New Jersey Lawmakers Are Trying to Tax the Rain

This gives new life to the saying, “when it rains, it pours.”

Sometimes life mimics fiction. And sometimes life is so much stranger than fiction you have to double check the headlines to ensure they aren’t satire. The latest double take comes from New Jersey, where, under the guise of environmentalism, local legislators have passed a new tax on—wait for it— the rain.

Governments are known for a lack of creativity and an uncanny ability to think only inside the box. However, when it comes to getting creative with inventing new forms of taxation, they never disappoint. Chicago, for example, recently implemented a “PlayStation” tax on its residents as part of the city’s previously existing “amusement tax,” which, just as it sounds, taxes individuals on almost all forms of entertainment.

California, on the other hand, recently tried to get away with unprecedented levels of extortion when it tried to tax residents for their drinking water and text messages. The water tax is still on the table, but luckily, the Golden State did not succumb to the new ridiculous texting tax. New Jersey, though, might not be so lucky.

To be perfectly clear, while the new tax is being referred to as the “rain tax,” it doesn’t actually tax the rain itself, but that doesn’t make the context of the legislation any less absurd.

Bill S-1073 seeks to penalize businesses and homeowners whose property contains paved surfaces, like a driveway or a parking lot. When it rains, the rain acts as a medium, transporting any pollutants it picks up from paved surfaces, like brine and rock salt, and then depositing it into sewers and drains. And since the pollutants are thought to have originated from paved surfaces, the state has determined that property owners are responsible for any negative environmental impacts that result therein and should be penalized accordingly.

The legislation itself does not actually allow the state to collect any taxes, however. Instead, it allows each of its 565 different municipalities to create their own stormwater utility systems to minimize the runoff problem. Each locality will then charge each homeowner and business based on what the bill calls “a fair and equitable approximation” of how much runoff is generated from their property.

The legislation states:

Under the bill, a county, municipality, or authority (local unit) that establishes a stormwater utility is authorized to charge and collect reasonable fees and other charges to recover the stormwater utility’s costs for stormwater management.

As is the trend these days, supporters are praising the bill as a heroic move to protect the environment, though there is no real evidence that any significant harm is being done. Yet, legislators would have you believe there is a crisis at hand.

Senate President Steve Sweeney tried to convey the seriousness of the problem, saying, “With all the salt we’ve had on roads recently, that’s all running into the sewer systems, so you don’t ignore the problems because they don’t go away.” However, this winter has actually been mild for the state, with fewer snow falls than usual, meaning there has not been any sudden influx of rock salt pouring into the sewer systems this season.

A local writer, E.W. Boyle, highlighted the true idiocy of this proposed tax, writing:

Now, since our roads have been treated during winter storm events for over 80 years, with no apparent environmental impact, one wonders what took them so long to notice that there is salt runoff into creeks, streams and estuary rivers during subsequent rain events. No, rather what they noticed was the potential for yet another tax levy.

Boyle hits the nail on the head, and he is not alone in his opposition to the new tax. Republican state senator Tom Kean Jr. also criticized this proposal for the burden it places on New Jersey residents. Since each municipality is in charge of setting its own rules regarding the collection of this tax with very little oversight from any other governing entity, it is ripe for potential abuse. Keane said, “We all want to protect our environment. We all want to preserve it for future generations, but this is a weighted tax.” He continued, “The citizens of New Jersey…really [have] no way to defend themselves against tax increases at local levels.”

Since the bill gives local governments carte blanche to set the rates and collect the revenue, it makes it harder for residents to voice their concern if they believe they are being asked to pay too much. Keane later added:

…you shouldn’t create unfair authorities with uneven taxing practices…You’re creating a new layer of government that will not be regulated. The concern is uneven enforcement.

While uneven enforcement is certainly a concern, it is not the only problem the new rain tax inflicts on New Jersey residents. The legislation also comes with a hefty price tag that property owners will be responsible for footing.

New Jersey is currently one of the most heavily taxed states in the country. And yet, it is going to burden its residents even further with the passing of this bill. According to the EPA, it will cost the state of New Jersey $15.6 billion to upgrade its storm drain system. However, the cost to Garden State taxpayers could end up being significantly higher.

New Jersey’s Office of Legislative Services, which usually determines the fiscal impact of state policies, could not shed any light on what this might actually cost residents. Since each local municipality is in charge of setting its own rates for each property owner, there is really no way of estimating the projected costs at this time. And given the nature of government, it is highly probable that taxpayers will end up paying more than their “fair” share of the burden.

Chris Sturm, a supporter of the bill and a water policy “expert” at the nonprofit organization New Jersey Future, attempted to downplay the impact this will have on homeowners. Sturm commented, “This will be negligible for the vast majority of homeowners. This is for properties that have large impervious surfaces.” While no one, including state officials, is sure of the fiscal impact this will have on residents, there is something else quite disturbing about his statement.

These properties with “large impervious surfaces” are places of business. They are the very institutions responsible for creating jobs, wealth, and prosperity within the state. And yet, rather than celebrating these titans of industry for their contributions, state lawmakers are attempting to impose onerous taxes on them. This is yet another example of governments using their taxing powers to turn private businesses into their personal coffers.

To make matters worse, any individual or business who does not pay their “rain tax” will be charged interest and have a tax lien imposed on them by the state, the very same type of action taken against those who fail to pay their property taxes.

New Jersey is, unfortunately, not the first state to attempt to inflict this type of tax on its residents. In 2012, Maryland instituted its own version of the rain tax, but it was not received well by the taxpayers. In 2014, Republican Governor Larry Hogan altered the law and allowed nine counties and the city of Baltimore to opt out of the state’s rain tax, so long as each municipality promised to address the Chesapeake Bay runoff issue on their own.

Hogan commented, “Passing a state law that forces counties to raise taxes on their citizens against their will is not the best way to address the issue.”

New Jersey does not feel the same way.

New Jersey legislators have done their constituents a great disservice by passing this bill. And now, the legislation is currently sitting on the desk of Governor Phil Murphy. It is expected that it will be signed any day now. This gives new life to the saying, “when it rains, it pours.”

COLUMN BY

Brittany Hunter

Brittany Hunter

Brittany is a senior writer for the Foundation for Economic Education. Additionally, she is a co-host of Beltway Banthas, a podcast that combines Star Wars and politics. Brittany believes that the most effective way to promote individual liberty and free-market economics is by telling timely stories that highlight timeless principles.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column with images is republished with permission. The feature image by Pexels on Pixabay.

Obama EPA Regulations Blamed for Closure of 100-Year-Old Coal Plant

A coal-fired power plan that’s operated for more than 100 years is shutting down, and its owners say Obama-era regulations are to blame.

Alabama Power’s Plant Gorgas will officially close in April. It’s only the latest coal industry casualty, driven by Environmental Protection Agency regulations and market forces.

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“We recognize that Plant Gorgas and the men and women who have operated it have brought great value to Alabama Power, our customers and the local community,” Jim Heilbron, Alabama Power’s senior vice president, said in a statement issued Wednesday.

“We are also concerned that more regulations are on the horizon that could require additional, costly expenditures at the plant,” Heilbron said.

Heilbron said federal regulations for handling coal ash and wastewater made it too costly to continue operating Plant Gorgas. Those regulations were put in place under the Obama administration.

Coal plant retirements spiked during former President Barack Obama’s time in office as his administration put in place costly regulations amid a boom in natural gas production. Low natural gas prices have persisted, putting more pressure on coal plants facing high compliance costs.

Obama-era regulations for wastewater, for example, were estimated to cost coal operators $2.5 billion a year, though utilities said EPA vastly underestimated compliance costs.

The Trump administration put the wastewater rule under review in 2017, but nothing seems to have happened since. Trump’s EPA put the rule under review in response to a petition from utilities.

Alabama Power estimates it would cost $300 million to comply with federal environmental regulations and keep its three remaining coal-fired generators running. Plant Gorgas has been in operation since 1917.

The company said closing down Plant Gorgas would not impact reliability, and that federal regulations are forcing them to take a hard look at their power portfolio.

“Alabama Power is focused on providing our customers reliable, affordable electricity while protecting the environment we all share,” Heilbron said.

The effects of Plant Gorgas’ closure will likely ripple upstream to its suppliers. More than half of U.S. coal mines have closed since 2008 as coal plants close their doors and suppress demand.

COLUMN BY

Mike Bastasch

Michael Bastasch

Michael Bastasch is a reporter for The Daily Caller News Foundation. Twitter: @MikeBastasch.

