Before the Income Tax, our Nation was Supported by Tariffs

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The prohibiting duties we lay on all articles of foreign manufacture which prudence indeed requires us to establish at home, with the patriotic determination of every good citizen to use no foreign article which can be made within ourselves, without regard to difference of price, secures us against a relapse into foreign dependency. Thomas Jefferson, in an 1815 letter to John-Baptiste Say, a French economist

A free people … should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent on others for essentials, particularly military supplies.  President George Washington

Under free trade, the trader is the master and the producer the slave. Protection is but the law of nature, the law of self-preservation, of self-development, of securing the highest and best destiny of the race of man. Free trade destroys the dignity and independence of American labor… It will take away from the people of this country who work for a living— and the majority of them live by the sweat of their faces— it will take from them heart and home and hope. It will be self-destruction. President William McKinley

I wish we still had tariffs on all imports.  Why?  Because tariffs are what kept America’s manufacturing alive, our people with decent jobs, our ability to purchase quality goods produced by American owned companies, and because those tariffs once supported the entire cost of running our country. For 126 years, until 1913, there was no federal income tax and we kept all of the monies we earned.  Today’s communist progressive taxation is a far cry from what our founders envisioned for America’s citizens.

Following World War II, America began switching from a policy of protection, to a policy of “free trade,” which used international trade deals as a means of diplomacy and alliance-building, slowly eroding and ultimately destroying America’s status as the world’s dominant manufacturing power.

The idea that America’s economic tradition has been economic liberty, laissez faire, and wide-open cowboy capitalism, which would naturally include free trade… is simply not real history. The reality is that all four presidents on Mount Rushmore were protectionists. Protectionism was, in fact, the real American way.

Trump’s populist pro-tariff advisors Bannon and Navarro opposed the globalists in Trump’s administration, including economic adviser Gary Cohn, and Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member, Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, then Trump’s national security adviser.

Gary Cohn resigned when the President called for broad import tariffs on steel and aluminum, anathema to establishment free-trade Democrats and Republicans.  McMaster was fired and replaced by former UN Ambassador, John Bolton.

The 1913 Income Tax

This tax dominates the revenue scheme of the federal government today.  It is totally unconstitutional.  Prior to ratification of the 16th Amendment (income tax) in February 1913, the federal government managed its few constitutional responsibilities without an income tax, except during the Civil War period. During peacetime, it did so largely or even entirely on import taxes called “tariffs.”

Congress ran the fed government on tariffs alone because fed responsibilities did not include welfare programs, agricultural subsidies, Social Security or Medicare/Medicaid.  Before the Northern War of Aggression, the need for tariff revenue to finance the federal government generally kept the tariffs at reasonable levels. During wartime throughout early American history, the Founding Fathers were able to raise additional revenue employing a different method of direct taxation authorized by the U.S. Constitution prior to the 16th Amendment. These alternative taxing methods gave the young American nation embarrassing peacetime budget surpluses that several times came close to paying off the national debt.

President Andrew Jackson boasted in his veto of the Maysville Road Bill in 1830 that God had blessed the nation with no taxes (except tariffs on imports) and no national debt.  “Old Hickory” presided over a nation where Congress had abolished all federal internal taxes, and no citizen saw a tax collector of the United States unless that citizen was in the business of importing foreign goods.  (And now, the $20-dollar bill sporting the visage of Tennessee’s beloved President Andrew Jackson will be replaced with the picture of abolitionist, Harriet Tubman.)

While American consumers were occasionally manipulated by outrageously high protective tariffs, inside the United States a massive free market emerged over which the U.S. government had almost no influence.

By way of contrast, the advent of the income tax prompted some congressmen to note that this tax was designed not principally for revenue, the U.S. government had always had plenty of money from tariffs, but to manipulate the American people and their choices in the market.

This has been the legacy of the income tax. While the income tax has produced the type of revenue that has made a massive transfer of wealth from the productive to the unproductive, the incentives, through thousands of deductions and tax credits have manipulated the American people into choices that they wouldn’t have otherwise made in a free market. These manipulations, whether in favor of “green energy” research, “cash for clunker” automobile purchases, or tobacco crop subsidies, have been chosen according to the prevailing virtue in Washington.

Prior to 1913, Americans were responsible for themselves and independent enough to know that their future depended not on the government, but solely on themselves.

Selling Out American Manufacturing

In 1992, ads in local newspapers encouraged businesses to transfer their manufacturing to Honduras, El Salvador, the Caribbean Basin International Development Zone, of the Dominican Republic and Haiti.  These were International Free Trade Zones and Port Industrial Free Zones. This included Mexico.

Instead of paying living wages in the United States, corporations were urged to move to countries where wages were $.33 to $.56 per hour.  In 1991, a U.S. government agency actually directed apparel firms in the Southeast to be approached and sold on the idea of going offshore where the labor was cheaper.  There is a Puerto Rican and Asian connection as well.  Hundreds of companies moved their plants out of our country, and this was 27 years ago.

I remember a friend of mine who worked for Levi Strauss jeans at a terrific middle-class salary being told to train the Mexican workers how to do their jobs knowing the company was moving manufacturing to Mexico.  The Mexicans were given free living accommodations in our country, they were free from our income taxes, and they took over the jobs our American citizens had for a lot less money and manufacturing was ultimately moved to Mexico.

Check out the 1992 article from the Pennsylvania Crier.  It will shock you.  Then go to the original Pennsylvania Crier home page and click on “Downloads.”  The information in this website documents history with far more than anything you’ll find in today’s school books.  It is invaluable!

Our country’s manufacturing was purposely sold to third world countries to the detriment of our own people.  When NAFTA was first promoted, the calls to our Congressional reps were ten to one against it, but our globalist enemies sold us out and voted for it.

Unfortunately, Trump’s Trade Representative, CFR member Robert Lighthizer has sold us out and fooled our President into thinking the USMCA is a better deal than NAFTA.  It is not! And Trump does not have conservative advisers who will read Lighthizer’s USMCA and tell him the truth.  Numerous articles have been written regarding the contents and the loss of our sovereignty.  Publius Huldah wrote that it not only violates our U.S. Constitution, but it also sets up global government.  And my friend, J.W. Bryan, has written numerous articles exposing the dangers within the USMCA.

Trump’s Tariffs on Chinese Imports

Last September 2018, President Trump announced tariffs on “roughly $200 billion of imports from China.” These tariffs are on top of the ones imposed during the summer on $50 billion of products from that country.

Mr. Trump has consistently believed that Beijing needed America far more than America needed China, largely because China is the country running large trade surpluses. In 2017, China’s merchandise trade surplus against the United States hit a record $375.6 billion. As Trump knows, trade-surplus countries get mauled in “trade wars.” Therefore, Beijing, not Washington, is the party that needs to talk to reduce tension.

After extensive trade talks with China ended without an agreement on May 10, 2019, President Trump raised the tariffs on another $200 billion in Chinese imports from 10% to 25%. China retaliated three days later, announcing new tariffs on $60 billion of American exports.

Asia expert, Gordon Chang is urging the president to remain strong on tariffs, telling Fox Business’ Lou Dobbs Opens a New Window. the only way to prevent Chinese theft and trade imbalance is for the U.S. to raise tariffs Opens a New Window. and implement continued pressure on the Chinese.  Chang told Dobbs, “We have seen so many trade negotiations between previous presidents and the Chinese. They have all failed. The Chinese have violated every single agreement. This is really important for us. This is where we either stand or we fail, and the only thing that’s going to get us there is President Trump.”

Of course, there are free-trade Republicans like Senator Ted Cruz who claim these actions will hurt the farmers and people of Texas.  Cruz previously supported giving fast track authority on trade to President Obama.  But our President already said the government would be subsidizing the farmers’ losses during this “fair” trade battle with China.

The Mexican Border and Trade

Personally, I’d like to see the border closed completely.  The trade trucks can stand in line at the border and be thoroughly inspected to allow them into the states.  But the border should be closed.  All border ports of entry should also be closed.  We are being flooded with illegal immigrants pleading asylum, being loosed in America and never showing up for their court appearances.  If anyone believes there are only 12 to 30 million illegals in this country, they are not paying attention.  The count is over 60 million or more and growing daily.

We do not have enough border patrol agents, ICE agents, fences or walls built as high as the Vatican, or congressional laws to protect American citizens from the influx and costs of these lawbreakers.  There are many Islamist terrorists amongst them who daily illegally cross into America.

