Biden's Gift To China, Enemy Of The People, Leftist Lunacy

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer: Biden's Gift To China
Joe Biden unveiled his climate change agenda yesterday, which is heavily influenced by AOC's radical Green New Deal. But Biden's climate plan could easily be called the "Make China Great Again" plan. I'm not kidding.

Everything he is proposing will put a straight jacket on the American economy, hurt working-class jobs and destroy our energy industry. At the same time, he is empowering communist China.

Biden wants to reduce carbon emissions to 50% of 2005 levels by 2030. While the U.S. is making tremendous progress reducing emissions, Biden's radical goal is virtually impossible to meet. As the Wall Street Journal notes:

"Amid last year's Covid-19 lockdowns, greenhouse gas emissions fell to about 21% below 2005 levels. In other words, even with the economy shut down and a large share of the population stuck at home, the U.S. was less than halfway to Mr. Biden's goal."

How much more are you willing to give up for the sake of the left's climate claims?

While Biden plans to shut down our coal industry and who knows what else, the rest of the world isn't quite so willing to go along. Sen. Joe Manchin noted, "There's 667 coal-fired plants being constructed as we speak today around the world — zero in the U.S. and 667 in the world."

Much of that coal construction is taking place in communist China. According to one report, "China built more than three times as much new coal power capacity as all the other countries in the world combined last year." China is building more than one new coal plant every week.

Communist China is the biggest threat to Mother Nature on the planet. It is more than canceling out everything that Joe Biden and John Kerry will inflict on the American people over the next ten years.

White House officials seem disappointed at communist China's attitude. I get the feeling that some progressives seem to think, "Sure, China is running genocidal camps trying to wipe out an entire ethnic group, but as long as they are carbon neutral it's okay."

In other words, it seems the Biden White House is more upset with China's environmental policies than its human rights abuses!

Still Not Happy
A group of climate extremists weren't happy that Biden and Kerry weren't destroying the U.S. economy fast enough. So, they dumped piles of cow manure in front of the White House in protest.

When this was happening, no one knew for sure what they were dumping. What if it had been laced with something toxic? This could have been a dangerous event yesterday.

But what if a group of conservatives drove a truck near the White House and started dumping an unknown substance to protest ongoing violations of our civil liberties?

I have no doubt that before the week was over, there would be FBI raids at the homes of these activists. There would be editorials declaring that the right-wing, which assaulted the Capitol, is now assaulting the White House.

Tech giants would be volunteering to turn over anyone on social media who supported this "assault." Big Banks would be turning over their financial information. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer would be condemning this act of extremism, and the Pentagon would be drumming out of the military anyone who supported the protest.

The Enemy Of The People
My 10 year-old grandson recently started a newspaper at his Christian school. He's a patriotic, America-loving, God-loving little boy. Maybe he will become a journalist. Unfortunately, that's at least 12 years away. And I don't believe either journalism or America have another 12 years to spare.

I've interacted with the media for 40 years. There were always some unprofessional reporters. Many showed their ideological bias. But what is happening now is entirely different.

American journalism has turned into propaganda. And that propaganda is aimed at creating hate for our country and hate for law enforcement. That's why Donald Trump referred to the media as "the enemy of the people." Our media are not informing. They are indoctrinating with propaganda.

As we reported yesterday, a police officer in Columbus, Ohio, tragically had to shoot a black teen-aged girl, armed with a knife, to prevent her from killing another black teen-aged girl.

Nearly every major media outlet buried the central fact that a girl with a knife was attacking another girl. All the media focused on was race -- that a white cop shot a black girl.

But NBC News was the worst. They deliberately edited the 911 call and the police body camera video so that no one would know that the girl who was shot was armed with a knife.

That's not journalism. That's not even biased journalism. That's vicious leftist propaganda meant to foment unrest and racial division in America.

Molly Hemingway said the media are creating one hoax after another meant to destroy every facet of American conservatism. She's right. We had the Russia hoax. We had the Kavanaugh hoax. Now we've got the racist police hoax.

Thankfully, there is a silver lining. Nearly two-thirds of Americans are worried that constant criticism of the police will undermine public safety. They're right to be worried. But they must channel that concern into opposition to left-wing politicians and their radical agenda.

Leftist Lunacy It seems many leftists have been competing with one another to demonstrate their utter lack of knowledge about policing.

Joy Behar and Juan Williams said the Columbus officer should have fired a warning shot in the air. Never mind where that bullet might come down.

One Columbus city councilmember said things would have turned out differently if only there had been a social worker on the scene.

MSNBC's Joy Reid suggested that the police officer should have tried to break up the knife fight.

One reporter wanted to know why the officer didn't just shoot the attacker in the leg.

The men and women on the Thin Blue Line have a thankless job. But I know you are very grateful for what they do.

Carol and I will often thank police officers whenever we see them. I urge you to do the same. Ask your pastor to pray during a service for the men and women in uniform who are working to keep us safe while we are sleeping.

Good News

• Arizona Governor Doug Ducey declared a state of emergency along the Arizona-Mexico border and ordered the deployment of Arizona National Guard troops to the border.
• Texas is suing the Biden Administration for creating a massive public health crisis on the southern border.
• Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed anti-rioting legislation into law. The law increases penalties for assaulting police officers, holds rioters in jail until after their first court date (no quick releases putting rioters back on the streets), and makes it harder for cities to "defund the police."
• Montana Governor Greg Gianforte signed election integrity legislation into law. Rep. Burgess Owens (R-UT), endorsed and supported by CWF, blasted the left's false "Jim Crow" narrative about Georgia's new election integrity law.
• By a 12-point margin, more Americans are less likely to buy Coke products since the company announced its opposition to Georgia's election integrity law.
• The Arizona Democrat Party filed a last-minute lawsuit to stop a forensic audit of ballots in Maricopa County. After months of insisting that there is zero evidence of any irregularities in the 2020 election, why are they fighting so hard to prevent an investigation that could confirm it?
• Planned Parenthood finally admitted that its founder, Margaret Sanger, was a racist. But the real problem is that Planned Parenthood still destroys about 250 innocent black babies every day. The pro-life movement truly believes that black lives matter!
• Two new polls (here and here) find that the left's court packing plan is extremely unpopular.

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Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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The Ebbing of 'the Misperception That Bigotry Is Everywhere'

Michael Barone

by Michael Barone: How will future historians explain this? From 2001 to 2014, majorities of Americans, including supermajorities of blacks and non-Hispanic whites, told Gallup pollsters that "race relations" were either very or somewhat good.

Then, after the election and reelection of the first American president of African descent, each case with majorities of the popular vote and electoral votes, perceptions suddenly plunged.

