Matt Gaetz Calls To Abolish The ATF After Agency Issues Rule Allegedly Making It Harder For Certain People To Buy Guns

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Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz introduced legislation Wednesday that would abolish the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) after they enacted a rule that would make pistol stabilizing braces illegal for anyone without a certain license.

The legislation, titled the “Abolish the ATF Act,” would totally eliminate the ATF immediately after the bill is enacted. Gaetz introduced the bill after the ATF announced they would make gun owners face the possibility of being charged with a felony if they do not register their firearms with the stabilizing braces.

Gaetz said that the House GOP has the ATF in their “crosshairs.”

“House Republicans have the ATF in our crosshairs. The continued existence of the ATF is increasingly unwarranted based on their repeated actions to convert law-abiding citizens into felons. They must be stopped. My bill today would abolish the ATF once and for all,” Gaetz said in a statement.

READ THE LEGISLATION HERE: 

(DAILY CALLER OBTAINED) — … by Henry Rodgers

In June of 2021, Republican Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also introduced legislation that would abolish ATF if signed into law, which Gaetz was a co-sponsor of. The Daily Caller first obtained that legislation, titled the “Brian A. Terry Memorial Eliminate the ATF Act.” The bill was named after Marine and Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry, who was killed in a gunfight after a group of armed men attempted to rob smugglers who were transporting drugs from Mexico to the U.S.

The Caller also broke the news of legislation introduced by Republican Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall in the Senate that would protect Americans’ second amendment rights from the ATF-proposed registry for firearms with stabilizing braces.

Democrats have been focused on passing legislation that would stop gun trafficking, ban the import, sale, manufacture, transfer or possession of high-capacity magazines, raise the purchase age for certain rifles from 18 to 21 and promote safer storage of guns.

AUTHOR

HENRY RODGERS

Chief national correspondent. Follow Henry Rodgers On Twitter

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EDITORS NOTE:

Report: U.S. Is ‘Most Permissive Country’ for Minor Gender Transition

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UPDATE:

”The United States is the most permissive country when it comes to the legal and medical gender transition of children,” according to a 12-country policy review by medical advocacy group Do No Harm. The group compared “different legal requirements for gender change-related treatments and actions” among the U.S. and the 11 countries of Northern and Western Europe. These countries — Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the United Kingdom — “share the United States’ broad support for transgenderism” yet “reject the gender-affirming care model for children.”

Do No Harm explained that America has adopted a “gender affirmation” policy for children, which “assumes that gender incongruence can manifest as early as age four and that questioning a minor’s gender self-definition is harmful and unethical. The American Academy of Pediatrics has embraced an affirm-only/affirm-early policy since 2018, and most states abide by its guidance despite withering medical and scientific criticism.” By contrast, some European countries “have explicitly abandoned” the gender-affirming care model and “now discourage automatic deference to a child’s self-declaration on the grounds that the risks outweigh the benefits.” They also recommend “months-long psychotherapy sessions to address co-occurring mental health problems.”

The report proceeded with a country-by-country comparison of requirements for the medical and legal gender transition of children.

American restrictions on puberty blockers vary by state, but “the most permissive states do not impose restrictions,” and blockers have been prescribed “as early as age eight.” Oregonians “are legally entitled” to blockers “from age 15,” with Medicaid assistance and without parental consent. In Iceland, there is “no minimum age” except as a “matter of clinical judgment.” The U.K. permits blockers “from the earliest stages of puberty,” while Belgium, France, and Norway permit blockers from Tanner Stage II, or “once physiological signs of puberty manifest.” Denmark, Netherlands, and Sweden allow puberty blockers “from age 12.” Finland allows them “about age 13.” Ireland allows them “under 16 years old.” In tiny Luxembourg, “no official guidance exists,” but “in practice, adolescents almost always receive blockers in a neighboring country.”

Restrictions on prescribing cross-sex hormones (estrogen and testosterone) to minors also vary state by state across the U.S., but “the practice has been documented with parental consent in children under the age of 13.” In Oregon, minors may “access cross-sex hormones from age 15 without consent and with Medicaid assistance.” France has “no age restrictions” on cross-sex hormones, but “clinicians generally will not administer them before Tanner Stage II.” Again, Luxembourg has “no official guidance,” but “Patients almost always receive hormones in a neighboring Country.” In every other European country studied, cross-sex hormones were available “from age 16,” although the U.K. requires that “individuals must have been receiving puberty blockers for at least one year.”

Do No Harm provided few specifics regarding the status of parental consent for these chemical gender transition procedures. They do say that, besides Oregon, “in most states, puberty blockers cannot be administered before age 18 without parental consent,” but they provide no insight on cross-sex hormones. However, California passed a bill in September effectively removing any parental consent requirement.

By contrast, children may not access gender transition chemical treatments until age 16 or 18 in nearly every country. Denmark is the most permissive, allowing children without parental consent to access puberty blockers at 15. In the U.K., “instances of children under 16 receiving blockers without consent are reportedly rare,” although such consent is not required. To access cross-sex hormones without consent in either country, children must be 16. In Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, and Norway, children must be 16 to access either puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, although Norway raises the age for cross-sex hormones to 18 “if the treatment is considered irreversible.” Sweden also allows cross-sex hormones without consent at 16, “so long as the individual is deemed sufficiently mature,” while it bars puberty blockers without consent until age 18. In Belgium, Finland, and France, neither treatment is available without parental consent until a person turns 18.

The report also compared the number of youth gender clinics in the various countries. The U.S. led by far, with “more than 60 pediatric gender clinics and 300 clinics” that “provide hormonal interventions to minors.” France also has many locations because “care is decentralized,” and “any doctor can prescribe treatment for medical transition.”

But after that the number quickly dwindles. Sweden administers all gender transition procedures through four hospitals, of which three provide surgery. Denmark administers gender transition hormones at only three locations. There are only two hospitals or clinics providing medical gender transitions in Belgium, Finland, and soon the U.K., which currently has one. Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and Norway have one gender transition facility apiece. Granted, the United States is far larger than many of these countries. But the U.S. has a population 2.5 times larger than all the countries except France, while it has 20 times as many clinics providing hormonal interventions to minors.

Do No Harm also compared the minimum age at which countries allow persons to legally change their gender in civil registries. In the U.S., “there is no minimum age” for federal documentation, such as passports or Social Security cards, but such changes require the consent of both parents. There is more variation in state documentation, such as ID cards and birth certificates, but at least seven states “permit minors to change their birth certificate gender markers with parental consent.”

Three European countries, Iceland, Luxembourg, and the U.K., have policies similar to the U.S. federal government in that there is no age limit, but children under the age of 18 need parental consent to change legally recognized gender. In Norway, gender markers can be changed, with parental permission, from age six, and from age 16 without parental permission. Netherlands also allows 16-year-olds to legally change their gender without parental permission. In Belgium and Ireland, 16-year-olds may change their legal gender identity with parental consent, and 18-year-olds may change it without parental consent. Denmark, Finland, France, and Sweden do not allow minors under the age of 18 to legally change their gender identity.

The U.S. also exceeds most European countries in legally recognizing genders other than male or female. Federal “passports offer an X gender option,” and a sizable number of states allow a gender marker of “X” on identification documents (22 states plus D.C. on driver’s licenses, and 16 states plus D.C. on birth certificates). Only Iceland permits gender variation, allowing “third gender and/or nonbinary designations” on official documents. Denmark and Ireland allow a third gender option on IDs and passports respectively, but their “civil registry is binary.” In the Netherlands, a person may only obtain a gender neutral designation through a court. In the other seven countries, Belgium, Finland, France, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, and the U.K., “male and female are the only recognized genders.”