RELATED ARTICLE: Mueller’s ‘Foreign Agent’ Prosecutions May Lead to Probes of Green Groups

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Liberals See Truth as Subservient to Doctrine, Feelings

Truth is not a left-wing value.

I first discovered this as a graduate student studying the Soviet Union and left-wing ideologies at the Russian Institute of Columbia University School of International Affairs. Everything I have learned since has confirmed this view.

Individuals on both the left and right lie. Individuals on both the left and right tell the truth. And liberalism, unlike leftism, does value truth. But the further left one goes, the more one enters the world of the lie.

Why does the left lie?

There are two main reasons.

One is that leftists deem their goals more important than telling the truth. For example, every honest economist knows women do not earn 20 percent less money than men for the same work done for the same amount of hours under the same conditions. Yet leftists repeat the lie that women earn 78 cents for every dollar men earn.

Why any employers would hire men when they could hire women and get the same amount of work done at the same level of excellence for the same number of hours while saving 20 cents on the dollar is a question only God or the sphinx could answer.

So, when New York Times columnists write this nonsense, do they believe it? The answer is they don’t ask themselves, “Is it true?” They ask themselves, “Does the claim help promote the left-wing doctrine that women are oppressed?”

 Whatever serves that end is morally justified.

The second reason is leftism is rooted in feelings, not reason or truth. From Karl Marx to Bernie Sanders, left-wing preference for socialism over capitalism is entirely rooted in emotion. Only capitalism creates wealth. Socialism merely spends what capitalism creates.

Do leftists not know this? Even if they know it, the emotional pull of socialism prevails.

Do leftists believe there are more than two sexes? Of course not. That’s why they renamed “sex” “gender”—and then redefined “gender” to mean whatever one wants it to mean.

So then, on the left, truth is subservient to two higher values: doctrine and emotion.

This leads to the question of this column: Do those on the left believe their lies?

Do leftists believe global warming will destroy the world as we know it in 12 years, as recently suggested by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.? I don’t know. They seem to talk themselves into believing their hysterias. But they don’t act on them.

Here’s a simple proof that the left is lying about the imminent threat of global warming to civilization: Leftists don’t support nuclear power. It is simply not possible to believe fossil fuel emissions will destroy the world and, at the same time, oppose nuclear power. Nuclear power is clean and safe. Sweden, a model country for leftists, meets 40 percent of its energy needs with nuclear power.

If you were certain you were terminally ill yet decline a medicine that is guaranteed to cure you, the rest of us would have every reason to assume you didn’t really believe you were terminally ill.

Here’s more evidence the left doesn’t believe its global warming hysteria: How many leftists with beachfront property anywhere in the world have sold it? If leftists really believe global warming will cause the oceans to rise and soon inundate the world’s coastal areas, why would any leftist not sell his beachfront home while he could not only make all his money back but make a profit as well?

Another example of left-wing rhetoric leftists don’t act on: The left tells us that colleges are permeated by a “rape culture,” yet virtually all left-wing parents send their daughters to college. If you were to believe any place has a culture of rape, where 1 in 4 or 5 women is raped or otherwise sexually assaulted, would you send your 18-year-old daughter there? Of course not.

So how do any left-wing mothers or fathers send their daughters to college? The answer would seem to be they know it’s a lie—but that doesn’t matter, since the left views telling the truth as incomparably less significant than combating sexism, sexual assault, misogyny, toxic masculinity, and patriarchy.

One more example: “Walls don’t work.”

It is inconceivable that people who say this—especially those with walls around their home—believe it. Yet leftists say it with the same degree of ease Stalin labeled Trotsky a fascist, even though Trotsky and Lenin were the fathers of the Bolshevik Revolution.

The question is not whether truth is a left-wing value. The only question is whether leftists believe their lies. And, believe it or not, I still don’t know.

So, conduct the following tests and decide for yourself:

Ask anyone you know who says global warming will destroy most life on Earth in 12 years why they don’t advocate nuclear power. If they tell you it’s too dangerous, you know they are hysterics, not followers of science.

Ask anyone you know who believes the global warming threat is an existential one and owns beachfront property why they aren’t selling their beachfront property.

Ask anyone who believes colleges have rape culture why they sent (or are sending) their daughter to college.

It is possible to love truth and be liberal, conservative, libertarian, an atheist, a believer, a Jew, a Christian, a Muslim, or a Hindu. But you cannot be a leftist.

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COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager

Dennis Prager is a columnist for The Daily Signal, nationally syndicated radio host, and creator of PragerU. Twitter:
@DennisPrager.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal Column with images is republished with permission. The featured image by OpenClipart-Vectors on Pixabay Pixabay.

Trump Weighs in on Jussie Smollett’s Arrest

President Donald Trump weighed in on Twitter after actor Jussie Smollett was arrested Thursday and charged with felony disorderly conduct for filing a false police report following an alleged hate crime hoax.

“[Jussie Smollett]—what about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments!? #MAGA,” Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday.

Smollett, known for his role on the show “Empire,” is accused of orchestrating a fake hate crime against himself in Chicago in January. He claimed that two white men attacked him while he was walking home from a restaurant late at night. Smollett, who is gay, told police that the men poured a bleach-like substance on him and tied a rope around his neck like a noose while shouting racist and homophobic slurs.

Some media outlets reported that Smollett said the alleged attackers wore “Make America Great Again” hats popularized by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, but Smollett said during a “Good Morning America” interview on Feb. 14 that he never said that.

That interview took place before Smollett’s story began to crumble. Two brothers, Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo, were arrested for allegedly attacking Smollett before being released Friday without charges. Smollett allegedly paid the brothers to carry out the attack.

The Chicago Police Department addressed the Smollett controversy during a press conference Thursday.

“This announcement today recognizes that ‘Empire’ actor Jussie Smollett took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career,” Chicago PD Superintendent Eddie Johnson said. “I am left hanging my head and asking why? Why would anyone, especially an African-American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations?”

RELATED VIDEO: Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Jackson on Jussie Smollett. NOTE: YouTube took down this video. Wonder why?

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column with images is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The featured image by geralt on Pixabay.

MOVIE REVIEW: Alita – Battle Angel is Anti-Socialism & Pro-Christian

Alita – Battle Angel is a visually stunning film with a heavy Christian theme. While Alita is a cyborg she is on a mission to confront evil wherever she may find it. Alita has unique abilities programmed in her that the Zalems and their agents will stop at nothing to destroy. These unique abilities include: a moral sense of right and wrong, kindness, a willingness to fight and die for the oppressed and of course great fighting skills. Alita is a human being. The Zalems want to stop Alita from becoming what she was ordained to be.

Alita Battle Angel (2019 poster).png

Theatrical release poster from Wikipedia

The world in which Alita must live, Iron City, is filled with evil. Iron City looks much like some areas of Detroit, Los Angeles or Chicago. Floating above Iron City is Zalem, the last of the aptly called “Sky cities.” Iron City is made up of oppressed factory workers who provide Zalem with goods made from the waste that falls from Sky City. Alita is part of that waste, an outcast, but a special outcast. Zalem is populated with a mysterious, but evil, ruling class who use the people of Iron City to do their bidding.

Zalem is the perfect socialist society. As Ayn Rand wrote it in her 1946 monograph Textbook of Americanism,

Collectivism holds that man has no rights; that his work, his body and his personality belong to the group; that the group can do with him as it pleases, in any manner it pleases, for the sake of whatever it decides to be its own welfare. Therefore, each man exists only by the permission of the group and for the sake of the group.

The citizens of Iron City are ruled by the collectivists on Zalem (the group) and their Iron City agents led by Vector. Vector is an evil and satanic man who is Alita’s nemesis.

MovieGuide.org notes:

Happily, ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL has a strong Christian worldview that evokes many allegorical messages. For example, the movie’s references to “the fall” stress the corruption of power and sin. At one point, Alita says, “I will not stand by in the presence of evil.” At another point, she and Hugo hide in an abandoned church and find protection. Also, in one scene, the villain, Vector, says, “I’d rather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.” His comment echoes Satan’s comment in John Milton’s classic Christian poem PARADISE LOST. ALITA also touches on the idea of indulgences or buying your way into heaven. For example, in the story, different characters are trying to buy their way into Zalem, the sky city. Eventually, Dr. Ido’s wife sees the error of her greed and desires to be different.

During the movie Alita takes a sword away from one of her protagonists named Zapan. She tells him that he is not worthy of such a sword. The sword becomes part of Alita and she wields it with great skill. This may also be a Biblical reference as the word sword appears 406 times in the Bible. The sword represents both a weapon used to defend oneself and as the Word of God. Genesis 27:40 reads:

“You will live by the sword and you will serve your brother. But when you grow restless, you will throw his yoke from off your neck.”

