News Blog for social, fiscal & national security conservatives who believe in God, family & the USA. Upholding the rights granted by God & guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, traditional family values, "republican" principles / ideals, transparent & limited "smaller" government, free markets, lower taxes, due process of law, liberty & individual freedom. Content approval rests with the ARRA News Service Editor. Opinions are those of the authors. While varied positions are reported, beliefs & principles remain fixed. No revenue is generated for or by this "Blog" - no paid ads - no payments for articles.Fair Use Doctrine is posted & used. Blogger/Editor/Founder: Bill Smith, Ph.D. [aka: OzarkGuru & 2010 AFP National Blogger of the Year] Contact: editor@arranewsservice.com (Pub. Since July, 2006)Home PageFollow @arra
One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics
is that you end up being governed by your inferiors. -- Plato
(429-347 BC)
Friday, March 17, 2017
Trump's FY2017 Supplemental Calls For Increased Immigration Enforcement
President Donald Trump
by NumbersUSA Staff: President Trump sent a supplemental spending request to Congress to fund the government for the remainder of FY2017 that includes a large increase in spending for the Department of Homeland Security. The request includes funding for new barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border, more Border Patrol and ICE agents, and expanded detention facilities.
Several items in the request are included on NumbersUSA's '10 Steps to Fix our Broken Immigration Enforcement System', including improving cooperation between ICE and state and local governments in immigration enforcement and increased detention space to help expand expedited removal orders.
The full request includes:
$11 million for the Office of the Secretary and Executive Management Operations and Support to establish a real-time data integration system that would support immigration enforcement operations, benefits adjudication, policy analysis, accurate data reporting, and for other border and immigration modeling analyses.
$286 million for CBP Operations and Support, including:
$95 million to support border surge operations,
$65 million to build hiring capacity to recruit and onboard 5,000 Border Patrol agents,
$18 million for project management, oversight, and support for the border wall,
$43 million to enhance situational awareness at the border, and
$64 million for other technology, equipment, and infrastructure investments that directly contribute to the effectiveness of border security operations.
$1.4 billion for CBP Procurement, Construction, and Improvements, including:
$999 million for planning, design, and construction of the first installment of the border wall,
$179 million for access roads, gates, and other tactical infrastructure projects, and
$200 million for border security technology deployments.
$1.2 billion for ICE Operations and Support, including:
$1.15 billion to pay for detention, transportation, and removal of illegal aliens, and for alternatives to detention;
$76 million to build hiring capacity to recruit and onboard 10,000 ICE agents and officers;
$5 million for homeland security investigations intelligence activities; and
$5 million to support the expansion of the Section 287(g) Program.
$25 million for Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Operations and Support for the hiring and training of instructors to support law enforcement officer hiring and training within CBP and ICE.
$63 million for Federal Law Enforcement Training Center Procurement, Construction, and Improvements for infrastructure investments, including modular dormitory and classroom buildings, which would support law enforcement officer hiring and training at CBP and ICE.
Read the full request the White House sent to Congress.
------------------ NumbersUSA Education & Research Foundation provides a civil forum for Americans of all political and ethnic backgrounds to focus on a single issue, the numerical level of U.S. immigration. We educate opinion leaders, policymakers and the public on immigration legislation, policies and their consequences. We favor reductions in immigration numbers toward traditional levels that would allow present and future generations of Americans to enjoy a stabilizing U.S. population and a high degree of individual liberty, mobility, environmental quality, worker fairness and fiscal responsibility. Tags:NumbersUSA staff, President Trump, FY2017 Supplemental, funding, Department of Homeland Security, increased immigration enforcement, border security Interior Enforcement, new barriers, U.S.-Mexico border, Border Patrol, ICE agents, detention facilitiesTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Newt Gingrich: The Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of how the American Health Care Act will impact the economy and our insurance markets is simply absurd.
I told Martha MacCallum on Fox News the other night that the CBO should be abolished and replaced by three to five outside professional firms that better understand the dynamic interaction of legislation and the marketplace.
This prompted some liberals to claim I was only griping, because the bill – the first step toward repealing and replacing Obamacare – received a bad “score” from the budget office. The Left wants to create a false narrative that Republican opponents of the CBO are simply defending their party and president.
But these Democrats are reimagining history.
In fact, I have advocated replacing the CBO for more than a decade.
In my 2005 book Winning the Future, I argued that the CBO and the Joint Committee on Taxation should be replaced with an Accurate Scoring Caucus after the CBO inaccurately projected $63 billion of revenue losses from the 2003 Bush tax cut, which never materialized. Then – as now – I argued that the CBO doesn’t score legislation dynamically. It simply ignores growth that results from tax cuts in its projections, which creates an inherent legislative bias toward more taxes and budget gimmicks.
In a more recent example, I advocated for ditching the CBO after it gave Obamacare an unrealistically positive initial score.
In a 2014 opinion piece, I argued: “The CBO’s original analysis of Obamacare deserves to be the final nail in the agency’s coffin. As much as any other single institution, the Congressional Budget Office is responsible for sticking us with this egregious law. The CBO’s ‘scores’ lent credibility to Obamacare’s supporters by making predictions that weren’t very good based on assumptions that made no sense.
“On [Feb. 4, 2014], the CBO updated its projections about the health care law’s effect on the economy, and included the bombshell that because of Obamacare, 2.3 million fewer Americans will have full-time jobs over the next 10 years. The White House’s charitable interpretation of the report was that millions of people will leave the workforce or will work less because of their subsides under Obamacare.”
In the same opinion piece, I said the CBO’s “nonpartisan” label gave it “an outsized influence on policy, as reporters, commentators, ‘fact checkers,’ and many members of Congress (most of whom should know better) treat CBO projections like trump cards in debates over legislation.”
If the CBO had reported in early 2010 that Obamacare would result in 2.3 million fewer full-time jobs or that it would cost $1.8 trillion over a decade, then Obamacare would never have passed Congress.
In both my 2005 book and my 2014 op-ed, I pointed out the central flaw at the CBO is the agency does not utilize any kind of dynamic scoring. It wrongly presumes that a change of fiscal policy will have no impact on labor, markets or other economic factors.
Any analytical model that changes fiscal policy and holds other variables constant is useless, and CBO has proved this again and again.