“The United States is the most permissive country when it comes to the legal and medical gender transition of children,” concluded the review. “Only France comes close, yet unlike the U.S., France’s medical authorities have recognized the uncertainties involved in transgender medical care for children and have urged ‘great caution’ in its use.”

“Given the growing body of evidence and the European consensus, which is grounded in medical science and common sense,” pleaded Do No Harm, “the United States should reconsider the gender-affirming care model to protect the youngest and most vulnerable patients.”

AUTHOR

Joshua Arnold

Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Joe Biden: The Bull Connor of the Pro-Abortion Movement

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For a man who ran for president to save the soul of America from racism, former segregationists’ buddy Joe Biden resembles few people more than the infamously abusive police chief Bull Connor. Both allowed domestic terrorists aligned with the Democratic Party to vandalize, bomb, and set fire to their opponents’ churches with impunity while using maximum force to arrest peaceful, Christian, protesters.

Sixty years later, little more than the names and faces have changed: Connor’s allies rallied behind the banner of white supremacy, while Biden’s supporters mobilize around “abortion on demand without apology.” The Biden administration’s refusal to protect pro-life Christians bears an eerie resemblance to Bull Connor’s collusion and selective prosecution. Imagine how civil rights protesters would have fared if George Wallace won the 1964 presidential election, and you get a sense of Biden’s treatment of peaceful, prayerful, pro-life advocates.

‘We’re Going to Allow You 15 Minutes….’

The Freedom Riders, who tested Southern segregation laws from Virginia to New Orleans, planned to stop in Birmingham on May 14, 1961. The Ku Klux Klan — and the Alabama lawman they helped elect Birmingham’s Commissioner of Public Safety, Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor — had other plans. The KKK plotted a series of coordinated strikes against the protesters spanning multiple cities. Klansmen knew the details of the demonstrators’ travel itinerary, because the Birmingham sheriff’s department told them — and the sheriff’s department knew, because the FBI told them. As the protesters departed Georgia, Martin Luther King Jr. warned the Freedom Riders, “You will never make it through Alabama.”

In the days leading up to their arrival, Bull Connor personally gave the Klan the green light to rough up Yankee “meddlers.” Connor’s right-hand man, Birmingham Police Department Sgt. Thomas H. Cook, arranged for a meeting with a man named Gary Thomas Rowe, a member of a violent chapter of the Klan — but also an FBI informant. Historian Raymond Arsenault recounts the scene:

Unaware that Rowe planned to relay his words to the Birmingham FBI office, Cook laid out an elaborate plot to bring the Freedom Ride to a halt in Birmingham. He assured Rowe that other members of the Birmingham Police Department, as well as officials of the Alabama Highway Patrol, were privy to the plan and could be counted on to cooperate. “You will work with me and I will work with you on the Freedom Riders,” he promised. “We’re going to allow you 15 minutes. …You can beat ‘em, bomb ‘em, maim ‘em, kill ‘em. I don’t give a s***. There will be absolutely no arrests. You can assure every Klansman in the country that no one will be arrested in Alabama for that fifteen minutes.”

“By God, if you’re going to do this thing,” Cook later told the Imperial Wizard of the Alabama Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Robert Shelton, “do it right.” Similarly, Bull Connor instructed the Klan to “make them look like a bulldog got a hold of them.”

The Klan didn’t have to be told twice; they planned to strike twice. They swarmed the first of the two vehicles, a Greyhound bus, when it arrived in nearby Anniston, breaking its windows and slashing its tires. Police escorted the protesters as far as the city limits … where the Klansmen were waiting. One Klansman threw an explosive device into the back of the bus and, as protesters scurried out of the door for their lives, the mob beat them savagely. “Then, God Almighty intervened,” remembered Hank Thomas: The bus’s gas tank exploded in two bursts, frightening the crowd away. “A miracle happened in Anniston.”

Klansmen posed as passengers of the Trailways bus carrying the other group of Freedom Riders. In Anniston, the Klan insisted the riders segregate the bus and pummeled several passengers — including Walter Bergman, then age 61 — to make their point. Although Bergman would remained partially paralyzed for the rest of his life and have to learn to feed himself again, a local policeman told his assailants, “Don’t worry about no lawsuits. I ain’t seen a thing.”

Unfortunately, the real violence awaited in Birmingham. Confident they would face no repercussions, the Klan invited CBS News reporter Howard K. Smith to witness the violence as the bloodied protesters descended the bus stairs to desegregate the terminal’s lunch counters. A mob of Klansmen (including the FBI informant, Rowe) and members of the National States Rights Party swarmed, sometimes beating protesters 12-on-one. The melee continued until one of Connor’s detectives, Red Self, told the Klansmen: “Get the boys out of here. I’m ready to give the signal for the police to move in.”

Faced with local intransigence, the FBI would soon arrest the four people responsible for firebombing the Greyhound, but it would be far from the last act of unpunished violence. A tragic 40 unsolved bombings over two decades earned the city the nickname “Bombingham.”

Not content to outsource his brutality to the Klan, Bull Connor ordered his police to use all means necessary to quash the message of Christian civil rights protesters.

Release the Guilty, Jail the Innocent

Bull Connor’s police proved more likely to arrest peaceful protesters than the Klansmen perpetrators. In April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” courtesy of Connor’s constabulary. As King and his supporters went to jail for “parading without a permit” (holding unauthorized demonstrations), Connor said:

[W]e are not going to stand for this in Birmingham. And if necessary we will fill the jail full, and we don’t care whose toes we step on. I am saying now to these meddlers from out of our city, the best thing for them to do is stay out if they don’t want to get slapped in jail. … I’ve never seen anyone yet look for trouble who wasn’t able to find it.

Volunteers evaporated from the desegregation campaign. King’s group, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), responded with “The Children’s Crusade,” recruiting more than 1,000 schoolchildren to march through Birmingham on May 2 and 3, 1963. As the youngsters left the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church carrying signs with such messages as, “Segregation is a sin,” Connor’s men arrested 959 the first night. But they did not merely apprehend the marchers: Police blasted young children with high-powered firehoses, beat them with batons, and sicced police dogs on them.

The cruelty was the point. The pretense of law masked ruthless hatred, as segregationists used overwhelming force to discourage them from ever again publicly voicing views disfavored by the powerful.

As the French say, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Joe Biden Bull-ies the Pro-Life Movement

Fast forward 60 years, and violent hatemongers with powerful political allies have again received free rein to terrorize their nonviolent, Christian foes. But Jane’s Revenge has enjoyed more than a 15-minute reign of terror. Since the leak of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling last May 2, pro-abortion fanatics have launched a wave of arsons, vandalism, and death threats against at least 101 pro-life churches or pregnancy resource centers. Abortion activists firebombed pro-life pregnancy resource centers in the same way Bull Connor let the Klan firebomb Freedom Riders’ buses — with the same number of arrests: zero. Leftist extremists perpetrated 52 attacks before the FBI even announced its investigation.

This wave of violence, like most cowardly violence, targets the powerless — unborn babies, their desperate mothers, and the nonviolent Christian churches and nonprofits that serve them — but this wave also victimized the powerful with impunity. On June 13, two people threw a lit flare into the offices of Washington State Rep. Andy Barkis (R). Eight days later, vandals smashed the windows at the local office of U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.). Like the Klan in Alabama, pro-abortion fanatics feel confident enough to leave their calling card — often scrawling, “If abortion isn’t safe, neither are you” on pro-life women’s centers and churches — and to alert the media they will take “increasingly drastic measures.”