President Trump threatened tariffs on Mexico being raised every single month until something was done by Mexico to stop them.  According to the State Department, Mexico agreed to dispatch 6,000 national guardsmen at the border with Guatemala to block migrants from reaching the United States and expand a Trump administration program that holds thousands of asylum-seekers in Mexico during U.S. immigration processing.  Over 90 percent of those released into America never appear in court and are free to remain in America.

If Mexico’s actions “do not have the expected results,” additional measures could be taken within 90 days, and the two countries will continue to discuss add-on steps during that period.  This includes tariffs on Mexican goods coming into our country increasing every month until this influx of illegal aliens is quelled.  Link  Without our President and without these tariff threats, there would have been no deal.

In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson put more than 100,000 National Guard troops on the Mexican border.  The military buildup followed an early-morning raid at the garrison town of Columbus, New Mexico. Ten soldiers and eight civilians were killed when the Mexican revolutionary leader General Francisco “Pancho” Villa attacked with almost 500 men.

It’s time for America to put thousands upon thousands of National Guard troops on our border again, and armed with equipment to prevent the surge of illegals from entering our country.  And yes, there is new military equipment that repels invaders called the Active Denial Systems Non-Lethal Weapon and turns them back without hurting them.  This needs to be manned and used on the entire southern border.

Conclusion

Pat Buchanan was absolutely on target when he stated, “Once a nation has put its foot onto the slippery slope of global free trade, the process is inexorable, the end inevitable: death of the nation-state.”

Tariffs are the answer.  The only way our nation can regain control of trade that benefits American citizens is through tariffs.  Neither China nor Mexico will cave to our demands unless they suffer the consequences of American tariffs.

If we subsidize our farmers and those who lose during this battle, a battle that we continue to fight over a period of five years or more, manufacturing would again start up in America, first with small businesses, and then it would spread.  Our nation would again be one of productivity, surplus, and financial growth for her citizens.

To right the wrongs can be painful for a short time, but in the long run will revive and restore our country.

PODCAST: Carbon Tax Scam, Politics of Virginia Beach Shooting and Benghazi Stand Down Exposed!

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GUESTS

Jordan McGillis is a Policy Analyst at the Institute for Energy Research. In his role, McGillis writes on energy policy and contributes to IER’s communications initiatives.
McGillis graduated with a B.A. from the University of South Florida and an M.A. from Seton Hall University, both in International Affairs. Areas of focus: Federal Lands (permitting, drilling rights,ect.), Carbon Tax & Climate Change, Free Market Theory.

TOPIC..Carbon Tax Scam!

Alan Gottlieb is a strong advocate of defense. A nuclear engineering graduate of the University of Tennessee, publisher of Gun Week, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, Founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, and serves on the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union.

TOPIC…Virginia Governor Pushes Gun Control After Virginia Beach Shooting!

Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, West Point Graduate, Founder of “Stand up America” and former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations under President Reagan and retired as Deputy Commanding General for the US Army Pacific. Now a guest military analyst for TV and radio and co-author of the book “Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror”.

TOPIC…Exposed!! Benghazi Stand Down!

100 Reasons to Homeschool Your Kids

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This is my 100th article at FEE.org, so here are 100 reasons to homeschool your kids!

  1. Homeschoolers perform well academically.
  2. Your kids may be happier.
  3. Issues like ADHD might disappear or become less problematic.
  4. It doesn’t matter if they fidget.
  5. YOU may be happier! All that time spent on your kids’ homework can now be used more productively for family learning and living.
  6. You can still work and homeschool.
  7. And even grow a successful business while homeschooling your kids.
  8. Your kids can also build successful businesses, as many grown unschoolers become entrepreneurs.
  9. You can be a single parent and homeschool your kids.
  10. Your kids can be little for longer. Early school enrollment has been linked by Harvard researchers with troubling rates of ADHD diagnosis. A year can make a big difference in early childhood development.
  11. Some of us are just late bloomers. We don’t all need to be on “America’s early-blooming conveyor belt.”
  12. Then again, homeschooling can help those kids who might be early bloomers and graduate from college at 16.
  13. Whether early, late, or somewhere in the middle, homeschooling allows all children to move at their own pace.
  14. You can choose from a panoply of curriculum options based on your children’s needs and your family’s educational philosophy.
  15. Or you can focus on unschooling, a self-directed education approach tied to a child’s interests.
  16. Homeschooling gives your kids plenty of time to play! In a culture where childhood free play is disappearing, preserving play is crucial to a child’s health and well-being.
  17. They can have more recess and less homework.
  18. You can take advantage of weekly homeschool park days, field trips, classes, and other gatherings offered through a homeschooling group near you.
  19. Homeschooling co-ops are growing, so you can find support and resources.
  20. Homeschooling learning centers are sprouting worldwide, prioritizing self-directed education and allowing more flexibility to more families who want to homeschool.
  21. Parks, beaches, libraries, and museums are often less crowded during school hours, and many offer programming specifically for homeschoolers.
  22. You’re not alone. Nearly two million US children are homeschooled, and the homeschooling population is increasingly reflective of America’s diversity. In fact, the number of black homeschoolers doubled between 2007 and 2011.
  23. One-quarter of today’s homeschoolers are Hispanic-Americans who want to preserve bilingualism and family culture.
  24. Some families of color are choosing homeschooling to escape what they see as poor academic outcomes in schools, a curriculum that ignores their cultural heritage, institutional racism, and disciplinary approaches that disproportionately target children of color.
  25. More military families are choosing homeschooling to provide stability and consistency through frequent relocations and deployments.
  26. While the majority of homeschoolers are Christians, many Muslim families are choosing to homeschool, as are atheists.
  27. Homeschooling has wide bipartisan appeal.
  28. More urban parents are choosing to homeschool, prioritizing family and individualized learning.
  29. Religious freedom may be important to many homeschooling families, but it is not the primary reason they choose to homeschool. “Concern about the school environment, such as safety, drugs, or negative peer pressure” is the top motivator according to federal data.
  30. Fear of school shootings and widespread bullying are other concerns that are prompting more families to consider the homeschooling option.
  31. Some parents choose homeschooling because they are frustrated by Common Core curriculum frameworks and frequent testing in public schools.
  32. Adolescent anxiety, depression, and suicide decline during the summer, but Vanderbilt University researchers found that suicidal tendencies spike at back-to-school time. (This is a pattern opposite to that of adults, who experience more suicidal thoughts and acts in the summertime.) Homeschooling your kids may reduce these school-induced mental health issues.
  33. It will also prevent schools from surreptitiously collecting and tracking data on your child’s mental health.
  34. Your kids’ summertime can be fully self-directed, as can the rest of their year.
  35. That’s because kids thrive under self-directed education.
  36. Some kids are asking to be homeschooled.
  37. And they may even thank you for it.
  38. Today’s teens aren’t working in part-time or summer jobs like they used to. Homeschooling can offer time for valuable teen work experience.
  39. It can also provide the opportunity to cultivate teen entrepreneurial skills.
  40. Your kids don’t have to wait for adulthood to pursue their passions.
  41. By forming authentic connections with community members, homeschoolers can take advantage of teen apprenticeship programs.
  42. Some apprenticeship programs have a great track record on helping homeschoolers build important career skills and get great jobs.
  43. Self-directed learning centers for teen homeschoolers can provide a launchpad for community college classes and jobs while offering peer connection and adult mentoring.
  44. With homeschooling, you can inspire your kids to love reading.
  45. Maybe that’s because they will actually read books, something one-quarter of Americans reported not doing in 2014.
  46. Your kids might even choose to voluntarily read financial statements or do worksheets.
  47. You can preserve their natural childhood creativity.
  48. Schools kill creativity, as Sir Ken Robinson proclaims in his TED Talk, the most-watched one ever.
  49. Homeschooling might even help your kids use their creativity in remarkable ways, as other well-known homeschoolers have done.
  50. With homeschooling, learning happens all the time, all year round. There are no arbitrary starts and stops.
  51. You can take vacations at any time of the year without needing permission from the principal.
  52. Or you can go world-schooling, spending extended periods of time traveling the world together as a family or letting your teens travel the world without you.
  53. Your kids can have healthier lunches than they would at school.
  54. And you can actually enjoy lunch with them rather than being banned from the school cafeteria.
  55. Your kids don’t have to walk through metal detectors, past armed police officers, and into locked classrooms in order to learn.
  56. You can avoid bathroom wars and let your kids go to the bathroom wherever and whenever they want—without raising their hand to ask for permission.
  57. Research shows that teen homeschoolers get more sleep than their schooled peers.
  58. Technological innovations make self-education through homeschooling not only possible but also preferable.
  59. Free, online learning programs like Khan Academy, Duolingo, Scratch, Prodigy Math, and MIT OpenCourseWare complement learning in an array of topics, while others, like Lynda.com and Mango, may be available for free through your local public library.
  60. Schooling was for the Industrial Age, but unschooling is for the future.
  61. With robots doing more of our work, we need to rely more on our distinctly human qualities, like curiosity and ingenuity, to thrive in the Innovation Era.
  62. Homeschooling could be the “smartest way to teach kids in the 21st century,” according to Business Insider.
  63. Teen homeschoolers can enroll in an online high school program to earn a high school diploma if they choose.
  64. But young people don’t need a high school diploma in order to go to college.
  65. Many teen homeschoolers take community college classes and transfer into four-year universities with significant credits and cost-savings. Research suggests that community college transfers also do better than their non-transfer peers.
  66. Homeschooling may be the new path to Harvard.
  67. Many colleges openly recruit and welcome homeschoolers because they tend to be “innovative thinkers.”
  68. But college doesn’t need to be the only pathway to a meaningful adult life and livelihood. Many lucrative jobs don’t require a college degree, and companies like Google and Apple have dropped their degree requirements.
  69. In fact, more homeschooling families from the tech community in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are choosing to homeschool their kids.
  70. Hybrid homeschooling models are popping up everywhere, allowing more families access to this educational option.
  71. Some of these hybrid homeschool programs are public charter schools that are free to attend and actually give families access to funds for homeschooling.
  72. Other education choice mechanisms, like Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) and tax-credit scholarship programs, are expanding to include homeschoolers, offering financial assistance to those families who need and want it.
  73. Some states allow homeschoolers to fully participate in their local school sports teams and extracurricular activities.
  74. Homeschooling may be particularly helpful for children with disabilities,like dyslexia, as the personalized learning model allows for more flexibility and customization.
  75. Homeschooling is growing in popularity worldwide, especially in India, Australia, the United Kingdom, Israel, and even in China, where it’s illegal.
  76. Homeschooling grants children remarkable freedom and autonomy, particularly self-directed approaches like unschooling, but it’s definitely not the Lord of the Flies.
  77. Homeschooling allows for much more authentic, purposeful learning tied to interests and everyday interactions in the community rather than contrived assignments at school.
  78. Throughout the American colonial and revolutionary eras, homeschooling was the norm, educating leaders like George Washington and Abigail Adams.
  79. In fact, many famous people were homeschooled.
  80. And many famous people homeschool their own kids.
  81. Your homeschooled kids will probably be able to name at least one right protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, something 37 percent of adults who participated in a recent University of Pennsylvania survey couldn’t do.
  82. Homeschooling can be preferable to school because it’s a totally different learning environment. As homeschooling pioneer John Holt wrote in Teach Your Own: “What is most important and valuable about the home as a base for children’s growth in the world is not that it is a better school than the schools but that it isn’t a school at all.”
  83. Immersed in their larger community and engaged in genuine, multi-generational activities, homeschoolers tend to be better socialized than their schooled peers. Newer studies suggest the same.
  84. Homeschoolers interact daily with an assortment of people in their community in pursuit of common interests, not in an age-segregated classroom with a handful of teachers.
  85. Research suggests that homeschoolers are more politically tolerant than others.
  86. They can dig deeper into emerging passions, becoming highly proficient.
  87. They also have the freedom to quit.
  88. They can spend abundant time outside and in nature.
  89. Homeschooling can create strong sibling relationships and tight family bonds.
  90. Homeschooling is legal in all 50 US states and has been since 1993, but regulations vary widely by state.
  91. In spite of ongoing efforts to regulate homeschoolers, US homeschooling is becoming less regulated.
  92. That’s because homeschooling parents are powerful defenders of education freedom.
  93. Parents can focus family learning around their own values, not someone else’s.
  94. Homeschooling is one way to get around regressive compulsory schooling laws and put parents back in charge of their child’s education.
  95. It can free children from coercive, test-driven schooling.
  96. It is one education option among many to consider as more parents opt-out of mass schooling.
  97. Homeschooling is the ultimate school choice.
  98. It is inspiring education entrepreneurship to disrupt the schooling status quo.
  99. And it’s encouraging frustrated educators to leave the classroom and launch their own alternatives to school.
  100. Homeschooling is all about having the liberty to learn.