Alita appears destined to throw the yoke form the necks of the people of Iron City. She is serving her brothers and sisters. Zalem is not heaven, at least not in a spiritual sense. Iron City is, on the other hand, hell on earth in a materialistic post modern Nietzsche/Darwin way. It’s dog eat dog or rather cyborg killing cyborg.

Iron City reminds us of Ecclesiastics:

Man’s fate is like that of animals; the same fate awaits them both. As one dies so dies the other. All have the same breath; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust and to the dust all return (3:19-20)

There is not a righteous man on earth, who does what is right and never sins (7:20) … one sinner destroys much good. (9:18).

At the end of the movie Alita enters a large arena filled with people from Iron City. She defiantly stands on a platform and points her flaming sword directly at Zalem as Zapan looks down upon her. Is judgement day coming to Zalem?

Let us see if Alita – Battle Angel can continue to do what is right and defeat the sinners in Sky City in the sequel. Alita has the power and the will. Does she have a Godly purpose? Or will the sequel devolve into a paradise lost with stunning animation but no moral message?

Nancy Pelosi Wants a National Emergency to Confiscate Your Guns in 2020

Nancy Pelosi wants to give illegal aliens rights, while declaring a national emergency to disarm the law-abiding. Reject Pelosi’s socialist disarmament. 

Join the NRA.

Barr and Mueller Eradicating Our Fourth Amendment Rights

“No system of mass surveillance has existed in any society that we know of to this point that has not been abused.” – Edward Snowden

“Legal and bureaucratic impediments to surveillance should be removed.” – Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo

“Entire populations, rather than just individuals, now live under constant surveillance. It’s no longer based on the traditional practice of targeted taps based on some individual suspicion of wrongdoing. It covers phone calls, emails, texts, search history, what you buy, who your friends are, where you go, who you love.” – Edward Snowden

The last thing we need is another swamp creature, but it appears that is what we’re getting with our new Attorney General (AG).  Bill Barr is a DC insider who praised Comey, Rosenstein and Mueller during his confirmation hearings — how is President Trump going to drain the swamp if Mueller’s best friend is running the DOJ?  Barr and Mueller worked together when Barr was Bush’s attorney general from 1991 to 1993 and Mueller oversaw the department’s criminal division.

During William Barr’s confirmation hearings, Senator Lindsey Graham asked the nominee several questions.  Barr said he didn’t think Robert Mueller was on a witch hunt, and thought he’d be fair to the country as a whole.  He also said he had no reason to stop Mueller’s investigation or terminate it for cause.  Barr told Senator Graham that he was committed to allowing Robert Mueller to finish his job, and that he has a very high opinion of Deputy AG (DAG) Rod Rosenstein.  Link

Barr has now asked Rod Rosenstein to stay on for a while, and he has said he would.  How special.  Fired former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and two other people who have testified to Congress, claim Mr. Rosenstein repeatedly offered to wear a wire when meeting with Mr. Trump.  McCabe also stated that he and other officials, including DAG Rosenstein, did headcounts of which cabinet officials might vote to declare the president “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office” under the 25th Amendment.  Rosenstein never actually denied McCabe’s claims.

The very suspicion of impropriety should be reason for Rosenstein’s termination. 

Barr and Second Amendment

William Barr served as the 77th United States Attorney General from 1991 to 1993 during the first Bush administration.  He is also a past employee of the CIA. The Bushes represent the establishment globalists in their party and rather than vote for their party’s nominee in 2016, they voted for Hillary Clinton. 

As I stated in a previous article, William Barr exhibited anti-Second Amendment policies in his 1991 confirmation hearings.  Both Gun Owners of America and Dr. John Lott, President of the Crime Research Prevention Center, shared similar sentiments of worry with Barr’s past confirmation statements.

Video here: 

Asset Forfeiture

It is also disturbing that Barr has been a big fan of taking people’s property through civil asset forfeiture without a conviction. Many poor people in our country have cash taken from them and then the government says, “Prove to us where you got the cash and then you can get it back,” the burden is on the individual. Civil Asset Forfeiture is a terrible thing and William Barr is a big fan.

Government Theft of Promis Software

In October 1991, Barr appointed then retired Democratic Chicago judge Nicholas Bua as special counsel in the Inslaw scandal. Few people understand the full ramifications of Promis software, and the undetectable spying apparatus placed in foreign computers. In 1989, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks, D-TX, launched a three-year investigation into the Inslaw affair. In the resulting report, the Committee suggested that among others, Edwin Meese, while presidential counselor and later as attorney general, and Democrat D. Lowell Jensen a former assistant and deputy attorney general and former US district judge in San Francisco, conspired to steal PROMIS software from Bill Hamilton’s company, Inslaw.

Bua’s 1993 report found the DOJ of no wrong doing in the matter, despite a 12-year lawsuit by Inslaw, regarding the government theft of their software.  One journalist, Danny Casolaro, died as he attempted to tell the story and boxes of documents relating to the case were destroyed, stolen, or conveniently “lost” by the DOJ. Software piracy, conspiracy, cover-up, stonewalling, covert action…just another decade at the corrupt DOJ.

Ruby Ridge

Senate Judiciary Committee hearings for AG nominee William Barr focused heavily on Barr’s views on Special Counsel Robert Mueller. But nobody asked about Barr’s legal crusade for blanket immunity for federal agents who killed American citizens.

Barr was responsible for both the U.S. Marshals Service and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, two federal agencies whose misconduct at Ruby Ridge “helped to weaken the bond of trust that must exist between ordinary Americans and our law enforcement agencies,” according to a 1995 Senate Judiciary Committee report.

The family had come under federal siege because of Randy’s refusal to become an informant within the Aryan Nation white supremacist group. Randy had been manipulated by an ATF undercover operative named Kenneth Fadeley into selling a shotgun with a sawed-off barrel. Eight months after that transaction, two of Fadeley’s comrades in that detestable organization demanded that Randy become an informant, threatening his home and family if he didn’t cooperate.  Ruby Ridge was considered a kill zone.

In a questionnaire by the Judicial Committee, Barr was asked to disclose his past work including pro bono activities “serving the disadvantaged.” The “disadvantaged” that Barr spent the most time helping was FBI agent Lon Horiuchi who slayed an Idaho mother holding her baby in 1992.  Barr spent two weeks organizing former Attorneys General and others to support “an FBI sniper in defending against criminal charges in connection with the Ruby Ridge incident.” Barr also “assisted in framing legal arguments advanced… in the district court and the subsequent appeal to the Ninth Circuit,” he told the committee.

U.S. marshals trespassed on Weaver’s land and killed his 14-year-old son, Sammy, and his dog. The following day, FBI sniper Lon Horiuchi killed his wife, Vicki, as she was standing in the cabin doorway holding her 10-month-old baby. Horiuchi had previously shot Randy Weaver in the back after he stepped out of the cabin to collect the body of his son. The suspects were never given a warning or a chance to surrender and had taken no action against FBI agents. Weaver survived.

In August of 1995, the Justice Department paid $3.1 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit from the Weaver family.  In 1998, they paid Elmer “Geronimo” Pratt $4.5 million for a 26-year false imprisonment and false testimony against him by an FBI informant.

Government Surveillance

The fourth amendment originally enforced the idea that each man’s home is his castle, secure from unreasonable search and seizure by the government.  The Patriot Act was the destruction of American citizen privacy.  Both Mueller and Barr are big brothers who love the “all-seeing eye.”

While serving as attorney general under former President George H.W. Bush in 1992, Barr directed the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to collect bulk phone data on millions of people, most of whom weren’t even suspected of a crime. This program laid the groundwork for the National Security Agency’s phone record collection authorized by the Patriot Act a decade later, a misnomer if there ever was one. Barr continued to be a cheerleader for warrantless surveillance even after the PATRIOT Act’s passage. During congressional testimony in 2003, he called the bill a “major step forward.”

He went on to say that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the law that authorizes foreign surveillance and has been abused to surveil, “remains too restrictive” because it “still requires that the government establish probable cause that an individual is either a ‘foreign power’ or an ‘agent of a foreign power.’” In other words, Barr objects to the idea that the government should need a warrant before it can spy on citizens.  Link

Surveillance and the Patriot Act

The Patriot Act permits FBI agents to write their own search warrants for business records, and it has been used to induce the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to issue warrants on a made-up basis to read emails and listen to telephone calls in real time. The members of Congress who voted for it were largely unaware of the liberties they were sacrificing.  None of them ever read it.