Only around 50% of non-Hispanic whites rated race relations as good in 2015, 2019 and 2020. And the percentage of blacks taking that view fell to 51% in 2015, before Donald Trump's election as president, to 40% in 2019 and to 36% in 2020.

The short explanation is that August 2014 saw the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement amid protests about the police killing in Ferguson, Missouri, of an 18-year-old black who had just robbed a convenience store and attempted to seize a policeman's gun.

And May 2020 saw 46-year-old George Floyd die while being restrained by then-officer Derek Chauvin after he was arrested on suspicion of distributing counterfeit money in Minneapolis. This week, a jury convicted Chauvin of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

How common are such deaths? The Washington Post's database reports 3,630 people have been shot and killed by police since 2015, 3,503 of them men, 1,636 of the men white and 900 black. That's a higher share of blacks than in the general population but a lower percentage of blacks who have contact with police. An unhappy fact of life in America is that blacks are about seven to eight times more likely than whites to commit violent crimes.

Floyd's death generated enormous publicity and a sizable increase in support for the Black Lives Matter movement among whites (to 43% in Civiqs polling) as well as blacks (to 69%).

That support was accompanied by widespread misperceptions of the magnitude of police shootings of blacks. As Canadian political scientist Eric Kaufmann points out, a Quadratics survey in fall 2020 found that 8 in 10 African Americans believe black men are more likely to be killed by police than die in an auto accident, as did 53% of white Biden voters but only 15% of white Trump voters.

Actually, thousands of black men die in auto accidents every year, while fewer than 300 a year, according to The Post, are killed by police. Similar questions showed that similarly wide divergences from reality are apparent on other racially charged questions, and indeed, ordinary people often have enormous misperceptions of many statistical relationships.

In any case, as Manhattan Institute scholar Coleman Hughes has argued, "The public perception of bigotry has surpassed the reality to such an extent that it has become a moral panic." Hughes blames "critical race theory and intersectionality" for "the misperception that bigotry is everywhere, even as the data tell a different story: racism exists, but there has never been less racism than there is now."

That's not the message sent by President Joe Biden when he decried "systemic racism" while rooting for Chauvin's conviction (as former President Richard Nixon rooted for Charles Manson's) and called the new voting law in Georgia -- much more accommodating than that in his own Delaware -- "Jim Crow on steroids."

Those views may be as politically problematic as senior Rep. Maxine Waters' unmistakable call to have more violent riots if Chauvin wasn't convicted. By 46% to 37%, whites now oppose Black Lives Matter, and a similar number in a national poll support the Georgia election law.

Central cities, starting with Minneapolis, proceeded to "defund the police," only to see murder rates zoom upward and many black lives end. The 50 largest cities cut their 2021 police budgets by 5%, but a USA Today poll found only 18% nationally favor defunding the police and 58% are opposed.

National polls, by the way, may be understating opposition. The Cook Report's Amy Walter reports that Republican voters may be especially unwilling to be polled, and a retrospective study of 2020 by five top Democratic pollsters reached a similar conclusion.

As "The Emerging Democratic Majority" co-author Ruy Teixeira points out, Americans' belief that "discrimination and racism are bad but they are not the cause of all disparities in American society" is "clearly at odds with causes" and views embraced by Democratic activists and "intellectual supporters."

The ebbing of their view that the America that elected and reelected Obama is just as racist as ever, and maybe more so, may be coinciding with (or caused by?) the emergence from lockdown made possible by America's vaccination success, just as the spread of the Black Lives Matter view after the death of George Floyd coincided with (or was caused by?) lockdown fatigue. All of this is a sense that it's time to emerge, into reality.
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Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics. H/T Rasmussen Reports.

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Is America Led Today By Anti-Americans?

by Patrick J. Buchanan: Biden is saying that when Chauvin knelt on the neck of George Floyd for nine minutes as the life drained out of him, the world, for once, was getting a good, close look at the diseased soul of America… a reflection of the kind of justice America delivers to Black Americans.

How can America unite again to do great things if we are led by people who believe America suffers from a great sickness of the soul, an original sin that dates back to her birth as a nation?

Consider.

After his long night of prayer for “the right verdict” to be pronounced — Derek Chauvin was convicted on all three counts — Joe Biden stepped before the White House cameras to tell us what it all meant.

George Floyd’s death, said Biden, “was a murder in the full light of day, and it ripped the blinders off for the whole world to see the systemic racism… that is a stain on our nation’s soul — the knee on the neck of justice for Black Americans.”

Astonishing. Biden is saying that when Chauvin knelt on the neck of George Floyd for nine minutes as the life drained out of him, the world, for once, was getting a good, close look at the diseased soul of America.

What Chauvin was doing to Floyd, said the president of the United States, is a reflection of the kind of justice America delivers to Black Americans.

This is no aberration, Biden was saying. This is the routine reality.

Biden was introduced by Kamala Harris, who said much the same:

“America has a long history of systemic racism. Black Americans and Black men in particular have been treated throughout the course of our history as less than human.”

At Al Sharpton’s National Action Network, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Linda Thomas-Greenfield delivered what The Wall Street Journal called, “a recitation of America’s sins (that) could have come from China’s Global Times.”

Said Thomas-Greenfield:

“I have… seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles. … Racism is the problem of the racist. And it is the problem of the society that produces the racist.”

What our diplomat to the world is saying is that our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights are interwoven with white supremacy and that America, to this day, continues to breed racists.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at a Congressional Black Caucus event after the verdict, turned her eyes heavenward in gratitude:

“Thank you, George Floyd, for sacrificing your life for justice….For being there to call out to your mom — how heartbreaking was that … And because of you … your name will always be synonymous with justice.”

Implication: Floyd died to redeem America of her original sin of racism.

All in all, quite a commentary on our leaders.

For, again, our president and vice president are saying that this people and country still suffer from a sickness of the soul that dates back to its formative days.

The 1960s radicals who vilified our country as “Amerika” were rightly called “anti-American.” Today, the difference between what they said about America and what our highest elected leaders are saying is hard to discern.

Our enemies have picked up on this. In Anchorage, after Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Beijing out for repression in Hong Kong and “genocide” in Xinjiang, China’s foreign minister was right back in his face.

You Americans should look to your own sins and clean up your house before lecturing the world on political morality, he said. Today, that Chinese foreign minister could cite Biden and Harris as his chief witnesses that America is a nation sick in its soul.

We hear our leaders’ attacks on America. Where is their defense?

What other nation has provided the same measures of personal and political freedoms and material blessings for 40 million Black people as has the United States?

If people of color are treated “as less than human” in America, as Harris says, why are so many people of color seeking desperately to get across our Southern border to build their future here?

What is the real truth about race in America that goes unmentioned in the mainstream media’s endless hunt for encounters between Black men and white cops?