Click here to sign-up for my weekly education and parenting email newsletter!

COLUMN BY

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019). Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. Follow her on Twitter @kerry_edu.

RELATED ARTICLE: Students Increasingly Are Pursuing Degrees with Better Job Prospects, Data Show

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

New Rules to Help Stop Fraud in Diversity Visa Program

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Did you know that when over a million people a year apply for the Diversity Visa Lottery in hopes of getting one of 50,000 tickets to your American town, that, in the past, applicants were not even required to show proof (a passport) that they live in the country from which they are applying.

That matters especially because some countries are barred from participation due to the large number of successful migrants to America in the previous five years.***

Readers! Our whole immigration system is one big fraud opportunity. 

For over 10 years I followed the US Refugee Admissions Program and saw the fraud on our country in that legal program and everywhere you turn it seems that someone is scheming, finding some way, to milk our system and it’s not just happening at the southern border.

This story about new requirements in the diversity lottery (we don’t have enough diversity!) is being reported in the Kenyan press!

From Mwakilishi.com,

US State Department to Require Passports to Enter the Green Card Lottery (Diversity Visa Program)

The US Department of State will now require foreign nationals who enter the Diversity Visa program, also known as the Green Card Lottery, to have valid unexpired passports.

In a document published on the Federal Register on Wednesday June 5th, the State Department says the principal petitioner will need to provide his/her passport information of the country he/she is a citizen of. Such information will include the passport number, issuing country, and passport expiration date. Derivatives listed on the entry form will not need to have passport at the time of the entry submission [but like before, will need passports at the time of the interview].

The State Department says the new requirement was necessitated by the significant number of fraudulent entries for the Diversity Visa program each year, noting that sometimes criminal enterprises submit entries for individuals without their knowledge. “Individuals or entities that submit unauthorized entries will often contact unwitting individuals whose identities were used on selected DV Program entries, inform them of the opportunity to apply for a diversity visa, and hold the entry information from the named petitioner in exchange for payment,” says the State Department.

The Department says requiring passport information will lead to less fraudulent entries submitted by third parties.

More here. 

Astounding that this was not a requirement all along as the program is approaching its 20th anniversary!

Learn more about this insane LEGAL method of entry to the US.

***The 2020 “winners” have been selected. Note Bangladesh is one of them. (See my post about Bangladeshis breaking into America by crossing the US Mexican border).

For DV-2020, nationals of the following countries were ineligible to participate in the program because they have had more than 50,000 natives immigrate to the United States over the last five years: Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China (mainland-born), Colombia, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Haiti, India, Jamaica, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, South Korea, United Kingdom (except Northern Ireland) and its dependent territories, and Vietnam.

By the way, I think the DR Congo should be excluded next time because we have brought 50,000 to the US in the last five years as ‘refugees.’

Go here to see the shocking list of countries whose nationals did “win” the recent lottery.

See my post last month about the lottery, here.

Good – Short Video on Red Flag Laws

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Watch and listen to this short Gun Owners of America video on Red Flag Laws which we now have in Florida codified in the Marjory Stoneman HS Protection Act (SB 7026) as “Risk Protection Orders”.

These laws ignore our 5th and 14th Amendment rights of Due Process and I predict will result in consequences for legal, law abiding gun owners over time. I’m personally not convinced that these are “unintended” consequences either but rather another intentional chipping away of our 2nd Amendment and Due Process Rights.

Gun Owners of America have been outspoken on this subject and I recommend you consider joining GOA as I did several years ago.

I am hopeful an iron-clad lawsuit will be filed before much longer to challenge FL’s Risk Protection Order and; if not eliminating it, as a minimum require holding a hearing before seizure and not exparte except in exceptional cases where there is overwhelming evidence/probable cause of potential harm by the gun owner. As the language is currently written, it is too open to interpretation resulting in differing procedures by different court jurisdictions and potential to be used as a political weapon by liberal gun control enthusiasts.

