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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, October 12, 2018
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Reveals Her Plan to Overthrow the Supreme Court
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
by Tyler O'Neil: On Saturday, Democratic Socialist starlet Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for the abolition of the Electoral College. On Thursday, she revealed her plan to undermine the U.S. Supreme Court. It's not very original...
At a screening for Michael Moore's new film "Fahrenheit 11/9," a member of the audience asked Ocasio-Cortez what she would do if the Supreme Court confirmed all of Democrats' fears.
"If, in a few months from now, the Supreme Court looks like ... a court that would overturn Roe [v. Wade] and make the president above the rule of law, what is to be done?" the audience member asked. This question echoed one real concern (overturning Roe, which would allow states to outlaw abortion) and one false concern (taken from twisting Judge Brett Kavanaugh's record on presidential immunity).
Ocasio-Cortez, never one to defend American institutions at the risk of her activist ambitions, took a page from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's book.
"I think we take back the House, we take back the Senate, we take back the presidency, and we pack the Supreme Court of the United States of America," she quipped. Then, as if this answer were clear and straightforward, she flippantly added, "Next!"
In 1937, FDR announced just this kind of Court-packing plan. The Supreme Court found some of his New Deal government expansion unconstitutional, so FDR wanted to remake the Court. If the separation of powers stood in the way of big government, FDR was going to get rid of the separation of powers.
He presented the Judicial Procedures Reform Bill of 1937, a bill to add more justices to the Supreme Court. Three weeks after FDR went public with this plan, the Supreme Court reversed course, bowing to the Democrats and the New Deal. This judicial sea-change went down in history as "the switch in time that saved nine." While some historians have disputed this connection, the Court did indeed reverse course on the New Deal after FDR's threat.
This is not the first time Ocasio-Cortez has aimed her wrath at an American institution that stood in the way of her activism. As previously mentioned, the socialist tweeted, "It is well past time we eliminate the Electoral College, a shadow of slavery's power on America today that undermines our nation as a democratic republic."
It is well past time we eliminate the Electoral College, a shadow of slavery’s power on America today that undermines our nation as a democratic republic. https://t.co/00HZN3MI6F
This is historically false. The Electoral College was created to give small population states more say in the federal government. This helped states like Delaware, Rhode Island, Georgia, and Vermont gain more of a say to balance large population states like Virginia (by far the most populous state at the time of the founding), Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and New York.
According to the 1790 census, free states had higher population than slave states, and there also were more free states than slave states. The Electoral College made no difference between them.
The Three-Fifths Compromise, on the other hand, counted a slave as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation. This enabled slave states to have more representation in Congress — but less than they wanted (they wanted to count slaves as full persons, which would have given them more power). Ironically, it was good for slaves that they were not counted as full persons for this purpose, but still horrifically tragic that slave states were able to use them as a political bargaining chip.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has shown her disdain for American institutions, based on a false understanding of history. If she had power, she would destroy America's federal system by abolishing the Electoral College and packing the Supreme Court. Yet more and more liberals are blaming the system for their political losses, suggesting that the Senate — never intended to be democratic — isn't democratic enough!
None of this should be surprising, however. After all, Woodrow Wilson, a major founder of progressivism, wrote that the Congress should have all the power when he saw himself as an excellent potential legislator but changed his tune when he became president. That's convenient...
Progressivism is about taking power and using it, American institutions be damned. Democratic socialists like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are even more brazen. Sure, let's pack the courts, no brainer.
-------------------- Tyler O'Neil is Assistant Editor of PJ Media, Tyler O'Neil is a conservative fundraiser and commentator. He has written for numerous publications. Tags:Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Reveals Her Plan, to Overthrow, the Supreme Court,PJMedia, Tyler O'NeilTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Missoula, MT is the home of the Univ. of Montana which has developed over many years into a concentration of bleeding heart liberals. Fortunately, there are a lot of places to live in the Big Sky areas of Montana. ~ Bill Smith, Editor
by Tom Knighton: It seems that the city of Missoula, Montana wants to require universal background checks. Despite the burden this places on people wishing to exercise their Second Amendment rights, it seems that not everyone disagrees with this either.
For example, a judge has upheld the law. A state judge on Thursday upheld Missoula’s 2016 gun ordinance, which requires background checks on all gun sales in city limits, even between private parties.
Judge Robert “Dusty” Deschamps’ ruling rejected an opinion from Montana Attorney General Tim Fox that said local governments don’t have the power to limit the sale and transfer of firearms.
State law, Deschamps wrote, says “Missoula’s governing authority must be ‘liberally construed’ with ‘every reasonable doubt as to the existence of a local government power or authority … resolved in favor of the existence of that power or authority.”’
“By invalidating the City of Missoula’s Ordinance, the Attorney General’s opinion deprives Missoula of its own authority,” Deschamps wrote.
Missoula, he concluded, is authorized by state law to prevent felons from possessing firearms and can therefore require background checks within city limits.
Earlier this year, the city challenged Fox’s decision to void the background check ordinance, which was passed in 2016 but never went into effect because of Fox’s opinion.
Missoula City Council Chair Bryan von Lossberg, sponsor of the ordinance, said Thursday evening the decision was “deeply affirming. It’s always been about public safety in Missoula.”
Several groups had weighed in on the case in Missoula County District Court, including the National Rifle Association, as well as a group of four local citizens who shared their experiences and support for the ordinance.
In his ruling, Deschamps mentioned specifically these citizens, who said they were “not zealots who support banning guns entirely or taking away anyone’s Second Amendment rights.”
“These are folks who are both gun owners and non-gun owners with a common sense of values around gun background checks,” von Lossberg said.Male bovine excrement.
There’s nothing “common sense” about this.
Look, a regulation that impacts the entire state has some actual teeth. Only people along the border region can easily hop across the state line to conduct a sale, and then you’re dealing with other regulations involved.
But leaving Missoula to sell a gun, thus bypassing the regulations? Easy as it gets.
Because of that fact, gun sales will happen between friends right inside the city, and if anyone asks, they conducted the sale in the next town over. It’s not common sense. It’s a sign that there are a lot of mentally deficient people involved in activism in Missoula.
No, seriously, anyone with half a brain can see how easily this can be bypassed and how this won’t do a damn thing to make the city safer. Despite protestations to the contrary, it’s not about public safety. It’s about “doing something” so they can pretend they’re accomplishing something, anything. But they’re not. Not in the least.
At the end of the day, though, they’ve done nothing except cost the taxpayers some money and made things a slightly more difficult for law-abiding gun owners while not doing anything to those who don’t follow the laws.