Biden’s nonfeasance embodies the administration’s defiant message that its ideological opponents enjoy no legal protection — a far cry from the promise Biden made the day after the media declared him winner of the 2020 election: “I will work as hard for those who didn’t vote for me as those who did.” The atmosphere of hatred has resulted in an 84-year-old pro-life woman being shot. (The male suspect said he shot her by accident.)

At least one congressman has connected the dots. The wave of anti-life terrorism represents “the death cult’s echo of the KKK’s burning cross — brazen, violent intimidation,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.). “But the federal government responded to the KKK. Where is the Biden Justice Department amid this violent campaign of national scope?” The administration, and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), instead aim to “put a stop” to pro-life pregnancy resource centers.

“To my knowledge, no one — no one — has been prosecuted under the FACE Act,” noted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as House Republicans passed a resolution condemning violence against pregnancy resource centers on January 11. J. Edgar Hoover, who shared the racial views of his time, arrested the Anniston bombers in a matter of days. In a world of high-definition security cameras and facial recognition software, Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland have apparently arrested no one in eight months.

At least, no one who shares the administration’s extreme commitment to abortion. “But if you’re a pro-life activist, and you’re praying outside of an abortion clinic like Mark Houck, guess what happens to you?” asked Jordan. “The FBI kicks in your door, arrests you, puts you in handcuffs, and does it in front of your wife and seven children,” using dozens of heavily armed agents. Biden’s DOJ meted out similar treatment to Paul Vaughn, a 55-year-old father of 11. Just as black-and-white footage of Bull Connor unleashing his dogs on children inspired national revulsion of segregation, Biden’s overreach should inspire outrage at federal collusion with the abortion industry.

As pregnancy resource centers burned, in July Biden’s Justice Department established the Reproductive Rights Task Force to take “proactive and defensive legal action” to protect the abortion industry (and punish its foes) — and tapped as its leader Vanita Gupta, who as a “civil rights” officer in Obama’s DOJ tried to force all public schools to allow men to use women’s restrooms, showers, and overnight accommodations or lose all federal funding. She applied her ideological fervor equally well to abortion. Biden’s Justice Department arrested 26 pro-life advocates by last October, with more following, including:

  • Franciscan friar Fr. Fidelius Mocinski (whose birth name was Christopher), just as local New Jersey prosecutors dropped charges for conducting his “Red Rose Rescues”: entering abortion facilities and giving mothers red roses. In this case, he lay down in front of an abortion facility’s entrance, just as protesters in the ‘60s laid down in front of Lyndon Johnson’s presidential limousine. (“If any demonstrator ever lays down in front of my car,” cracked segregationist Governor George Wallace of Alabama (D) during the 1968 presidential campaign, “it’ll be the last car he’ll ever lay down in front of.”);
  • Nine defendants who entered a Washington, D.C., abortion facility and sang “let there be peace” (as a live-stream of the event shows) in October 2020. At least one of the women had participated in Rose Rescues;
  • Eleven defendants who entered an abortion facility in Tennessee in March 2021. If convicted, some of the defendants stand to serve up to 11 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and fines totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars;
  • Pastor Daniel Courney of Enfield, N.J., one month after it wrung an agreement out of him not to commit “future FACE Act violations” — which, out of fear, would effectively cause him to end his presence outside abortion facilities; and
  • Bevelyn Williams and Edmee Chavannes, who happen to be black women from the South, for allegedly violating the FACE Act as far back as June 2020. (Curiously, their indictment begins with peaceful pro-life activity in 2019.) In one alleged violation in the indictment, Chavannes told an abortion facility employee, “Do not touch me.”

The arrest total seems all the more lopsided, since pro-life women’s centers are 22 times more likely to be attacked than abortion facilities. Both Gupta and Garland touted their work prosecuting pro-life advocates at a civil rights assembly last December. Both invoked Martin Luther King Jr.

As noted, in many cases the Biden administration presses pro-life advocates to sign agreements not to protest any more — a similar tactic employed by the Obama-Biden administration. A federal judge questioned whether the Obama-Biden administration’s prosecution of Mary Susan Pine “was the product of a concerted effort between the Government and the [abortion provider], which began well before the date of the incident at issue, to quell Ms. Pine’s activities.” (Ultimately, the DOJ paid Pine $120,000 in legal fees.) One could be forgiven for asking the same question of these cases.

A trial may conclude some of these acts violated the law, just as civil rights protesters violated the law of their day — the law their peaceful, prayerful actions aimed to change. But today’s prayerful pro-life advocates see their homes raided, not aided, by the federal government led by a vice president who raised bail money for the BLM’s “mostly peaceful” rioters. They face enormous legal bills, a criminal record, huge fines, and perhaps more than a decade in prison.

Despite these pressures, the pro-life movement has not buckled, as the terrorists and their federal government enablers wished. When bombed, they have rebuilt. When denied protection, they have secured their ministries of mercy. When denied justice, they hired their own private investigators. They have suffered long and done good. They have emerged from the fiery crucible of persecution with a stronger resolve to help the weak and save the innocent. The pro-life movement is “hard-pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed — always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” … And, one day, manifested in our laws.

We shall overcome.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Social Determinants of Health: A Trojan Horse

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Yesterday, I told you how government healthcare programs are getting bigger and how this is the wrong direction for the country.  I also mentioned a relatively new theory from the Left – social determinants of health [SDOH] – that is about to make government healthcare programs even bigger.

Social determinants of health is the idea that social factors like housing, income, and employment have more to do with a person’s health than do individual risk factors like behavior and genetics.  So, if you give poor people free housing, free food, free employment services, free education, free transportation, other free services, and guarantee their income, their health will get better.  This will reduce hospital admissions, as well as overall health spending, the theory goes.  At least that’s the cover story.  The real agenda is radical egalitarian redistribution of income.  But the theory sounds good.  It sounds right.  It sounds plausible.  However, there’s just one problem.  There’s very little evidence for this happy-face assertion.  Billions have already spent on the theory, but the track record of real-world results is not good.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t stopped the government from rushing pell-mell into social determinants of health and into the arms of the people pushing it.  The Biden administration recently announced it is giving states discretion to cover social services under their Medicaid programs.

No one is asking how much this is going to cost.  The federal deficit is already $421 billion for the current fiscal year which began in October.  Sorry, but Uncle Sugar doesn’t have unlimited pots of money.  If the true agenda is redistribution, how much more do you think there is to get with a deficit like that?   Would we even be talking about spending money on social determinants of health if we had to balance our budget?    Also, no one is asking about the downsides.  Nothing in life is perfect.  Shouldn’t lawmakers be informed of the negative consequences before being asked to vote on such a thing?  And speaking of Congress, this sounds like a major change that cannot be done by agency regulation alone under recent Supreme Court jurisprudence.  So where is Congress on this?  Are they falling down on the job again by not reining in agencies from committing us to huge new expenditures without congressional authorization?  Why am I the only one asking these questions?

Tax-exempt hospitals spent $2.5 billion on social determinants of health – housing, employment, education, and food security – from 2017 to 2019.  They are obligated to provide community benefit in exchange for their tax exemptions.  But their spending on social determinants initiatives has fallen off more recently because the evidence such initiatives are effective is limited, a study found.  Another study found social spending reduces unnecessary healthcare use but the costs outweigh the benefits.  Other researchers found no association between overall community benefit spending and hospital readmission rates.  These researchers concluded “the evidence for health outcome improvements from interventions focused on social determinants is thin…. This is very little evidence on which to base billions in investment….”  The study concluding the costs outweighed the benefits found $3.4 million in healthcare savings after $22.4 million was spent on a social determinants case management program.  Costs running seven times bigger than the savings – doesn’t sound like a smart investment to me.