Both the Patriot Act and the USA Freedom Act unconstitutionally do away with the probable cause requirement for warrants. Those two laws permit the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to issue warrants based on the standard of “governmental needs” rather than probable cause. This is a profoundly unconstitutional standard, and one that has resulted in spying on all people all the time.

The Patriot Act vastly expanded the surveillance potential of the FBI, the CIA and the NSA among other intelligence agencies.  The US government contracted with Acxiom, Lockheed, Booz Allen Hamilton and many others to build new mass surveillance programs.  One program was called Total Information Awareness (TIA), which was an operation where the FBI and other agencies would build profiles, like Acxiom’s, on millions of law-abiding Americans.  Link

Mr. Barr strongly supports the Patriot Act which violates every American’s fourth amendment right to privacy.  The Constitution provides us with more protection and safety than the surveillance state ever will.

An NSA Whistle-Blower tells all in this video to filmmaker Laura Poitras.  She profiled William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data.

Following the June 2013 leak of documents detailing the NSA practice of collecting telephone metadata on millions of Americans’ telephone calls, former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper was accused of perjury for telling a congressional committee hearing that the NSA does not collect any type of data on millions of Americans.  He escaped prosecution because the five-year Statute of Limitations ran out.

Birds of a Feather

Barr and Mueller are birds of a feather.  Mueller has claimed one case to validate spying on all of America.  It was a Supreme Court case and the tracing of a single phone call to a single robber.  Thus, the Supreme Court held that phone metadata is not protected by the fourth amendment.  Mueller has repeatedly used this.  The case is Smith v. Maryland, which held that people did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy regarding the numbers they call, because they willingly give up those numbers to the company to connect their call.

And so, because the Supreme Court approved the collection of one robber’s phone records in 1979, Mueller insists it meant it was reasonable for FBI and NSA to collect and aggregate the phone records for every American today and forever. Link

Mueller implicitly argues that the perpetual and ubiquitous data collection of the digital and telephonic communications of law-abiding Americans is constitutional.  For thorough documentation of same, see Louisiana State Senator John Milkovich’s book, Robert Mueller, Errand Boy for the New World Order.

Conclusion

Rand Paul opposed the confirmation of William Barr.  He said, He’s been the chief advocate for warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens. I think that the Fourth Amendment should protect your phone calls and your bank information. People shouldn’t be allowed to look at it without a warrant.”  Perhaps this one Senator knows an inside player when he sees one.

Surely, we’ve all heard foolish folks say, “Well, I have nothing to hide, I’m not a terrorist.”  Edward Snowden said, “Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”

Americans do not understand freedom or the Fourth Amendment of our unalienable Bill of Rights.  The Jews of Europe had nothing to hide either, but it didn’t stop the Gestapo, and neither did it stop the East German Stasi.  The NSA’s algorithms and extensive databases make it far more effective than the Stasi ever dreamed of being.

S139 reauthorizes the FISA for six years through 2023 which governs electronic surveillance of foreign terrorism suspects.  The Senate passed it on January 18, 2018 by a vote of 65 to 34.  Although put in place to gather intel on foreign targets, it has been used to spy on U.S. citizens.  The bill provides provisions to protect the privacy of American citizens, but given the track record of intel agencies, it is unlikely they will follow these rules.  Will our new AG make sure they do?

Attorney Joe DiGenova believes William Barr is going to be the catalyst who will clean out the filth from the DOJ.  I hope he is right, and I am wrong. P.S.  Remember during the Trump campaign how NewsWithViews articles had virus warnings appear when you opened them?  There was never a virus, it was an attempt by google to keep people from reading truth.  Now, Google has removed their ads from NewsWithViews because they don’t like the content of the articles.  Those ads help to pay for the cost of running the website.  They know that, and that’s why they’ve pulled their ads.  We need your help now more than ever.  Please tell your friends to sign up to receive the daily emails, and remember NewsWithViews when you pay your monthly bills. 

RELATED ARTICLE: Rod Rosenstein Out, William Barr In: Time To Investigate Deep State Plot Against Trump

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In America Today, We Plunder and Call It Good

Frederic Bastiat, a French economist and member of the French National Assembly, lived from 1801 to 1850. He had great admiration for our country, except for our two faults—slavery and tariffs.

He said: “Look at the United States. There is no country in the world where the law is kept more within its proper domain: the protection of every person’s liberty and property.”

If Bastiat were alive today, he would not have that same level of admiration. The U.S. has become what he fought against for most of his short life.

Bastiat observed that “when plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”

You might ask, “What did Bastiat mean by ‘plunder’?”

Plunder is when someone forcibly takes the property of another. That’s private plunder. What he truly railed against was legalized plunder, and he told us how to identify it.

He said: “See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”

That could describe today’s American laws. We enthusiastically demand that the Congress forcibly use one American to serve the purposes of another American.

You say: “Williams, that’s insulting. It’s no less than saying that we Americans support a form of slavery!”

What then should we call it when two-thirds to three-quarters of a $4 trillion-plus federal budget can be described as Congress taking the property of one American and giving it to another to whom it does not belong?

Where do you think Congress gets the billions upon billions of dollars for business and farmer handouts?

What about the billions handed out for Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, housing allowances, and thousands of other handouts?

There’s no Santa Claus or tooth fairy giving Congress the money, and members of Congress are not spending their own money. The only way Congress can give one American $1 is to first take it from another American.

What if I privately took the property of one American to give to another American to help him out? I’m guessing and hoping you’d call it theft and seek to jail me. When Congress does the same thing, it’s still theft. The only difference is that it’s legalized theft.

However, legality alone does not establish morality. Slavery was legal; was it moral? Nazi, Stalinist, and Maoist purges were legal, but were they moral?

Some argue that Congress gets its authority to bypass its enumerated powers from the general welfare clause. There are a host of proofs that the Framers had no such intention.

James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution,” wrote, “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one.”

Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Our tenet ever was … that Congress had not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but were restrained to those specifically enumerated.”

Rep. William Drayton of South Carolina asked in 1828, “If Congress can determine what constitutes the general welfare and can appropriate money for its advancement, where is the limitation to carrying into execution whatever can be effected by money?”

What about our nation’s future?

Alexis de Tocqueville is said to have predicted, “The American republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public’s money.”

We long ago began ignoring Bastiat’s warning when the federal government was just a tiny fraction of gross domestic product—3 percent, as opposed to today’s 20 percent: “If you don’t take care, what begins by being an exception tends to become general, to multiply itself, and to develop into a veritable system.”

Moral Americans are increasingly confronted with Bastiat’s dilemma: “When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law.”

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COMMENTARY BY

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Walter E. Williams

Walter E. Williams is a columnist for The Daily Signal and a professor of economics at George Mason University. Twitter: @WE_Williams.

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Dems to Trump: Quit Wall You’re Ahead

If liberals wanted to sue over the border wall, they’re about 13 years too late. Congress already gave its blessing back in 2006 when it passed the Secure Fence Act. The same goes for the president’s decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel. The House and Senate have been on board since 1995 when they authorized it. If the Left’s being honest, its problem isn’t that the president is moving forward with the wall. Its problem is that the president is Donald Trump.

Back in 2014, the Washington Examiner’s Eddie Scarry points out, the media had no problem calling it a “border crisis.” Neither did Barack Obama, who stood in the same Rose Garden as Donald Trump did on Friday, and insisted, “We now have an actual humanitarian crisis on the border that only underscores the need to drop the politics and fix our immigration system once and for all.” Five years, one administration, and who-knows-how-many caravans later, and suddenly, this president is doing something “immoral” by addressing the situation. That’s not because the dilemma changed. It’s because the occupant of the Oval Office did.

Take columnists like Karen Tumulty. In 2014, Scarry explains, she had no problem writing about the “current crisis on the Southwest border.” Well, it must have magically fixed itself, because last month, she accused the president of “manufacturing an emergency.” California, New York, and 14 other states want you to think that Donald Trump was acting outside of his constitutional authority when he used his executive power to finish the job Congress gave the green light to over a dozen years ago. But, as Ken Klukowski told me last night on Washington Watch, nothing could be farther from the truth.

“It’s critical for everyone to understand: the president is not invoking any of his inherent constitutional powers — none of his Article 2 powers, like commander-in-chief authority. In this case, you have a president who is only acting under a specific act of Congress, a federal statute called the National Emergencies Act of 1976. It’s been used 59 times before. This is just number 60. In fact, the 59th time was earlier this month — also by President Trump — regarding U.S. relations with Venezuela, because of course the turmoil going on over there. Maybe I missed the press release, but I didn’t hear the sky fall [when he declared that emergency]. I didn’t hear a news story from the National Archives that the Constitution burst into flames. One would almost think that this is just part of the rule of law. And that’s exactly what’s going on here.”