Nice job, dipsticks.
--------------- Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger at Bearing Arms. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia. Tags:Tom Knighton, Bearing Arms, Judge Upholds, Missoula Montana, Universal Background Check RegulationTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Kevin McCarthy: Focused on Our Safety and Our Children’s Safety
by Newt Gingrich: When House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy introduced the “Build the Wall, Enforce the Law Act” he set the stage for a vital national debate.
Does our safety matter?
Does the safety of our children matter?
Does the safety of our neighborhoods and communities matter?
Every American should be grateful for Majority Leader McCarthy for boldly setting out a plan to genuinely control our southern border. He has written a bill that would provide the resources and organization to truly control our border – and he said that the House will vote on it in December.
When contrasted with Senator Dianne Feinstein’s Open Borders bill (which every Democratic Senate incumbent cosponsored), the choice between the two parties is clear.
Republicans will control the border.
Democrats will throw the border wide open to anyone who wants to enter.
The American people can decide which future is safer and more desirable.
What will someday amaze historians is how so many of our politicians and members of our news media have simply ignored the facts and focused on politically inspired distortions.
It is a fact that El Salvadoran gangs like MS-13 and their imitators have become a major threat in many American cities and neighborhoods.
It is a fact that MS-13 and its imitators like to use knives because they can inflict more pain and create more terror – and that they prefer torturing people rather than simply killing them.
A number of MS-13 members have been convicted of coercing children into sexual trafficking for the gang’s profits.
I know how great a danger MS-13 is, because I made a special on this violent group for Fox News more than a decade ago. It was already horrifying then. It is worse now. But, of course, the left-wing media does all it can to ignore or minimize MS-13’s viciousness while focusing on the sad story of the American government mishandling young people whose parents have broken the law to get to the United States.
However, the problem goes far beyond gangs.
Fentanyl is a stunningly dangerous drug.
Carfentanil is an even more dangerous drug.
Both kill, both are made in China, and both are largely brought into the United States across our southern border.
In 2017, there were an estimated 72,000-plus drug overdose deaths in the United States. This is a stunning death rate when you consider that in the entire Vietnam War we lost 58,220 US soldiers.
The fastest growing cause of drug overdose deaths in 2017 was fentanyl, which took the lives of more than 30,000 Americans.
Controlling the American border is the first line of defense for our children, our neighborhoods, and our safety.
Democrats who favor open borders, sanctuary cities for criminals, and abolishing or dramatically weakening US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) should be made to explain why they aren’t worried by the gangs and the drugs.
Majority Leader McCarthy has done the country a real service by offering the Build the Wall, Enforce the Law Act – an effective bill that would increase safety for all Americans.
Let your Congressmen and Senators know that if they care about the safety of Americans, they should cosponsor and fully support the Build the Wall, Enforce the Law Act.
Every day that we fail to act in controlling and securing the border, Americans die from drug overdoses and others are threatened and intimidated by gangs.
It is time to put American safety first.
House Majority Leader McCarthy is doing that with the Build the Wall, Enforce the Law Act – and he deserves our help.
---------------------- 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, Kevin McCarthy, Focused on Our Safety, Our Children’s SafetyTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
A Turkish court today convicted him on terrorism charges related to the July 2016 attempted coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The court sentenced Brunson to an additional year in prison, then ordered him released for good behavior and time served.
Kanye vs. Kaepernick - As I noted in yesterday's report, rapper Kanye West had lunch with President Trump yesterday. The reaction of the media and cultural left has been completely unhinged.
They are attacking West with blatantly racist language. They are suggesting that West is mentally disturbed and that Trump is exploiting him. Of course, the left thinks Trump is mentally unfit too, and that anyone who agrees with him is crazy.
But Kanye made a lot of good points yesterday. For example, he talked about the urgent need to create jobs in minority communities, saying:
"We have to bring jobs into America because our best export is entertainment and ideas. . . but when we make everything in China and not in America, then we're cheating on our country, and we're putting people in positions to have to do illegal things to end up in the cheapest factory ever — the prison system."
This is the same argument that Trump makes in his own way, and it is the argument that the Republican Party should have been making for the past 30 years.
West also said that when he wears his "Make America Great Again" hat, he feels like "Superman." That's about as far from Colin Kaepernick as you can get!
By the way, while West was at the White House, Kaepernick was at Harvard University being feted by our liberal elites who love his anti-cop, anti-flag message. The university was giving Kaepernick its W.E.B. Du Bois Medal. Du Bois was a founder of the NAACP and an ardent socialist.
So there is a great debate now raging within the black community: Are you a Kaepernick anti-American, anti-police socialist or are you a Kanye pro-American, pro-jobs capitalist?
The fact that such a debate between two competing visions is taking place within the black community explains why left-wing commentators are going insane. They are attacking West the same way they attacked Clarence Thomas.
By the way, these attacks against West are coming from people who don't believe in God, who think raising taxes is good for the economy, who say securing the border is racist and that unborn babies are not people. Now that is nuts!
"Gosnell" - Do you remember the name Kermit Gosnell? He's the Philadelphia abortionist who became a symbol of America's abortion industry when it was discovered that he had killed several women and hundreds of babies.
Gosnell preyed on minority women and their children. He even kept specimens of his unborn victims in jars as trophies. Gosnell is now serving a life sentence for his crimes.
"Gosnell" isn't just the tale of a rogue abortionist and his horrific crimes. It focuses on our legal and political systems and media that looked the other way as women were maimed and babies were slaughtered in some of the most gruesome ways imaginable.
The film faced many roadblocks because it exposes the ugly side of the abortion industry for what it is: a money-making enterprise that leaves dead babies and shattered families in its wake.
While Gosnell's crimes were gruesome, the film carries a PG-13 rating. I strongly encourage you to check it out.
Other Headlines - The Kavanaugh controversy continues. Nancy Pelosi is questioning the validity of the FBI's seventh and final investigation -- you know, the one Senate Democrats demanded -- into Kavanaugh's background. She is laying the groundwork to impeach Justice Kavanaugh should her party retake the House in November.
By the way, a group of witches are planning to "hex" Kavanaugh. I guess that means Republicans can't count on the "witch vote" this November.
Senate Republicans clinched a deal to secure the confirmation of another 15 Trump judges. And progressives are fuming!
The Trump tax cuts are working and Americans are going back to work. The economy has created more than 1.8 million new jobs since the 2017 tax reform law was passed. By the way, tax receipts are at a record high. So the Trump tax cuts are clearly not causing the deficit to explode.
Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson is suddenly refusing to talk to congressional investigators. In spite of having already testified before two committees, Simpson is now pleading the Fifth. It seems he doesn't want to answer any questions about Bruce Ohr's testimony, which contradicted Simpson's previous sworn statements.
Are You Registered? - Believe it or not, early voting for the 2018 mid-term elections is already taking place in several states. Early voting began this week in Arizona, California, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Nebraska and Ohio.
Please make sure you and all of your friends and family members are registered to vote.
------------------- 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, Brunson Freed, Kanye vs. Kaepernick, GosnellTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Bill Gates Thinks There are Too Many Africans/Calls for Population Control
Emmanuel Macron
by Dr. Rebecca Oas: The goal of eliminating extreme poverty is among the top priorities of the global community and is the first of the UN’s seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). But, according to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, progress toward reducing poverty is threatened by the presence of too many poor people, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
Some global leaders have drawn criticism for their patronizing comments about African fertility, including French president Emmanuel Macron. At a launch event for the Gates Foundation’s Goalkeepers Report, held alongside the UN’s General Assembly, Macron said that Africa’s high birth rate is “not chosen fertility,” and reflects a lack of education. “I always say: ‘Present me the woman who decided, being perfectly educated, to have seven, eight or nine children.’”
Because of the history of coercive population control programs, “population was removed from the development vocabulary altogether,” writes Alex Ezeh in the Goalkeepers Report. “For the sake of Africa’s future, we should bring it back.”
The report argues that the decline of the extremely poor in the world could be hampered by population growth in Africa. Moreover, the report charges that because of increased African population, the number of extreme poor could begin to rise given that more than 40 percent of the world’s extremely poor live in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Nigeria.
One of the problems in analyzing poverty and population is the distinction between raw numbers and percentages. Take Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country; the Gates report projects the number of people in extreme poverty will expand from 81 million to 152 million by 2050. At the same time, however, they anticipate that the percentage of Nigeria’s population in extreme poverty will decrease from 43% to 35% in the same period. In the DRC, extreme poverty is projected to fall from 67% to 41%. In other words, as the population in both countries grows, the relative share of people in extreme poverty is shrinking, not growing.
Melinda Gates has long championed international family planning, and the Goalkeepers Report highlights it as one of four priority areas, alongside HIV, agriculture, and education. One of the SDG targets is to ensure universal access to sexual and reproductive health care services, including family planning. But when it comes to measuring access, the UN relies on metrics better suited to measuring use, or the concept of “unmet need,” of which lack of access to services makes up only 5%.
Sub-Saharan Africa remains notable for both its high actual fertility, and its high desired fertility. While family planning advocates, including Melinda Gates, typically speak of the need to increase access to contraceptives, their real goal is to increase use and to promote a small-family norm. But the looming shadow of past abuses remains large, despite efforts by the Gates Foundation and others to bring back the demographic rationale for family planning in addition to rhetoric about human rights and choice.
Melinda Gates told the Washington Post she is frustrated with the Trump administration’s decision to cut funding for international “reproductive-rights projects,” calling it “incredibly disappointing.” While in the past Gates notably distanced her family planning advocacy from the global abortion lobby, she co-chaired a Gender Equality Council at the G7 earlier this year, that called for public funding for abortion, abortion as a component of humanitarian assistance, and the withdrawal of the Trump administration’s expanded Mexico City Policy blocking aid funding to international abortion groups.
------------------ Rebecca Oas, Ph.D. is the Associate Director of Research at the Center for Family & Human Rights. Tags:Rebecca Oas, Center for Family & Human Rights, Bill Gates, Thinks There are Too Many Africans, Calls for Population ControlTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Don't Look for Civility Unless Democrats Win in November
Michael Barone
by Michael Barone: "You cannot be civil with a political party that wants to destroy what you stand for, what you care about," Hillary Clinton told CNN last Tuesday. Her words cannot be taken literally, for you can be civil if you want to; they're a statement that she doesn't want to.
That's the bad news; the good news is that she laid out the terms and conditions under which civility will be appropriate again. "(I)f we are fortunate enough to win back the House and/or the Senate," she went on, "that's when civility can start again."
Easy. Just let Democrats win the elections, and then Republican senators and their wives can eat dinner in restaurants without being forced out by jeering crowds. Republican members of Congress can rest in peace at night, knowing that their addresses and phone numbers won't be doxed and crowds won't gather to attack.
Asked if Democrats should stop behaving this way now, Hawaii Sen. Mazie Hirono blandly replied, "this is what happens." So much for the aloha spirit. Doesn't apply, apparently, if you favor restrictions on abortions.
A Republican senator out raking leaves can be attacked by an angry Democratic neighbor and left with multiple ribs broken. The House Republican baseball team cannot relax in the knowledge that a Bernie Sanders bro can start spraying gunfire over their practice field.
When I was writing the first edition of The Almanac of American Politics, 40-some years ago, it was common for members of Congress to list their Washington, D.C., addresses in the Congressional Directory. If you could have found one of those cumbersome earlier copies, you could have printed a four-page table showing the whole bunch of them.
You can tell that Democrats are a little embarrassed by Party leaders' nondenunciation of violence and intimidation -- assault and battery in criminal law. That's because their CNN reporter political allies have been bristling when the howling protesters against Justice Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation are called a "mob." That's a term apparently reserved for Republican protesters, no matter how many decibels the invited guests of Democratic members emit in the Senate gallery.
Democrats might reasonably reply that Donald Trump offered to pay legal costs for a MAGA enthusiast accused of beating up Democrats, and that Hillary Clinton rebuked him sharply and rightfully for refusing in advance to accept the results of the election. Liberals pride themselves on being tolerant and see themselves as political milquetoasts. But when they're losing, they are at least as nasty and violent as they have sometimes accurately accused Trump and his followers of being.
For some voters, at least, this is not a good look. Recent polls show Republicans gaining in some close Senate races -- ABC-OH Predictive Insights in Arizona, NBC News-Marist College in Nevada, and New York Times Upshot-Siena College and CBS-YouGov in Tennessee and Texas.
The cumulative effect is indicated by the fact that, for the first time in months, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight website gives Republicans a better chance (22 percent) of maintaining its majority in the House than the Democrats' chance (19 percent) of winning a majority in the Senate. Both are a bit below the 29 percent chance of winning the website gave Donald Trump just before the 2016 election.