The other day on Fox News, I argued for the same solution I suggested in 2014:“The credit rating agencies that service financial markets could offer a useful model for obtaining better policy scores… We should consider replacing the CBO with a competitive system of multiple scoring agencies whose success depends on accuracy over time.”
What I wrote in 2014 – long before the CBO scored the American Health Care Act – is just as relevant today as it was then. I’ll say it again: We can’t afford any more errors like Obamacare.
---------------------- Newt Gingrich is a former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House. He co-authored and was the chief architect of the "Contract with America" and a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. He is noted speaker and writer. The above commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions. Tags:Newt Gingrich, commentary, CBO, Needs to GoTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Last Chance: Tell DC to Leave Our Retirement Plans ALONE!
by Phil Kerpen, Contributing Author: A disastrous Obama regulation with huge consequences for retirement plans is being debated – and time is running out to have your voice heard on this critical issue.
The good news is, I believe that President Trump’s Department of Labor is committed to doing what’s in the best interest of the American people, and they will likely stop this regulation from being implemented.
But the bad news is... liberal activist groups have mounted a large-scale campaign to stop President Trump from blocking this rule...
... And I’ll be honest with you, they are pouring in a lot more comments than we are right now – which will make it much harder for the Trump Administration to do the right thing.
“Savers who don’t want government bureaucrats and trial lawyers dictating what’s in their best interest can help President Trump by telling the Labor Department that they want the fiduciary rule immediately delayed and eventually repealed.”Will you give President Trump the political capital he needs to delay and then repeal this costly rule? Tell the Department of Labor to Leave Our Retirement Plans ALONE!
If you have already signed your letter to the Department of Labor, please forward this to a friend. We need to make up a lot of ground to get our comment numbers closer to what liberal groups have already submitted, so every letter counts.
------------------ Phil Kerpen is president of American Commitment. Follow him at (@kerpen) and on Facebook. He is a contributing author at the ARRA News Service. Consider viewing relevant prior article: Stop Obama’s War on Retirement Plans! Tags:Phil Kerpen, American Commitment, Last Chance, Tell DC, Leave Our Retirement Plans, ALONETo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Trump Convinces Conservatives, Wake Up, No Spark, Encouraging News
Gary Bauer
by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Trump Convinces Conservatives - Nobody knows exactly what happened, but there was breaking news this morning from the White House that President Trump has secured the support of more than a dozen key House conservatives for the leadership's Obamacare repeal bill.
During an Oval Office meeting, President Trump said, "I want people to know Obamacare is dead." Referring to the House bill, the president added, "I want to let the world know: I am 100 percent in favor." President Trump added that the conservative critics "were no's, mostly no's, yesterday, and now every single one is a yes."
Rep. Gary Palmer (R-AL), a personal friend and stalwart conservative, is one of the new "yes" votes. Palmer voted against the bill in committee yesterday. But he was with President Trump today applauding "certain changes" to the bill. Those changes apparently move the legislation in a more conservative direction.
The leadership now appears confident of victory. It announced that the House will vote Thursday on the Obamacare repeal bill.
Wake Up! When will left-wing European elites wake up to the fact that their own open borders immigration policies are being "weaponized" politically and military?
We know that Islamist groups have embedded terrorists among the refugees. How do we know that? Because ISIS bragged about it. The Obama State Department acknowledged it was happening.
European officials have caught some of them. They have also intercepted massive supplies of weapons, including "over 10,000 assault rifles, machine guns . . . and 400 shells and grenades." Some weapons were reportedly "powerful enough to 'bring down an aircraft.'"
And some "refugees" have committed terrorist attacks.
Imams have laughed that they are going to conquer Europe demographically. The outlook is indeed bleak.
But now we have even more evidence, if any was needed.
A diplomatic spat erupted recently when Turkey wanted to send diplomats to the Netherlands to campaign among the Turkish residents there for an upcoming constitutional referendum in Turkey. Dutch officials refused to allow the visit, which coincided with their own hotly contested election, and the Turkish government erupted in rage.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan slammed Europe during a rally yesterday. "Shame on the EU," Erdogan said. "Down with your European principles, values and justice. . . They started a clash between the cross and the crescent, there is no other explanation."
Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu ominously declared, "Soon wars of religion . . . will start in Europe." He then threatened to "invade" Europe, saying, "We could open the way for 15,000 refugees . . . each month and blow [Europe's] mind."
Here's an idea, maybe Europe should lower refugee flows and raise its defense spending. Oh, right . . . President Trump already recommended that. I hope he raises the issue with German Chancellor Angela Merkel during their White House meeting today.
"No Spark" - The left's obsession with portraying President Trump as a puppet of Russian President Vladimir Putin took a big hit this week.
Barack Obama's acting CIA Director Michael Morell appeared at an intelligence community forum Wednesday. When asked about the allegations of collusion between Donald Trump and the Russians, Morell bluntly stated: "There is no fire at all. There's no little campfire. There's no little candle. There's no spark. And there's a lot of people looking for it."
This is big news, my friends. Not only was Morell Obama's CIA chief, but he publicly endorsed Hillary Clinton, and has worked at a public relations firm founded by one of her long-time aides since he left the CIA.
As this "fake news" story starts to fall apart, some responsible liberals are warning about the left's "delusional temptations." They fear they could lose control of their activist base because "expectations have been purposely stoked" and "wildly inflated."
Democrats close to the congressional investigation are reportedly "petrified" of what their base "will do if they do not find evidence of collusion."
Stay tuned!
Encouraging News - Generation Y, or Millennials as they are often called, are increasingly making headlines for their growing impact on America's economic, cultural and political landscapes. They have numerically surpassed the Baby Boomers. They are generally liberal and, for a variety of reasons, seem to like socialism.
Not very encouraging is it? Well, here's some hopeful news.
Christian author Eric Metaxas notes that early studies suggest that the generation coming behind the Millennials, Generation Z, "may be, by certain measures, the most conservative generation since World War II."
Having been raised in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Great Recession, they tend to identify as "fiscally conservative" on economic issues, have a "more pragmatic" view of the world and even identify as more conservative on social issues than their Millennial elders.