President Trump’s request is simple. He wants to move money that’s already been approved by Congress from one bank account to another. This president hasn’t “conjured funding from thin air (the military construction and Army Corps funding has already been appropriated),” the Federalist argues, “nor is he using funds for purposes explicitly prohibited by Congress (to the contrary, Congress explicitly authorized the construction of a border wall).”

In other words, there’s no constitutional crisis here. The only reason these leftist states are suing Trump is because he wants to protect American sovereignty and security. Juxtapose that with 2012. When conservative states took Barack Obama to court over his health care mandate, it was for the exact opposite reason. Unlike Trump, Obama wasn’t in the business of protecting freedom — he was in the business of undermining it. Obviously, after eight years of Obama, a lot of people are out of practice when it comes to operating within the limits of presidential authority. But in this instance, the contrast between the two parties has never been clearer.

None of this, unfortunately, is a surprise to President Trump. “… I’ll sign the final papers as soon as I get into the Oval Office. And we will have a national emergency, and we will then be sued. and they will sue us in the Ninth Circuit even though it shouldn’t be there, and we will possibly get a bad ruling — and then we’ll get another bad ruling — and then we’ll end up in the Supreme Court, and hopefully we’ll get a fair shake. And we’ll win in the Supreme Court just like the [travel] ban.”

As Ken joked, “We can’t get through our morning coffee without the Left filing a new lawsuit against President Trump — even when he’s just doing things that President Obama or previous presidents have done. Somehow it all becomes illegal when President Trump does it.” But if there’s one thing the other side should have learned by now, it’s that this president isn’t deterred — not by them, not by lawsuits, and certainly not when it comes to doing what’s right.


Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.


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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column with images is republished with permission.

Here’s A List Of Hoax ‘Hate Crimes’ In The Trump Era

Liberal actor Jussie Smollett is accused of staging a racist and anti-gay attack on himself, which Smollett blamed on supporters of President Donald Trump.

Smollett’s alleged fake “hate crime” appears to be the latest instance of liberals manufacturing hate crimes for attention in the Trump era.

The Daily Caller News Foundation compiled below some of the most outrageous fake hate crimes since Trump was elected, in rough chronological order:

ANTI-MUSLIM HATE CRIME IN MICHIGAN TURNS OUT TO BE A HOAX (NOV. 2016)

A Muslim woman at the University of Michigan received national attention from national outlets like The Washington Post in November 2016 after she claimed a drunk 20-something man threatened to light her on fire if she didn’t remove her hijab. The university condemned the “hateful attack,” which turned out to be a hoax.

BISEXUAL STUDENT FAKES TRUMP-INSPIRED HATE CRIME (NOV. 2016)

Taylor Volk, an openly bisexual senior at North Park University claimed to be the target of hateful notes and emails following Trump’s election in November 2016. Volk told NBC News that “I just want them to stop.” But the “them” referenced by Volk turned out to be herself, as the whole thing was fabricated.

GAS STATION RACISM GOES VIRAL — THEN POLICE DEBUNK IT (NOV. 2016)

Philadelphia woman Ashley Boyer claimed in November 2016 that she was harassed at a gas station by white, Trump-supporting males, one of whom pulled a weapon on her. Boyer claimed that the men “proceeded to talk about the election and how they’re glad they won’t have to deal with n—–s much longer.” Boyer deleted her post after it went viral and claimed the men had been caught and were facing criminal charges. Local police debunked her account.

WHITE MEN ROB MUSLIM WOMAN OF HER HIJAB AND WALLET — EXCEPT IT NEVER HAPPENED (NOV. 2016)

An 18-year-old Muslim woman in Louisiana claimed in November 2016 that two white men, one of whom was wearing a Trump hat, attacked and robbed her, taking her wallet and hijab while yelling racial slurs. She later admitted to the Lafayette Police Department that she made the whole thing up.

CHURCH ORGANIST VANDALIZES OWN CHURCH (NOV. 2016) 

A church organist was arrested in May 2017 after he was found responsible for spray-painting a swastika, an anti-gay slur and the words “Heil Trump” on his own church in November 2016. When the story first broke, media outlets tied the hoax to Trump’s election. “The offensive graffiti at St. David’s is among numerous incidents that have occurred in the wake of Trump’s Election Day win,” The Washington Post reported at the time.

“DRUNK WHITE MEN” ATTACK MUSLIM WOMAN IN STORY THAT ALSO NEVER HAPPENED (DEC. 2016)

Another 18-year-old Muslim woman, this time in New York, was the subject of breathless headlines in December 2016 after she claimed to have been attacked by a group of Donald Trump supporters on a New York subway while onlookers did nothing. The woman, Yasmin Seweid, would go on to confess that she made the whole thing up.

WHITE GUY SETS HIS OWN CAR ON FIRE, PAINTS RACIAL SLUR ON HIS OWN GARAGE (DEC. 2016)

Denton, Texas, resident David Williams set his own car on fire and painted “n***** lovers” on his home’s garage, in an apparent attempt to stage a hate crime. Local police investigated the arson as a hate crime. Williams and his wife, Jenny, collected more than $5,000 from Good Samaritans via a GoFundMe page before the hoax was exposed.

PRANKSTER TRICKS LIBERAL JOURNALIST INTO SPREADING ANTI-TRUMP HOAX (DEC. 2016) 

As tales of Trump-inspired “hate crimes” were spread far and wide by liberal journalists after Trump’s election, one online prankster decided to test just easy it was to fool journalists. The prankster sent Mic.com writer Sarah Harvard a fictitious story in which a Native American claimed to have been harassed by an alleged Trump supporter who thought she was Mexican. Despite no evidence backing up the claim, Harvard spread the fake story, emails the prankster shared with The Daily Caller showed.

STUDENT WRITES ANTI-MUSLIM GRAFFITI ON HIS OWN DOOR (FEB. 2017)

A Muslim student at Beloit College wrote anti-Muslim graffiti on his own dorm room door. The student was reportedly motivated by a desire to seek attention after a Jewish student was targeted with an anti-Semitic note.

ISRAELI MAN BEHIND ANTI-SEMITIC BOMB THREATS IN THE U.S. (APRIL 2017) 

Media outlets didn’t wait to find out who was behind a string of bomb threats targeting synagogues and Jewish schools before linking the threats to Trump. A U.S.-Israeli man was charged in April 2017 and indicted in February 2018 for the threats. A former reporter for The Intercept was also charged in March 2017 with making several copycat threats.

HOAX AT ST. OLAF (MAY 2017)

Students at St. Olaf college in Minnesota staged protests and boycotted classes in May 2017 after racist notes targeting black students were found around campus, earning coverage in national media outlets like The Washington Post. It later came out that a black student was responsible for the racist notes. The student carried out the hoax in order to “draw attention to concerns about the campus climate,” the university announced.

FAKE HATE AT AIR FORCE ACADEMY GOES VIRAL (SEPT. 2017) 

The Air Force Academy was thrown into turmoil in September 2017 when horrific racist notes were found at the academy’s preparatory school. “Go home n***er,” read one of the notes. The superintendent, Lt. Gen. Jay B. Silveria, went viral with an impassioned speech addressing the racist notes.

Two months later, authorities determined that one of the students targeted by the notes was also the person responsible for writing them.

K-STATE FAKE HATE CRIME (NOV. 2017)

A student at Kansas State University filed a police report in November 2017 over racist graffiti left on his car. “Go Home N***** Boy” and “Whites Only,” read the racist graffiti, which the the student later admitted to writing himself.

RACIST GRAFFITI CARRIED OUT BY NON-WHITE STUDENT (NOV. 2017) 

Another instance of racist graffiti that same month also turned out to be a hoax. A Missouri high school investigated after racial slurs were left on a bathroom mirror in November 2017, only to find that the student responsible was “non-white.”

WAITER FAKES NOTE CALLING HIMSELF A TERRORIST (JULY 2018)

Texas waiter Khalil Cavil went viral after posting a Facebook picture of a racist note that he claimed a customer had left on the receipt, in lieu of a tip. The note described Cavil as a “terrorist.” Saltgrass Steak House, where Cavil worked, initially banned the customers for life, before their investigation revealed that the waiter had faked the racist note. “I did write it,” Cavil later admitted. “I don’t have an explanation. I made a mistake. There is no excuse for what I did.”

WAITRESS FAKES RACIST NOTE, BLAMES LAW ENFORCEMENT (JULY 2018)

A Texas waitress apologized in July 2018 after blaming local law enforcement for an offensive note targeting Mexicans. She later admitted to writing the note herself.