Many, though not all, post-Kavanaugh confirmation polls show enthusiasm about voting increasing among Republican voters, for the first time this cycle, to the level as among Democrats. That's important, since off-year turnout is variable and Democrats' advantage has been clear in special elections as well as polls. If that's maintained, Republicans' chances of holding their Senate majority is good: Nine of the 10 states with the closest Senate races were carried by Trump back then.
In House contests, many eyes have been fastened on upscale (high income/high education) districts where Trump ran significantly behind earlier Republicans and Clinton ran significantly ahead of earlier Democrats. But they're less than half the 68 seats rated as tossups or leaning to one party by the Cook Political Report or the 69 in the Washington Post's survey of battleground House districts.
The New York Times Upshot-Siena College surveys of 40 House districts have shown Republicans ahead by 2 points or more in 18 polls, Democrats similarly ahead in 12, and a tie or a 1 point lead for one party in 10 polls. "Democrats," The Times' Nate Cohn tweeted Oct. 7, "have put a long list of Republican-leaning districts into play. But it's not clear whether they actually lead in a lot of them."
So it's possible, though unlikely, Democrats could fall short in both houses. In which case I guess we can't hope for any civility from Hillary Clinton. ----------------------- Michael Barone is a Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics Shared by Rasmussen Reports. Tags:Michael Barone, editorial, Rasmussen Reports, Don't Look for Civility, Unless Democrats, Win in NovemberTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
They’re All Socialists Now: 120 House Democrats Co-sponsored Bernie’s ‘Medicare for All’
by Dan Calabrese: I’m not sure why Washington always wants to talk about the cost of everything “over 10 years.” Let’s talk in terms of one year.
The entire federal budget is just about $4 trillion a year. Is that too high? Yeah. Way too high. But that’s where we are. The proposed “Medicare for All” bill that’s been sponsored by the likes of Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker and Kamala Harris is projected to cost $32.6 trillion “over 10 years,” so let’s just spread the average across the decade evenly and call it $3.26 trillion a year.
That’s 80 percent of the entire current federal budget. How much money is that? It’s so much that one estimate shows you could double all existing corporate and individual income taxes and it wouldn’t be enough to cover it. Among other things, “Medicare for All” would eliminate employer-sponsored health insurance. It would also eliminate the current element of the Medicare model that requires a premium to be paid by beneficiaries. Everything would be paid for by taxes, and your care would be “free”. That probably sound pretty good until you realize a couple of things:
You are neither the payer nor the care provider, so when it comes time to decide if you’re going to get care – and how much – you have no say in the matter. You’re not a party to the transaction. You’re just a helpless would-be beneficiary hoping someone will take care of you and someone else will pay the bill. It’s out of your hands entirely.>/li>
Nothing’s free. Your taxes are going to be doubled and then some. So will your employer’s. Good luck keeping your job.
One of the ways Bernie plans to reduce the cost of health care delivery is to reduce reimbursements to physicians. They’re already just barely breaking even on Medicare patients. If everyone is on Medicare and reimbursement levels are even less, guess what’s going to happen. A lot of doctors are going to find other things to do with their lives. And you’ll have a shortage of providers. That’s what always happens with socialism.
Now, having said all this, this is the sort of proposal that even in the leftist Democratic Party used to only get the support of a handful on the fringe. Most recognized that while they love big government, it would be insane to take it this far. Others might have secretly loved the idea, but they didn’t think it was politically viable to admit it publicly.
No more. In addition to the aforementioned senators – all of whom are considered viable presidential candidates – the House of Representatives has 197 Democrats. How many do you suppose might have signed on as co-sponsored to socialize all American medicine? Five? Ten? You’re too low. Way too low: Republicans are running ads slamming Democrats on single-payer health care, and President Trump framed the issue this week in a USA Today op-ed that said “Democrats would gut Medicare with their planned government takeover of American health care.” Democrats claim this is unfair because not every candidate has endorsed single payer, but if they now want to repudiate it they should say so.Mr. Trump is referring to the Bernie Sanders bill known as Medicare for All, which has been endorsed by 16 Senators, including almost all of the left’s leading 2020 presidential contenders (Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren).A companion House bill has attracted more than 120 co-sponsors, which is nearly two-thirds of the current Democratic caucus. Other devotees include the Democratic nominees for Governor in California (Gavin Newsom) and Florida (Andrew Gillum) and dozens of other candidates around the country. Did Democrats think they could endorse this to please their progressive base but then have no one notice?You might see this as evidence that the Democratic Party has “moved left.” I don’t think so.
I think the Democratic Party has always been as far left as it thinks the voting public will let it be. Are they in favor of the complete nationalization of all industry? If it will poll well enough, sure. The only restraint on the Democrats’ leftism is electoral reality. If the claim not to be full-fledged socialists, it’s only because they think you’ll reject them if they admit that they actually are.
Why do you think they passed ObamaCare and not “Medicare for All” in 2010? Because that’s as far as they thought they could go without getting wiped out at the next election? As it turned out, ObamaCare was enough to wipe them out.
But they also learned something else from ObamaCare: You can pass a gigantic big-government measure that the public hates, and the Republicans can run against it and win. And once in office, the Republicans will not be able to figure out how to get rid of it, or they’ll just simply lack the nerve.
Is big government really unpopular? The Democrats seem increasingly convinced that they can shove just about any expansion of the state down the throats of the public, and no matter what the short-term electoral consequences may be, no part of the edifice they construct will ever be torn down because Republicans are too afraid.
And I think they’re right.
So maybe this is their chance. You’d think the sensible 2020 strategy would be to run a sensible, centrist-sounding candidate against the unpopular incumbent Donald Trump. The public would figure, “Let’s go back to having a normal president who doesn’t sound too crazy,” and the sensible-sounding Democrat would win.
Instead, every major Democrat contender is making no bones about their desire to give us socialized medicine, which gives Trump the opportunity to say, “Hey, stick with me. These are the real crazy people.”
