Day: May 17, 2018

Fayette County Republican Party Adopts Resolution Supporting Green-Reedy Anti-Sanctuary City Bill

Chris Alto

The Fayette County Republican Party is the first county political organization to adopt a Resolution supporting the Green-Reedy Anti-Sanctuary City bill. They have transmitted their resolution to Governor Haslam’s office with the following message: “As fellow Republicans, we respectfully ask that you please sign the bill that overwhelmingly passed in both the House and Senate. Thank you for your thoughtful consideration.” Resolution of the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Fayette County, Tennessee Supporting Federal Immigration Laws in Tennessee Whereas every person of alien nationality who has not complied fully with the immigration statutes and regulations of the United States is not a legal resident of the State of Tennessee or any other jurisdiction, and, Whereas every such person illegally present in Tennessee is in conscious violation of the law, defiantly putting their own convenience and benefit above the rights of the People of the United States to make, enforce, and abide by the laws we choose, specifically defining whom we choose to allow to join in our national community, and, Whereas every member of the General Assembly, the Executive Branch, and the Judicial branch of the State of Tennessee, has sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United…

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Did Karl Dean Use Flood Relief Funds to Build Ascend Amphitheater?

Jason M. Reynolds

News4 I-Team has followed up with its stunning report that it says shows former Nashville Mayor Karl Dean used relief funds from the 2010 flood to build Ascend Ampitheater. Dean denied the accusation during a gubernatorial debate Tuesday night after opponent Craig Fitzhugh brought it up, WSMV said. Last week News4 I-Team reported that $7.4 million in HUD disaster relief money didn’t go to flood victims; it went to design and engineering work for riverfront development, including Ascend Amphitheater. Dean’s former communications director Janel Lacy tweeted, “strong rebuttal by Karl Dean in response to a false statement about the use of flood recovery funds.” Paige Hill, communications director for the Karl Dean for Governor campaign, gave a statement saying Dean went through a three-year period of working with Metro Council and other stakeholders to “repurpose” $7 million of Community Development Block Grant funds to build a seepage cut-off wall along the Riverfront Park where the ampitheater is located. “This infrastructure fix slows down the movement of underground water and helps decrease the impact of future floods. The city’s actual investment in flood mitigation totaled well over the $7 million that was repurposed.” The I-Team report cited invoices and other paperwork…

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California Officials Back Trump on Crackdown on ‘Sanctuary’ Policies

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by Fred Lucas   California law enforcement and local officials gathered at the White House on Wednesday to make it clear that Sacramento doesn’t speak for them on illegal immigration. The Democrat-controlled state legislature passed and Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, signed a “sanctuary state” law that prohibits state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration authorities on matters such as detaining illegal immigrants in local jails or reporting them. California state Assemblywoman Melissa Melendez, a Republican, praised President Donald Trump for holding the White House meeting, noting that Brown has not met with Republican officials. “This is your Republican resistance right here,” Melendez told the president during the Cabinet Room meeting, obliquely referencing the “resist” movement among some Democrats and liberals dedicated to opposing Trump’s policies. [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] Seven mayors, four sheriffs and one deputy sheriff, two county supervisors, a city council member, and a district attorney—all from California—attended the White House meeting with the president and administration officials from the Justice and Homeland Security departments. Each expressed support for the administration’s tough immigration policies. House…

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Pompeo Extols ‘America’s Essential Rightness’ at State Department

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Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday extolled the “essential rightness” of the United States in global affairs as he urged demoralized U.S. diplomats to act firmly and aggressively as they promote and carry out the Trump administration’s foreign policies. In a town hall pep talk to State Department employees, Pompeo explained that his repeated calls for the agency to regain its “swagger” meant that diplomats should act with confidence, knowing that the U.S. cause is just. The event was closed to journalists as Pompeo told staff he wanted his conversations with them to be private but the State Department released excerpts of his prepared remarks. “Swagger is not arrogance; it is not boastfulness, it is not ego,” Pompeo said, according to the excerpts. “No, swagger is confidence; in one’s self, in one’s ideas. In our case, it is America’s essential rightness. And it is aggressiveness born of the righteous knowledge that our cause is just, special, and built upon America’s core principles.” “Our task is to preserve our civilization of human dignity, individual liberty, democracy, national sovereignty, and the rule of law, and to challenge anyone seeking to take it down,” he said. “We should be proud and confident…