NEW YORK WOMAN’S HATE CRIME THAT WASN’T (SEPT. 2018)

A New York woman was charged in September 2018 after police determined she fabricated a story about white teens yelling racial slurs at her and leaving a racist note on her car.

STUDENT FAKED RACIST NOTES (DEC. 2018)

Several racist notes at Drake University were actually the work of one of the students who had been targeted by them. “The fact that the actions of the student who has admitted guilt were propelled by motives other than hate does not minimize the worry and emotional harm they caused, but should temper fears,” university president Marty Martin said afterwards.

THE COVINGTON CATASTROPHE (JAN. 2019)

National media outlets pounced on a selectively edited video from the March for Life that showed Native American activist Nathan Phillips beating a drum in front of a boisterous group of boys from Covington Catholic High School.

REUTERS/Madalyn McGarvey

The exterior of Covington Catholic High School Dennis Griffin stadium is pictured in Park Hills, Kentucky, U.S., January 23, 2019. REUTERS/Madalyn McGarvey

Phillips originally told The Washington Post the students swarmed him while he was preparing to leave the Indigenous People’s March scheduled for the same day. Phillips originally said one student, who later identified himself as high school junior Nick Sandmann, blocked his path from leaving as he tried to do so. The extended video shows that wasn’t the case: Phillips approached the high school boys during their cheers, not the other way around. Some of the people with Phillips were directing racially charged language at the students, not the other way around.

Phillips told a second variation of his story to the Detroit Free Press. Phillips claimed he was playing the role of peacemaker by getting between the students and four “old black individuals,” whom he claimed the students were attacking. “They were in the process of attacking these four black individuals,” Phillip tolds the Michigan paper. “I was there and I was witnessing all of this … As this kept on going on and escalating, it just got to a point where you do something or you walk away, you know? You see something that is wrong and you’re faced with that choice of right or wrong.”

“These young men were beastly and these old black individuals was their prey, and I stood in between them and so they needed their pounds of flesh and they were looking at me for that,” he added. Extended video shows that account also isn’t accurate. The four individuals Phillips referenced were members of the Black Hebrew Israelites and they launched racist and anti-gay slurs at the high school students, not the other way around.

WATCH: 

BONUS: ANTI-SEMITIC VANDAL EXPOSED AS DEMOCRATIC ACTIVIST (NOV. 2018)

Anti-Semitic vandalism in New York City turned out to be the work of a Democratic activist, according to police. It wasn’t a hoax — the anti-Semitic vandalism was real — but the suspect wasn’t the right-winger some had assumed him to be. The man police arrested, based on surveillance footage, was 26-year-old James Polite, who had actually interned for City Hall on anti-hate issues.

BONUS IITRUMP-INSPIRED RACIST BLAZE AT BLACK CHURCH WAS CARRIED OUT BY BLACK CHURCH-GOER (NOV. 2016)

This hoax occurred one week before Trump was elected, but TheDCNF is including it as a bonus because it was so egregious. Leftist media outlets ran headlines like “A Black Church Burned in the Name of Trump” after a black church in Greenville, Mississippi, was set on fire and spray painted with the words “Vote Trump.” The Washington Post’s original coverage of the incident read in part,” Greenville Mayor Errick Simmons called the fire a ‘hateful and cowardly act,’ sparked by the incendiary rhetoric of GOP nominee Donald Trump during his presidential campaign.” But the church was set on fire by one of the church’s own congregants, who is black.

Did we miss any hoaxes? Shoot me an email

Follow Hasson on Twitter @PeterJHasson

RELATED ARTICLES:

Brothers Allegedly Hired To Stage Smollett Hate Crime Break Silence

Kamala Harris Stammers When Asked About Smollett ‘Lynching’ Comments

Don Trump Jr. Slams Instagram After Smollett Post Deleted: ‘Why Don’t You Want The Truth Out There?’

Nathan Phillips Keeps Changing His Story, Keeps Getting It Wrong

RELATED VIDEO: Glazov on “Why Jussie Smollett Lied – And the Left’s Victimhood Cult.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column with images is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Florida’s Universal Education Choice Moment

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday that the state legislature intends to establish Equal Opportunity Scholarships designed to end the current waiting list on the tax credit scholarship program—a move the Republican chief executive supports.

The Florida Tax Credit Scholarship—which provides scholarships to eligible children to attend a private school of choice, and which is financed through corporate donations—currently has a waitlist of an estimated 13,000 families.

As the Tampa Bay Times reported, DeSantis would like those waiting students to have an immediate school choice option.

“If the taxpayer is paying for education, it’s public education,” regardless of where the student attends, DeSantis said.

He also said:

We have parents who are lining up for a tax credit scholarship. They would not do that if the program was not succeeding. … The question for us now is, should we be satisfied there is a growing waitlist, or should we build off the successes?

He is indeed correct to want to build off the success of the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship and end the waitlist. And the announcement follows on the heels of DeSantis’ promise earlier this month to eliminate the waitlist on the state’s education savings account program, which provides those accounts to students with special needs to get a customized education.

DeSantis’ remarks underscore the need to safeguard education choice for those hoping to exercise it; namely, students on the waitlist across the Sunshine State.

Now Florida should take the next step, and make education choice universally available to every student in the state.

Florida policymakers—along with DeSantis and his newly appointed education commissioner, Richard Corcoran (another staunch supporter of school choice)—should establish universal education savings accounts available to all students in the state.

As the Fordham Institute’s Robert Pondiscio explained, Republicans control the governor’s office, the state Senate, and the state House—a “trifecta” bolstered by DeSantis’ appointment of three conservatives to the Florida Supreme Court, shifting the balance on the court from a liberal majority to a conservative-leaning court.

Although Pondiscio notes that some are wary of expanding choice too quickly, “[a]lmost without exception, every state official and school choice advocate I recently met in Florida believes the state will be the first to have ‘universal’ education savings accounts, opening private-school choice options to all who seek them,” he noted.

As Jason Bedrick of EdChoice and I recently explained, Florida’s tax credit scholarship program is benefiting some of the most disadvantaged students in the state, with participating families’ average household income being just 8.2 percent above the federal poverty line (at $25,362).

Participating students scored lower on standardized exams prior to entry into the program than their peers, yet performed up to the national average (and exceeded their demographic peers) after using a scholarship.

Moreover, on Feb. 4, the Urban Institute released an evaluation finding that tax credit scholarship students are more likely to go to college and graduate.

Those are likely a few of the reasons parents are highly satisfied with the school choice option. Ninety-two percent of parents are satisfied with the program, including 89 percent who reported being highly satisfied.

Notably, as we found in this study—currently, the largest survey ever conducted of school choice program participants—parents are seeking out things the public school system cannot or will not provide:

Parents place a high value on their child’s character development. When asked to list the top three factors that influenced their decision to have their child attend their chosen school, the only factors to be selected by a majority of scholarship parents were religious environment/instruction (66 percent) and morals/character/values instruction (52 percent).

These two highly influential factors were followed by a safe environment (36 percent), academic reputation (34 percent), and small classes (31 percent).

The least important factor was standardized test scores, which only 4 percent of parents listed as one of their top three factors.

Parents in Florida want expanded education choice options. There are high levels of satisfaction among families in the current programs, high demand for more options (as evidenced by the waitlist), and the opportunity to go bold.

More than 100,000 children currently attend a school of their choice, thanks to the tax credit scholarship program, and 13,000 remain on the waitlist.

If implemented, Equal Opportunity Scholarships would give immediate school choice access to those students.

Florida should also seize this critical moment in time, as Pondiscio explains, to go bold on school choice:

Now the political stars have aligned to allow Florida Republicans—if they choose—to push the school choice agenda even further.

With the election of Gov. Ron DeSantis, a victory credited by The Wall Street Journal to African-American ‘school choice moms’ voting to protect tax credit scholarships and charter schools, choice proponents are champing at the bit to push school choice into the middle class, even making Florida the first state in the nation with universal choice.

Florida should do just that, providing education savings accounts to every child in the Sunshine State. Such a move would maintain Florida’s status as a leader in education choice, and improve educational opportunity to all families.

COMMENTARY BY

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Lindsey Burke

Lindsey M. Burke researches and writes on federal and state education issues as the Will Skillman fellow in education policy at The Heritage Foundation. Read her research. Twitter: @lindseymburke.

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It’s Really Not AOC, Amazon Or The Green New Deal; It’s Democrats And Their Media

The Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez phenomenon in the Democratic Party is both scrumptious and terrifying to watch because it either destroys the Democratic Party for the foreseeable future or it cripples America for good.