---------------- Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families Tags:Trump Convinces Conservatives, Wake Up, No Spark, Encouraging News, Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working FamiliesTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
House Passes Two Bills to Help New VA Secretary Improve Care for Veterans
ARRA News Service: This week, the House passed the following veterans bills:
H.R. 1367, (House Vote 412 - 0). H.R. 1367 improves the authority of the Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) to hire and retain physicians and other employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and for other purposes.
H.R. 1259, the VA Accountability First Act of 2017 (House Vote 237-178). H.R. 1259 would give the VA Secretary increased authority to remove, demote, or suspend any VA employee for poor performance or misconduct.
Following passage of H.R. 1367 and H.R. 1259, Congressman French Hill (AR-02) stated:“We in the House remain committed to making VA a place that employs the best and brightest and those that take pride in working on behalf of our veterans. H.R. 1367 will give the secretary the ability to recruit the personnel needed to provide top-notch, quality care, and the VA Accountability First Act will ensure that those working at the department fulfill their responsibilities in a way that does right by our veterans and by our taxpayers. I hope the Senate will work with the House to pass both of these bills, so that the president can sign them into law and VA can open a new chapter of increased accountability and quality customer service and care.”Tags:U.S. House, Passes, H.R. 1357, H.R. 1259, VA Secretary, Improve Care, VeteransTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
. . . Freedom Center founder joins Dave Rubin for an in-depth interview on the Left, his political journey and the current political climate.
David Horowitz
Bill Smith, Editor: David Horowitz is founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center (formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture), FrontPage Mag, and author of many books and pamphlets published over the last twenty years. Horowitz was a left-minded radical who transitioned over his life into a conservative. Yet despite the effort of the left "to deprecate and diminish him, Horowitz has succeeded in his main task of exposing the left's agenda and decoding the way it seeks to control American culture and politics." (The Life and Work of David Horowitz) He is a Contributing Author of the ARRA News Service.
Freedom Center founder David Horowitz recently sat down with Dave Rubin, host of the Rubin Report, for a wide-ranging interview discussing the ideology of the Left, his transition from Marxism to conservatism, the current political climate, and much more. Watch the three-part interview below.
To order Horowitz's new book, "Big Agenda: President Trump's Plan to Save America," click here.
Part I of Interview
Part II of Interview
Part III of Interview
Tags:David Horowitz, David Horowitz Freedom Center, Big Agenda, interview, The Rubin ReportTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
What 2 Obama Judges Got Wrong in Striking Down Travel Executive Order
by Hans von Spakovsky: Two federal judges, both nominated by President Barack Obama, have issued injunctions against President Donald Trump’s revised executive order temporarily restricting travel from six terrorist safe havens in the Middle East and Africa.
The decisions by Derrick Kahala Watson in Hawaii and Theodore David Chuang in Maryland should shock no one—not because the judges are correct, but because their decisions follow the same pattern as prior decisions in Washington state and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals over the first order.
These rulings ignore or misinterpret federal immigration law that gives the president the clear authority to act and prior Supreme Court precedents that support the legality of the president’s actions.
Watson issued a nationwide injunction against enforcement of Section 2 and Section 6 of Executive Order 13,780, “Protecting the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States.”
These are the provisions that would have suspended entry of foreign aliens for 90 days from Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, as well as the entry of refugees for 120 days until the Department of Homeland Security has had a chance to revamp its vetting procedures.
Chuang—who worked in the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department at one point—issued an injunction only against part of Section 2, saying that the plaintiffs had not provided sufficient evidence to warrant an injunction against the refugee provision in Section 6.
Both judges based their decisions on a supposed violation of the Establishment Clause that bars religious discrimination, even though both judges acknowledge that the actual language of the executive order does not discriminate.
Watson admits that it “is undisputed that the Executive Order does not facially discriminate for or against any particular religion, or for or against religion versus non-religion.” Nevertheless, Chuang claims (as does Watson) that “the history of public statements continues to provide a convincing case that the purpose of the Second Executive Order remains the realization of the long-envisioned Muslim ban.”
These conclusions make no sense. As the government pointed out in these cases, the revised order explicitly explains its national security purposes and provides detailed information on why these six countries were chosen.
According to Chuang, the government asserted that “there is a heightened chance that individuals from the designated countries will be ‘terrorist operatives or sympathizers’ because each country is ‘a state sponsor of terrorism, has been significantly compromised by terrorist organizations, or contains active conflict zones,’ and those governments are therefore less likely to provide necessary information for the immigrant vetting process.”
All of which is just plain common sense—except to these two liberal judges.
In a fitting piece of irony that would be funny if this were not so serious, Chuang says that “courts should afford deference to national security and foreign policy judgments of the executive branch” and that “this Court thus should not, and will not, second-guess the conclusion that national security interests would be served by the travel ban.”
But then, the judge proceeds to do exactly what he just promised he wouldn’t do: He second guesses the travel ban and issues an injunction against it because he considers—apparently in his superior national security judgment—that the travel ban “represents an unprecedented response” to the “undisputed … heightened security risks with the designated countries.”
The logical extension of this reasoning about the supposed “motive” behind the executive order, based on statements made by Trump and others during a campaign, is that the order is unlawful because Trump signed it. Yet the same exact order would not be unlawful if Obama had signed it.
This goes against a basic principle of sound jurisprudence that Chief Justice Earl Warren voiced in U.S. v. O’Brien (1968) when he wrote, “This Court will not strike down an otherwise constitutional statute on the basis of an alleged illicit legislative motive.”
Just like the 9th Circuit Court, Watson avoids the relevant federal law that gives the president authority to suspend the entry of aliens. In his 43-page opinion, there is no discussion of the legality and constitutionality of 8 U.S.C. §1182(f) or whether the president acted outside the authority delegated to him by Congress.
This provision specifically gives the president the power to suspend the entry of any aliens into the United States if he finds that their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” That is exactly the finding that Trump made, as outlined in the executive order.
Chuang actually does discuss §1182(f), but he then claims that applying that section against immigrants, as opposed to alien visitors, violates another provision of federal immigration law, 8 U.S.C. §1152(a)(1)(A). This provision prohibits discrimination “in the issuance of an immigrant visa because of his race, sex, nationality, place of birth, or place or residence.”
Chuang dismisses the government’s argument that another provision of that same law—which specifically says that nothing in §1152 (a) “shall be construed to limit the authority of the secretary of state to determine the procedures for the processing immigrant of visa applications”—doesn’t apply to Trump’s action.