-------------------- Dan Calabrese writes Christian spiritual warfare novels and contributes to HermainCain.com. Tags:Dan Calabrese, HermainCain.com, They’re All Socialists Now, 120 House Democrats, Co-sponsored, Bernie’s ‘Medicare for All’To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
In ‘A Remarkable Rebound’ From The Last Recession, ‘The Benefits Of The Strong Economy Lifted The Fortunes Of More Americans’
SENATE MAJORITY LEADER MITCH McCONNELL (R-KY): “According to the latest Department of Labor report, unemployment in the United States of America has now fallen to 3.7 percent. That’s our lowest unemployment rate since 1969…. [I]t is rising wages, more job opportunities, and new investment. And it’s reaching kitchen tables and communities large and small all across America. The real winners here are the American people. Republicans are just proud our policies are helping them do what they do best.”(Sen. McConnell, Remarks, 10/10/2018)
“The unemployment rate fell to a nearly five-decade low in September, punctuating a remarkable rebound … By almost any measure, the American economy is humming. Gross domestic product is on pace for its best year since the housing bubble of the mid-2000s. Consumers and businesses are the most confident they have been in years, if not decades. Stock market indexes are near record highs.”(The New York Times, 10/05/2018)
The Unemployment Rate Is Under 4%, ‘The Lowest Since December 1969’
“Unemployment rates below 4% are extremely rare in 70 years of modern record-keeping…. In 1953, the year the Korean War ended, the jobless rate got as low as 2.5%. In the 1960s, it stayed below 4% for nearly four years, until a bout of rising inflation and interest rates led to recession and rising joblessness. Another run below 4% in 2000 lasted just a few months, burst by a bubble in technology stocks.” (“U.S. Unemployment Rate Falls to Lowest Level Since 1969,” The Wall Street Journal, 10/05/2018)
“The turnaround from a decade ago is hard to overstate….Crucially, the recovery is reaching groups that struggled in the early years of the recovery. The unemployment rates for African-Americans and Hispanics are both near all-time lows. Teenagers, less-educated workers and disabled Americans have also made progress in recent months.”(The New York Times, 10/05/2018)
‘The Highest Level On Record’ For Available Jobs, ‘Shifting More Power To Workers’
“The number of available jobs in the U.S. exceeded the number of job seekers by more than 650,000 in July—a gap that has been growing … The number of available jobs in the U.S. rose by about 117,000 to a seasonally adjusted 6.94 million in July, the Labor Department said Tuesday. That is the highest level on record back to 2000, exceeding the prior peak set in April. It also exceeds the 6.28 million Americans who were unemployed during the month, meaning they were without work but actively seeking a job.”(“Job Openings Exceed Unemployed Americans Again in July as Employers Feel the Pinch,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/11/2018)
“The tight labor market—shown by an unemployment rate holding near a 17-year low—is shifting more power to workers. And increasingly they are willing to quit their jobs. In July, 3.58 million workers voluntarily left their jobs, the highest level on record, the Labor Department said. ‘The tight labor market is quickly causing workers to gain the confidence they need to quit their jobs,’ said JPMorgan Chase economist Jesse Edgerton. ‘That movement should lead to better wage growth.’”(“Job Openings Exceed Unemployed Americans Again in July as Employers Feel the Pinch,” The Wall Street Journal, 9/11/2018)
‘Compensation For Workers Rose To A Nearly 10-Year High,’ ‘Low-Income Workers See Long-Awaited Wage Gains’
“Compensation for workers rose to a nearly 10-year high in the second quarter … The employment cost index increased 0.6 percent for civilian workers in the three-month period ending in June, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics release Tuesday. That brought the 12-month rate up to 2.8 percent, the highest level since 2.9 percent in the third quarter of 2008 … the ECI has been on a steady rise over the past year and a half.”(“Worker Pay Rate Hits Highest Level Since 2008,” CNBC, 7/31/2018)
“The benefits of a strong job market are spreading in the form of higher wages for many of those left behind for much of the past decade’s economic expansion, including young Americans, low-income households and people with the least education. The unemployment rate in September fell to 3.7%, its lowest level since 1969. That is creating worker shortages and wage gains, not just for high-skilled workers who tend to command the best pay but also for low-skilled and blue-collar workers whose wages lag behind.” (“Low-Income Workers See Long-Awaited Wage Gains,” The Wall Street Journal, 10/05/2018)
“US small business optimism just hit its highest level in history … A measure of optimism among U.S. small-business owners rose to a record and exceeded projections as companies planned the most capital spending since 2007 and hiring intentions hit an all-time high, a National Federation of Independent Business survey showed …”(“US Small Business Optimism Just Hit Its Highest Level In History,” The Washington Post, 9/11/2018) Tags:American Economy, HummingTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Dr. Victor Davis Hanson: hen the Christine Ford saga finally ended with the confirmation of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, a lot of truth had distilled out, along with the evaporation of prior pretensions and misconceptions.
The Left
The hearing confirmed that the traditional JFK/Hubert Humphrey Democrat party, as once envisioned by a Bill Clinton, Gary Hart, or Jim Webb, is long kaput. In its place is being birthed a hard-left progressive movement that absorbs the ideologies and methodologies of its base and that now incorporates all sorts, from Ocasio-Cortez’s socialist hipsters to Black Lives Matters, Antifa, and Occupy Wall Street protestors.
The new progressives recently have come to believe that they gain traction by the theater of disrupting senate hearings, cornering senators in elevators, stalking them on the way to work, doxing their opponents on the Internet, and during the hearings throwing out the concept of due process. Any means is deemed permissible to enact visions of social justice, given legislative and executive power is lost for now — and as if proverbially ordinary Americans who watched the televised circus might applaud the performers.
Diane Feinstein, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, and the Democratic fossils on the Senate Judiciary Committee may in their golden years try to lumber onto the departing progressive train, but their septuagenarian and octogenarian creaky efforts to get on board grow sad. Joe Biden was reduced to threatening to beat Trump up behind the locker room. Diane Feinstein staged a clumsy eleventh-hour ambush of the hearings that proved pure bathos. Even leftists such as Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren fear that they are suddenly pseudo- revolutionaries, compared with the new, far more radical Jacobins, who in cyclical French Revolutionary style call for massive repeals of all student debt, free tuition, packing the Supreme Court, Medicare for all, a specified end to fossil fuels, quotas based on identity politics, and an abolishment of Immigration and Custom Enforcement. No one quite knows how far this cannibalistic cycle will go.
The emotional powerbase of the new Democrats is now Corey “I am Spartacus” Booker, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, and thousands of state and local Ocasio-Cortezes. Barack Obama really did fundamentally transform the old Democratic party. Or rather from 2009 to 2017, he dismantled it at the congressional, state, and local levels while he was elected twice to the presidency. But even the now multimillionaire Obama appears to the new Democrats as a near has-been sellout. And in his fifties, he will have to hit the streets again, in his prior mode of “get in their face, bring a gun to a knife fight, punish our enemies,” to recapture his hard-left fides.
