.
RELATED TWEET:

PODCAST: Trump and Supporters Wage Legal Battles Across U.S.

/in , , , , /by


GUESTS AND TOPICS:

HANS VOT SPAKOVSKY
Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues – including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform — as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. His analysis and commentary have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Politico, Human Events, National Review Online and Townhall. Along with John Fund, he is the co-author of Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk and Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department
TOPIC: Trump and supporters wage legal battles across US!
REV. BEN JOHNSON
Rev. Ben Johnson is a managing editor of the Acton Institute’s flagship publication, Religion & Liberty. He also work focuses on the principles necessary to create a free and virtuous society in the U.S., Canada, and Europe. His writings have appeared in The (UK) Guardian, Human Events, The Stream, Real Clear Policy, Aleteia.org, Conservative Review, The Daily Caller, and have been cited by National Review, CBS News, and Fox News. He was managing editor of FrontPage Magazine and U.S. Bureau Chief at LifeSiteNews. He is the author of two books on tax-exempt foundations, as well as Party of Defeat (2008, Spence, with David Horowitz). Before turning to online journalism and editing, he spent more than a decade in all facets of radio broadcasting, including news and talk.
TOPIC: Kamala Harris’ ‘Equality vs. Equity’ video endorses injustice and discrimination.
TRACY BEANZ
Tracy Beanz is an investigative journalist and Editor-in-Chief at UncoverDC whose sole focus is the truth. While writing for UncoverDC, she has brought the intricate details of several major stories to light, including corruption at the highest levels of the government. Her tireless dedication has earned her a reputation for a dogged commitment to truth. A sought-after guest on major talk radio and television shows, She is also a social media phenom, in addition to her website, Tracy hosts a popular podcast and has amassed nearly 245,000 twitter followers, garnering retweets from other influential people including President Donald Trump, members of Congress and notable newsmakers.
TOPIC: A Republic, If You Can Keep It!

©Conservative Commandoes Radio. All rights reserved.

Trump suspended entry of migrants from Syria, Somalia, and Yemen over terror risk, Biden could admit 125,000

/in , , , , /by


What could possibly go wrong? Celebrate diversity, you greasy Islamophobe!
“US Cuts Refugee Admissions, Creating Doubt for Tens of Thousands of Applicants,” by Aline Barros, VOA, November 6, 2020 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):

The United States will admit a maximum of 15,000 refugees for fiscal 2021, an all-time low, according to a notice the Trump administration published Friday in the Federal Register.
The administration also suspended entry of most refugees from Syria, Somalia and Yemen, citing terrorism risks….
Humanitarian organizations told VOA the number of Syrian, Somali and Yemeni refugees already referred for resettlement in the U.S. was almost double the number established by the cap.
As of October 27, nonprofit groups confirmed that 27,023 individuals were in the “pipeline” for resettlement in the United States, pending security checks.
The breakdown among the countries was 12,924 from Somalia, 14,084 from Syria and 15 people from Yemen, according to two humanitarian organizations….
Contacted by VOA, a State Department spokesman declined to comment on whether refugees from Somalia, Yemen and Syria already in the resettlement process would be rejected based on their nationality or the lowered refugee cap.
Friday’s notice specifies that exceptions can be made for refugees of the three restricted nations “who have been persecuted or have a well-founded fear of persecution on account of religion” or were referred by a U.S. embassy….
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden vowed during the campaign to raise the refugee admissions ceiling to 125,000….

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden plans sweeping reversal of Trump’s immigration agenda, from deportations to asylum policy

Now for the Next Step: Articles About What Happens if the President-Elect Dies Before Taking Office
UK: Muslim who plotted to behead soldier is likely to be freed next month, jihad bomb plotter is already free
Al Jazeera celebrates the end of US ‘Muslim ban’ on day one of Biden presidency
Iran’s Rouhani: ‘The next US administration should use the opportunity to make up for past mistakes’
Bangladesh: Muslims lynch man, burn his body, riot, assault police over rumor that he desecrated Qur’an
EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Joe Biden’s ‘Transition Agenda’ is Full of Big Government Power Grabs

/in , , , /by


Biden’s rhetoric focuses on restoring order and stability amid emergency, but the details of his transition agenda involve a radical upheaval of our economy.