The main perpetrators of violent crimes against Black Americans — are other Black Americans. Black men, ages 16 to 40, are 3% of the U.S. population but commit roughly a third of America’s violent crimes.

Defund police, restrict police, remove police and you will get more of what the police prevent — crimes, especially violent crimes, in your community.

When Biden and Harris spoke of “systemic racism” afflicting our society, they were not describing their enlightened selves. And it was Hillary Clinton who identified the people the leftist elites have in mind:

“You could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. … The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. … Some of those folks… are irredeemable, but thankfully they are not America.”

What Clinton, Biden and Harris are all saying is that, though the moral sickness of racism pervades our society, we are the vaccinated ones.
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Patrick Buchanan (@PatrickBuchanan) is currently a blogger, conservative columnist, political analyst, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. He has been a senior adviser to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000.

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The Woke Skies

The Woke SkiesEditorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Doubling Down on Time Jiggering

by Paul Jacob: Daylight Saving Time was designed to trick us into spending more free time in daylight during summer. The trick? Set our clocks forward in the spring, meaning — if we keep to our old-clocked schedules — waking up and going to work earlier, leaving more recreational and home life (and shopping time) in sunnier late afternoons and evenings.

Kind of cheating. Surely we cam change our schedule to fit whatever
sunlight we want and we don't need Washington to tell
us when to get up ... even as they manipulate time.
Most folks find it a bother.* Switching one’s clocks back and forth means upsetting sleep rhythms, which can trigger negative health outcomes.

Commonsensical people prefer to chuck the program — and several states have opted out, having no Daylight Saving Time at all. The program’s benefits — and negatives — often prove hard to find in actual statistics.

Enter Senators Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). They want to get rid of all the Spring-Forward/Fall-Back nonsense.

And there’s a bill in the House to push the policy forward.

But they want to do it the Nixonian way, making Daylight Savings Time universal and year-long. This effectively shifts time zones permanently east by one hour. And ensures that no one will experience 12:00 at solar noon, with the Sun directly above.

Surely we can change our schedules to fit whatever sunlight we want and we don’t need Washington to tell us when to get up . . . even as they manipulate time.

Regardless, you can check out Murray’s and Rubio’s arguments in USA Today.

The switching has got to go. But the permanent evasion of astronomical timekeeping sure smacks of . . . the opposite of . . .

Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 
* Daylight Savings Time was first instituted in wartime by Woodrow Wilson, but repealed by popular demand during peacetime; this was repeated under FDR for WWII. Richard M. Nixon pushed it in during the Seventies as an energy conservation program. It still exists federally, with 16 state exceptions.
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Paul Jacob (@Common_Sense_PJ) 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.

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Woke CEOs who Condemned GA Election Integrity Laws Can’t Explain what is Racist About the Laws

When questioned at shareholder’s meetings, CEOs refused or were unable to thoroughly answer questions or give specifics of how Georgia’s laws are ‘racist.’
by Catherine Mortensen: Free enterprise advocates participating in annual shareholder meetings of corporations like Levi Strauss, whose CEO called the new Georgia election integrity law racist. Yet, one conservative shareholder group who attended the meeting claimed the CEO was unable to explain exactly why he thought the voting law was racist.

Davis Soderberg of the Free Enterprise Project (FEP) asked Levi Strauss CEO Chip Bergh, “Can you explain specifically how requiring voters to show ID in order to avoid fraud is racist, and also your timeline for ending all Levi Strauss requests for ID from job candidates, employees, visitors to your facilities, and attendees at your annual shareholder meetings, in conformance with your race-based claims?”

Soderberg said it was clear Bergh did not want to answer the question, and his response sounded canned. “These CEOs seem to have pre-written and pre-approved responses to every topic and then regardless of the specific questions that are asked on that topic, they will just give a broad answer and move on. They hate having to answer difficult questions pressed upon them by their shareholders.”

Here is how Bergh responded to Soderberg’s question:

“I think it’s important we step back, because I think there are some things that all Americans should be able to agree on. First and foremost, that voting is not a partisan issue, but it’s an American issue, that the right to vote is central to democracy. I like to say, ‘democracy only works if every eligible voter votes.’

“And we must come together as a country to protect that right. Democracy needs to work around a free, fair and equitable assess to the polls. As a company, we’ve been focused on voting and access to voting since before the midterm elections in 2018. We’ve participated in an organization called [MakeTimeToVote.org] with PayPal and Patagonia and enlisted over 2,000 companies to join us in giving employees time off to vote on Election Day.

“The 2020 election had the most Americans vote than any prior election. And it had the highest percentage of eligible voters voting in 120 years. And, definitely, it has been one of the safest and most secure elections in the history of voting in this country. Any step backwards is a step away from democracy. Our focus has been advocating for voting rights and civic participation, and actively supporting organizations that are working to dismantle barriers to voting designed to disenfranchise communities of color and others in low-income areas. We need to do more. For us, that includes ensuring our advocacy and grant-making focused on voting addresses the wave of discriminatory laws in states like Georgia, but also in states where we have large populations of employees like Texas, Florida, Mississippi and Kentucky.

“Right now, there are more than 350 bills moving in 47 states that are designed to restrict voting access. These bills are racist and undemocratic. And by the way, I’ve never said anything about voter ID. So, we are focused and join with more than 170 other companies in signing onto business statements with the civic alliance, calling on lawmakers around the country to set aside partisan politics and work together to pass laws that make voting safe and accessible to everyone. And we’re supporting federal legislation like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to ensure that all voters can participate in their democracy free from discrimination.”

Soderberg’s organization, which is part of the National Center for Public Policy Research, believes corporations should be politically neutral. “Many woke corporate CEO’s use their decision-making power to satisfy their own personal political desires, which often don’t align with their shareholders’ beliefs. Our advocacy work at the Free Enterprise Project is to help shareholders voice their conservative values and stand up to these self-righteous business executives.”

Soderberg explained that for years left-wing coalitions have been investing in companies and pushing their radical agendas upon them. He said that the conservatives are behind in this movement. “Right-of-center investors have failed to actively engage in shareholder meetings and corporate governance in the past, it’s time we start playing hard-ball just like the left-wing shareholder coalitions.” Soderberg continued, “the FEP and the Back to Neutral coalition are leading the charge in that fight, but we need all conservatives’ hands on deck to counter the leftward march.”

“Many Americans are just now waking up to the fact that American corporations are falling victim to leftism,” Soderberg added. “The shareholder activists on the left have become very powerful. These CEOs are snuggling up to groups like As You Sow to slingshot a far-left agenda that does nothing to solidify the long-term growth for their businesses. Shareholders must aware of this reality, and start holding corporate leaders accountable.”

In addition to the Levi Strauss shareholder meeting, FEP representatives attended several other corporate shareholder meetings this week, including Coca-Cola’s and Bank of America’s, all companies whose CEOs came out in opposition to Georgia’s voter integrity laws.