I am a Life Member of the NRA and want to know where is the NRA-ILA on this issue? So far – Crickets – chirp – chirp.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Why Gun Control Is Wrong Response to Tragic Virginia Shooting

Florida’s “Red-flag” Law Has Red Flags Of Its Own

Red Flag Gun Laws Turn Due Process on Its Head

Response from Rep. Darren Soto (D-FL) on Gun Control/Red Flag Laws

VIDEO: Leading the Battle Against Illegal Immigration

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In this edition of “Judicial Watch On Issue,” Senior Attorney James Peterson explains the issue of illegal immigration & its impact on the United States.

Former sheriff’s deputy Scot Peterson charged with child neglect, culpable negligence & perjury in connection with Parkland school mass shooting

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Fort Lauderdale – Former Broward Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson is facing 11 criminal charges – including child neglect, culpable negligence and perjury – in connection with his lack of response to the Feb. 14, 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Broward State Attorney Mike Satz announced Tuesday.

Following a 14-month investigation by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, former Broward Sheriff’s Deputy Scot Peterson, 56, was arrested Tuesday on seven counts of child neglect, three counts of culpable negligence and one count of perjury. The investigation examined the actions of law enforcement during and following the Parkland school mass shooting.

Peterson will be booked into the Broward County Jail. His bond is set at $102,000. Under the terms of his bond, Peterson would be required to wear a GPS monitor, must surrender his passport and is banned from possessing any firearms while the case is pending.

If convicted, the 11 charges technically carry a maximum potential punishment of 96 ½ years in state prison.

Six of the seven child neglect charges are second-degree felonies and carry a maximum penalty of 15 years in state prison. The seventh child neglect charge is a third-degree felony (because the child was not severely injured) with a maximum penalty of five years in prison. The perjury charge is a first-degree misdemeanor with a maximum penalty of one year in jail. The three charges of culpable negligence are second-degree misdemeanors with a maximum penalty of 60 days in jail.

During the investigation, FDLE agents interviewed 184 witnesses, reviewed countless hours of video surveillance, and wrote 212 investigative reports, totaling more than 800 hours of investigation on the case to determine the actions of law enforcement as they responded to the February 14, 2018 school shooting. The investigation received the full cooperation and assistance from the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, Coral Springs Police Department and all other agencies that responded to the school shooting.

Assistant State Attorney Tim Donnelly is handling the case for the Broward State Attorney’s Office (17th Judicial Circuit).

Click here for Scot Peterson arrest warrant.

RELATED ARTICLE: Sheriff’s Deputy Who Fled Parkland Shooting Charged With Neglecting Children

VIDEO: Ocasio-Cortez’s Gardening Advice Echoes the Hubris of Mao’s Great Leap Forward

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to extend identity politics to vegetables.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) wants to extend identity politics to vegetables. For Ocasio-Cortez, some vegetables are too “colonial” to grow.

Community gardens are a component of the Green New Deal, and having projects “make sense in a cultural context” is important, says Ocasio-Cortez.

If “communities of color” are “resistant to certain environmentalist movements,” perhaps it’s because they are concerned about taxes and jobs? The reason Ocasio-Cortez gives is far different:

When someone says that it’s too hard to do a green space that grows yuca instead of…cauliflower or something, what you’re doing is that you’re taking a colonial approach to environmentalism.

Yuca grows best in hot, dry regions. In many areas of the United States, including her home district of New York City, it would be an enormous challenge to grow yuca. I may like grapefruits, but I wouldn’t plant a grapefruit tree in the cold climate where I live.

Cauliflower is used in many Caribbean cuisines. Only Ocasio-Cortez knows why some vegetables are “colonial.”

Yuca is a starchy root vegetable with over double the amount of carbohydrates in a potato. If Ocasio-Cortez cares about the obesity and diabetes problems in her district, she may want to think again about her gardening advice.

Ocasio-Cortez is not the first member of Congress to offer inane advice. Yet she is fair game because she wants to use coercive force of government to remake the country in the image of her Democratic Socialist and Green New Deal programs.

We may laugh at Ocasio-Cortez’s boundless hubris, but let’s learn from history. Mao is perhaps history’s most famous despot who was eager to dispense agricultural (along with much other) advice. The result? During his Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), at least 45 million lost their lives through starvation, neglect, and violence.

Mao was a despot who had the power of the Chinese military power behind him to enforce his edicts; Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t.

Today, some see Ocasio-Cortez as a brilliant new voice in politics. With enough support, she and her fellow Democratic Socialists might have the power they crave to command people’s individual decisions. Ocasio-Cortez will never have absolute power, but she may gain enough power to do real harm.

In his book The Fatal Conceit, F.A. Hayek warned of the “naïve mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement.” To such a mind, Hayek wrote,

it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions.

We are all naïve about many things; a dose of humility and respect for the rights of others keeps us out of trouble.

In his book, Mao’s Great Famine, historian Frank Dikötter explains the horrors of the Great Leap Forward. Mao was intent on dramatically increasing both industrial and agricultural production, and the Great Helmsman was sure he knew the way forward. Here are some of the agriculture “reforms” commanded by Mao.

Mao commanded the planting of more than one rice crop a year even though the weather didn’t support it:

Mao asked, on a visit to the provincial capital Changsha. “Why do the Hunan peasants still plant only one crop of rice a year?” After Zhou explained that the weather permitted only a single crop a year, Mao pointed out that Zhejiang was on the same latitude as Hunan and planted two crops of rice. “You are not even studying other experiences. That’s the trouble,” Mao continued.

Mao ordered deeper plowing of the soil and destroyed the topsoil in the process:

Deep ploughing was another revolutionary recipe meant to free the farmers from the capricious soil. The deeper the planting, the stronger the roots and the taller the stalk, or so ran the logic behind this experiment. “Use human waves, and turn every field over,” commanded Mao.

Goaded by cadres… villagers now and then burrowed through the earth to bedrock, destroying the topsoil.

Then Mao ordered a heavier concentration of seeds:

Explained Chairman Mao: “With company they grow easily, when they grow together they will be more comfortable”… Villagers, of course, knew better: they had tilled the land for generations, and knew how to care for a precious resource on which their livelihoods depended. Many were incredulous, some trying to reason with the cadres: “You plant the seedlings too closely, there is not enough breathing space between them, and then you add ten tonnes of fertiliser per field. It will suffocate them to death.” But advice was ignored: “It’s a new technique, you don’t understand!”

Mao believed he could conquer nature, but nature had the last word. The killing of sparrows led to insect infestations, worsening the famine:

Sparrows were targeted because they ate grain seeds, depriving the people of the fruits of their labour. In what is one of the most bizarre and ecologically damaging episodes of the Great Leap Forward, the country was mobilised in an all-out war against the birds. Banging on drums, clashing pots or beating gongs, a giant din was raised to keep the sparrows flying till they were so exhausted that they simply dropped from the sky. Eggs were broken and nestlings destroyed; the birds were also shot out of the air. Timing was of the essence, as the entire country was made to march in lockstep in the battle against the enemy, making sure that the sparrows had nowhere to escape.

Farmers were organized into large communes with ignorant political cadres issuing capricious orders based on “little knowledge of agriculture.”

In 1959 in Luokang commune a local leader decided to replace the existing crop with sweet potatoes on half of the available acreage, only to change his mind later and substitute the potatoes with peanuts. These were then torn out to make room for rice instead. The previous year the commune had tried deep ploughing, using vast concentrations of manpower on small strips of land to dig deep furrows, much of it by hand. Huge amounts of fertiliser were applied, in some cases up to 30 tonnes a hectare. It all came to nothing. In Kaiping county, Guangdong, thousands of villagers were repeatedly forced to plant a crop in the early spring of 1959 despite bitterly cold weather: the seeds froze on three occasions.

Agriculture was militarized:

The militia movement and a small corps of trained fighters brought military organisation to every commune. All over China farmers were roused from sleep at dawn at the sound of the bugle and filed into the canteen for a quick bowl of watery rice gruel. Whistles were blown to gather the workforce, which moved in military step to the fields, carrying banners and flags to the sound of marching songs. Loudspeakers sometimes blasted exhortations to work harder, or occasionally played revolutionary music. Party activists, local cadres and the militia enforced discipline, sometimes punishing underachievers with beatings.