The hatred of Kavanaugh and the left-wing repudiation of due process and of Senate protocol and tradition united the Democrats by moving their party far more to the left rather than to the center. Apparently, Democrats must embrace or at least excuse Antifa-like tactics or they are no longer Democrats. Diane Feinstein’s reprehensible behavior must be seen in this context as seeking to be as radical as the unhinged expressions of Kevin de León, her election rival for the Senate seat.
Yes, both parties are now more united and energized. But one did so by enticing the recalcitrant back into the fold; the other, by warning them to join the revolution or be guillotined.
Never Trump
The character assassination of Brett Kavanaugh by unsubstantiated rumor and gossip put Never Trumpers in a bind, or rather split them in two. Kavanaugh was nominated by the hated Trump, but his record and endorsements by the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society mainstreamed the choice. He was neither a liberal David Souter in conservative sheep’s clothing nor a crony appointment like the failed Harriet Miers nomination.
The preppy Kavanaugh — by class, education, comportment, and prior employment — was about as pure a Bushite as one could imagine. His opinions were doctrinaire conservative and traditionalist, in the sense of interpreting rather than making laws.
To destroy a judge like Kavanaugh reflected that the New Left’s hatred of Trump had always been incidental to its essential loathing of conservatives in general. For a remnant group of Never Trumpers to oppose Kavanaugh, then, reflected the elevation of their own personal hatred for Trump over the critical elevation of a principled jurist to the Supreme Court. Supposedly, Kavanaugh was soiled by a Trump handprint, and therefore it was better to have a more liberal court than see Trump get any credit for taking the court in a direction only previously dreamed of by conservatives.
Never Trumpers had always assured their former conservative colleagues that Trump would either fail or prove liberal. But he has done neither. And as far as his demonstrable crudity and uncouthness, the hearings showed that the Democrats were far crueler and crass in deed than Trump was in word. So perhaps half of the small minority of Republican Never Trumpers, in horror at the Antifa tactics of the Democrats, retreated to the old adage of “hang together or hang separately.” Those who doubled down by joining leftists in opposing the Kavanaugh nomination revealed that they have crossed their Rubicon and now are either orphaned or unabashedly part of the new progressive Democratic party — at least until their useful obsequiousness no longer serves current progressive agendas.
Conventional Political Wisdom
Kavanaugh was not supposed to display too much anger at the Left that sought not just to thwart his confirmation, but destroy his person and his family as just deserts. At noon on the day of his final appearance, Kavanaugh was declared dead after the sympathetic but otherwise not credible testimony of Christine Ford. But by day’s end, Kavanaugh’s freelancing explosive defiance had saved the nomination, showing that conventional wisdom’s “judicial temperament” when smeared was merely a noble way to lose.
Trump was damned at a rally for mocking Ford’s full-of-holes assertions — and for the nth time written off as crude, crass, and uncouth. But Trump haters so often let their venom blind them to Trump’s cunning: 1) He is reactive not provocative. All week Trump was demonized, and so his description of Ford and her enablers was seen as righteous retaliation not a bullying attack; 2) Trump has an uncanny sense of the pulse of public opinion. He waited to apply the coup de grace until Ford’s own narratives, which she changed numerous times, were being picked apart not so much as incomplete but as impossible to reconcile; 3) Trump realizes that it is his defiance as much as his message that wins him fealty. He never publicly flinched from his support for Kavanaugh and by doubling-down told his base that if Kavanaugh was going down, so would he. After eight years of perceived namby-pamby Republican contextualization, even mainstream conservatives seem to appreciate defiance. And they got it in spades with both Kavanaugh and Trump, whose both defied collective conventional wisdom of just letting it be.
The #MeToo Movement
The #MeToo movement is imploding. By its recent McCarthyesque excesses it is undoing a great deal of good that it had once done, in Hollywood and the media especially.
Once #MeToo embraced the generic position of “she must be believed” even when there is no evidence, and even despite overwhelming contradictory evidence, then the movement, willingly or not, had sided with Phaedra over Hippolytus and Mayella Violet Ewell over Tom Robinson. It would render our Western cultural inheritance — from Socrates’s Apology and Alfred Dreyfus to The Ox-Bow Incident to 12 Angry Men — null and void.
A republic cannot survive any revolutionary movement that insist that its moral claims are so exalted that 2,500 years of Western jurisprudence must be jettisoned, as if “sincerity” established “believability” and believability in turn “credibility” — all without evidence, witnesses, or substantiated testimonies. The result of such ideas would be the nightmarish world of either a regimented Ninety Eighty-Four or the chaos of the Lord of the Flies.
The Kavanaugh hearing was the ultimate but logical continuation of the Duke Lacrosse and Rolling Stone travesties. The #MeToo excess was even likely to have pleased the ogre Harvey Weinstein — a sexual predator who for decades was exempted by liberal Hollywood enablers and appeasers either on the theory of “Well, he may be a predator, but he’s our predator” or “He’s bad, but not always bad for me.” Weinstein may now claim that what happened to the hated conservative Kavanaugh earlier had happened to him, the once beloved liberal, or he may say something like “See what happens when you lose liberal warriors like me.”
So #MeToo has transmogrified into a partisan political movement. Once it took down one too many liberal journalists and politicians, it was steered back onto a progressive course. The police report about Keith Ellison and recent testimony from his former girlfriends did not constitute “substantiation” and therefore were not “credible” in a way the incoherent writ against a 17-year-old Bret Kavanaugh, 36 years ago, most certainly was. Once #MeToo became an arm of the progressive political movement, as witnessed by the Kavanaugh debacle, it lost credence as a movement of righteous indignation whose targets were mostly contrite predators. Today, increasingly, the alleged predators targeted by #MeToo are conservative.
The Blue-Chip Media The New Yorker and Ronan Farrow will likely be more remembered for their abject Ramirez fantasies than the earlier Weinstein realities. They ran with a story that had no substantiation, no coherence, no witnesses.
Such an article, without any evidence, would never have been published about a liberal justice — and the authors and their editors, of course, knew that.
The NBC interview with Julia Swetnick was an unmitigated disaster. When a marquee network warns its own audience that the comments of the interviewee either could not be confirmed or were contrary to her earlier testimonies, then the natural question arises: Would NBC ever have run such an interview with an unhinged conservative critic who, without evidence or testimony, had recently alleged that she had 36 years earlier seen a liberal justice commit gang rape in his teens?