Why? Because Trump is not the secretary of state,” and this provision “expressly applies to the secretary of state.”
This is a bizarre conclusion. The president does not process visa applications himself. That is the State Department’s job, and the secretary of state is answerable directly to the president.
A provision of federal law such as this one that gives the secretary of state the authority “to determine the procedures” for alien visas is obviously authority that the president can direct the secretary to exercise. Chuang’s legal reasoning makes no sense.
Both judges also ignored precedents like Sale v. Haitian Centers Council, in which the U.S Supreme Court upheld a ban on the entry of refugees from Haiti issued by President George H.W. Bush and continued by President Bill Clinton.
They also ignored U.S. ex rel. Knauff v. Shaughnessy, where the Supreme Court held, in a case over the exclusion of an alien wife of an American citizen, “that it is not within the province of any court, unless authorized by law, to review the determination of the political branch of the government to exclude a given alien.”
And the court also said that the only due process right an alien who is denied entry has is “the procedure authorized by Congress.” Foreign aliens have no constitutional right to enter the U.S., no matter what these federal judges erroneously believe.
There seems little doubt that the Justice Department will appeal these orders. Given how far the courts of appeal have slanted to the left during the Obama administration, it would be no surprise if these injunctions are upheld even though they should be thrown out.
That will leave it up to the Supreme Court to tamp down this judicial usurpation of the executive branch’s authority over national security, terrorism, and immigration.
------------- Hans von Spakovsky is an authority on a wide range of issues—including civil rights, civil justice, the First Amendment, immigration, the rule of law and government reform—as a senior legal fellow in The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies and manager of the think tank’s Election Law Reform Initiative. More ARRA News Service articles by or about Hans con Spakovsky Tags: 2 Obama Judges, Got it Wrong, Striking Down, Travel Executive Order, Hans von Spakovsky, The Heritage Foundation, The Daily SignalTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Leprechauns and politicians offer prosperity. The both lie!
Happy St Patrick's Day: Each year on March 17, many celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. The original color associated with St. Patrick was blue not green. The color blue is often connected to depth and stability, but also symbolizes trust, faith, loyalty, wisdom and truth. As early as the 17th century, however, the color green was worn in celebration of this day. Green is also symbolic of balance, life, nature, fertility, health, good luck, tranquility, well-being and even jealousy.
For over 1,000 years, the Irish observed St. Patrick’s Day as a religious holiday, although it is steeped with deep-rooted folklore. From shamrocks to leprechauns sitting on a pot o’ gold at the end of the rainbow, St. Patrick’s Day is celebrated in the United States and abroad with Irish inspired feasts, parades and gallantly wearing many hues of green.
However, in the 21st Century are not so green (or in the green) but indeed very blue as a bunch of political leprechauns having stolen our former golden economy and created massive debt. So, it seems appropriate to share a 2011 St Patty's video -- Drunk With Debt. In the video, Seamus eagerly displays how years of overspending have left us drunk with debt. At the time of the video, the US gross debt had reached $14 trillion — the size of the US economy. However, today, 6 years year later, the situation is far worse. Our National Gross Debt today is over $20 trillion!
Tags:St. Patrick's Day, St. Patty's Day, 2017, Irish, Irish music, Ireland, United States, Green, Blue, Bankrupting America, federal budget, government spending, national debt, spending, debt, deficit, budget, economy, politicsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: There were many strange forces at play in the Netherlands’ elections on Wednesday. In my report, I concentrated on the biggest story, the possibility that Geert Wilders’s Freedom Party might take a huge number of parliamentary seats — though I quoted The Atlantic’s coverage predicting a narrow loss to Mark Rutte’s Liberal Party.
What I did not mention were some of the . . . oddities.
Did you know that Geert Wilders is the only official member of the Freedom Party?
Did you know that there is a 50+ Party in Holland — to represent folks . . . in my age bracket?
Irksome. A party organized just for an age group bugs me almost as much as the most extreme elements of Wilders’s anti-Islamism. But then, all parties bug me a bit, for the same reason the founding fathers desperately feared “factions” . . . that is, political parties. Factionalism turns government into tribal warfare, with legislation counting as . . . counting coup.
But no one in the Netherlands is asking how “bugged” I may or may not be.
The outcome of the March 15 elections? Labour lost the most, and the Freedom Party did not do as well as predicted . . . or feared. Instead of over 20 seats, it won 16, according to Bloomberg (quoting i & o research).
Here’s a not-so-odd oddity: I had to wade through quite a few reports on the election before I found any actual numerical results. The papers all seemed too busy gloating that the Freedom Party failed. I guess that counts as enough reporting. For them.
More evidence that we live in a post-fact society?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
------------------ Paul Jacobs is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacobs is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service. Tags:Paul Jacob, Common Sense, Netherlands, Dutch Election, OdditiesTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
. . . Hillary Clinton's CNN ally Jason Morell says smoke, but no fire, that there is no evidence of a Russian-Trump collusion to interfere in the election.
Tags:Editorial Cartoon, AF Branco, Up in Smoke, MS Media, Hillary Clinton, ally, Jason Morell, says smoke, but no fire, no evidence, Russian-Trump collusion, to interfere, electionTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Natalia Castro: The House has done a phenomenal job rooting out the government overreach and constraining regulations which the Obama Administration used to grow the executive branches power. Now, after 14 successfully passed Congressional Review Act (CRA) rescissions in the House, the Senate is trailing behind having only passed eight. While the nomination process continues to occupy the second branch of Congress, Senators ought to remember that with only a 60-legislative day window for rescinding regulations, expediting this process must remain a strong priority.
Here are the six CRA regulatory rescissions which the House has pushed through to the Senate but are still waiting on a vote:
H.J. Res. 36: Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule of the Bureau of Land Management relating to “Waste Prevention, Production Subject to Royalties, and Resource Conservation”. Upon Senate passage and Presidential approval, this legislation will remove regulatory burdens from small businesses with under 500 employees, saving an estimated $55,200 per year. This CRA has been passed in the House since Feb. 3, making it unclear why the Senate has yet to take action.