This begs the question: if the evidence is so thin and even counter to what proponents claim, why proceed?  Why is the federal government itching to spend more money on social determinants of health?  Especially when social determinants theory has been criticized for ignoring the importance on health outcomes of personal choices and responsibility regarding alcohol, tobacco, junk food, drugs, and gambling.  Moreover, in a previous commentary, I criticized social determinants theory for ignoring the magnet effect of free stuff from the government drawing ever-larger numbers of people into government dependency.  Wrong direction.

The current administration has made no bones about working towards ‘equity’, ensuring equal outcomes, and redistribution.  Social determinants of health theory – which comes from the redistributionist World Health Organization – is tailor-made for the Biden administration’s goals, whether the theory makes any sense or not.

In making its announcement states can add social determinants to their Medicaid programs, the administration said it will require states to show their social outlays are cost-effective, something the research has failed to show convincingly, so far.  Whether the administration really means it is anybody’s guess, but Republicans on Capitol Hill need to police this to make sure the analysis is on the up and up and to shut the initiative down if it turns out it’s just another redistributionist boondoggle without any real benefit, aside from making redistributionists feel good about being so virtuous in giving away other people’s money.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

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Tentacles of Government Healthcare Extending Their Reach

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Government healthcare programs are getting bigger, and we are not better off for it.  Things are trending in the wrong direction.

First, we have recent news nearly 100 million Americans – one in three – are now on Medicaid.  Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion for childless able-bodied adults transformed Medicaid from a poverty program into a middle-class entitlement.  Build it and they will come.  In my own state of Virginia, for example, Democrats promised Medicaid expansion enrollment would never exceed 400,000.  It now stands at more than 700,000 – 75 percent over worst-case projections.  In other states, enrollment was double or even quadruple estimates – 110 percent beyond estimates overall.  Another reason Medicaid rolls have ballooned is the COVID emergency that never ends.  The federal government told states ‘we’ll throw a bunch of money at you for Medicaid during the pandemic but, oh, by the way, you can’t take anybody off your rolls, even if they become ineligible.’  Joe Biden just extended the COVID emergency declaration to April, so this state of affairs will persist at least a while longer, leaving an estimated 20 million ineligible people on the rolls.  You are paying for them.

Second, U.S. government healthcare is also getting bigger because Obamacare subsidies got super-sized some months ago.  The jumbo subsidies have lured more people to sign up for Obamacare, understandably.  More on that on another day.

Third, the so-called Obamacare ‘family glitch’ was addressed, making five million more Americans on employer-based coverage eligible for Obamacare.

The growth of government-run healthcare shows up in the smaller share consumers actually pay out of pocket for healthcare expenses.  Between private insurance and government healthcare programs, people directly pay in aggregate only 10 percent of the cost of the medical services they consume.  It’s 90 percent a third-party payer system, now, which is too bad, because being insulated from true costs incentivizes consumers to over-consume, distorting the market.  Another distortion is the growth in the number of administrators – all the people needed to administer third-party payments and deal with red tape – which far exceeds the growth in the number of physicians.

These inefficiencies are only the start of why all of this is the wrong direction.  Hate to break it to you but, contrary to what Democrats would have you believe, government-run healthcare is not all it’s cracked up to be.

The growth in government healthcare imposes enormous costs.  Annual Medicaid spending increased by $198 billion during the pandemic, about as much Medicaid spending grew from 2012 to 2019.  Jumbo Obamacare subsidies were initially estimated to cost $22 billion for two years, but the figure is actually $50 billion.

Medicare dragged its feet on providing drug coverage even though private insurers had long since discovered such coverage, in general, gives more bang for the buck than doctor or hospital therapies.  Among other problems with Medicare include paying for small expenses while leaving seniors exposed to catastrophic costs, and sticking it to seniors with high drug costs while subsidizing those with low drug costs.

People who believe in government healthcare like it was a religion or something should look at the latest sins of the VA.

A VA hospital in Florida denied treatment to a veteran dying of heart failure because first responders could not verify his military service, in violation of federal law.  The VA hospital in Spokane injured 148 veterans when its computer system failed to deliver 11,000 orders for specialty care, lab work, and other services and, further, failed to alert staff the orders had been lost.  Despite all the publicity about long wait times at VA hospitals, the problem is growing worse after initially improving.  An Inspector General report found $4 billion in employee or contractor embezzlement, kickbacks, theft, and other wrongdoing.  There were 104 arrests and 500 administrative actions taken to address these problems in just the first half of 2022 alone.  One kickback scheme involved 17 doctors, two executives, and millions of dollars in penalties.

Unfortunately, too many people still love government healthcare and it’s poised to get even bigger under a left-wing theory called ‘social determinants of health’.  More on that tomorrow.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

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If I Wanted To Reshape The World To Have Fewer People →

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It occurs to me that our failings in the past decades all have one thing in common. We consistently and with a flawless record, fail to think as big as the people creating the problems facing us. That is to say, when we oppose a line of effort against us, we always treat the problem or issue as presented. When in fact it’s larger, and part of a much bigger planed assault on ourselves.

Take Global Warming.

There are a few layers of opposition. Those who know the science is fabricated and argue the science and try and get people to understand that Global Warming by man’s actions simply isn’t a real thing. That has nearly no chance of succeeding, but its one level of activism people can do.

Then, there are those who think Global Warming is a dialectic device to take control of especially Western industrial man using control of CO2 production as a means of ending productivity, or at least being in full control of it. One may notice that no alternatives to create of energy, such as nuclear or other means can be allowed. Only the problem of CO2 must remain in the forefront as a means to shape the future. Even when there are multiple ways to create the needed energy without producing it. Bad solutions, like electric cars are encouraged. Sorry, not bad solutions, things that kinda sorta look like solutions but actually make no difference or add to the problem and create new ones.

But a real psychopath might take it to the next level.

Imagine being so committed to the idea that the world has too many people on it that you needed to embark on a serious plan to reduce the world’s population.

Imagine that you had convinced enough people that the world was warming, despite all the evidence to the contrary, to the point that no one would interfere with a plan to geo-engineer the atmosphere to block out solar radiation for a time that would significantly cool the Earth.

Imagine that you had managed to get millions of people from warm parts of the Earth to move to cooler parts, even though it would multiply their carbon footprint by a factor of FOUR and the resources needed for life are far greater for each individual in say, Canada than in Namibia.

Imagine that the people doing the geo-engineering to “solve Global Warming” know damn well it isn’t happening. They would also then know that a warmer Earth means more food and more plant life and more animal life. Especially if the level of CO2 goes up a few more parts per billion.

So what would happen to the available food supply if the temperature of the Earth’s most productive growing regions fell by a few degrees?

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Blue States Attempted To Crackdown On Guns. Firearm Sales Skyrocketed Instead

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Blue states have recently introduced restrictive gun laws that aim to remove firearms from the streets, but numerous states are now seeing massive increases in gun sales as Americans begin to “vote with their wallets,” according to data from the Firearm Industry Trade Association (NSSF).

Gun sales in Oregon, Washington and Illinois jumped either before or after legislators introduced or passed restrictive gun measures, according to National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) data adjusted by the NSSF. The number of gun sales per month in each state was based on the number of firearm background checks performed by NICS.