Soderberg’s colleague, Scott Sheppard said many of these CEOs are now “retreating or petulantly repeating generalized talking points without being able to identify any single provision that triggers their objections. This has been a vital demonstration of the dangers, risks and errors of ‘woke’ capitalism. Calling a state’s voting laws illegitimate, and even racist, is a really big deal. It is not a move that competently run companies would rush into given the risks of embarrassment, of alienating key stakeholders and of demonstrating their incompetence beyond a narrow focus on the businesses they run.

“If these companies have been misidentified as having opposed the Georgia voter law, it should say so plainly,” added Shepard. “If they were properly identified, and now have backed off, they still owe the people of Georgia an apology for libeling the state. These companies should rethink their commitment to knee-jerk reactions to profound civic issues.”


Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning said this is just the kind of citizen and shareholder activism that is needed to hold these elitist CEOs accountable.

“For too long, we have ceded too much ground to the Left,” Manning said. “I’m thrilled to see groups on the right start to ask these CEOs tough questions. Anyone who owns stock in a company is eligible to ask a question in these shareholder meetings. I encourage everyone to get involved this way and try to steer these woke companies back to being politically neutral.”

For more on how you can get involved in stopping corporate tyranny, go to StopCorporateTyranny.org.
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Catherine Mortensen is Vice President of Communications at Americans for Limited Government.

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Tags: Catherine Mortensen, Americans for Limited Government, Woke CEOs, who Condemned GA Election Integrity Laws, Can’t Explain, what is Racist, About the Laws To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!

Reduce Drug Prices and Boost Access Through a Personal Option, Not Government Rationing

by Americans for Prosperity: Yesterday, House Democrats introduced H.R. 3. While the goal of the legislation – lowering prescription drug prices – is laudable, the plan is deeply flawed and would cause far more harm than good, leading to widespread drug shortages and stifling the development of new life-saving medicines.

A smarter approach would be to give Americans a personal option for prescription drugs that creates a greater supply of available medicines. Lawmakers could do this in a few ways, including:

• Streamlining the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s drug approval process so that new drugs are approved at the same rate of speed as the COVID-19 vaccines;
• Removing barriers that block access to generic versions of drugs;
• Allowing for more legal drug importation from other countries; and more.

AFP Senior Health Policy Fellow Dean Clancy issued the following statement:“Making prescription drugs more affordable doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game that forces patients to choose between lower prices and access to the treatments they need. A rationing scheme that puts the government in charge of Americans’ medicine cabinets is the wrong prescription that would only hurt those we need to help. Instead of H.R. 3’s approach, lawmakers should give Americans a personal option that brings drug prices down and boosts access to prescription medicines by increasing competition, expanding choice, and promoting innovation.”Going forward, Americans for Prosperity will educate Americans in districts across the country about the dangers of H.R. 3 and why lawmakers should work together in bipartisan fashion to create a personal option for prescription drugs.

Background:
In a December 2019 report, the White House Council of Economic Advisers estimated that H.R. 3 would reduce the pharmaceutical spending on research and development by $75 billion to $200 billion over the next decade. If price controls were to reduce R&D by $200 billion over the next 10 years, the CEA concluded, the industry will introduce as many as 100 fewer products over that period. Instead of 300 new drugs, Americans would see 200. According to the CEA, Americans would be less healthy and less economically productive. The $34.5 billion in annual savings that the federal government would realize from price controls would reduce annual economic output by $375 billion to $1 trillion, imposing a cost to society 10 to 30 times the federal savings.

Price controls have failed in other areas of the globe. In the European Union, price controls have led to drug shortages. Meanwhile, while Americans enjoy access to 89 percent of new drugs, Canadians only have access to about half, because its government deems most new drugs “too expensive.”

AFP’s plan, the personal option, would reduce drug prices while boosting access through the following reforms:

Faster Drug Approvals. Reform the FDA’s drug approval process to reduce prescription drug costs. Grant automatic approval to any therapy approved as safe by advanced countries we trust.

More Generic Competition. Promote robust generic competition through sensible, bipartisan reforms that respect the just rights of inventors. Many such reforms can be found in House bill HR 19 and the Senate’s Wyden-Grassley drug reform proposal.

Tax-Free Savings for All. Let every American save and spend for prescription drugs, tax-free. Allow every Americans have a tax-free Health Savings Account (HSA) and thus a generous discount on every out-of-pocket prescription-drug expense. For lower-income individuals, provide means-tested government contributions, so they too can benefit from this powerful tool. Codify the current federal rule on Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs), so employees can use pre-tax contributions from their employer to purchase personally owned, portable health insurance that includes good-quality prescription drug coverage that meets their individual needs.

Legal Drug Importation. Allow individuals and importers to bring legal prescription drugs into this country without hindrance.

Better Medicare Drug Coverage. Auto-enroll all new Medicare enrollees into a high-quality, low-premium Medicare Advantage plan that includes good drug coverage, while allowing them to opt into original Medicare if they wish. Protect those who opt into original Medicare from excessive drug costs by capping their total Part D out-of-pocket cost exposure and eliminating the infamous “donut hole” coverage gap.
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Article by Americans For Prosperity.

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The Thomas-Greenfield Doctrine of U.S. Foreign Policy

by Caroline Glick: Taken at face value, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s condemnation of the United States in a speech last week before Al Sharpton’s National Action Network was one of the most bizarre statements made by a diplomat—from the U.S. or, indeed, from anywhere—in recent years.

In her remarks, Thomas-Greenfield castigated the U.S. as inherently, irredeemably evil. “I have seen for myself how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles,” America’s woman at the United Nations said.

While bizarre to the uninformed, it turns out Thomas-Greenfield’s remarks were simply her stump speech. She gave the same one—nearly verbatim—at the UN last month.

Speaking at the UN General Assembly’s meeting marking the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, Thomas-Greenfield insisted that America’s “original sin” of slavery has not been expunged from American life. It has simply morphed into a new form.

There is “a direct line from slavery to lynchings to segregation to mass incarceration,” she alleged. So as far as Thomas-Greenfield is concerned, slavery didn’t end when hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers gave their lives to end slavery in the Civil War. It didn’t end through constitutional amendments, or even during the civil rights movement. America’s “original sin of slavery” continues to have a terrible impact “on our people today,” she insisted.

The most basic job of a diplomat—for any country—is to put a good face on his or her country before the nations of the world. At the UN, an institution dominated by tyrannies, the U.S faces isolation as a matter of course. For the most part, the only U.S. initiatives at the UN that have succeeded have been those that directly support rogue actors—like then-President Barack Obama‘s decision to rejoin the dictator-controlled, anti-American and anti-Semitic Human Rights Council, as well as his decision to legitimize Iran’s nuclear program.