H.J. Res. 43: Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule submitted by Secretary of Health and Human Services relating to compliance with title X requirements by project recipients in selecting subrecipients. This law effectively costs the federal government between >$11,400-$24,600 a year to ensure that services, such as family planning, are of adequate availability in states.
H.J. Res. 66: Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to savings arrangements established by States for non-governmental employees. This regulation addresses the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) and serves to “provides guidance for states in designing such programs so as to reduce the risk of ERISA preemption of the relevant state laws.” Rather than allow states to implement the law on their own terms, the executive branch has expanded its control over state.
H.J. Res. 67: Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to savings arrangements established by qualified State political subdivisions for non-governmental employees. This rule regulates the how states design and operate payroll deduction savings programs that use automatic enrollment, without causing the states or private-sector employers to have established employee pension benefit plans. While this rule does not articulate any specific costs associated with the rules implementation, it does admit that costs exist. The Federal Register writes, “Qualified political subdivisions may incur administrative and operating costs including mailing and form production costs. These potential costs, however, are not directly attributable to the final rule; they are attributable to the political subdivision’s creation of the payroll deduction savings program pursuant to its authority under state law.” This regulation simply imposes federal guidelines with the hope of state funding.
H.J. Res. 69: Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the final rule of the Department of the Interior relating to “Non-Subsistence Take of Wildlife, and Public Participation and Closure Procedures, on National Wildlife Refuges in Alaska”. With hunting representing a significant cultural and economic lifestyle in Alaska, the net loss the communities should be about $5.9 million annually. By stalling on regulations, the Senate is costing communities million and dismantling their way of life.
H.J. Res. 83: Disapproving the rule submitted by the Department of Labor relating to “Clarification of Employer’s Continuing Obligation to Make and Maintain an Accurate Record of Each Recordable Injury and Illness”. This regulation amends record keeping strategies for employers in regards to work related injuries, by changing their system of record maintenance the Department of Labor is expected to cost employers an additional $18.54 per employee injury or illness, equating to an estimated national cost of $1.85 million per year.
-------------------- Natalia Castro is a contributing editor at Americans for Limited Government. Tags:Natalia Castro, Americans for Limited Government, Senate, yet to pass, six CRA RecentionsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: our children are facing an onslaught of profanity through the media. Movies are one place where profanity reigns. One survey has been tracking profanity in movies from the first swear word on film (1939’s Gone With the Wind) to The Wolf of Wall Street, which holds the record with 798 swear words. There has been a 500 percent increase over these many decades.
The Parents Television Council has documented the fact that the number of expletives on television programs has doubled in just the last decade. Kids and adults use more profanity simply because they hear it more than ever before.
Let’s start with a definition. The word “profane” means: to treat something that is sacred with abuse or contempt. It means to desecrate. Something profane is unholy. It is certainly not a positive attribute. What does the Bible teach?
Paul says in Ephesians 4:29, “Do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs.” Colossians 3:8 say, “Rid yourselves of all things such as these: anger, rage, malice, slander and filthy language from your lips.”
Sometimes we hear young people say that it really doesn’t matter what you say, it is only words. Words make a difference. Make a joke in public about hijacking a plane and see if words have consequences. Make a derisive comment about people’s appearance to their face and see if they merely ignore it.
As believers, we should submit our vocabularies to the Lord. The world is watching us. 1 Peter 2:12 admonishes us to keep our “behavior excellent among the Gentiles, so that in the thing in which they slander you as evildoers, they may because of your good deeds, as they observe them, glorify God in the day of visitation.” In a world awash in profanity, Christians should watch what they say.
----------- Kerby Anderson is a radio talk show host heard on numerous stations via the Point of View Network endorsed by Dr. Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service Tags:Kerby Anderson, Viewpoints, Point of View, Profanity, Christians, words make a differenceTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Michael Barone: Perceptions matter. People make decisions, even life-altering decisions, based on what they perceive as likely to happen. To the extent that public policy affects such decisions, the perception of likely policy change can affect behavior even before the change happens — even if it ends up never happening.
Something like that seems to be happening in America — and around the world — in the two months since Donald Trump was inaugurated as president. People are making decisions based on perceptions of how he might change the country's direction.
Take the economy. The numbers in the jobs report for February, Trump's first full month in office, showing an increase of 235,000 jobs, are not wildly out of line with some monthly reports in recent years.
In contrast to the years of the Obama stimulus program, when the bulk of new jobs came in the public sector, it appears that the increase here is in the private sector. Moody's Analytics says there were 298,000 new private sector jobs in February, far more than the 189,000 it expected.
Construction jobs were up 58,000, private educational services jobs up 29,000, manufacturing jobs up 28,000. This suggests that lots of employers, small as well as large, are taking the plunge and creating new jobs.
Can I prove that they're doing so because of perceptions that regulations and taxes will be decreased by the Trump administration? No, and I'm not sure any economist's statistical model could either. But that sure looks like what's happening.
Big players in the financial markets seem to think so. Federal Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen suggested the Fed will raise interest rates twice after doing so this month. That's a significant shift from her longstanding reluctance to increase rates at all for fear of dampening the economy.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said Friday that Trump's program of cutting corporate taxes, building infrastructure and rolling back regulations has unleashed the "animal spirits" — economist John Maynard Keynes' phrase — of businessmen. "Even if he gets part of it done," Dimon, a Democrat and Hillary Clinton contributor, told Bloomberg News, "it'll be good for growth."
Does the unusual speed with which Paul Ryan is leading the House to vote on the first of three promised initiatives to repeal and replace Obamacare suggest that he — and Trump — are trying to strengthen the perception that the private sector economy will boom? Given the significant risk of political damage and policy bollix, it certainly looks like the answer is yes.
----------------- Michael Barone (@MichaelBarone) is Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner, co-author of The Almanac of American Politics and a contributor to Fox News. Tags:Michael Barone, Washington Examiner, perceptions, President Trump, policies To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Patrick Buchanan: “The senator from Kentucky,” said John McCain, speaking of his colleague Rand Paul, “is working for Vladimir Putin … and I do not say that lightly.”
What did Sen. Paul do to deserve being called a hireling of Vladimir Putin?
He declined to support McCain’s call for a unanimous Senate vote to bring Montenegro into NATO as the 29th member of a Cold War alliance President Trump has called “obsolete.”