‘Threats, and actual legislation to limit the right of law-abiding citizens to own the firearm of their choosing, does have an effect on firearm sales,” NSSF Public Affairs Managing Director Mark Oliva told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In November, Oregon residents narrowly passed Ballot Measure 114, a gun law that requires background checks, firearm training, fingerprint collection and a permit to purchase a gun. Following the law’s passing, background checks jumped from 29,472 in October to 86,075 in November, according to NSSF data obtained by the DCNF.

“Oregon’s figures easily demonstrate that Oregonians acted while they had the opportunity to buy the guns of their choice before the state moved to infringe on their Constitutional rights,” Oliva told the DCNF.

In March 2022, Democratic Washington Gov. Jay Inslee signed three gun laws that restrict gun usage, including where guns can be carried, how to handle firearms without serial numbers and what kinds of magazines can be made and sold, according to The Spokesman-Review. After signing the laws, background checks jumped from 39,247 in February to 59,419 in March, according to the NSSF data.

In December 2022, Inslee announced additional gun control legislation that would ban “assault-style” weapons, hold manufacturers and retailers accountable for gun sales and implement a permit-to-purchase requirement for all gun buyers, according to a press conference.

“We intend in this session of the legislature to give Washingtonians assertive, effective and protective laws to protect them and their children against this epidemic of gun violence,” Inslee said.

Background checks in Illinois were at 33,326 in November, jumping to 42,305 in December, according to NSSF data.

“Every time new restrictions on firearms ownership are enacted we always see a spike in gun sales. The gun prohibition lobby is the best gun salesman out there. When people’s Second Amendment rights are attacked they respond by exercising them,” Second Amendment Foundation Founder Alan Gottlieb told the DCNF.

In January, Illinois passed a ban on “assault weapons” that went into effect immediately. The law banned more than 100 guns that were deemed “weapons of war” and limited magazine capacity to 10 rounds for long guns and 15 rounds for handguns, according to the legislation. However, the law states that gun owners can keep any firearm purchased before the ban took effect.

Leading up to the law’s passing, background checks climbed from 33,318 to 51,301 over a three-month period, according to NSSF data. “There’s been quite a rush of people trying to get in under the wire,” Maxon Shooter’s Supplies Owner Dan Eldridge told the Illinois Newsroom.

“Obviously, the law-abiding gun owners are concerned. And they’re voting with their wallets,” he continued.

AUTHOR

BRONSON WINSLOW

Contributor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

U.S. Coast Guard Apparently Had Pre-Written Denials For Vaccine Exemption Requests, Docs Show

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  • Coast Guard documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation appear to show canned justifications commanders can cut and paste into vaccine exemption requests, experts told the DCNF.
  • Existence of the statements suggests the Coast Guard may have violated requirements to consider the unique circumstances surrounding each request, experts said.
  • “It is very easy for a commander to have a closed mind when there is a pre-written language presented to them in draft form,” Dwight Stirling, former military attorney and founder of the Center for Law and Military Policy, explained to the DCNF.

The Coast Guard had pre-written justifications for denying COVID-19 vaccine exemption requests, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Justifications in the document differ according to the position each Coast Guard member requesting an exemption occupied and where he or she was stationed, but each of the 30 listed follows a similar pattern of highlighting the operational requirements for each position and explaining why vaccination is necessary. The DCNF could not determine exactly how those in charge of deciding exemption cases applied each justification to individual requests, but the document indicates they failed to consider the unique circumstances of each applicant, a violation of Coast Guard policy and U.S. law, experts told the DCNF.

“All the commander needs to do is sign the memo and the matter is finished,” Dwight Stirling, former military attorney and founder of the Center for Law and Military Policy, explained to the DCNF.

Coast Guard policy aimed at protecting First Amendment rights requires leaders to individually review each vaccine exemption request, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act says armed forces must demonstrate a “compelling interest” in overruling religious accommodations.

Mike Rose, general counsel for Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, said he could not confirm whether the document was used to help the Coast Guard violate policy. However, he agreed that it appears to contain pre-written statements “designed to be applied automatically to each individual Coast Guardsmen based on the nature of their assignment.”

“I also considered that you are assigned to an operational billet,” reads one of the justifications, directed at a cook aboard CGC Angela McShan. “Your duties as the senior Culinary Specialist requires frequent interactions with the entire crew in smaller, enclosed spaces that do not afford the opportunity to consistently social distance in accordance with the Center for Disease Control’s recommended guidelines.”

The document contains a separate section labeled “COVID-19 and Other Requests” with responses to multiple religious exemptions related to the COVID-19 vaccine listed below.

The first response addresses Coast Guard members’ request to be exempt from all future vaccines developed from mRNA or viral vector technology, which are used in the top COVID-19 vaccines.

“The Coast Guard cannot predict which vaccines in the future will be mandated and of those which will be developed with mRNA or viral vector technology. Therefore, because of the broad nature of your request, it is denied,” the document reads, with “it is denied” in boldface type.

The document also contains language for commanders denying religious exemptions to any COVID-19 vaccine: “I am the adjudication authority for religious accommodation requests pursuant to reference (d),” it reads.

“I have carefully reviewed your request in accordance with references (d)-(f). Your request is denied,” it concludes, also with the final sentence in boldface.

The document does not contain any language that would seem to approve an exemption request.

Of 1,350 religious accommodation requests received since the mandate came into effect in August 2021, the Coast Guard approved 12, along with eight permanent medical exemptions, a Coast Guard spokesperson told the DCNF.

“Giving commanders suggested reasons to consider that might justify denying an exemption from the vaccine in an individual case might not be wrong and could be justifiable legal advice,” Rose told the DCNF. “What would be wrong and impermissible would be to deny an exemption without regard to the individual circumstances and to use the pre canned statements to justify those denials.”

Military lawyers often cut and paste from memos or briefs, Stirling explained.

“While we don’t know whether the Coast Guard commanders pre-judged the exemption cases before them, it would not be shocking to learn that they did so,” he said. “From my experience, it is very easy for a commander to have a closed mind when there is a pre-written language presented to them in draft form.”

House Oversight Committee Republicans confirmed the document’s authenticity, saying they had obtained a similar document, but did not respond to further questioning about its contents. The document’s metadata says it was created in August 2022.

The Coast Guard fell under scrutiny after an investigation by members of the Oversight Republicans found that the Coast Guard used a computer-based tool, consisting of drop-down menus with premade answers for sections of the appeal response form, to issue mass denials of religious accommodations, Fox News first reported.

However, lawmakers alleged that the Coast Guard deliberately stood up the exemption request review system “to reach predetermined conclusions with the goal of rejecting applications” in a letter to Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Linda Fagan.

“Every request received individualized review and analysis in accordance with law and Coast Guard policy,” a Coast Guard spokesperson told the DCNF.

The Department of Defense (DOD) officially nullified the military vaccine mandate Tuesday; while the Coast Guard operates under the Department of Homeland Security, it has followed DOD guidance related to COVID-19.

AUTHOR

MICAELA BURROW

Reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: Court Decides Air Force ‘Wrongly’ Dismisses Religious Exemption Requests From Unvaxxed Airmen

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Why Banning Gas Stoves Is Not a Serious Way to Fight Climate Change

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In July, in an effort to combat global warming, Berkeley, California, became the first city in the United States to prohibit natural gas in new buildings, including residential homes.

“We need to tackle climate change every way that we can,” said Berkeley City Councilwoman Kate Harrison, who led the effort.

Other cities, including Sacramento, Los Angeles, and San Jose, are developing their own policies in what appears to be the latest trend to save the planet. But does banning gas for heating and cooking in residential developments make sense?