The New York Times had to retract a false allegation that Mark Judge had more or less had changed his story and now had confirmed his presence at the alleged party: “An earlier version of this article misstated what Mark Judge told the Senate Judiciary Committee. He said that he does not remember the episode, not that he does.” “Fake News” is an overused phrase, but it proves a euphemism when describing the recent behavior of The New Yorker, the New York Times, and NBC.
When Donald J. Trump rants at his rallies about “fake news” and claims that the media is not just biased but lies, Americans wince — but now more so at the accuracy of his charges and no longer so much at the crassness with which he delivers them.
The Old-White-Men Slur
The media and Democratic operatives pounded the idea that Senate Republicans were “old white men” and symbols of a has-been old-white-man country that is unfair and cruel. Given that Christine Ford was not exactly young but was clearly white, why did progressives not just say “men”?
The answer, of course, is that the progressive movement sought to use the Kavanaugh hearings to empower a larger race-and-gender identity-politics agenda, in which the perennial targets are old white guys. The operating theory is that women, the nonwhite, and young hipsters by their gender, race, or age — and their collective victimization — are innately preferable and more deserving people.
But once progressives drew up those insane rules, the subsequent spectacle was judged by their own standards. Mitch McConnell proved a far more adroit senatorial manager than Chuck Schumer. Chuck Grassley sounded more judicious and worried about the rules than did Diane Feinstein. Lindsey Graham was far more coherent and focused that Senator Spartacus. Prosecutor Mitchell was to the point, direct, and transparent in a way Christine Ford was not always.
More important, for millions of Americans watching the spectacle, the results did not play out so much as an old-white-guy melodrama as a class-and-gender psychodrama. Most men of all races and classes cannot accept a new reality that they can have their careers destroyed, without appeal to due process, at any moment by an unsubstantiated accusation dating from when they were 17 — all on the pretext that a destructive career inquisition “is not formally a criminal trial” and therefore not subject to the spirit of the U.S. Constitution. And if there was any stereotypical lesson to be had, it was that many on the senatorial panel and the legions of advisers and lawyers on the Ford Team, as well as Ford herself, by their class, education, and comportment, increasingly seem quite different, quite more privileged, and quite more self-absorbed than most average Americans of all backgrounds who have little sympathy for the psychodramas of a pampered and professional class.
-------------------------------- Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) is a senior fellow, classicist and historian at the
and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where many of his artices are found; his focus is classics and military history Tags:Victor Davis Hanson, Kavanaugh CasualtiesTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Congress Must Stop The Internet Sales Tax Mugging of Small Businesses and Jobs
Ken Blackwell
by Ken Blackwell, Contributing Author: Americans from coast to coast enjoy purchasing goods on the Internet. It’s comfortable, convenient, and the product is delivered right to your doorstep. Online shopping makes it possible for people to buy products from states clear on the other side of the country and, in many cases to find unique or difficult to find items.
This boom in online shopping has brought tremendous benefits to consumers but also created tremendous opportunities for small businesses. This trend has created countless small sellers across the nation leading to the creation of jobs and wealth.
This exciting trend faces a potential hurdle after a Supreme Court ruling this summer. The case (South Dakota v. Wayfair) overturned a decades old precedent in Quill Corp v. North Dakota. Specifically, the justices decision struck down the “physical presence” standard, which stipulated that out-of-state sellers, referred to as remote sellers, were not required to collect sales tax for states where they did not have a physical presence.
Under the previous standard, a small seller in Ohio is not required to collect and figure out the sales tax for an item bought from a consumer in California or any other state. With over 10,000 different tax jurisdictions across the nation, the burden for small businesses would be crushing. This will create enormous costs for companies that have to navigate complex tax laws. Small sellers may need to pay accountants and lawyers to help them comply with these thousands of laws and may open themselves up to potential audits and other state regulations. Large corporations may easily be able to comply with these burdens, but it may be impossible for small businesses.
As a former state and local official, I know that many states will rush in and try to get their hands on additional revenue. Some states have already moved to begin collecting – some even on the smallest seller and some have even threatened retroactive taxation. These officials will be more than happy to impose these burdens on businesses who don’t reside in their state and whose votes they don’t depend on.
The Wayfair decision has left many businesses in limbo wondering what the impact will be, not knowing if there will be generous thresholds for small business before they have to collect of if they will have to collect retroactive taxes.
Thankfully, representatives in Congress have recognized the problems created by the Supreme Court decision. Rep. Sensenbrenner (WI-05), along with a group of bipartisan lawmakers, have introduced a bill to fight the taxation tidal wave. The bill, the Online Sales Simplicity and Small Business Relief Act, will clarify interstate tax on remote sales.
Provisions in the bill include a ban on retroactive taxes, which would bar states from taxing any sales from remote sellers prior to June 21, 2018, the date the Court handed down Wayfair. The bill also establishes a phase-in period of compliance, preventing states from collecting taxes until January 1, 2019.
Additionally, the Online Sales Simplicity and Small Business Relief Act provides small businesses with some breathing room. The bill allows a generous $10 million exemption for small businesses, meaning any seller that generates less than $10 million in sales a year would not be affected by online sales taxes. The provision remains in place until the States can create a compact to be approved by Congress where such a waiver is unnecessary.
As the National Taxpayers Union argued in endorsing the Sensenbrenner bill, “Absent Congressional action, billions of dollars in interstate commerce and millions of small business people face the threat of back-tax bills, complicated collection obligations, and nationwide tax and audit responsibilities simply for having the temerity to use the Internet to reach buyers.”
The Supreme Court made a mistake in overturning its physical presence precedent, but Congress has the opportunity to alleviate some of the uncertainty that has been unleashed by the decision. The Online Sales Simplicity and Small Business Relief Act is an important step towards protecting small businesses and taxpayers.
------------------ Ken Blackwell (@kenblackwell) is a former ambassador to the U.N., a former Domestic Policy Advisor to the Trump Presidential Transition Team, and former Ohio State Treasurer and mayor of Cincinnati who currently serves on the boards of numerous conservative policy organizations including the National Taxpayers Union and is an Advisor to the Family Research Council in Washington, DC. He is a contributing author to the ARRA News Service Tags:Ken Blackwell, Congress, Must Stop, The Internet Sales Tax, Mugging of Small Businesses and JobsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
Tags:Editorial Cartoon, AF Branco, Mobocrat Party, Democrats, continue to ignore, the Cconstitution, rule of law, threaten no civility, till back in powerTo 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: In addition to my study of the millennial generation is my current research on the generation following them. Jean Twenge has given them the name iGen because their generation has always had digital devices like the iPod and the iPhone.