Joe Biden plans to hit the ground running after Inauguration Day.
Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, have released a sweeping transition agenda they hope to implement after taking power. It focuses on several main issues: COVID-19, economic stimulus, racial equity, and climate change.
While Biden campaigned as a moderate Democrat, this transition agenda is very radical. It includes a whole host of policies that go far beyond the “return to normalcy” rhetoric that defined his campaign.


For example, Biden promises to respond to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic by further making use of the Defense Production Act. The emergency law allows the federal government to seize control of private industries and dictate their manufacturing. Biden says he would use this power to commandeer more private manufacturers and force them to build up the US’s supply of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE).
Biden also says he would use the COVID-19 crisis as cause to push for a massive expansion of government control of Americans’ healthcare.
Per his transition website, Biden will push for a government-run “public option” that “competes” with private health care companies.
As Pacific Research Institute healthcare analyst Sally Pipes has explained, this would lead to socialized healthcare in short order. Why?
Well, the government can force medical providers to accept lower rates and subsidize itself. Businesses can’t. No private company can “compete” with an institution that writes the rules of the game. They could eventually all go out of business, leaving just the government.
Biden says this plan is needed in the name of emergency pandemic response. But his public option would prove more than a short-term measure—it would almost certainly put the US on the path to permanent government-run healthcare for all.
On the economic front, Biden’s rhetoric focuses on restoring order and stability, but the details of his transition agenda involve a radical transformation of our economy toward more state control and intervention.
For example, Biden’s emergency economic recovery plan includes permanently implementing a federal $15 minimum wage. Slipped into his crisis response, this provision would put national price controls on the labor market and, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, eliminate millions of jobs.
That’s right: Biden has snuck a highly-debated big-government economic policy into the fine print of his COVID-19 emergency plan. And this quiet economic overhaul extends beyond the minimum wage.
“This is no time to just build back to the way things were before, with the old economy’s structural weaknesses and inequalities still in place,” reads Biden’s transition website. “This is the moment to imagine and build a new American economy for our families and the next generation.”
This overhaul would include a federal bailout for bankrupt state and local governments and further expansion of what was supposed to be a short-term, ultra-generous augmentation of unemployment benefits. Indeed, remember the benefits that paid 70 percent of the unemployed more to stay home on welfare than to go back to work?
Biden wants to extend what was sold as an emergency measure. (And, I’m sure, extend it after that, and after that…)
The obvious labor disincentive created evidently does not concern Biden, or, he has decided it is a price worth paying for a massive expansion of the welfare state. So, too, Biden would seize upon the pandemic to inject the government further into the labor market through the creation of a “Public Health Jobs Corps.”
And, as part of his “emergency” economic response, Biden wants to pass the PRO Act, a law permanently destroying many gig economy jobs and erasing right-to-work laws nationwide.
Oh, and don’t forget about climate change, of course.
The Biden-Harris transition agenda also promises to immediately address climate change and “achieve a carbon-pollution-free power sector by 2035.” In pursuit of this drastic goal they would inject government resources into the upgrading of 4 million buildings and 2 million homes as well as promoting the construction of 1.5 million new “sustainable” housing units.
We should acknowledge that all of these policy overhauls are eminently debatable. While free-marketeers and fiscal conservatives will no doubt find many of them harmful, people of good faith may support the Biden agenda.
What’s really disheartening is the quiet manner in which clearly radical policy provisions have been slipped into the Biden transition agenda and emergency response. In this, we can observe one of the perennial dangers of government power—that it will seize on emergencies to expand, yet never fully recede.
This is the danger economist Robert Higgs identified in his seminal work Crisis and Leviathan as “the Ratchet Effect.” As I’ve written before:

Higgs showed how throughout history, crises have been used to excuse government power grabs. After each crisis, the government lets go of some of the power, but never all of it. As a result, the federal government’s power (the Leviathan) has ‘ratcheted up,’ crisis after crisis, throughout the last hundred years.

This is seemingly what the transition agenda is constructed to do.
Of course, Biden and Harris have every right to argue for their progressive, big-government agenda once in office. However, we should all demand that they be upfront with the American people about what they are doing.
Otherwise, millions may unknowingly acquiescence to permanent government power grabs—masquerading as short-term emergency measures—that we may never fully be able to reverse.
COLUMN BY

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is a libertarian-conservative journalist and Opinion Editor at the Foundation for Economic Education.
RELATED ARTICLES:
Biden Likely Would Issue Flurry of Executive Orders on Climate, Abortion, Immigration
Here’s the Latest on Litigation Over Election Results
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The ATF Has Become a Rogue Agency That Turns Lawful Gun Owners Into Felons

/in , , , /by


Over and over again, innocent people unwittingly find themselves in the ATF’s crosshairs.