By repeatedly attacking and condemning her own country, Thomas-Greenfield was telling her fellow UN ambassadors two things. First, they have no reason to take seriously anything the U.S. says about human rights in their own countries. By accusing her own nation of using private prisons to “warehouse young black and brown men,” Thomas-Greenfield signaled to the regimes of Iran, Venezuela, Russia, China, Cuba and fellow tyrannies to go ahead and abuse their own citizens “just like America.”

Second, Thomas-Greenfield signaled that the U.S. is surrendering its leadership of the free world and is instead reverting to the Obama administration’s policy of “leading from behind” at the UN by adopting positions that are advantageous to U.S. foes.

The question is whether Thomas-Greenfield’s trashing of the U.S. represents merely her personal policy, or whether it is an expression of the Biden administration’s foreign policy doctrine. The answer becomes clear from a brief glance at the administration’s handling of two key Middle East issues: Iran’s nuclear program and U.S. financial assistance for the terrorism-financing Palestinian Authority.

Earlier this month, the administration began conducting what are referred to as “indirect talks” with Iran in Vienna about restoring both sides’ commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal. Iran began breaching the limitations the deal imposed on its nuclear activities from the outset by, among other things, stockpiling more enriched uranium than was permitted under the 2015 agreement. In response to Iran’s breaches and overall bad faith—as well as the inherent limitations of an agreement that permitted Iran to continue invading neighbors, supporting terrorist organizations and proliferating ballistic missiles, while legitimizing its nuclear program lock, stock and barrel when the deal expires in 2025—in 2018 Trump withdrew the U.S. from the nuclear deal and reimposed U.S. economic sanctions on the mullahs. In recent months, Iran significantly ratcheted up its nuclear activities, including, most recently, escalating its uranium enrichment to 60 percent.

The U.S.-Iran negotiations are taking place through European, Russian and Chinese intermediaries rather than face-to-face because Iran refuses to “stoop” to speaking with Americans.

In the past, American negotiators would have refused to be humiliated in this way. Certainly, they would have refused to accept this contemptuous treatment from the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. But according to leaks from Vienna, far from taking umbrage at Iran’s disrespect, Biden’s team is capitulating to Iran’s demands on all fronts.

According to Israel’s largest-circulation daily, Israel Hayom, Biden’s team has agreed to rescind U.S. economic sanctions on Iran and allow it to reenter global commerce. The administration has also reportedly bowed to Iran’s demand that the original deal be amended to legitimize Iran’s breaches. On Sunday, it was reported that the U.S. chief negotiator in Vienna, Robert Malley, has agreed to Iran’s demand that it be permitted to continue its unlawful uranium enrichment. The advanced centrifuges that Iran is now employing in contravention of the 2015 deal will be permitted to keep spinning.

At the same time, the Biden administration will drop all its own previous pledges to amend the deal to block Iran’s missile program and support for terrorism, and to get Iranian occupation forces out of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Iran will get its money and its nuclear program—and perhaps, the Biden administration hopes, Iran’s dictators will be kind enough to end their malign behavior in the future out of the goodness of their hearts.

The same self-flagellation is the rule, rather than the exception, in the administration’s dealing with the Palestinians. In open breach of U.S. law, such as the Taylor Force Act, which bars the U.S. from funding the Palestinian Authority due to its funding of terrorists, the administration announced earlier this month that it was restoring U.S. funding to the PA to the tune of nearly $100 million. To facilitate its effort, the administration has embraced subterfuge. It is pretending that Palestinian “NGOs,” which are entirely controlled by the PA, are actually independent entities.

Biden’s willingness to break U.S. law to reinstate funding for the corrupt, terror-supporting regime did not win him any plaudits from the Palestinian leadership. On the contrary, it elicited contempt. PA leader Mahmoud Abbas refuses to accept phone calls from Secretary of State Antony Blinken, holding out instead for an elusive call from Biden himself. And in a speech before the anti-Israel pressure group J Street earlier this week, Abbas demanded that the U.S. cancel laws sanctioning the Palestinians for their continued participation in, and support for, terrorism.

Trying to place the Biden administration’s policy of national humiliation into a recognizable doctrine of foreign policy is impossible. All U.S. foreign policy doctrines, from the isolationist school to the liberal internationalist school, begin with their agreement that U.S. foreign policy should aim to advance U.S. interests, and that those interests reflect the fact that the U.S. is a moral and exceptional country. Instead, the Biden administration’s policy begins with the assertion that the U.S is an immoral and unexceptional nation, without the right to expect or receive the respect of others, or to advance its own national interest.

America’s allies are stunned by the administration’s behavior. And America’s enemies are quick to capitalize on it: China’s $400 billion strategic partnership with Iran is a direct corollary of Biden’s masochistic behavior in Vienna.

The only way to understand Biden foreign policy doctrine is by recognizing that it isn’t a foreign policy doctrine at all. It is an extension of Biden’s domestic genuflection to the radicals who control his own party. This genuflection takes the Biden administration’s embrace of critical race theory in domestic law enforcement, public health, immigration and economic policies and projects it out onto the world stage. The purpose is not to advance America’s interests in the world. Rather, the purpose is to signal to the fanatical progressives who run the modern Democratic Party that Biden is their man in the White House.

Throughout the Cold War, the view of both major parties was that “politics stops at the water’s edge.” That is, the debates over domestic issues would not influence America’s policies toward the world or its commitment to protecting its interests and allies. The man who coined the phrase, Republican Senator Arthur Vandenberg, explained: “To me, ‘bipartisan foreign policy’ means a mutual effort, under our indispensable two-party system, to unite our official voice at the water’s edge so that America speaks with maximum authority against those who would divide and conquer us and the free world.”

When asked whether Biden would fire Thomas-Greenfield in light of her use of Chinese Foreign Ministry talking points to attack America, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki scoffed. “Most people recognize the history of systemic racism in our country,” she said dismissively.
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Caroline Glick writes for CarolineGlick.com.

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GOP to Planned Parenthood: Mind Your Loan Business

by Tony Perkins: There are lots of ways to describe a business with $2 billion dollars in assets -- but "charity" isn't one of them. And yet, that's how Democrats must see Planned Parenthood, the "nonprofit" that just took in its biggest taxpayer-funded haul in history: $618 million dollars. Now, as if that weren't enough, they've stuck out their hand for more -- trying to cash in on the pandemic relief that clearly meant for small businesses. Well, Planned Parenthood isn't "small" and isn't eligible. And if the country's abortion tycoon doesn't give the money back, Senate Republicans want the government to come and take it.