“Every conceivable kind of nutrient” was used as fertilizer:

Animal and human waste was carried to the fields by endless rows of people, sometimes until deep into the night…. Human waste extended to hair, and in some Guangdong villages women were forced to shave their heads to contribute fertiliser or face a ban from the canteen.

The demand for higher yields meant houses were razed for their value as fertilizer:

But most of the time buildings made of mud and straw were torn down to provide nutrients for the soil. Walls of buildings where animals had lived and especially where they had urinated, such as stables, could provide useful fertiliser. At first old walls and abandoned huts were destroyed, but as the campaign gained momentum entire rows of houses were systematically razed to the ground, the mud bricks shattered and strewn across the fields.

Later, houses were wantonly destroyed to make room for new buildings that were never built:

Most quietly stood by, sometimes in tears, as the local leader walked past without uttering a word, simply lifting his finger to mark out a house for destruction. In Dianjiang county, Sichuan, a team of eleven people went around torching hundreds of straw huts. “Destroy Straw Huts in an Evening, Erect Residential Areas in Three Days, Build Communism in a Hundred Days” was the leading slogan. Some villages were emptied altogether, although somehow nobody quite managed to get beyond the destruction phase of the plan.

Pots and pans and farm implements were confiscated and melted down to be used in industrial production:

Many of the farming tools had been destroyed in the iron and steel campaign, labour was still diverted to building dams, and communal granaries in the people’s communes were poorly managed. In Liantan, the model commune where a slogan praising the Great Leap Forward had been chiselled in the mountains to welcome an inspection team, several thousand farmers were conscripted to deep-plough seven hectares during the autumn harvest; as nobody was available to collect the crop, some 500 tonnes of grain were abandoned in the fields.

As starvation spread, ersatz foods such as chlorella and wood pulp were promoted:

In China [chlorella, a form of algae] the watery slime was elevated to the status of miracle food during the famine. It could be cultivated and skimmed from swampy ponds, but more often than not it was grown in vats of human urine, the green stuff being scooped out, washed and cooked with rice.

Prisoners were used as guinea pigs. Besides the green plankton, which sickened the inmates, they were also fed sawdust and wood pulp. Bao Ruowang – also known as Jean Pasqualini, the author of a memoir about life in a Chinese labour camp – remembered how brown sheets of the stuff were ground into paper pulp and mixed with flour. Mass constipation followed, killing the weaker prisoners. But even in the cities the spread of substitute foods caused obstruction of the bowels or rupture of the sphincter.

Villagers “scavenged for carrion, rummaged through rubbish, scraped the bark off trees and in the end turned to mud to fill their stomachs”:

It was a vision of hell, as serried ranks of ghostly villagers queued up in front of deep pits, their shrivelled bodies pouring with sweat under the glare of the sun, waiting for their turn to scramble down the hole and carve out a few handfuls of the porcelain-white mud… Once eaten the soil acted like cement, drying out the stomach and absorbing all the moisture inside the intestinal tract.

As the country starved, Mao opened a party meeting in the summer of 1959. The party leaders were not hungry. They “referred to the gathering as a ‘meeting of immortals’. Immortals lived far above mere humans, seated on the clouds of heaven, playfully gliding through the mist, unencumbered by earthly restraints.”

Propaganda insisted

the country had witnessed an unprecedentedly rich harvest in 1960, there was absolutely no famine and rumours to the contrary were slanderous.

Humanitarian offers of food aid were rebuffed. The contempt the leaders had for their own countrymen was as boundless as their hubris.

COLUMN BY

Barry Brownstein

Barry Brownstein is professor emeritus of economics and leadership at the University of Baltimore. He is the author of The Inner-Work of Leadership. To receive Barry’s essays subscribe at Mindset Shifts.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission.

Cooperation Between ICE and Police Essential to Combat MS-13

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Immigration law enforcement provides heavy artillery to fight transnational crime.

On May 26, 2019 the local radio station in New York, 1010 WINS reported, Nassau police union: Dozens more detectives needed to combat MS-13.

That report began with this excerpt:

NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – Two days after the body of a suspected MS-13 victim was discovered at Massapequa Preserve, Nassau PBA president James McDermott says gang units in the county are understaffed and ill-equipped to deal with the violent gang.

“Our gang unit is undermanned and not provided with the necessary resources to deal with this threat,” he said Sunday, speaking near the location where the body was discovered Friday.

The remains are believed to be from one of a number of people murdered by MS-13 several years ago.

In any battle, more “boots on the ground” can help to insure victory.  Where the battle is against transnational criminals, it would be most helpful if those “boots” were worn by ICE agents.

What was not discussed in this article is how ICE agents can be of a huge assistance in effectively combatting MS-13 and other transnational gangs and how sanctuary policies have the exact opposite impact.

Indeed, effective immigration law enforcement can support law and assist enforcement efforts to combat gangs, human trafficking, prostitution drug trafficking and other serious crimes.

Years ago INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) agents worked in close cooperation with the NYPD.  Back then I frequently participated in joint operations with the NYPD to shut down houses of prostitution.  Many of the clients and prostitutes of these brothels were illegal aliens.

The police would arrest the prostitutes and their clients and we would lodge detainers or simply take them into custody.  The word on the street was that illegal aliens might find themselves being deported by the INS agents.  Business dropped and many of these locations were permanently shuttered.

Additionally, many times the prostitutes would cooperate with our efforts to identify human traffickers so that we could target the pernicious traffickers and ultimately dismantle their operations and bring them to justice.

It is obvious that ICE agents are empowered to arrest illegal aliens on administrative charges that result in the deportation of illegal aliens from the United States.

To this point, immigration anarchists frequently refer to immigration laws as “civil laws” minimizing the true importance of our nation’s immigration laws and the actual authority that ICE agents have.

What is seldom, if ever discussed, is that there are also criminal laws that are a part of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) and violations of these laws carry serious prison sentences.

In fact, on May 13, 2019 The Washington Examiner published an opinion piece, Feds: Immigration top US crime, one-third of all sentencings that was based on the official report of the U.S. Sentencing Commission, Fiscal Year 2018 Annual Report and Sourcebook of Federal Sentencing Statistics that reported that immigration law violations accounted for 34.4% of all federal prosecutions and that 94.7% of immigration prosecutions resulted in prison sentences.

The 9/11 Commission determined that visa fraud and immigration fraud figured prominently in the ability of international terrorists to enter the United States and embed themselves as they went about their deadly preparation, and not only with the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 were concerned.

Visa fraud 18 U.S. Code § 1546 is an extremely serious crime and when it is committed in conjunction with terrorism exposes the alien who perpetrates that crime to a prison sentence of up to 25 years.

Visa fraud committed in conjunction with drug trafficking carries a maximum of 20 years in  prison.

Human Trafficking/Alien Smuggling 8 U.S. Code § 1324 addresses crimes that relate to illegally bringing aliens into the and/or harboring, concealing, aiding, abetting, inducing and encouraging aliens to enter the United States illegally or to remain in the United States illegally and these crimes carry hefty jail sentences.  In fact, if such activities lead to the death of any individual, the punishment, upon conviction, can be life in prison.

Re-entry After Deportation, 8 U.S. Code § 1326 carries a maximum of 20 years in prison if the alien in question meets the definition of an “aggravated felon.”  (On a personal note, I worked with then-New York Senator Al D’Amato to first convince him of the need to change the law that had previously made no distinction about the criminal history of deported aliens who reentered the United States after being deported.  Previously the maximum penalty was two years in prison.  The twenty year maximum is intended to deter aliens from returning illegally to the United States.)  Given the nature of this particular crime, it is all but impossible for an alien who has been deported and subsequently reentered illegally to deny that the charges are true.

While it may take years to put many criminal cases together and involve many agents and resources, the crime of unlawful reentry can be investigated and completed in just a few days.  It is cost-effective and provides a huge hammer to combat criminal aliens who make a mockery of our borders and immigration laws.

Illegal aliens who are found in possession of ammunition or a firearm in interstate or foreign commerce, 18 U.S. Code § 922(g)(5) face up to ten years in prison.  Again, this is a simple case to investigate and the jail sentence is significant.

Where all of these federal criminal charges are concerned, they will all ultimately also result in the deportation of the criminal aliens after they complete their prisons sentences.

The goal of law enforcement is to protect the property and lives of those who would fall prey to criminals.  Prison sentences are established to accomplish a few commonsense objectives.  First, to punish those who violate our laws, second to deter those who might contemplate violating our laws and finally to get dangerous criminals off of the streets of our towns and cities to separate them from those who would otherwise fall victim to their criminal behavior.