It cannot be emphasized enough up front: The media has created the pretty AOC monster with endless lavish and uncritical cover stories, Sunday morning interviews and daily coverage verging on adoration. Talk about a Messiah complex — not AOC’s, but the media and sycophantic Democratic Presidential candidates, which are really the problems.

The Amazon fiasco, which I talked about a week ago on my Salem radio show, displays both her inordinately outsized influence, power, destruction and ongoing, astonishing ignorance. It’s important to keep writing and reminding about her train wrecks of bad ideas because again, you virtually cannot find her almost daily knuckle-headed comments in the MSM. Covering as per usual.

So Amazon pulls out of its New York City deal along with its 25,000 pretty good jobs and all the surrounding development and rollover effect, because of the AOC-led charge opposing giant giveaways to corporations. I’m pretty sympathetic to that in principle. But you have to have a modicum of understanding of how these deals are typically structured nowadays (as opposed to the outright gifts given to, say, major league sports teams. That’s not how Amazon or others work.)

In this case, the generally superficial reporting on Amazon said that NYC was providing $3 billion in “incentives.” Apparently, AOC took that to mean the city was giving Amazon $3 billion from the city’s coffers. Now the projections were that Amazon would have created about $26 billion of economic impact and the taxed portion of that would have more than paid back the incentives in just a few years.

But even that was not the deal. These were only tax breaks provided once Amazon had created those 25,000 jobs. So this was tax revenue — and tax break — that would only be realized if Amazon relocated and if they create all 25,000 jobs. But AOC, in her junior high way, thinks that money is just sitting somewhere. Here’s what she said while virtually dancing a jig in the halls of Congress at the news that Amazon will take their development and 25,000 jobs elsewhere, in response to a reporter’s question:

“The district is now going to lose thousands of jobs that would have come there,” a reporter quietly noted in the middle of Ocasio-Cortez’s celebratory dance. “Well one of those things is, A) we were subsidizing those jobs,” she said. “The city was paying for those jobs so frankly if we were willing to give Amazon, so if we were willing to give away $3 billion for this deal, we could invest those $3 billion in our district ourselves if we wanted to. We could hire out more teachers, we can fix our subways, we can put a lot of people to work for that money if we wanted to.”

Good golly Miss Molly. The money does not exist without Amazon moving to New York City. Those taxes are not being paid by others. It would have been the taxes due because Amazon was there. Ignorance really does kill — in this case, good jobs and economic development for her own district — but she’s going to totally remake the American economy. Riiiight. She does this almost daily. I won’t regale you with the litany. They are everywhere in the non-MSM sphere, where again her daily ignorance is largely swept away.

But the terrifying part is that because she has been propped up as the fresh new face of the Democratic Party and its future by the utterly compromised, irresponsible and untrustworthy American media, she is dragging the Party in her ignorant, socialist direction. (She is a self-proclaimed Socialist Democrat.)

Her Green New Deal is embarrassingly junior high in its thinking and reality, but it had 60 Democratic members of Congress sign on and most of the front-runners in the Democratic presidential campaign also jumped onboard. Sure it was craven politics without probably vetting it first, but that is part of the problem. There really is no substance in the Democratic Party, and far from enough in the Republican Party.

She cannot just be mocked, easy and fun as that is. See, it’s not just that she released a plan to eliminate all fossil fuel use in 10 years, eliminate all air travel and originally cow emissions. It’s that because of her now gigantic platform — a monstrous creation of the media — she has lured a lot of wet-finger Democrats to her. It’s not just that she led the charge against Amazon with the envy card (rich corporation!) it’s that she managed to destroy a demonstrable increase in prosperity for that part of New York through sheer ignorance.

What she did for New York, she would like to do for the country.

If this is the direction of the Democratic Party, if she is the future, the Party is either doomed to self-immolation, leaving us with one-party rule for a season that will go badly, or the Party is actually successful in taking power with this radical agenda, the nation itself is under grave threat of self-immolation.

You see, there is virtually no check. With craven Democrats and dishonest media colluding against Republicans and President Trump, willing to build up AOC and other radicals in Congress while covering up their idiocy and bigotry (Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib) the American people can be too easily misled.

That makes the threat real.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Revolutionary Act column is republished with permission. The featured image is by Pixabay.

Breaking Leftists’ Deception of Black Americans

With earbuds in my ears and wired to my phone, I listen to national Christian broadcasts during my daily walk. Back to back, I heard two black pastors with large congregations. It was stunning hearing how clueless both men were regarding the truth of various political issues.

Both pastors parroted Democrats’ and fake news media’s lies in their sermons. Between the two, they rebuked Republicans for hatefully wanting to build a wall to “keep people out”. They blamed Republicans for foolishly shutting down the government which caused 800,000 employees to suffer unpaid. They scolded Republicans for cruelly separating children from their parents. Each allegation against Republicans was a misrepresentation of the truth; rooted in Democrats’ and fake news media’s longtime lie that Republicans are racist and mean.

The Border Wall. Americans welcome immigrants who enter our country legally. The border wall is to stop the invasion of illegals which includes sex traffickers, drug dealers and violent criminals. Stats confirm that walls are effective. Hypocritically, Democrats who preach that building a wall to keep Americans safe is racist and mean live in highly secured communities behind walls.

The Government Shutdown. In essence, Democrats shutdown the government by refusing to sign a budget with a piddly $5 billion towards the border wall. Democrats claim the wall at a cost of $25 billion is too expensive. Meanwhile, we are spending $135 billion annually for freebies to illegals. Democrats want the free flow of unskilled needy illegals invading our country to become new Democrat voters. The dirty little secret is illegal aliens are already illegally voting for Democrats in our elections. 

Separating Children. Democrats authored the law separating children from their parents at the border. Trump said he hates the law. Fake news and Democrats are using this Democrat law to portray Trump as a villain. Meanwhile, Democrats and fake news elevate to sainthood irresponsible foreign parents who send their children unaccompanied to make the extremely dangerous journey to America. Border agents report 12 year old illegal alien girls armed with birth control, Plan B pills, due to the high probability of being raped along the way. What kind of parents subject their children to such horrors?

A white friend left a tearful message on my phone. Kelly was heartbroken over the loss of her 40 year friendship with a black woman. The two women and their husbands vacationed together; shared family joys and sorrows together. They never discussed politics. Out of the blue, the black woman phoned Kelly to rant about Trump’s racism. Kelly gave numerous examples of why Trump is not a racist. She touted Trump’s excellent record of hiring blacks. She included how Trump fought the old guard racism of Palm Beach golf clubs. Trump opened Mar-a-Lago and insisted that blacks and Jews be admitted

The conversation between Kelly and her longtime friend ended with the black woman saying, “I never thought you would support a racist.”

I returned Kelly’s heartfelt phone call. I told Kelly to pray that God will open the eyes of her deceived black friend. I handed the phone to my wife. Mary counseled Kelly to mourn the loss of her friend and trust God to fill the void.

The next day Kelly sent me a note saying she decided to send her black friend a letter telling her that she loves her. Kelly said she will include my article, “State of the Union Destroys Trump is Racist Lie”.

My younger brother Jerry is the only Republican in his all black Baptist church in Baltimore. He confronted his black pastor about routinely including rants about how Trump and Republicans are racist in his sermons. Jerry told the pastor about how years ago, Trump gave Jesse Jackson office space for his PUSH organization. Jerry explained that the KKK was founded by Democrats. He touted Democrats’ history of perceiving blacks as inferior and opposing black liberation. None of these truths impacted his pastor’s disdain for Trump and Republicans. Jerry feels led to remain in his church, letting his light shine and speaking out for what is right.

Jerry said since political facts seem useless in breaking his pastor’s blind loyalty to Democrats, he will approach it using biblical scripture. What can I say folks, our dad was a preacher.

Jerry has scheduled a meeting with his pastor and the church elders. He will speak to them using, Matthew 16:33. “But seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness….” Jerry will go down the list of all the things Democrats are pushing which are in conflict with the kingdom of God and his righteousness.

I applaud my brother Jerry and my friend Kelly for not giving up. Both are seeking ways to break leftists’ stronghold on the hearts and minds of deceived black Americans. The Bible says,”Seek and ye shall find.”

My dad, Dr Rev Lloyd E. Marcus, recently passed at age 90. I brought home a book from Dad’s library titled, “The Magic of Thinking Big” by David J. Schwartz. The book says your mind is a “thought factory” either dominated by Mr Triumph or Mr Defeat. Both are extremely obedient, triggered by your instructions. Mr Triumph produces ways for you to win. Mr Defeat nurtures ways for you to fail. I can testify to the truth of this concept in the book.