They were born between 1995 and 2012. In fact, the leading edge of the iGen generation are now graduating from college. In many ways, they are different from previous generations. Here are a few characteristics that Jean Twenge talks about in her book and articles.
First, it appears that iGen is more focused on work than the millennial generation. A higher percentage of them were willing to work overtime to get a job done. That changed perception might have to do with the fact that they experienced the Great Recession a number of years ago.
Second, the iGen generation is taking longer to work, drive, and date than previous generations. This will no doubt have an impact on the workplace. Twenge observes that, “Managers who learned to be cheerleaders for millennials will find they are more like therapists, life coaches, or parents for iGen’ers.”
Third, the iGen generation is not as confident as the millennial predecessors. Various surveys show they are less confident about their career prospects. They have lower self-confidence than the previous generation at the same age.
The latest generation also seems very concerned with safety. They have turned out to be safe drivers. They are less likely to binge drink than the previous generations. And they want “emotional safety” — meaning they want to be protected from offensive comments and conflict.
Finally, they are obviously tied to their phones and social media. They are likely to socialize using their phones rather than getting together in person. If we want to reach this new generation, we need to see how they are different due both to their social experiences and their digital devices.
------------------------ 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, iGenTo 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: Two propositions on this November’s California ballot, Propositions 8 and 11, have found an opponent.
“Both would have voters decide very narrow union-management conflicts in two relatively small medical service sectors,” explains Dan Walters, long the dean of California columnists. Unions are sponsoring Prop 8, which “purports to limit profits in clinics that provide dialysis treatments to sufferers of kidney failure.” Ambulance companies are behind Prop 11, which would “require ambulance crews to remain on call during meal and rest breaks.”
Walters thinks it “foolish to expect November’s nine-plus million voters to make even semi-informed decisions about their provisions, much less understand how dialysis clinics and ambulance services operate, or should operate.”
Well, yes, but this criticism applies to government universally. Legislators don’t understand how every business or industry functions, or should function, either. Even when politicians pretend to comprehend, by what right do they micromanage other people’s businesses and labor contracts?
Freedom, not government regulation, should be the default position.
But Walters’ fix runs against this logic. He thinks that upping the required percentage of signatures for ballot placement “by half . . . might discourage the misuse of the system for issues that cannot be fairly and rationally decided by voters.”
Don’t bet on it.
As Walters himself admits, making it tougher and more expensive to petition a measure onto the ballot won’t block the well-heeled: “any interest group with a few million bucks and an axe to grind can qualify a ballot measure, regardless of their merits.”
But it would disenfranchise grassroots groups.
Defeat bad measures; don’t destroy the democratic process.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
------------------ Paul Jacob 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. Jacob is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service. Tags:Paul Jacob, Common Sense, Three Bad PropositionsTo share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!
by Donald Wilfong: Yes, the Democratic mob exists, and it is very real. It is a faction that aims disrupt to our representative government in an uncivilized manner. They are the reason for the Justice Brett Kavanaugh outrage, the senseless attack of the GOP’s charity baseball team last year, and Senator Rand Paul’s (R-Ky.) wife Kelley sleeping with a loaded gun on her bedside table.
The mob is real and while Democrats and the mainstream media try to avoid this fact, it is something that Republicans should label for what it is. It has no place in our republic.
In an interview at Oxford, England, Hillary Clinton urged Democrats across America to be more uncivil and hostile towards Republicans across America, it is clear there is a real threat. While some news organizations will laugh and poke fun at the word “mob”, I ask, what better word is there to describe it? Webster’s Dictionary describes a mob as “a large crowd of people, especially one that is disorderly and intent on causing trouble or violence.”
The three key components to describe a mob are there being a large crowd, disorderly, and violent. Were the people outside the Capitol and Supreme Court large in size? Yes, in fact liberal media outlets have boasted about how many activists they were able to assemble to protest the confirmation process of now Justice Kavanaugh. The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 6, reports hundreds of protesters gathered outside of the Supreme Court and the Capitol.
Were the large crowds disorderly? Yes. Recently Senator Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) was bombarded in the Senate elevator by protesters. They forced open the doors to the elevator and trapped Senator Flake in to hear their story. A few days later, people followed Senator Susan Collins (R-Maine) from her office to an elevator shouting, screaming and yelling to her in a desperate attempt to force her to change her mind on her vote to confirm Kavanaugh.
Luckily for Republicans everywhere Susan Collins was brave enough to stand up to the mob and continue her support for Justice Kavanaugh.
That leaves the third requirement, were the large disorderly crowds violent? Absolutely. The large crowds tried to break down the 17 feet tall, 13-ton, solid bronze doors of the Supreme Court, which have not been opened since 2010. The ones who were not pounding a solid bronze door waited near the road on which Justice Kavanaugh traveled to yell and scream at him and family as they rode by. Others, who supported the nomination and confirmation of Justice Kavanaugh were spit on, had things thrown at them, cursed at, degraded, and had signs ripped from their grasp. This all happened in a matter of hours and was truly violent.
The mob was not confined to the D.C. area, young conservative students were assaulted all week by the angry “democratic” mob. On Oct. 3, The Young Conservatives of Texas at the University of Texas, Austin were holding a rally in support on Justice Kavanaugh while over 150 liberal students gathered to protest against them. A few turned violent and ripped pro-Kavanaugh signs from their hands before destroying the signs right in-front of the very people who worked so hard to create them.
The mob even spread to Stanford University, where Susan Rice’s conservative son and leader of Stanford’s College Republicans, John David Rice-Cameron, was assaulted on Oct. 9 by a fellow student. Essentially, John Davis Rice-Cameron was assaulted for his pro-Kavanaugh stance and voicing his opinion in an open, public space. Rightfully so, John David Rice-Cameron will be pressing charges against his assailant.
Despite all of this blatant violence and disorder, CNN anchors Don Lemon and Brooke Baldwin have claimed that these are absolutely not mobs and instead just individual’s exercising their “constitutional rights.” Unfortunately, the Constitution does not provide grounds for large groups to attack innocent people for disagreeing with their political views. That is mob violence.
By all standards of the definition of the word “mob,” the actions put on display throughout the Kavanaugh confirmation process and beyond are deserving of the mob label. These weren’t normal protesters, this was a large crowd of individuals who exhibited unruly, disorderly, and violent behavior. While the left may choose to reject this title, the American people should call it what it is, an angry mob.
--------------- Donald Wilfong is the development officer at Americans for Limited Government. Tags:Donald Wilfong, Americans for Limited Government, Democratic Mob, Is RealTo 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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