The Paycheck Protection loans were supposed to be for hurting mom and pops -- not abortion tycoons trying to stop people from being moms and pops. And Planned Parenthood knew it. When they swindled $80 million dollars out of the small business pool in 2020, they knew the rules. The government specifically excluded big businesses, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.) pointed out. For a company with 16,000 employees to say otherwise, Republicans have said, is fraud. They not only cheated taxpayers out of the money -- they poached it from desperate employers who need these loans to stay afloat.

Of course, the other outrage is that Planned Parenthood didn't need the loans, because guess what? They were still operating! Even in states where governors explicitly told them to stop, they went ahead performing abortions anyway -- cramming women into unsafe waiting rooms and openly defying states' orders. While everyone else was taking a hit to their bottom line because of the lockdown, their cash registers didn't stop ringing. In fact, some affiliates bragged they'd never been busier!

For months, Republicans have been holding the Small Business Administration's (SBA) feet to the fire, demanding that they get those dollars back. Maybe there was confusion in the mad dash for cash last April, but there's no confusion now. So why is the SBA still forking over millions to Planned Parenthood? Good question, Paul says. And yet, "one more affiliate was approved for a second PPP loan while conservatives were leading the call for an investigation!"

"The Trump administration saw that they lied," Paul explains. "They knew they got the money illegally... So they made they made a ruling... on what affiliates are and who controls them. And so the Trump administration said, 'Send the money back.' A few of the Planned Parenthoods did send some money back, but most of them kept the money." Now, with the commander-in-abortion Joe Biden in charge, the SBA is even more indifferent. When officials came before the Small Business Committee where Paul is the ranking Republican, he said they asked them: "Look, we've seen the data, and we know that you're giving second loans to Planned Parenthood after you already told them it was illegal. Why aren't you pushing to get all of the money back -- and why in the world would you be giving second loans to entities that you knew were getting it illegally?" "They professed not to understand," Paul said.

That was even more infuriating, the senator explained, because these same officials had bragged in their testimony about how they were surveilling and catching ineligible businesses. And that's when Paul asked the administrator directly: "'Have you changed the policy? Have you changed the Trump policy and are Planned Parenthood affiliates now able to get this money?' He said, 'No, we haven't changed the policy.' ... So we immediately sent a letter to the Department of Justice, to the inspector general for the Small Business Administration and to the Small Business Administration itself [demanding an investigation]."

At the end of the day, these are Biden officials. "And, as you know," Paul said, Planned Parenthood dictates the politics of the Left and dictates the politics of the Democrat Party. And I think that they're going to keep giving them money, even though it is overtly against the law. But," he warned, "they also know now that I'm going to be dogged in pursuing this, and we're not going to let go." There's a chance the inspector general will take this seriously, Paul told listeners. "If there's anything that's pretty close to independent in the federal government -- an independent watchdog -- it's the inspector general. So we're going to keep pushing it on all fronts... If they're breaking the law, we want them to stop."

He's right. Planned Parenthood doesn't need a bailout. It needs a blackout of taxpayer funds!
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Tony Perkins (@tperkins) is President of the Family Research Council . Article on Tony Perkins' Washington Update and written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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The Threat To America, Media Malfeasance, LeBron's Threat

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer: The Threat To America
Throughout history, propaganda that undermines the morale of a nation has always been an effective weapon. Well, no enemy of the United States – not communist China, not Russia, not Iran – could do more through propaganda to hurt our country than what the American left is doing right now.

The left's rhetoric is turning our people against each other. (See next item.) It's making our children hate the country of their birth. No foreign enemy could accomplish what the political left has managed to do. And it's no coincidence that our enemies now parrot the left's rhetoric to slander America.

Throughout history, every country taught its citizens to love their country. That's how countries survive in this dangerous world.

But for decades, our cultural leaders, and at times our government leaders, have been telling our children that they live in a terrible, racist country. They've been telling our children that there are only two types of people: You're either oppressed in America or you are an oppressor in America.

That is a poisonous lie!

Obviously, America isn't perfect. No nation is. But compared to any other country, America is a shining city upon a hill.

That's why each and every day thousands of people risk their lives to enter this country illegally. But people of color are not coming here in droves because America is a systemically racist nation. Ironically, the crisis at the southern border disproves the left's big lie about America.

Those slandering America range from the president of the United States to university professors and teachers in our public schools. It includes many media commentators and professional athletes who have enjoyed unimaginable wealth and privilege. And yet they pay back their country by tearing it down.

If the left's hatred continues to run its course unchallenged, it will bring America to its knees as effectively as any virus or nuclear missile landing on our soil.

Remember the Tea Party – a spontaneous movement of Americans frustrated with big government? My old friend Bill Bennett, who was Ronald Reagan's secretary of Education and I served as under secretary, said this morning that we need a cultural Tea Party of citizens willing to defend our country from the lies of the radical left.

That was and still is Donald Trump's America First movement.

Media Malfeasance
Here we go again.

Earlier this week, a white police officer in Columbus, Ohio, responded to a frantic 911 caller who said someone was "trying to stab us." As he arrives on the scene, there is a horrific fight taking place. The officer witnesses a black teenage girl armed with knife about to stab another black teenage girl who is backed up against a car.

The officer yells, "Get Down!" multiple times, and then fires his weapon killing the attacker, 16 year-old Ma'Khia Bryant.

The headlines describing this event could have been, "White Cop Saves Black Teen" or "Hero Cop Saves Black Life."

Instead, we got headlines like this from the Washington Post: "Fatal Police Shooting Of Black Teenager In Columbus Sparks New Outcry." That was tame by comparison. Other headlines even tried to drag Derek Chauvin into it.

For the first seven paragraphs of the Post report, all you get is rhetoric like this:

". . . a person of color killed by law enforcement. . ."

". . . a long and growing list of Black people killed by police officers. . ."

". . . systemic racism and overhaul policing. . ."

". . . an example of the kind of systemic racism that persists in the country's policing practices."

You have to get eight paragraphs into the Post report before you learn (and almost as an afterthought) the most important fact: That the attacker was armed with a knife; that the use of deadly force was justified; that this probably shouldn't be a front-page national news story.

The officer saved at least one black life! But, sadly, the White House and the entire media complex put the worst possible spin on it.

Exactly what is it that President Biden, Vice President Harris, Valerie Jarrett and LeBron James (see below) wanted that police officer to do? I have no doubt that if the officer had not acted, he would be getting attacked today for not caring about black lives.

LeBron's Threat
There are persistent rumors that LeBron James is planning to pursue a political career in Ohio. There were reports that he heavily influenced the decision of MLB Commissioner Manfred to pull the All-Star Game out of Georgia.

No one questions James's skill on the basketball court. He is a scoring machine. But while we can celebrate his athletic abilities, we don't need to elevate him to public office.