Bordered by Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Albania, tiny Montenegro has a population roughly that of D.C., and sits on the western coast of the most volatile peninsula in Europe.
What strategic benefit would accrue from having Montenegro as an ally that would justify the risk of our having to go to war should some neighbor breach Montenegro’s borders?
Historically, the Balkans have been an incubator of war. In the 19th century, Otto van Bismarck predicted that when the Great War came, it would come out of “some damn fool thing in the Balkans.” And so it did when the Austrian archduke was assassinated in Sarajevo June 28, 1914 by Serbian ethnonationalist Gavrilo Princip.
Aflame with ethnic, civil and sectarian war in the 1990s, the western Balkans are again in political turmoil. Milo Djukanovic, the longtime Montenegrin prime minister who resigned on election day in October, claims that he was targeted for assassination by Russia to prevent Montenegro’s accession to NATO.
Russia denies it. But on the Senate floor, McCain raged at Rand Paul: “You are achieving the objectives of Vladimir Putin … trying to dismember this small country which has already been the subject of an attempted coup.”
But if Montenegro, awash in corruption and crime, is on the verge of an uprising or coup, why would the U.S. issue a war guarantee that could vault us into a confrontation with Russia — without a full Senate debate?
The vote that needs explaining here is not Rand Paul’s.
It is the votes of those senators who are handing out U.S.-NATO war guarantees to countries most Americans could not find on a map.
Is no one besides Sen. Paul asking the relevant questions here?
What vital U.S. interest is imperiled in who comes to power in Podgorica, Montenegro? Why cannot Europe handle this problem in its own back yard?
Has President Trump given McCain, who wanted President Bush to intervene in a Russia-Georgia war — over South Ossetia! — carte blanche to hand out war guarantees to unstable Balkan states?
Did Trump approve the expansion of NATO into all the successor states born of the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia?
Or is McCain hijacking U.S. foreign policy on NATO and Russia?
President Trump should tell the Senate: No more admissions to NATO, no more U.S. war guarantees, unless I have recommended or approved them. Foreign policy is made in the White House, not on the Senate floor.
Indeed, what happened to the foreign policy America voted for — rapprochement with Russia, an end to U.S. wars in the Middle East, and having rich allies share more of the cost of their own defense?
It is U.S., not NATO defense spending that is rising to more than $50 billion this year. And today we learn the Pentagon has drawn up plans for the insertion of 1,000 more U.S. troops into Syria. While the ISIS caliphate seems doomed, this six-year Syrian war is far from over.
An al-Qaida subsidiary, the Nusra Front, has become the most formidable rebel fighting group. Syria’s army, with the backing of Russia, Iran, Hezbollah and Shiite militias from across the Middle East, has carved out most of the territory it needs.
The Turkish army is now in Syria, beside its rebel allies. Their main enemy: Syria’s Kurds, who are America’s allies.
From our longest war, Afghanistan, comes word from U.S. Gen. John Nicholson that we and our Afghan allies are in a “stalemate” with the Taliban, and he will need a “few thousand” more U.S. troops — to augment the 8,500 President Obama left behind when he left office.
Some 5,000 U.S. troops are in Iraq, helping to liberate Mosul from ISIS. In Kabul, Baghdad and Damascus, terrorist bombings are a weekly, if not a daily, occurrence.
Then there is the U.S. troop buildup in Poland and the Baltic, the U.S. deployment of a missile defense to South Korea after multiple missile tests in the North, and Russia and China talking of upgrading their nuclear arsenals to counter U.S. missile defenses in Poland, Romania and South Korea.
In and around the waters of the Persian Gulf, United States warships are harassed by Iranian patrol boats, as Tehran test-fires anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles to send the Americans a message: Attack us and it will not be a cakewalk war.
With the death of Communism, the end of the Cold War, and the collapse of the Bushite New World Order, America needs a new grand strategy, built upon the solid foundation of America First.
-------------------- Patrick Buchanan is currently a conservative columnist, political analyst, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. He has been a senior advisor to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000. He blogs at the Patrick J. Buchanan. Tags:Patrick Buchanan, conservative, commentary, John McCain, hijacking, President Trump, Foreign PolicyTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Illinois Security Officer Hailed a Hero, Not a Criminal for Shooting Robber
by Jenn Jacques: The Rockford, IL. security officer who shot and killed a violent armed bank robber high on drugs in January will not face charges.
On Tuesday, the Winnebago County State’s Attorney’s Office said the officer’s actions were justified, calling him a hero. “There is no doubt in my mind the actions of Brian Harrison saved the lives of those that were employees in the Alpine Bank location on that date and saved his own life,” Winnebago County State’s Attorney Joe Bruscato, said.
It took just seconds: From a quiet day inside Alpine Bank on N. Mulford to a masked gunman creating chaos. Surveillance video shows Laurence Turner coming in, shooting once into the ceiling, then at Metro Enforcement security officer Brian Harrison. Harrison is a former Winnebago County deputy who jumped into action.
“They are taught generally to shoot center mass in the body. This is a very dynamic, fluid situation and he’s doing what he was trained for 30 years to do and it was eliminate and take care of the threat,” Rockford Police Chief Dan O’Shea said.Police confirmed Turner was on drugs when he entered the Alpine Bank and shot two rounds – one in the ceiling, then one at the security officer. Harrison swiftly returned two shots which hit the suspect, who died at the scene
“Someone who’s willing to fire a weapon rather than just carry it are always a little more important to us,” Chief O’Shea said.
Authorities said Turner was also connected to three other armed robberies in the area.
----------------- Jenn Jacques (@JennJacques)is a conservative blogger and blogs at Guns and Curves. H/T BearingArms.com for sharing this article. Tags:Armed Robbery, Bank Robbery, Crime, Criminals, Jenn Jacques, Bearing Arms To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: "Unprecedented Overreach"
A left-wing federal judge has once again blocked an executive order meant to safeguard our homeland security. Obama-appointed Judge Derrick Watson sided with arguments by the state of Hawaii, which said it was worried about losing Muslim tourists. This morning, a federal judge in Maryland also ruled against the president's order.
American citizens losing their jobs to foreign workers with H-1B visas are told they have no virtually chance to challenge U.S. immigration law. Yet Muslim tourists somehow have more "standing" to challenge our laws and the president's authority.