Frustrated, I whined about how unfair it was that nothing I did seemed to lower my blood sugar. Committed to win, I put Mr Triumph in charge, thinking of things I needed to do differently. After several adjustments in my diet and exercise, my blood sugar numbers have dramatically improved. I focused totally on thinking of ways to win. The Bible says, “As a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”

My fellow Americans, we can whine about how evil leftists control mainstream and social media. Or, we can place Mr Triumph in charge of our thinking, focusing on creative ways to educate our fellow American low-info voters. I fully intend to continue praying, trusting God and spreading truth.

Why Do American Jews Vote Against Their Interests?

Congresswoman IIhan Omar, a Radical Islamist and ardent anti Semite, accuses the Jews in America of paying Congress to support Israel. She particularly accuses AIPAC (American-Israel Affairs Committee) of paying Congressional members money, which is untrue. 

The reason Omar is an anti Semite is obvious. She is a Radical Islamist.  The question is why have the Democrat leadership given her a  coveted position on the powerful Foreign Affairs Committee which deals with U.S.- Israel relations. As a first term Congresswoman she has no foreign policy experience. Her only claim to fame is that she hates Jews and Israel.

So why did the Democrats give her this coveted appointment?

The obvious answer is that the Democrats are trying to coral the Muslim vote.  No one knows how many Muslims reside in the U.S. There are estimates between three and five million or more. This means there are probably as many Muslims as Jews in the U.S. That being the case the question is why elevate a antisemitic Radical Muslim to the Foreign relation Committee against Jewish interests? 

The Jewish Vote is Being Taken For Granted 

The reason that the Democrat leadership feel they can appoint an Anti-Semite to a powerful position is because the Democrats believe Jews based on past history will vote for Democrats no matter what Democrats do to them.   

The Democrats believe they have the Jewish vote in their pocket. 

President Obama  attacked Israel’s Prime Minister and arranged for the entire Black Caucus to walk out of the Congressional Joint Session when Netanyahu raised the issue of the Iran nuclear agreement which we all know is a direct threat to Israel and the U.S.  Obama succeeded in turning millions of Democrats against Israel.

A Pew poll indicated that 73% of Americans (mostly Republicans) while only 27% of Democrats support Israel.

This shift occurred during the Obama administration. Notwithstanding this fact a large majority of Jews continue to vote for Democrats. Sad but true. Perhaps the elevation of anti Semites in the Democrat ranks to high position will change this.

The Progressive Assault on Israel 

By Bret Stephens (New York Times)

  • Last month in Detroit, pro-Palestinian demonstrators seized the stage of the National LGBTQ Task Force conference and demanded a boycott of Israel. Conference organizers did nothing to stop the disruption or disavow the demonstrators, who were met with sustained applause by the audience.
  • What’s unsettling is that anti-Zionism – rejection not just of this or that Israeli policy but also of the idea of a Jewish state itself – is becoming a respectable position among people who would never support the elimination of any other country in any other circumstance. And it is churning up a new wave of anti-Jewish bigotry in its wake.
  • Israel’s enemies were committed to its destruction long before it occupied a single inch of Gaza or the West Bank. In proportion to its size, Israel has voluntarily relinquished more territory taken in war than any state in the world. Israeli prime ministers offered a Palestinian state in 2000 and 2008; they were refused both times. Nearly 1,300 Israeli civilians have been killed in Palestinian terrorist attacks in this century: That’s the proportional equivalent of about 16 Sept. 11s in the U.S.
  • Israel is now the home of nearly nine million citizens, with an identity that is as distinctively and proudly Israeli as the Dutch are Dutch or the Danes Danish. Anti-Zionism proposes nothing less than the elimination of that identity and the political dispossession of those who cherish it, with no real thought of what would likely happen to the dispossessed.
  • To say that Jews are “colonizers” in Israel is anti-Semitic because it advances the lie that there is no ancestral or historic Jewish tie to the land. To claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, when manifestly it is not, is anti-Semitic because it’s an attempt to Nazify the Jewish state. To insist that the only state in the world that has forfeited the moral right to exist just happens to be the Jewish state is anti-Semitic, too.
  • But the most toxic assumption is that Jews, whether in Israel or the U.S., can never really be thought of as victims or even as a minority because they are white, wealthy, powerful and “privileged.” Jews in Germany were economically and even politically powerful in the 1920s. And then they were in Buchenwald. Israel appears powerful vis-a-vis the Palestinians, but considerably less so in the context of a broader Middle East saturated with genocidal anti-Semitism.

RELATED VIDEO: Ben Shapiro: Why Jews Vote Leftist?

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by Pixabay.

The Green New Deal Mirrors Mao’s Great Leap Forward

The Mises Institute’s William L. Anderson published an article titled “AOC and the Green Great Leap Forward.” Anderson wrote:

When Baby Boomers were in college a half-century ago, many saw Mao as their political hero, a man with great vision who had the political will to do what was necessary to advance the fortunes of his own people. That he was a murderous tyrant who presided over mass death that exceeded even the killings of World War II was irrelevant or even ignored.

Today, we are told by her adoring press that Alexandria Occasio-Cortez is the New Visionary, a person who is far-seeing and knows what we have to do in order to survive the coming consequences of climate change. That her grand vision is little more than a mass-depopulation scheme is ignored, and we ignore it at our peril.

I believe that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a clear and present danger to our Constitutional Republican form of government.

The Great Leap Forward

It is important to understand history in order to realize how dangerous the Green New Deal is. Let’s look at the last time this type of massive government reorganization of society happened. It was tried in China under Mao Zedong. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Overall, the radicalization of policy that led to the Great Leap Forward can be traced back to the anti-rightist campaign of 1957 and a major meeting of China’s leaders at the resort city of Qingdao in October of that year. 

In the Encyclopedia Britannica’s study of the Great Leap Forward found:

[I]n Chinese history, the campaign undertaken by the Chinese communists between 1958 and early 1960 to organize its vast population, especially in large-scale rural communes, to meet China’s industrial and agricultural problems. The Chinese hoped to develop labour-intensive methods of industrialization, which would emphasize manpower rather than machines and capital expenditure. Thereby, it was hoped, the country could bypass the slow, more typical process of industrialization through gradual accumulation of capital and purchase of heavy machinery. The Great Leap Forward approach was epitomized by the development of small backyard steel furnaces in every village and urban neighbourhood, which were intended to accelerate the industrialization process.

[ … ]

After intense debate, it was decided that agriculture and industry could be developed at the same time by changing people’s working habits and relying on labour rather than machine-centred industrial processes. An experimental commune was established in the north-central province of Henan early in 1958, and the system soon spread throughout the country.

Under the commune system, agricultural and political decisions were decentralized, and ideological purity rather than expertise was emphasized. 

What were the outcomes of the Great Leap Forward?

Encyclopedia Britannica’s study of the Great Leap Forward found:

The program was implemented with such haste by overzealous cadres that implements were often melted to make steel in the backyard furnaces, and many farm animals were slaughtered by discontented peasants. These errors in implementation were made worse by a series of natural disasters and the withdrawal of Soviet support. The inefficiency of the communes and the large-scale diversion of farm labour into small-scale industry disrupted China’s agriculture seriously, and three consecutive years of natural calamities added to what quickly turned into a national disaster; in all, about 20 million people were estimated to have died of starvation between 1959 and 1962.

This breakdown of the Chinese economy caused the government to begin to repeal the Great Leap Forward program by early 1960. 

In an article titled “AOC’s Green New Deal Is a U.S. Version of Mao’s Disastrous Great Leap Forward” the Foundation for Economic Education’s Dr. William Anderson, a Professor of Economics at Frostburg State University, wrote:

In what its supporters have claimed is “visionary,” congressional media darling Alexandria Occasio-Cortez (AOC) has released her short-awaited Green New Deal, and she has called for nothing short of the destruction of life as we have known it:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she has no qualms about acknowledging a so-called “Green New Deal” will mean unprecedented governmental intrusion into the private sector. Appearing on NPR, she was asked if she’s prepared to tell Americans outright that her plans involve “massive government intervention.”

We cannot predict what would be the outcome if the Green New Deal Resolution was fully implemented. What we can say is it would require a massive government takeover of all means of production with the stated goal of “saving the planet.”

As George Santayana wrote, ” “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

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Great Leap Forward

AOC’s Green New Deal Is a U.S. Version of Mao’s Disastrous Great Leap Forward

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Alfonso Castro on Unsplash.