One of the challenges for law enforcement is the challenge presented by recidivists, that is, criminals who repeatedly commit crimes, get arrested and convicted, serve prison sentences only to return to the street to commit more crimes and hurt/kill more victims.

Prisons are often optimistically referred to as “Correctional Institutions” where the inmates are hopefully rehabilitated by addressing their sociopathic conduct through training, counseling and other such measures.  Unfortunately, all too frequently these efforts fail.

Where criminal aliens are concerned, deporting such criminals provides a means of removing them permanently from the streets of American towns and cities.  The severe penalty for unlawful reentry of such criminal aliens was intended to deter such aliens from returning to the United States.  This deterrent factor would be far more effective if there were more ICE agents who could arrest such aliens so that more would be prosecuted.

Sanctuary cities have the precise opposite affect, encouraging aliens to run our borders and thus endanger the lives of innocent victims.  It most be noted the most frequently those at greatest risk are the members of the immigrant communities where these criminal aliens live and ply their sociopathic “trades.”

Sanctuary policies shield and embolden the gangs and imperil innocent victims, often teenage immigrant children.

With “friends” like the politicians who create “Sanctuary” policies, or want to end ICE altogether, immigrants don’t need enemies!

RELATED ARTICLES:

FLASHBACK: Pew Research Confirms 6 In 10 Illegal Aliens Live In These Areas

Top 10 Reasons MS-13 Should Terrify You

Report: DHS Agents Are Being Sent To The Guatemela-Mexico Border 

It’s All About the Open Borders, Stupid

EDITORS NOTE: This FrontPage Magazine column is republished with permission.

In Fact, Neither France Nor The U.S. Belong To Illegal Aliens

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It appears that illegal aliens in France (known as “les sans-papiers,” which translates to “the ones without papers”) have begun imitating the tactics used by illegal aliens in the United States.

A few days ago, roughly 500 sans-papiers invaded Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport to protest France’s immigration policies. According to the New York Post, “The migrants reportedly refused to let passengers board [outgoing flights]until their demands were met….” They also insisted that Air France immediately cease, “any financial, material, logistical or political participation in deportations.”

That’s become pretty standard stuff in immigration protests. However, it was the demonstrators’ slogans that should give pause to the citizens of the developed West, whose countries are being overrun. As they were surrounded by riot police, the sans-papierschanted, “France does not belong to the French! Everyone has a right to be here!”

That’s a shocking claim. At present, the world is organized around a system of independent nations described as “sovereign.” Sovereignty, is the notion that people may form political bonds and govern themselves any way they choose. It acknowledges that there is a philosophical wall around nations. Within that border, the nation-state is the highest political and legal authority. And no single nation has the authority to dictate how another conducts its internal affairs.  As such, France does, in fact, belong to the French, just as the United States belongs to Americans.

As an element of sovereignty, nations have the unfettered right to determine who may enter their territory. The Supreme Court of the United States summarized this very neatly in Ekiu v. United States saying, “It is an accepted maxim of international law that every sovereign nation has the power, as inherent in sovereignty, and essential to self-preservation, to forbid the entrance of foreigners within its dominions, or to admit them only in such cases and upon such conditions as it may see fit to prescribe.”

In plain English, that means any time outside forces are permitted to dictate who a particular nation must allow within its borders, that nation is no longer in control of its own political destiny. And it must always be wary of its sovereignty being slowly eroded by uncontrolled mass migration – and the political shifts that inevitably accompany rapid demographic change.

Europe’s “Syrian Refugee” crisis and America’s southern border crisis continue to drag on. Therefore both France and the U.S. should be asking themselves just how long they are willing to tolerate foreign trespassers who feel entitled to make unreasonable demands and dictate how immigration laws should be enforced. A failure to answer that question may very well lead to a loss of meaningful sovereignty and the dissolution of both France and the United States as we currently know them.

RELATED ARTICLES:

France: 13 injured in a nail bomb blast, police launch investigation into “terror conspiracy”

No Place Like A (Federally-Subsidized) Home for Illegal Aliens?

New York Politicians Ignore Public’s Opposition To Driver’s Licenses For Illegal Aliens

The $150 Billion Drain On The U.S. Economy

EDITORS NOTE: This FAIR column is republished with permission.

The New Pro-Life Moment

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Robert Royal: Pro-life opportunities abound, and Church leaders and laity must seize them, if we don’t want history to say that we did nothing. 

Something out of the ordinary happened this past week. On Saturday, over 10,000 people walked the streets of Rome in defense of children in the womb. Italian lay people have organized a march for nine years now, and it grows – despite no support from the Italian bishops – including the pope.

On Friday, Francis did encourage members of the Catholic Medical Association to “defend life,” though so vaguely that you couldn’t tell whether he was talking about abortion, euthanasia, immigration, climate, poverty – or all of them (more of this below).

But as usual no Italian bishops participated in the Marcia– they’ve been saying that they don’t want it to be seen as only “Catholic,” though why is not clear. And that they prefer to work through elected officials rather than public protest (though they seem to support other public demonstrations, e.g., on immigration and poverty, and don’t have any natural partners in government now that the Christian Democrats have splintered). Italian television, accordingly, didn’t even mention the march occurred.

The lone Italian prelate in the past, Archbishop Viganò, was missing, for good reasons.

None of this was out of the ordinary. And neither, basically, were the large pro-life marches in London last week and Ottawa. There are marches in many other countries in Europe and Latin America as well, though we rarely hear about them outside of the Catholic press, and not very much even there.

No, the real novelty is that Alabama essentially banned abortion last week with a  bill that was passed by the legislature and signed into law by governor Kay Ivey who, like large numbers of women, believes abortion is the taking of innocent human life.

Numerous states have now passed law restricting abortion, so we’re about to see a titanic battle in the Supreme Court – and American society.

Pro-abortion commentators are worrying about a reversal of Roe v. Wade, though the swift discrediting of the Center for Medical Progress’s videos showing Planned Parenthood selling fetal body parties suggests that it’s still easy to gaslight the public about such matters.  (Remember when Groucho Marx’s line – “Who you gonna believe, me or your own lying eyes?” – was a joke?)

But pro-lifers too are nervous, several wondering whether such “extreme” legislation makes it easier for courts to strike down such measures.

In any case, we’ll shortly know whether our legal system is entirely captive to anti-scientific ideology or still capable of rational moral debate. The Supremes may only send questions on abortion back to the states, where – as Justice Antonin Scalia often argued – it belongs, since the Federal government has no constitutional jurisdiction over such matters. The fundamental right to life will probably be addressed, if ever, further down the line.

But there’s reason for hope here.

Abortion supporters are beginning to deploy arguments that may delay but will not dispel the main question. Some states, for example, have tried to draw a line at the point where the fetus has a detectible heartbeat or some other biological marker.

A writer in the Washington Post this weekend elaborated on a new formula now appearing everywhere from Hollywood to Manhattan; “Lest I be chastened for daring to humanize an embryo, let me state for the record that the correct term for ‘heartbeat’ is ‘fetal pole cardiac activity,’ because at six weeks, said embryo doesn’t have a cardiovascular system and, therefore, no fully formed beating heart.”

Valiant effort, but if people – and the courts – start to pay attention to such details, we will inevitably have to decide, “So when do we have enough ‘fetal pole’ motion and vascular system to call what’s going on simply a heartbeat?” It’s not long after.

Similarly, as even outlets like The New York Times have been conceding for more than a decade, there is rudimentary brainwave activity detectible about as early as “fetal pole” motion – not a developed brain of course, but by ten weeks an articulated brain is forming.

These defenses of early abortion will look increasingly weak as people (and courts) look more carefully. Is there anyone who thinks that as science advances we will discover less rather than more complexity and activity in the early embryo? I’d be nervous, too, about the science if I supported abortion.

The Church – and especially the Vatican – should get squarely behind this burgeoning pro-life pushback. Commentators recognize that the radicalism of new abortion laws in New York, Virginia, and Canada have provoked the current reaction.

And anyway, protecting human life in the womb has been and remains the central human-rights question of our time.

Respect for human life is never merely a numbers game. But we need to find ways to take proper measure of the horror. For instance, authorities estimate 2241 people died crossing the Mediterranean illegally from Africa to Europe in 2018. In an average year, on the U.S. border, there are usually 200-400 such deaths.