Reacting to Ma'Khia Bryant's death, James tweeted a photo of the Columbus police officer with the caption, "YOU'RE NEXT #ACCOUNTABILITY."

The tweet was widely seen as a threat to the officer's life, and a clear incitement to violence. The Fraternal Order of Police blasted James for "gaslighting" America, and condemned his tweet as "disgraceful and extremely reckless."

After a fierce backlash, James eventually deleted the tweet. But he lashed out at his critics, insisting they were the ones creating "more hate," and adding, "This isn't about one officer. It's about the entire system. . ."

So, there you go. James is just another run-of-the-mill, anti-American leftist who thinks the entire system is racist. He rakes in millions while stepping over black bodies killed by gangs and criminals because he is fixated on the left's false narratives.

Minneapolis Misery
The misery in Minneapolis is far from over. Other cases involving Officer Kim Potter and three more officers involved in George Floyd's death are still pending. Meanwhile, Merrick Garland, who was nominated by Obama for the Supreme Court and wisely blocked by Mitch McConnell, is now attorney general of the United States.

In the wake of Chauvin verdict, Garland revived an Obama-era program used by Eric Holder against police departments all over the country. Garland announced that the Department of Justice is going to investigate the Minneapolis Police Department, presumably because the Biden Administration believes there is deep-seated racism that must be rooted out.

Keep in mind that Minneapolis is governed by a liberal Democrat mayor and a radical left-wing city council. But we know how this ends. We've seen it before. Every officer in Minneapolis will stop taking risks fearing that anything they do will be second-guessed by federal officials who assume law enforcement is systemically racist.

At some point, the Democrats who run Minneapolis will cut a deal with the Democrats investigating Minneapolis to "reform" policing. Crime will go up. And the most frequent victims will inevitably be the minority residents of the city.

So, a blow for reform will be struck, and more black kids will die. And the radical leftists who run the Democrat Party will call that progress.
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Gary Bauer (@GaryLBauer)  is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

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How Much Ruin Do We Have Left?

The rest of the world is watching — some with glee, others with horror.

Victor Davis Hanson

by Victor Davis Hanson: As Americans know from their own illustrious history, any nation’s well-being hinges on only a few factors. Its prosperity, freedom, and overall stability depend on its constitutional and political stability. A secure currency and financial order are also essential, as is a strong military.

Perhaps most important is a first-rate inductive educational system. Of course, nothing is possible without general social calm (often dependent on a reverence for the past) and secure borders.

The ability to produce or easily acquire food, fuel, and key natural resources ensures a nation’s independence and autonomy.

Unfortunately, in the last few months, all of those centuries-old reasons to be confident in American strength and resiliency have been put into doubt.

The challenge is not just enemies abroad such as China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. The greater problem lies within us, as we erode the inherited and acquired strengths that made us singular, both materially and spiritually.

We are now witnessing a concentrated effort to alter the constitutional order and centuries of custom and tradition. The left believes that’s the only way it can retain its transient power, given the unpopularity of most of its current agenda.

A nation’s institutions are its bedrock. Yet, the Electoral College and the Constitution’s emphasis on individual states establishing voting laws are under assault.

Already gone is the 176-year-old tradition of a pivotal November Election Day. The 152-year-old nine-member Supreme Court, the 184-year-old Senate filibuster and the 62-year-old idea of a 50-state union are all being targeted by the New Democratic Party.

Given that the last presidential election was hotly contested, that Democratic congressional majorities are minuscule, and that the Supreme Court is unsympathetic, the left seeks to change the rules to stay in power rather than adjust its unpopular policies.

We are running up vast multitrillion-dollar annual deficits as we race to a $30 trillion national debt. More worrisome, our elites justify the spending with sophistries about debt being irrelevant, or inflation and stagflation being relics of the past — even as prices are now soaring.

After costly strategic stagnation in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, our military is now turning on its own. Some of the politicized top brass seem more worried about the politics of their own soldiers than the dangers of foreign militaries.

Our public schools and colleges are systematically downplaying meritocratic curricula and substituting ideological, racial, and cultural litmus tests. Admissions now often hinge as much on race, gender, and ethnicity as on quantifiable achievement. The First Amendment and Fifth Amendment, covering free speech and due process, have vanished from most college campuses.

The year 2020 saw the most destructive riots in American history. Yet very few of the looters, arsonists, and rioters were ever indicted. Most were never arrested.

Whether the government arrests violent protesters or those assembling en masse and breaking quarantines is contingent on their ideology.

Private monopolies that control most of the written communications of Americans censor expression entirely on the basis of politics.

Modern Jacobins seek to erase our founding in 1776. Mobs tear down statues and deface monuments with impunity. There is no consistent rhyme or reason as to why the names of schools, institutions, and streets are erased overnight — except the relative dangers of a nihilistic electronic mob.

Our officials at the Justice Department and the United Nations either will not or cannot defend the history and reputation of their own homeland.

Record natural gas and oil production has been giving the public affordable heating, cooling, and transportation. Self-sufficiency in energy made the United States exempt from worries over Middle Eastern wars and foreign oil embargos. The more we produced our own natural gas, the cleaner became our air and the smaller our collective carbon footprint.

Yet in just 100 days, energy prices have soared. The Joe Biden administration has canceled the Keystone XL pipeline and limited energy leasing on federal lands, threatening to all but end our gas and oil independence in just a few years.

In the drought-stricken West, key irrigation water is still being diverted from farms to the ocean. Billions of dollars in farm aid are doled out on the basis of race. And promised new regulations and estate taxes may well kill off what’s left of family farms.

Adam Smith said of successful nations that they have a lot of “ruin” in them. He meant that a dissolute, leisure and ahistorical generation has to waste a lot of its generous inherited wealth before it runs out.

We are learning how much will soon be left of what our ancestors bequeathed. And the rest of the world is watching — some with glee, others with horror.
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Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) is a senior fellow, classicist and historian and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution where many of his articles are found; his focus is classics and military history. He has been a visiting professor at Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal in 2007 by President George W. Bush. H/T McIntosh Enterprises & The Patriot Post.

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A Black Republican Talks Race

Burgess Owens slams Democrats on reparations and race-baiting in general.
by Lewis Morris: Utah Republican Congressman Burgess Owens is a black man who is the descendent of slaves. His grandfather proudly served in World War I, and his father served in World War II. Undeterred by living in the actual Jim Crow South of the early 1960s, Owens attended college and became an all-star football player. He went on to have a respectable career in the NFL, earning a Super Bowl ring along the way. Owens knows the value of hard work. He also knows racism when he sees it. And Burgess Owens will tell you straight away that today’s Democrat Party is exhibiting “true racism.”