President Trump attacked Judge Watson's ruling as an example of "unprecedented judicial overreach." I'm sure the president wanted to say much more. But Trump restrained himself because some Republicans attacked the president when he criticized the "so-called judge" who struck down his first executive order.
The judges making these rulings do not deserve our respect. They are not upholding the judicial branch, they are undermining it. They are abusing their power. They are ignoring existing law and making up their own law.
President Trump's reasoning is based on logic and common sense.
We are at war with radical Islamists.
Radical Islamists live predominately in Islamic countries.
Some of these Islamic countries are essentially failed states or they have governments that can't or won't cooperate in vetting.
The president issues an order temporarily limiting immigration from six countries known to be hotbeds of Islamic terrorism where vetting is virtually impossible.
The court looked at these facts and declared that the order is a "Muslim ban.
To refute the judge's ludicrous assertion, the president would have to ban travel from Canada, Norway and India in order to convince the court that his order wasn't a Muslim ban.
If the media were fulfilling their role as watchdogs against the abuse of power, they would be calling out these robed radicals. But the media are only interested in thwarting conservatives when they are in power.
Consider Yemen
Today's Washington Times has an analysis of the recent Navy SEAL raid in Yemen. Evidently, the SEALs were surprised that a house full of civilians was well-armed and that women fired at them.
According to the Times, at least 25 "civilians" were killed in the raid, "showing how difficult it is to tell who is Al Qaeda in a country where the militants are mingled with tribes and are fighting on the same side as the government against the rebels."
If Navy SEALs can't tell who the good guys and bad guys are, how is a State Department bureaucrat supposed to determine that the woman in front of him is telling the truth, has fake documents, is an Al Qaeda fighter, or harbors ill will against America? (Remember Tashfeen Malik?)
Trump's Budget
The blueprint of President Trump's first budget was released this morning, reflecting his priorities and the course he intends to chart for our nation. Earlier in the week, as the first details began to emerge, the "swamp" began to panic.
A front page Washington Post headline blared, "Trump Budget Expected To Seek Historic Contraction Of Federal Workforce."
Following through on the president's pledge to protect America and rebuild our military, Trump's budget proposes:
A ten percent increase for the Defense Department.
A seven percent boost to the Department of Homeland Security.
A six percent increase for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
This spending is offset by major cuts to other bureaucracies, such as:
A 21% reduction in spending at the Departments of Agriculture and Labor.
A 29% cut to the State Department.
A 31% cut to the EPA, which would see 50 programs and more than 3,000 federal jobs eliminated.
In addition, the president is proposing to eliminate federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
The American people did not send a businessman to the White House to continue business as usual. After eight years of record debt and deficits under Barack Obama, we must get government spending under control.
Barack's Blunder
There was breaking news yesterday that two Russian FSB Center 18 security officials had been indicted for their alleged involvement in a massive hacking attack against Yahoo. The FSB is the Russian equivalent of the FBI and the successor to the Soviet KGB. Center 18 is the FSB's cybercrime unit.
(To be clear, these indictments had nothing to do with last year's hacking of the Democrat National Committee.)
Justice Department officials are also convinced that these Russian agents were not "rogue" officials acting alone. Other senior FSB officials were involved in this plot. Also indicted were two Russian cyber criminals.
The foolish Obama Administration had been cooperating with the FSB on cybersecurity measures. In fact, the Obama White House even invited the head of the FSB, who was under international sanctions at the time, to come to Washington two years ago.
Steve Hall, a former CIA station chief in Moscow, said, "What this shows is that we've been had. Center 18 was the part of the FSB that was supposed to be working with us."
As one report explained, the Justice Department charges make it clear that "instead of working with the FBI and CIA to catch hackers, the FSB officers were actually working with hackers themselves."
But wait. . . There's more!
One of the indicted Russian security officials, Dmitry Dokuchaev, is currently in a Moscow jail charged with treason . . . for aiding the CIA!
Pro-Abortion Extremism
Is there anything that restrains the abortion movement, that pricks its heart or challenges its conscience? The answer appears to be no.
An abortion rights advocate confessed that he "lied through my teeth' to defend the barbaric practice of partial-birth abortions.
In recent years, abortion activists have embraced the "pro-abortion" label, calling abortion a "positive social good."
They even launched a campaign calling on women to celebrate their abortions. They want people to think that ripping an innocent baby out of the womb and ending her life has no more moral implications than removing a diseased organ.
And now this: During the March 8th Women's Day protests, pro-abortion activists performed a mock abortion on the Virgin Mary, "aborting" Jesus, along with "patriarchy" and "forced heterosexuality." [WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES.]
Western Civilization is under siege from a culture death -- from death-worshipping jihadists to death-worshipping secularists.
But we know that life is sacred. The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Jesus declared: "This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live."
---------------- Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families Tags:Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Unprecedented Overreach, Trump's Budget, Barack's Blunder, Pro-AbortionTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Will Donald Trump Let Paul Ryan Make Him A One-Term President?
Dr. Chuck Baldwin
by Dr. Chuck Baldwin: From the beginning, there have been several things that have bothered me about Donald Trump. Perhaps my biggest concerns have always been how genuine Trump is and, if he is genuine, how much he truly understands about “the swamp” he promised to drain.
President Trump has appointed numerous big-government, pro-war neocons to his administration. In just two months, Trump has appointed more individual members from the CFR--and people from corporations belonging to the CFR--to his administration than Barack Obama did during his entire eight years in the White House. That is very troubling. The CFR is perhaps the preeminent globalist organization on the planet. How can Trump talk about putting America first when he litters his administration with people who are sympathetic to subjecting the United States to the globalist agenda?
While decrying the methods and motives of the CIA (Bravo!) on one hand, Trump turns around and gives this deepest of Deep State entities the authority to carry out assassinations around the world WITHOUT Pentagon or White House approval or oversight.
In other words, President Trump has given CIA Director Mike Pompeo the power to launch drone attacks against anybody he wants to--with NO accountability to anybody (all in the name of the “war on terror,” of course). This means Pompeo is probably the most dangerous and unaccountable human being on earth right now. Without a doubt, this is one of the most draconian decisions an American President could ever make. Imagine what the outcry would be if Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton were to make such a decision. As it is, you are probably learning about it for the first time as you read it right now. (Notice we have to read about this from a foreign news agency because the U.S. media totally ignores these kinds of stories--as do conservative publications and websites.)