So some simple math: 2241+400 (to take the high estimate) = 2641. Abortions in America are at a low point, “only” 652,639 in 2015 (though this is clearly an undercount since California and other states don’t report abortions to the Centers for Disease Control).

That’s 1788 per day. So every two days, the abortion body count exceeds the migrant deaths for a whole year. Planned Parenthood alone does almost 1000 abortions per day.

No one really knows global numbers, but a good estimate is 16 million abortions a year, roughly 44,000 per day. If that many innocents were dying while migrating or in a repressive regime or owing to racism or some climate shift or even in a war zone, the world would be – rightly – in an uproar.

Yet very few people, even those who say abortion wrong – even high Church officials – seem much moved. Some procedures are medically necessary (only 1.5 percent of abortions follow rape or incest). But there’s no getting around the massive, casual, brutal carnage.

We’re all going to need to learn to debunk terms like “fetal pole cardiac activity” and whatever other rationalizations will be coming now. But this is a new and special moment when some real change seems possible. And we – Church leaders, laity, all people of good will – have to seize it, if we don’t want history to say that we did nothing while millions of innocents were being slaughtered.

COLUMN BY

Robert Royal

Dr. Robert Royal is editor-in-chief of The Catholic Thing, and president of the Faith & Reason Institute in Washington, D.C. His most recent book is A Deeper Vision: The Catholic Intellectual Tradition in the Twentieth Century, published by Ignatius Press. The God That Did Not Fail: How Religion Built and Sustains the West, is now available in paperback from Encounter Books.

RELATED ARTICLE: I’ve Had 2 Abortions. Here’s Why I Support Alabama’s Pro-Life Law.

EDITORS NOTE: This Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2019 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

State of “Gun Violence” in the United States

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Politicians treat so-called “gun violence” as a lever issue, hoping to energize their base and guilt law-abiding Americans into supporting policies that would have no effect on crime or help the mentally ill. Part of this effort entails presenting as large a number of fatalities as possible, and so researchers, the media, and anti-gun politicians combine suicide, homicide, accidents, legal interventions, and incidents in which the intent is unknown.

They’ve chosen to sensationalize tragedies time and again to advance an anti-freedom agenda. The media misrepresents old data by using current-tense headlines. Anti-gun organizations the Brady Campaign and Moms Demand Action politicized memorial services held the day after a shooting when the community wanted a chance to mourn properly. Anti-gun politicians ignore pre-existing trend data if it means they can claim gun control works – no matter how many caveats are included in the underlying analysis.

What does “gun violence” really look like? CDC non-fatal injury data is not reliable, but fatality statistics are accurate. The most recent data available is for 2017; there were 39,772 total firearms-related fatalities. Sixty percent were suicides. Thirty-seven percent were homicides, which is a rate of 4.5 fatalities per 100,000 people. The rate held steady between 2016 and 2017, but it has increased slightly since the start of the decade. However, the 2017 rate is 34% lower than it was in 1980 and 36% lower than in 1993. In other words, the firearms-related homicide rate dropped by 36% in the last 25 years for which we have data. Rates don’t tell the whole story; the total population grew by more than 99 million people from 1980 to 2017 and the number of firearms-related homicides decreased by 958.

Let’s look at the specific wording used in a recent article supporting gun control. “In 2017, the United States had the highest rate of firearm fatalities since 1996.” This statement is specifically crafted to make a dramatic point. The rate of all firearms-related fatalities in 1996 was lower than it was in the previous 15 years, and the rate was lower every year from 1997 through 2016. The data tell a clear story, even in the presence of a recent and moderate increase. Perhaps more importantly, the data shows that suicide is increasing as a percentage of all firearms-related fatalities.

Not all charts are as clear. Some seem designed to support a certain perspective rather than to present data without bias. Doctor Eric Fleegler, affiliated with Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital, recently published the above-referenced article titled, “Mass Shootings and the Numbing of America” in JAMA Internal Medicine. He presented firearms-related fatalities by age group and intent. The bars represent the percentage of all fatalities within that age group that involve firearms.

This representation is technically correct, but it suggests at first look that there are more firearms-related fatalities among younger people, specifically those within the 15-19-year-old and 20-24-year-old age groups. The chart really indicates what is not shown: that younger people face fewer potentially fatal injuries and health complications than older generations. In other words, younger age cohorts are generally healthier than older people, some of whom unfortunately pass away due to falls, to heart disease, cancer, or any number of other issues that are not common among teenagers and young adults.

This commentary is not designed to trivialize any deaths, but efforts to address firearms-related fatalities should be targeted and the data needs to be considered sincerely. Unfortunately, we too often see the presentation of data sensationalized to make a point. But, that’s the shell game that anti-gun activists and politicians want to play.

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EDITORS NOTE: This NRA-ILA column is republished with permission.

PODCAST: The Democrats Take Another Swipe At Right-To-Work

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Presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) recently raised eye-brows by calling for a federal ban on “Right-To-Work” (RTW) laws in the United States. By doing so, she was pandering to American unions to support her candidacy. Other Democrat candidates will likely follow suit, as they do every four years, and by doing so RTW laws are once again becoming a campaign issue. Unfortunately, many people still do not understand what is at stake here.

Right-To-Work simply means a union cannot get a worker fired for not paying union dues. It also means joining a union is voluntary, not compulsory as you will find in a “closed shop.” Such laws started in the south and west, but are now moving north with Kentucky becoming the 26th (2017), Wisconsin the 25th (2015), Michigan (24th; 2012) and Indiana (23rd; 2012).

RTW laws weaken the strength of unions. To illustrate, Boeing’s North Charleston plant employs about 7,500 workers to build fuselages for 747s and 787s. In 2015, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers tried to build support to unionize 3,175 production and maintenance workers. The effort was called off as workers wouldn’t embrace the union. Boeing constructed the plant in South Carolina after several battles with unions at its Washington plant.

According to a February 2011 study by the Economic Policy Institute, the drawbacks to RTW include:

  • Wages in right-to-work states are 3.2% lower than those in non-RTW states.
  • The rate of employer-sponsored health insurance is 2.6 percentage points lower in RTW states.
  • The rate of employer-sponsored pensions is 4.8 percentage points lower in RTW states.

However, it should be remembered that the cost of living in RTW states is less than non-RTW states.

Further, an article in the “Wall Street Journal” (“An Inspiration and a Warning From Michigan”; Dec 14, 2012) claims that “between 1980 and 2011, total employment in right-to-work states grew by 71%, while employment in non-right-to-work states grew 32%. Sadly, employment in Michigan increased just 14% during that time. Since 2001, RTW states added 3.5% more jobs, while other states decreased by 2.6%. Similarly, inflation-adjusted compensation grew 12% in RTW states, but just 3% in the others.”

Beyond this, RTW is an important indicator of a state’s prosperity. To illustrate, according to a report from the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, it appears financial success in state governments is not by accident. The Mercatus report, examined the financial stability of the fifty states, plus Puerto Rico and Guam. The report considered debt and financial obligations, as well as state pension programs and health care benefits. Of the top 10 states, all had adopted RTW legislation:

#1 – Nebraska
#2 – South Dakota
#3 – Tennessee
#4 – Florida
#5 – Oklahoma
#6 – Wyoming
#7 – Idaho
#8 – Utah
#9 – North Carolina
#10 – Nevada

Of the bottom 10 states in the study, with the exception of Kentucky (which just adopted RTW legislation in 2017), none supported RTW:

#41 – New York
#42 – California
#43 – West Virginia
#44 – Delaware
#45 – New Mexico
#46 – Kentucky
#47 – Massachusetts
#48 – New Jersey
#49 – Connecticut
#50 – Illinois

In another article, I discovered the states reporting the highest levels of worker “engagement,” meaning the employees are motivated and self-starting, were primarily in the South, and the lowest were in the Northeast and Midwest. Again, in this instance, the South includes RTW states, and the Northeast and Midwest are under union control.

Time and again, RTW is somehow related to prosperity. Coincidence? I do not believe so. Bottom-line, it comes down to whether or not you believe trade unions serve the best interests of their constituents. With the passing of Kentucky’s RTW legislation, there are now more states interested in providing work for their people as opposed to trusting the unions.

As an aside, the territory of Guam has RTW laws, as does the Federal Government. Participation in unions is strictly voluntary.

In the upcoming presidential election, you will not hear a Democrat candidate openly support RTW legislation as they need union votes to get elected. However, the day is not far away when living in a non-RTW state will be considered a political liability as opposed to an asset. Therefore, Sen. Harris’ attack on RTW was to be expected, after all she is not a Republican.