Since taking office, Owens has proudly stood on the front line to fight against the Democrats’ incessant race-baiting. He had the chance to speak his mind at the Senate Judiciary Committee’s sham hearings into voter election laws this week, where he called out President Joe Biden and the Democrat Party for using the memory of Jim Crow as leverage in their attempt to defeat Georgia’s voting law.

“What I find extremely offensive,” Owens said, “is the narrative from the Left that black people are not smart enough, not educated enough, not desirous enough of education to do what every other culture and race does in this country: get an ID.”

Owens further explained that Georgia’s election law does not even come close to establishing the systemic hurdles to minority voting that were present during the Jim Crow era in the Deep South. And he speaks from experience — something Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are sorely lacking.

It’s not just voting, though. Owens also spoke out against reparations for blacks, pointing out the impracticality and logistical impossibility of calculating and distributing taxpayer money and who should get it.

More importantly, says Owens, “Reparations teach separation and convey a narrative that black Americans are a hopeless, hapless, and oppressed race entitled to handouts. The core of the debate certainly does not represent black America’s potential, nor the 150 years of legal, social, and economic progress achieved by millions of American minorities.”

Owens’s words drive right to the fact that the Democrat Party doesn’t think very highly of blacks in America. At every turn, under the guise of protecting them, Democrats portray blacks as needing special attention and privileges when it comes to getting a job, obtaining a college education, buying a home, and many other tasks. Blacks in America should not feel soothed by this rhetoric. They should feel insulted.

The extent of concern Democrats truly have for blacks is directly proportional to how many votes they can draw from them. Democrats buy those votes with free stuff and the promise of better education and job opportunities that they never seem to deliver. They use victimology and race-baiting as a means of convincing blacks that the Democrat Party is the only way blacks will get ahead in this country. They conveniently sweep aside the fact that Democrats were the slave owners, Jim Crow was a Democrat creation, Democrats fought against civil rights legislation for decades, and their current policies have repeatedly failed to improve the lives of blacks in America.

Burgess Owens speaks the truth about the real source of racism in this country. More voices should join him.
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Lewis Morris writes The Patriot Post.

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Critical Child Abuse

Critical Race Theory is dividing our country and demoralizing children because of the color of their skin.
Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

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Democrats Could End Border Crisis Quickly. Instead, They’re Making It Worse.

Illegal immigrants wade ashore April 14 in Roma, Texas, after a
smuggler, left, brings them across the Rio Grande from Mexico in a raft.

by Mike Pence: President Joe Biden inherited the most secure southern border in American history. Under the Trump-Pence administration, we built more than 450 miles of the world’s most robust border wall, reducing illegal crossings by over 90%.

We abolished the absurd practice of “catch and release.” We ended asylum fraud through a groundbreaking partnership with Mexico known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, requiring illegal aliens who are seeking asylum to remain in Mexico while their cases are adjudicated.

And during the pandemic, we authorized sweeping emergency measures to immediately remove virtually every illegal immigrant apprehended at the southern border, to protect the health and safety of American citizens.

For years, politicians promised to secure the border. Under the last administration, we delivered.

And yet, in just three short months, the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress have unleashed the worst border crisis in the history of our country.

On his first day in office, Biden suspended nearly all deportations nationwide, shut down construction of the border wall, reinstated catch and release, canceled the Migrant Protection Protocols, and proposed amnesty for millions of illegal aliens currently residing in the United States. Not long after that, the Biden administration announced it would allow unaccompanied minors to enter the country.

Seemingly overnight, illegal immigration surged to levels unseen since 2006. The number of unaccompanied minors apprehended at the border is the highest ever recorded, and the results are heartbreaking.

Smugglers are dropping toddlers from atop 14-foot-high border barriers, leaving children as young as 3 to fend for themselves in the wilderness. Tragically, children and adults have drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande. American citizens living near the border have become victims of burglary, theft, and worse.

The problem isn’t getting better—it is rapidly growing worse.

Biden administration officials now admit that as many as 2 million migrants may try to enter our country illegally this year, the most of any year in the 21st century.

In addition to spending $87 million on hotel rooms for illegal aliens, the administration frantically has converted military bases and convention centers into emergency housing in anticipation of the next, even larger, wave of unaccompanied minors, families, and adults.

Yet as the human suffering intensifies on both sides of the border, neither Biden nor Vice President Kamala Harris has taken the time to visit the border and witness the crisis firsthand.

Thousands of miles to the south, the Democrats’ message is as clear as a bell. As Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador correctly noted:Expectations were created that with the government of President Biden there would be a better treatment of migrants. And this has caused Central American migrants, and also from our country, wanting to cross the border thinking that it is easier to do so.The catastrophe now unfolding at our border is a direct result of progressive policies and pronouncements emanating from Democrats in Washington. But Democrats can end this disaster just as quickly as they caused it. All they have to do is reinstate commonsense border enforcement and stop treating U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol as a concierge service for illegal aliens.

The truth is, support for open borders and unlimited immigration is a key precept of today’s Democrat Party. It is extremely telling that most Democrat politicians refuse to even utter the word “crisis” to describe what obviously is an unmitigated disaster. Many on the radical left likely don’t see the current crisis as a failure, but ultimately as a victory in their never-ending struggle for open borders.

Democrats believe the problem at the border is a lack of capacity to house and process an unprecedented surge of illegal aliens. But the actual problem is not mismanagement of the surge but the surge itself, which is caused solely and exclusively by Democrats’ open border policies.

In fact, the left’s approach thus far to dealing with the crisis only will exacerbate the problem. There never will be enough capacity to deal with the surge that the left’s policies invite.

Until left-wing politicians recognize the true nature of the border crisis and its roots in far-left policies, the crisis only will get worse. Wave after wave of illegal aliens will arrive at our southern border in an endless cascade of chaos.

The savage drug cartels that profit from human smuggling will grow richer and more powerful by the day, bolstering their ability to terrorize their home nations while flooding American neighborhoods with a sea of poisonous drugs and violence.

And American families will be punished with lost jobs, lower wages, overcrowded schools, and overburdened public services.

Immigration has been an existential issue for all nations at all times, but never more so for the United States. America is a welcoming nation to many who come in search of opportunity, but we also must be a nation of laws. Open borders combined with free health care, education, and welfare is a recipe for disaster. You can be for working-class families or you can be for open borders—but you cannot be for both.

In four short years, the Trump-Pence administration proved that we can secure our southern border and end the crisis of illegal immigration.

Every American concerned about the humanitarian crisis at our border should continue to demand full enforcement of immigration law, renewed investments in border security and the wall, restoration of the “Remain in Mexico” policy, and an end to catch and release.

These policies worked under our administration, and they are the only means of ending the unfolding crisis of illegal immigration under the Biden administration.
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Mike Pence is a distinguished visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation and chairman of Advancing American Freedom. He previously served as vice president of the United States, governor of Indiana, and member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

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