Lawmakers and environmental activists often overlook important issues.

Assuming that people will continue to cook their meals at home and that exotic solutions such as sun-powered grills are exercised by a tiny fraction of the population, people will still need devices that heat their pots and pans for cooking.

On a gas stove, you burn natural gas to heat the water for your tea. In the case of an electric stove, you burn natural gas (or coal, oil, or biomass) in a power plant to heat water that turns turbines that produce electricity that heats the stove that heats the water for your tea. Simple physics reminds us that as energy passes from one state of matter to another, energy loss is inevitable. Burning gas to make electricity is only about 40 percent efficient, on average.

The environmental effect of switching from gas stoves to electric stoves depends largely on how the electricity is produced. If your electricity comes from renewable sources, there is greater potential for shrinking your carbon footprint. If your electricity comes from coal-powered plants that don‘t capture carbon dioxide, then switching could be worse for the environment since coal produces more carbon dioxide emissions than natural gas.

In 2018, about 17 percent of electricity produced came from renewables, with 35 percent coming from natural gas, 27 percent coming from coal, and 19 percent coming from nuclear.

Given current U.S. electricity production, if you banned natural gas stoves across the country, only two out of ten would be powered by renewable energy—the remaining eight would be powered by electricity generated from coal (three), nuclear (two), and natural gas (three).

California produces about 44 percent of its electricity from renewables, so swapping natural gas for electricity makes more sense there than, say, Florida, where renewables generate just three percent of the state’s electricity.

There are other problems, however. Take peak demand. Electric heating usually uses a lot of energy—to such an extent that British grid operators need to predict when a major soccer match ends so that they can ramp up production at tea time, when millions of Brits plug in electric kettles. (This is less of a problem today because of on-demand streaming.)

What this means is that even if electricity from renewables increased substantially, due to the intermittent nature of wind and solar power, you might end up in a situation where gas-powered electricity production plants are working overtime during peak demand. This is an issue that electric grid operators face on a daily basis.

While cooking is far from the main consumer of electricity, a mass switch from cooking on gas to cooking on electricity could add stress to the system. Moreover, if bans extend from cooking on gas to heating homes with gas, the problems would likely be even more severe.

Of course, in some cases, especially where natural gas infrastructure is not in place, cooking with electricity from the grid might make more sense than expensive new investments in natural gas pipelines. But if operational pipelines are already there, banning gas is a poor use of resources.

To be sure, these issues are not unsolvable. Smart grids, better planning and forecasting, more efficient methods to store and release electric power (think giant batteries or hydroaccumulation plants), superior electric stoves, and better technology in general might solve some or all of these problems. But banning gas-powered stoves before this better technology has arrived is similar to banning horses before cars had been invented.

Some say bans on cooking with natural gas is a symbolic gesture. Indeed. But it is the worst kind of symbol—one designed to make people feel good rather than do good. An outright blanket ban on natural gas in homes, especially if extended throughout the country, would make little environmental sense—and no economic sense.

Frankly, such ill-conceived gestures undermine the good faith efforts of those seeking to pass sound environmental policy.

This article originally appeared in the Washington Examiner. 

AUTHOR

Zilvinas Silenas

Zilvinas Silenas is the president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE).

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

Federal Aviation Administration Grounds All Domestic U.S. Flights

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All domestic flights in the U.S. were grounded overnight Wednesday into the morning due to a technical error. Some flights gradually started to resume shortly before 9:00 am (eastern time).

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) worked overnight to restore a system that allows air traffic control to alert pilots when there are potential hazards on their flight path. Normal air traffic operations resumed just before 9am on Tuesday while agents continued to look into the original cause of the issue, according to an update from the FAA.

“We are performing final validation checks and reloading the system now. Operations across the National Airspace System are affected,” the FAA wrote on Twitter. “We will provide frequent updates as we make progress.”

Roughly an hour after their initial tweet, the FAA sent an update to followers, announcing that the agency had “ordered airlines to pause all domestic departures until 9am Eastern Time,” to allow for research to be done on the “integrity of flight and safety information.”

Delays for arriving and departing domestic flights are likely to be substantial Wednesday, just a few short weeks after a significant winter bomb cyclone disrupted tens of thousands of flights through the holiday season.

Twitter users were quick to express concerns over the total shutdown of domestic travel, with the CEO of Evercontact writing, “This is alarming. There should be an independent audit on such a large-scale incident. Is it due to obsolete equipment? is it a hack? Human error? Accountability is key to restoring trust in an industry that can’t allow mistakes!”

The FAA then retweeted a post from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who noted that “there is no evidence of a cyberattack at this point, but the President directed the Department of Transportation to conduct a full investigation into the causes.” She furthered that the FAA would continue to provide regular updates.

AUTHOR

KAY SMYTHE

News and commentary writer.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Elite University Department Bans Use Of Word ‘Field,’ Claiming It’s Too Racist

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Last week, it was American that was racist, now this. These people are nuts. Evil and nuts.

Elite University Department Bans Use Of Word ‘Field,’ Claiming It’s Too Racist

Elite University Department Bans Use Of Word ‘Field,’ Claiming It’s Too Racist

By: Alexa Schwerha, Daily Caller, on January 10, 2023

The University of Southern California (USC) Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work will no longer use the world “field” in its curriculum or its practices as part of its anti-racist framework, according to an email reportedly sent Monday.

The school reportedly stripped the word from use due to alleged ties to “anti-Black” and “anti-immigrant” rhetoric, according to the email sent by the Practicum Education Department to the campus community, faculty, staff and students. The school informed that the word “practicum” would be used instead to “ensure [its] use of inclusive language and practice.”

“This change supports anti-racist social work practice by replacing language that could be considered anti-Black or anti-immigrant in favor of inclusive language,” the email reportedly reads. “Language can be powerful, and phrases such as ‘going into the field’ or ‘field work’ may have connotations for descendants of slavery and immigrant workers that are not benign.”

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Numbers Don’t Lie: America’s Border Crisis Is Biden-Made

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The Biden administration’s open-border policies and its refusal to fully enforce federal immigration laws have imposed huge costs on local communities across the country. Border states are groaning under the enormous cost of sheltering, feeding, educating, policing, and providing medical care for tens of thousands of illegal aliens.

There are humanitarian costs, as well, paid by those who are assaulted and killed by the human traffickers, those who die from the fentanyl flooding across the border and those victimized by vicious criminals who have entered illegally.

This crisis is unprecedented crisis. And it is entirely man-made. Put more precisely: It is Biden-made.

The numbers don’t lie. In fiscal year 2022, ending Sept. 30, U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported a record 2.76 million alien “encounters” at our border. CBP reported another 278,102 in October and an even-more-staggering 283,189 in November. More than 3 million illegal aliens will have crossed our border illegally in the past 15 months—all because of the administration’s irresponsible stewardship of the Department of Homeland Security.

And that number is conservative. It doesn’t include the “gotaways”— those who made it across the border illegally, without getting caught. Border officials estimate there were at least 600,000 “gotaways” in fiscal year 2022, compared to only 60,000 in fiscal year 2020.

Supporters of open-border policies argue that this flood of illegal aliens is beneficial. Try telling that to the victims of violent crimes committed by illegal aliens who should never have been allowed to enter the United States.

Texas is one of the few states that provides reports on crimes committed by aliens, and the numbers are appalling. The latest report from the Texas Department of Public Safety notes that, from June 1, 2011, through Dec. 31, 2022, more than 389,000 criminal aliens were booked into local Texas jails. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security confirmed that 70% of those arrested were here illegally.