What if government agents could, by declaration, make you into a criminal? What if, without legislative change, bureaucrats could decide that what was legal yesterday is a felony today? What if we were governed not by law, but by arbitrary statements telling us what we may or may not do?
Unfortunately, those questions are not merely hypothetical—thanks to recent abuses of power by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), millions of American gun owners are facing them head-on. Even if you hate guns, you should be deeply concerned by the arbitrary power wielded by the ATF against your fellow Americans. If an unchecked executive agency can run roughshod over any of our rights with impunity, all of our rights are in danger.

Recently, the firearms manufacturer Q, LLC shared disturbing news with its customers: the ATF had declared the delightfully-named and popular “Honey Badger” pistol to be a “short-barreled rifle” (SBR). This determination subjects the firearm to special restrictions under the National Firearms Act (NFA). As a consequence of the ATF’s decision, customers who had purchased the Honey Badger have suddenly found themselves in felonious possession of a now-illegal firearm that they had legally acquired and legally owned.
The ATF’s determination is arbitrary. It is inconsistent with both federal law and prior ATF statements. Substantially similar firearms continue to be sold legally, as they have been for years. Instead of explaining what makes the Honey Badger different from those firearms, the ATF vaguely alluded to “objective design features,” offering no further explanation as to what those features are or why they lead the ATF to determine that the Honey Badger is an SBR.
This is far from the first time that the ATF has issued a declaration that turns innocent people into criminals — other examples abound. As I explained in Felony by Fiat:

In 2015, the ATF decided that the physical action of holding a pistol equipped with an ATF-approved brace to one’s shoulder was equivalent to creating an illegal short-barreled firearm. That is to say, you could pick up your perfectly legal pistol (which is not otherwise subject to the NFA’s minimum barrel length restrictions) and unwittingly commit a felony by virtue of the way you held it. That guidance directly contradicted a 2014 ATF letter that said just the opposite. In 2017, new guidance was issued which appears to sanction the shouldering of a braced pistol so long as such use is ‘incidental, sporadic, or situational’ — whatever that means.

And:

Just last year, the ATF issued new measurement guidelines that transformed some conventionally legal pistols into presumptively illegal firearms under the NFA’s ‘any other weapon’ (AOW) classification, depending on how those pistols had been configured and accessorized.

In 2018, at President Trump’s direction, the ATF created rules banning the possession of bump stocks, devices which use a gun’s recoil to facilitate rapid operation of the trigger.
As Reason’s Jacob Sullum noted, the ATF’s regulatory move made “owners of ‘bump-stock-type devices’…felons, subject to a maximum penalty of 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.”

Join us in preserving the principles of economic freedom and individual liberty for the rising generation

The bump stock ban was more prominent than other instances of the ATF’s lawless policymaking. Nonetheless, the ban was met with little outcry or appreciation of its implications.
But, as you can see from the other cases detailed here, the ATF’s ban on bump stocks was not an aberration: it was just one of countless regulatory changes, before and since, that have turned lawful gun owners into criminals by executive fiat.

The ATF is not a lawmaking body—or, at least, it is not supposed to be. It is an executive agency tasked with enforcing laws passed by Congress.
The ATF is not empowered to create policy of its own accord, and it’s certainly not empowered to turn law-abiding citizens into criminals, but that’s exactly what it has been doing. Sadly, there’s no hyperbole in the observation that millions of legal gun owners must wonder: Will I wake up tomorrow to find that I’ve been declared a felon?
The rule of law is a fundamental value of a free society. We are not to be governed by edict, but only by laws that are consistent with the Constitution and created according to its provisions. The purpose of government is to protect us from arbitrary and illegitimate force, and to secure our rights—not to be the agent of their destruction.
The ATF itself has come to embody the exercise of arbitrary and illegitimate power. Such a perversion of government’s purpose must be condemned in the strongest possible terms. No matter how much our opinions about gun control laws diverge, we should be united in rejecting executive agencies’ usurpations of sovereignty.
COLUMN BY

Mark Houser

Mark Houser is an independent researcher who writes about the right to bear arms and firearm policy.
EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

STAY INFORMED

Receive regular news, commentary, and analysis straight to your inbox.

POWERED BY

DrRichSwier.com | ThePricklyPear.org

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.