Keep the Faith!

RELATED ARTICLE: Socialists Don’t Aim To End Poverty, They Aim To Use It

EDITORS NOTE: This Bryce is Right column is republished with permission. All trademarks both marked and unmarked belong to their respective companies.

Should We Panic over the Measles Outbreaks?

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In general, it is not a good idea to panic about anything. The panic itself often causes more harm than the original threat.

Crisis situations, real or contrived, lead to new intrusive laws that the public would never accept otherwise. We supposedly cherish freedom, but if we believe that the world will end if we don’t act NOW, then we may clamor for the government to save us. Cynical politicians bent on increasing their power never let a crisis go to waste.

Something like the Green New Deal—the end of our comfortable, prosperous lifestyle—takes a truly apocalyptic threat. But to eliminate our freedom to decline a medical treatment, the threat that “millions will die” of measles is evidently enough. Or if not millions (most older people had measles and recovered fully), a few especially vulnerable children, who can’t be vaccinated themselves, might catch measles and die.

There are several hundred cases of measles nationwide, more than in 2014, and bills are being pushed through state legislatures to eliminate all but very narrow exemptions to the 60 shots now mandated for school attendance.

In New York City, people are receiving summonses based on Mayor Bill de Blasio’s emergency order. Everybody, adult or child, who lives in four ZIP code areas must get an MMR shot or prove immunity, or face the prospect of a $1,000 fine ($2,000 if you don’t appear as ordered). Your religious exemption is overridden. The threat of 6 months in prison and the prospect of forcible vaccination were removed before a hearing on a lawsuit brought by five mothers. The judge dismissed the case.

Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot said that the purpose of the fines is not to punish but to encourage more people to proclaim the message that vaccines are safe and effective. Get it? If you say something to avoid a fine, that makes it true.

It’s about the need for herd immunity, they say. We need a 95 percent vaccination rate for herd immunity to measles. With only 91 percent or so we are having outbreaks! If we could just vaccinate another 4 or 5 percent!

Mayor De Blasio has a point about vaccinating everyone. Adults are getting measles because their shots have worn off. It is likely that we have survived for decades with a large part of the adult population vaccinated—but not immune. So where do the mandates stop?

Outbreaks have occurred in populations with a near-100 percent vaccination rate. Was it vaccine failure? Or was the vaccine not refrigerated properly? Or was a claimed outbreak real? One in Ann Arbor, Michigan, was called off when a special test, a reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) showed a vaccine-strain measles virus rather than a wild-strain measles virus. Some 5 percent of vaccinees may get an illness that looks like measles, but it is just a “vaccine reaction.” Can they shed live virus? Yes. Should you keep your immunocompromised child away from recently vaccinated people? Just asking.

Like all medical treatments, vaccines are neither 100 percent effective, nor 100 percent safe. Read the FDA-required, FDA-approved package inserts. Arizona defeated a law that would have required making these available to parents in obtaining informed consent. (You can get them on the internet.) Vaccine Court has paid out about $4 billion in damages—recently for two children with severe brain damage from encephalopathy (that’s brain inflammation) after a fight lasting about 15 years. Just incidentally, they had an autism diagnosis also. Parents bring their severely injured children to hearings. You won’t see these children on tv, only pictures of babies with measles. No “fear-mongering” allowed about “rare,” possibly coincidental problems from vaccines.

There are trade-offs with vaccines: risks and benefits. But in the panic about measles, the right to give or withhold informed consent—fundamental in medical ethics as well as U.S. and international law—is being sacrificed. And so is free speech. The AMA wants to censor “anti-vaccine” information on social media. I happened on a factual article by investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, but was not able to retweet it because it had been removed.

The threat of infectious diseases is real and increasing. We need more robust public health measures, better vaccines, and improved public knowledge and awareness. Deploying vaccine police and shutting down debate will erode trust in health authorities and physicians, although more people may get their shots. But such heavy-handed measures will not defeat the enemy—measles and worse diseases.

A Higher Minimum Wage Fails in California

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Issues such as job losses and automation have become concerns for the American people as technology transforms our economy.

Some have proposed universal basic income and other policies  to salve these problems, but they risk sapping the dignity of work and creating a kind of bifurcated warehouse society with huge numbers of people barely skating by on welfare.

The false notion that America must inevitably become a nation of welfare dependents and the super rich is toxic to the idea of the American dream.

Instead, we should look to avoid policies that harm Americans’ potential to enter the job market.

Minimum wage increases are supposed to be great for low-income workers and a boon to working-class Americans. However, mounting evidence suggests that’s not the case.

A recently released study by the University of California, Riverside demonstrates how California’s perhaps well-meaning minimum wage policies produce underwhelming results at best—but more typically create corrosive side effects for business owners and workers alike.

In 2016, California passed legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and the law is being phased in with incremental increases.

At the start of this year, The Sacramento Bee reported, “employers with 25 or fewer employees will be required to pay a minimum of $11 an hour, while employers who have 26 or more employees must pay $12 an hour.”

The minimum wage in California will rise to the full $15 in 2022.

But warning signs already indicate that the policy isn’t working.

Despite huge growth in California’s restaurant industry, some businesses—largely in the full-service category of restaurants—have been hit hard.

Restaurant Business Online reported: “Nearly 1 out of 10 in areas with a recently increased minimum wage have closed an operation since the cost hike, and 71 percent have attempted to pass along the rise to customers by raising menu prices, according to new research.”

It’s not just businesses that have been harmed. The rapidly increased minimum wage has a negative impact on the job market, leading to employment for fewer people, according to the findings of the University of California, Riverside study:

The model suggests that there would be 30,000 fewer jobs in the industry from 2017 to 2022 as a result of the higher minimum wage. Over the period 2013-2022, therefore, the number of new jobs in the full-service industry will grow by 120,000, but would have grown by 160,000.

The study’s authors concluded that this depressing effect on job growth will accelerate as the minimum wage is increased to $15.

For those currently employed—those who presumably benefit most from the law—earnings increases are underwhelming.

“One explanation for a relatively small increase in wages is that lower-paid workers end up working fewer hours as a result of the higher minimum wage, thus offsetting the increase in their hourly rate,” the study says.

The conclusions of this study mirror others that have found that increased minimum wages actually harm lower-income workers.

A notable 2017 study in Seattle, conducted by researchers at the University of Washington, found that a “wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3 percent.”

“Consequently,” that study added, “total payroll fell for such jobs, implying that the minimum wage ordinance lowered low-wage employees’ earnings by an average of $125 per month in 2016.”

What’s clear from the findings of the Riverside study and others is that the movement to dramatically increase the minimum wage is a false panacea. The massive boon promised to workers hasn’t materialized, and for many the mandatory wage hike has been a barrier to employment.

Boom times in the Trump economy have “masked” the issues with the minimum wage, according to researchers, and job growth could have been much better without it.

The Riverside study concludes:

The data analysis suggests that while the restaurant industry in California has grown significantly as the minimum wage has increased, employment in the industry has grown more slowly than it would have without minimum wage hikes. When the next recession arrives, the higher real minimum wage could increase overall job losses within the economy and lead to a higher unemployment rate than would have been the case without the minimum wage increases.

What’s clear is that minimum wage laws don’t come without their negative side effects, even in good times.

These effects may become more pronounced as automation technology puts pressure on workers in various industries.

And that pressure certainly exists, for example, in the restaurant industry, which is particularly affected by minimum wage laws.

Innovations like kiosk ordering are allowing businesses to avoid labor costs. Pressure to replace jobs with machines will only increase as the minimum wage is driven to an artificially high number.

The truth is that the real minimum wage is nothing. This is what people get if they can’t find work.

The result ends up being a turn to welfare, a drain on society and the individual, which can never replace the benefit of a job.

A government policy meant to help lower income workers may in fact be the bar that makes their employment, and advancement, unlikely or impossible.

Certainly, there are many vexing economic issues to tackle in our future, but it does no good to pursue seemingly idealistic policies that act as an impediment to economic advancement.

As usual, California is ahead of the curve in finding ways to tarnish what is golden. Perhaps that’s why so many middle-class Americans are leaving the wealthiest state in the union for greener pastures.

COMMENTARY BY

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast.Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: .

RELATED ARTICLE: Socialists Don’t Aim To End Poverty, They Aim To Use It

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