Keep in mind that Homeland Security can only confirm the illegal status of aliens who were previously detained by DHS and had their fingerprints entered into the department’s alien database.  Given the huge number of “gotaways” whose fingerprints never make it into the system, it is highly likely that many more of those arrested are also here illegally.

But just those 269,000 arrested aliens confirmed to be here illegally were charged with more than 454,000 criminal offenses. That included 847 homicides, 55,509 assaults, 901 kidnappings, 22,139 thefts, 2,551 robberies, 5,579 sexual assaults, 6,729 sexual offenses, 54,885 drug charges, 35,538 obstructing police charges and 5,315 weapons charges. And this is only in Texas.

Sanctuary states like California and New York deliberately refuse to collect or report this data. But we know that Americans are being killed and victimized all over the country. Just ask the families of the victims of criminal aliens at organizations like the Remembrance Project.

The violence, bloodshed, and mayhem caused by these criminals should shock the conscience of every government official, particularly President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris (his designated “Border Czar”) and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Those three have worked to obstruct the enforcement of our immigration laws and destroy the security of our borders.

Biden’s latest proposal for mass amnesty and mass parole would only make the problem worse.

Already exacerbating this public safety problem are rogue prosecutors such as Joe Gonzalez, John Creuzot and Jose Garza, the elected district attorneys in Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin, Texas, respectively.

Disregarding their fundamental duty to protect the public, they refuse to prosecute most misdemeanors, water down violent felonies, turn a blind eye to most illegal drug offenses, and refuse to seek cash bail for known criminals. These policies send a loud message to those inclined to commit crimes: Go ahead and do it!

One of the many reasons why people from all over the world come to the U.S. is because they want to live in a country where the rule of law, undergirded by the Constitution, matters and is honored. The rule of law is the cornerstone of an ordered society.

But when “progressive” officials—from the president down to local district attorneys—refuse to enforce the law, chaos ensues.

It’s time to end the chaos, enforce the law, and hold Biden and all federal and state executive branch officials accountable for failing to do their jobs.

Originally published at the DailyCaller.com.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

AUTHORS

Hans von Spakovsky

Hans von Spakovsky is a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, a former commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, and former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. He is a member of the board of the Public Interest Legal Foundation.

Cully Stimson

Charles “Cully” Stimson is a leading expert in national security, homeland security, crime control, immigration, and drug policy at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies. Read his research.

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House Rules Package: A Step in the Right Direction

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Frank Gaffney pointed out on his show yesterday that every major country in the Americas is now in the hands of the Left – Canada, the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, and Chile.  That’s really disturbing when you consider how authoritarian leftist governments become.  An island in this sea of misery is the Republican-controlled House of Representatives in the United States which just elected a new Speaker and passed a rules package that will appeal to anyone concerned about the advance of the authoritarian Left in this country.

The full text of the rule package isn’t posted yet on Congress.gov, so what I’m about to tell you is from the House Rules Committee version 3 dated January 6th.  (text – analysis).  Even if some of the details of my summation are not correct, the point will remain the same – the Republican House is standing strongly against misrule by the authoritarian Left.

The first thing that caught my eye in the rules package is the institution of CUTGO – proposals to increase spending in one area must contain equal or greater offsets to spending in other areas.  Put that together with the new rule a 60 percent majority is required in the House to pass tax increases, and you’ve got a start on getting government spending back under control.  The Left always wants to tax and spend.  Half their mischief would go away if government were forced to live within its means like the rest of us.  I also like that this restores the Holman Rule that allows members to offer amendments to reduce the salary of specific abusive federal bureaucrats and to cut specific bloated government programs.  I’d start with no more paycheck for DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas who is single-handedly dismantling the nation’s immigration laws.

Other provisions in the package I like include allowing the public to bring ethics complaints directly against House members, and limiting bills to a single subject.  The latter will make it much easier for members and the public to follow proposed legislation.  Hopefully, this means no more secret deals stuffed into giant bills passed in the middle of the night when nobody knows what’s in them.  What Pelosi said during Obamacare – ‘we have to pass it so you can see what’s in it’ – became standard operating procedure under the Democrats, making a mockery of representative government.

Other ideas I’ve seen floating around I hope made it into the final rules:

  • Requiring the text of legislation to be made available at least 72 hours prior to a vote in the House
  • Ending proxy voting in the House and remote proceedings in committees
  • No more automatic suspensions of the debt ceiling when a budget resolution is adopted.  A separate vote to raise the debt ceiling would be required.
  • No more prohibitions against gender-specific language such as “mother” or “father” on the House floor or in committee.   That’s a deserved poke in the eye to the Woke Left.

Best of all are the investigations.  One will look into the origins of COVID, the government’s involvement in gain-of-function research, COVID vaccines and vaccine mandates.    Others will take up the weaponization of government agencies against the people.  The Justice Department will be investigated for going after ordinary parents as ‘domestic terrorists’ for speaking their minds against leftist policies at school board meetings.  The FBI and other federal agencies will be investigated for their roles in censoring truthful information about COVID and election fraud.  There will also be a Select Committee established to look into the threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to the country – it’s about time.  I also hope the investigation into Hunter Biden and the Biden crime family’s foreign business dealings made the final cut.  I will be following all these investigations very closely.

Finally, I hope somewhere in all this is the restoration of regular order, that is, a return to actual separate appropriations bills with committee hearings – not just the giant take-it-or-leave-it omnibus budget packages we’ve seen under the Democrats in recent years.  Thousand page monstrosities loaded up with all sorts of leftist spending priorities that members can’t possibly read before they vote.

The battle has been joined.  May the House Republicans summon the courage to stick to their principles in the face of the onslaught from the authoritarian Left that is coming.  Democrat operative David Brock has formed a $5 million ‘SWAT team’ to deflect House Republican investigations of the administration.  That’s in addition to another multimillion-dollar ‘war room’ set up by other leftist organizers for the same purpose.  Where do they get all this money?  Big money versus sound principles and representative government – I know what side I’m on.  Do you?

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Visit The Daily Skirmish and Watch Eagle Headline News – 7:30am ET Weekdays

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In 2022, The IRS Went After the Very Poorest Taxpayers

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And so many of them vote Democrat — Stockholm Syndrome.

I am sure they are comforted in their freezing beds in the knowledge that Ukraine is living large on their dime.

In 2022, the IRS Went After the Very Poorest Taxpayers

By: Liz Wolfe, Reason Magazine, January 5, 2023: (thanks to Van):

Despite $80 billion in new funding, the agency is living up to its reputation of hassling low-income taxpayers over rich people.

On Wednesday, Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) released data provided to it by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on audits performed by the agency in fiscal year 2022. Despite the infusion of new funding earmarked for the IRS via last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, the agency continued historic trends of hassling primarily low-income taxpayers, with relatively few millionaires and billionaires getting caught up in the audit sweep.

“The taxpayer class with unbelievably high audit rates—five and a half times virtually everyone else—were low-income wage-earners taking the earned income tax credit,” reported TRAC, noting that the poorest taxpayers are “easy marks in an era when IRS increasingly relies upon correspondence audits yet doesn’t have the resources to assist taxpayers or answer their questions.”

In fact, “if one ignores the fiction of auditing a millionaire through simply sending a letter through the mail, the odds that millionaires received a regular audit by a revenue agent (1.1%) was actually less than the audit rate of the targeted lowest income wage-earners whose audit rate was 1.27 percent!”

The Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August 2022, directed $80 billion worth of new funding over the next decade to the IRS so it could hire 87,000 new workers, purportedly to better target millionaire and billionaire scofflaws. The Biden administration and credulous journalists claimed that this would in no way increase audits for those making under $400,000 annually—suspect assurances not provided within the text of the actual bill. This increased capacity meant only those at the top would be targeted, supporters insisted. But this ignores how the IRS’s incentives work and how agencywide reform might be too heavy of a lift.

Correspondence audits—which are conducted via mail, and are the type frequently used when interacting with the poorest of taxpayers—are much easier and cheaper to conduct than other types of audits. Plus, the earned income tax credit is easy to get wrong. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that new hires with experience in the field will take almost three years of ramp-up time, with more junior new hires taking longer. The lag time between 2022’s infusion of funding, and legitimately increased capacity, will be enormous—if the agency can even snag the best in the industry when TurboTax and H&R Block will surely be swelling their own ranks. It makes sense that, given a dearth of experienced auditors not likely to be fixed soon, the agency would rely on the easiest and least time-consuming types of audits.

But be suspicious of the idea that an infusion of cash will solve longstanding problems within the IRS. This is, after all, the agency that sent $1.1 billion in child welfare payments to the wrong people over the course of merely five months during the pandemic. It’s the agency that was hacked back in 2015, resulting in the personal information of more than 700,000 taxpayers being compromised. It’s the agency that has been foolishly going after Americans who hold $10,000 or more in a foreign bank since 2010, never mind the fact that many of them are middle-class expats, not folks with yachts in the Mediterranean. And it’s the (leaky) agency that enabled the richest Americans’ intimate financial information to be thumbed through by ProPublica readers. It will take more than a little cash to fix all this, and, as the IRS’s competence and tenacity increase, so too will the tenacity of the vast infrastructure of accountants and lawyers hired by the rich to creatively minimize their tax burdens.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Pentagon’s Pronoun Wars

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Our woke military brass don’t know how to win wars, but know their pronouns.

In 2020, the Air Force conducted a classified war game which showed Communist China launching a biological attack and then invading Taiwan.

And we lost.

“At that point the trend in our war games was not just that we were losing, but we were losing faster,” Air Force Lt. Gen. S. Clinton Hinote stated.

With abysmal readiness rates that have an average of only 7 out of 10 planes operational, and down to 50% for the F-22 stealth fighter, 50% for the CV-22 Osprey and 40% for the B-1 Lancer, the Air Force isn’t even trying to win a possible war, but it’s fighting one for pronouns.

Gina Ortiz Jones, a two-time losing congressional candidate who wasted millions before being appointed by Biden as Air Force Undersecretary, declared that adding pronouns to the emails of air force personnel will make them “a more inclusive force”.

”An inclusive force is a mission-ready force,” she contended, all evidence to the contrary.

This proposal was cheered by Lt. Col. Bree (Bryan) Fram, LIT Transgender Policy Team co-lead. He describes himself as a “Rocket Scientist, Author, Advocate, Nerd”. Warrior does not make the list. But he was in attendance when Biden signed the Disrespect for Marriage Act, abolishing religious freedom and marriage.

“The use of correct pronouns is an easy way to show care and respect,” Mr. Fram insisted.

It’s a short hop from pronouns being voluntary to becoming mandatory.

Pacific Air Forces went further by warning its personnel not to use “he/she” pronouns. The Air Force Academy, always in the vanguard of wokeness, told cadets to stop referencing “mom and dad”, and to ask people for their gender identity. This was described as a “warfighting imperative”.

The Navy, like the Army, has jettisoned the use of ‘ma’am’ or ‘sir’ for drill instructors.

Earlier this year, the Navy released a video teaching personnel to use proper gender pronouns. An editorial at the Naval Institute complained about the use of such terms as “manpower, manning, man overboard, man the rails, sideboy, man hours”.

The authors even urged replacing “man overboard” with “shipmate overboard.”

Now when a man falls overboard, there will have to be a debate about gendered language and what he identifies with before he can be rescued. And by then he’ll probably have drowned.

The Navy’s Special Ops creed changed its wording from  “elite brotherhood of sailors” to “elite group of maritime warriors”. SEALs no longer mention “brave men who have fought and died building the proud tradition and feared reputation that I am bound to uphold.”

Nor do they say, “I am that man.”

There are no female operators because none have met the standards. But it’s only a matter of time until those standards are lowered.

Chris Beck, the retired Navy SEAL who became the poster boy for the transgender movement when he spent a decade claiming to be a woman, has returned to his senses, and calls it the “worst mistake of my life.”

Beck describes getting a prescription for hormones after a brief consultation at the VA.

“I got propagandized. I got used badly by a lot of people who had knowledge way beyond me,” he admitted. “They knew what they were doing. I didn’t.”

The VA, whose delays are still killing veterans, offers a special field for gender identity and a list of pronouns for “nonbinaries” that include xe/xem. Earlier this year, House Democrats blocked an effort to expose VA delays in veteran care. Some VA facilities still have delays that drag on for months, but pronouns remain a leading priority. Patient care takes a back seat to wokeness.

As it does across the military in the Obama and Biden eras.

Military policy demands that personnel “should be sensitive to the use of pronouns when addressing others.” There is no expectation that the men who wake up one morning and decide that they’re women should stop putting their fetishes and neuroses ahead of the mission.

The United States is following in the footsteps of the Canadian Armed Forces which mandates the use of gender neutral pronouns and the British Ministry of Defence which orders officials to state their gender pronouns.

“Pronouns aren’t just used inside the 2SLGBTQI+ communities but are used by everyone,” Canada’s Department of National Defence states.

The only people who use pronouns are ordered to use them by their employer or institution. With control of the military, the Trudeau regime and other woke governments have a sizable class of personnel that, to their endless delight, they can order to do anything they want.

Western nations can’t think of any better use for their militaries than performative dogma.

NATO has a 38-page manual on “gendered language” which emphasizes that it is “important to distinguish between grammatical gender and gender as a social construct.” What would have been an obscure dilettante academic’s thesis in the 80s are now military marching orders.

During the Cold War, NATO focused on tactics and strategy while the Russians wrote papers on Marxism-Leninism. Now NATO is stuffed with personnel writing papers on cultural Marxism.

We no longer have a serious military leadership and so we’re not ready for a serious war.

But that’s because our ideologically captured institutions have no interest in fighting one. If China invades Taiwan, South Korea or Hawaii, they’ll issue a strong statement, supply some weapons to the remaining defenders and go back to emphasizing pronoun discipline.

These are the preoccupations of ideologically captured institutions which are not interested in winning military conflicts, only ideological ones.

As Clausewitz suggested, war is politics by other means. Inversely, politics is also war by other means. The Left is fighting a political civil war and has little interest in foreign wars. Leftist control over any institution transforms it into another battalion in its culture war against us.

While China and other enemy nations expand outward, America is stuck in a civil war. That’s why we continue to lose to China in our war games. Instead of being prepared for a war, our woke military brass, men like Secretary of Defense Austin, Gen. Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Air Force Chief of Staff, Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Mike Gilday, and others have made it abundantly clear that their priority is enforcing wokeness.

They have no plan to fight or win a war against any substantial enemy. They’re here to enforce the identity politics mandates on the military in between schmoozing at D.C. cocktail parties.

Ask them how to beat China and they don’t have an answer, but just ask them their pronouns, ask them about green energy, systemic racism and abortion and they’ll talk your ears off.

The woke military brass with its pronouns and allegiance to the ideals of the same enemy they were tasked with fighting during the Cold War is a national security threat to our nation.

AUTHOR

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