We know now that the clandestine attack that got one of our Special Forces troops killed in Yemen was conducted by the CIA. We also know that our forces killed at least a dozen or more innocent civilians and children in that raid. But no one wants to talk about that either.
The CIA was never intended to be a paramilitary organization. It was supposed to be an international intelligence gathering agency similar to the FBI except on a much broader scale. Obviously, the CIA has grown into an international killing machine. And Donald Trump has just given CIA Director Pompeo a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card. If Mike Pompeo were remotely honest, he would never have accepted such raw, unaccountable power. Can you imagine?
Furthermore, Donald Trump has sent U.S. Special Forces troops and Marines into Syria. The Syrian government has given NO consent for American troops to enter its country and considers the presence of our troops to be an invasion. Therefore, the very act of sending U.S. armed forces into Syria is illegal and unconstitutional. The LAST thing the American people elected Trump for was to start another Middle Eastern war.
Illegally placing U.S. fighting men on foreign soil where they are not invited or welcomed is NOT the action of a President who intends to “live in peace” with foreign countries, as he said was his intention when he was campaigning for office. Imagine what the American people would do should any foreign power inject its fighting men onto U.S. soil without America’s consent.
I wonder, too, just who our military forces will be targeting in Syria. After all, our government (via the CIA) has been surreptitiously assisting Al Qaeda and ISIS in both Iraq and Syria for years. You can bet your bottom dollar, our troops are NOT going to be assisting the Syrian army. So why in the H-E-double-hockey-sticks are our troops there?
The fact is, the Syrian army--with the help of Russia--has ISIS on the run. They are destroying ISIS as we speak. Even a few news sources in the western media are reporting the significant decline of ISIS. It is no hyperbole to say that Russia and Syria have ISIS on life support. If Donald Trump truly wants to defeat ISIS, all he needs to do is just stay out of the way and let Vladimir Putin and Bashar al-Assad take care of it.
Then there is Obamacare Lite, also known as Obamacare 2.0 or Ryancare. This thing is a monstrosity! Everybody, and I mean everybody, knows that Paul Ryan’s proposed healthcare bill is nothing but a huge payoff to the insurance companies.
Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) and Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) and Congressman Dave Brat (R-Virginia) and Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky) have come out strongly against Ryan’s pseudo-Obamacare replacement bill. So have countless others. Congressman Massie’s quote is the most honest and accurate. He says Ryancare is “a stinking pile of garbage.” Congressman Brat pulled away the curtain by boldly saying that Ryancare “is designed to save the insurance companies.”
Writing for NewsWithViews.com, Diane Kepus says this about Ryancare: “Working Americans Screwed Again.” She’s exactly right.
Writing for Breitbart.com, Katie McHugh wrote an excellent analysis of the certain disaster that would ensue should Ryancare become law. Her report is entitled “7 Reasons Why Obamacare 2.0 Is All But Guaranteed To Impose Crushing Costs On Voters, Hurt Trump’s Base, And Hand Power Back To The Democrats.”
Repealing Obamacare was one of the major tenets of Donald Trump’s campaign. Paul Ryan’s bill doesn’t repeal Obamacare; it just gives it a new name. So, why then is President Trump cajoling Congress to pass the stupid thing?
Recently on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, Senator Rand Paul said that “every conservative that’s come out publicly opposed” to the Obamacare replacement “has been called by the White House [that’s Donald Trump] and is being cajoled and wooed by the White House to give in.”
Paul Ryan is the consummate neocon. He makes John Boehner look GOOD. Ryan was one of Donald Trump’s fiercest opponents within the Republican Party during the primaries. Now Trump is twisting arms in the GOP caucus in order to secure their votes in SUPPORT of Ryan’s bill--a bill that is nothing more than an Obamacare rework? Why? Why would Trump do this--if he was sincere about what he said on the campaign trail, I mean?
Respected conservative radio broadcaster Steve Deace recently wrote this: Where, oh where, are Donald Trump’s manly parts?
No one has seen them. There are no solid leads. Every jar in the 202 and 212 area codes has been inspected, and they’re not there. There are rumors that Trump was really being wire-tapped in an attempt to find out where he lost them, but that cannot be confirmed or denied. We’re barely halfway through the first 100 days, and already Trump has backed down on the following:
*He’s not going to arrest “crooked Hillary” and “locker her up” after all.
*He’s not going to repeal Obama’s unconstitutional (see that as illegal) executive amnesty (DACA) after all.
*After saying throughout the campaign it was weak and dumb to show your plans and give a heads up to your enemies, his new (and watered down) immigration executive order gives jihadists a 10-day warning before being implemented.
*He’s siding with weak House GOP leadership in not repealing Obamacare as promised, and instead replacing it with something that could even be worse.
*His RNC leadership team looks like a Who’s Who of the establishment, including the name Henry Barbour. The man who orchestrated one of the worst betrayals ever of the grassroots--the literal stealing of the 2014 Mississippi senate primary.
*He still hasn’t lifted a finger to protect religious liberty. No repeal of the Johnson Amendment. No executive order. Not even a reference in his recent congressional speech to the Left’s attempt to destroy the lives of believers like Barronelle Stutzman.All of this goes back to what I said at the beginning of this column: perhaps my biggest concerns have always been how genuine Trump is and, if he is genuine, how much he truly understands about “the swamp” he promised to drain.
Either way, if Donald Trump succumbs to Paul Ryan’s Obamacare 2.0 monstrosity, he will have allowed Ryan to make him a certain one-term President--which could be Ryan’s goal. And if Trump continues his current course on foreign policy, we will be lucky if we are not in World War III before he finishes his first term.
------------- Dr. Chuck Baldwin is the Pastor of Liberty Fellowship in Kalispell, Montana. Dr. Baldwin is Talk Radio Show Host for Chuck Baldwin Live.” He addresses current event topics from a conservative Christian point of view.and is a writer/columnist whose articles and political commentaries are carried by a host of Internet sites, newspapers, news magazines and the ARRA News Service. Tags:Chuck Baldwin, Donald Trump, Paul Ryan, One-Term President?To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
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