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Our Approach to Severe Mental Illness Endangers Everyone

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by Jarrett Stepman   Americans pour billions of their taxpayer dollars into treating mental illness, but the spending isn’t addressing the real crisis. Though most media coverage focuses on gun control after shootings take place, few reports pay attention to the increasing problem of untreated, severe mental illness. As The Daily Signal previously reported, a massive deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people occurred in the past half-century. [RELATED:  How Better Treatment of the Mentally Ill Could Reduce Mass Shootings ] [ The liberal Left continue to push their radical agenda against American values. The good news is there is a solution. Find out more ] In an article in National Review, the Treatment Advocacy Center’s executive director, John Snook, writes about how dramatic the move to deinstitutionalization has been: From its historic peak in 1955 to 2016, the number of state psychiatric-hospital beds in the United States plummeted almost 97 percent, in a trend known as ‘deinstitutionalization.’ There are now fewer beds per capita in the United States than there were in 1850. An analysis of the broader system of both inpatient and other 24-hour residential-treatment beds similarly found a 77.4 percent decrease from 1970 to 2014. This change is having serious repercussions for the country. A recent Heritage Foundation…

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North Korea’s Rich History of Backing Out of Talks

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Kim Jong Un

by Robert Romano   For now, the date is set for June 12, when President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will meet for a summit in Singapore to discuss nuclear disarmament of Pyongyang. The summit was set to follow the historic meeting last month between Kim and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, where the two agreed in principle to finally end the Korean War after 68 years and to pursue denuclearization of the peninsula. But now North Korea appears to be backing away, canceling planned talks with South Korea over routine military training exercises between the U.S. and South Korea. According to the state-run media outlet, KCNA, “The United States will also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-U.S. summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities.” This, after the resumption of military exercises had already been announced in mid-March by the U.S. and South Korea. That was before any summit had even been agreed by the Trump administration. There was no thought that a summit had been predicated on a cessation of such exercises. The appearance, then, is that Kim is moving the goal posts. If…

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Louisiana’s Democratic Governor Used An ‘Unprecedented’ Scare Tactic To Push For Tax Hikes – It Completely Backfired

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by Will Racke   Louisiana’s ongoing budget battle received national attention last week, when the office of Gov. John Bel Edwards sent letters to thousands of elderly and disabled Medicaid recipients, warning spending cuts proposed by Republican lawmakers could result in the cancellation of critical health programs — including funding for nursing homes and long-term care. News of the letters, mailed Thursday to 37,000 people, was picked up by several national media outlets, including CBS News, Huffington Post and CNN, which ran a story under: “Tens of thousands of Louisiana residents could face eviction from nursing and group homes.” The Edwards administration sent the ominous notices in response to a balanced budget Republicans in Louisiana’s House advanced in April, which slashed state Medicaid funding. Republicans reacted furiously, saying Edwards was interfering with the budget process and using the sick and elderly as political pawns. [ RELATED: Louisiana Democrats Threaten To Evict Nursing Home Residents ] The decision to send the letters as lawmakers were working through the budget process was an “unprecedented, irresponsible political move,” Republican state Rep. Lance Harris said. “It’s an unnecessary political scare tactic done to intimidate and frighten the most vulnerable into believing they will be kicked out on the street if…

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President Trump Will Seek Full Funding Soon for His Border Wall

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President Trump and the Border Wall

Reuters News Service President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he would soon push for full funding of his promised wall along the U.S. border with Mexico, which could spark budget battles in a Congress fractured over his immigration policy. “Now we’re going for the full funding for the wall, and we’re going to try and get that as soon as possible,” Trump said at a roundtable with California municipal leaders who favor his goal of making the U.S. border impervious to illegal immigration. Last month Trump threatened to shut down the federal government in September if Congress did not provide more funding for his wall. If that happens, it would mark the second time in one year the U.S. government was shuttered over immigration, with an impasse leading to a brief shutdown in January. Center and right-wing lawmakers from Trump’s Republican party are split on legislation that would protect young illegal immigrants from deportation, torn over how far it should go to clamp down on legal and illegal immigration. At the roundtable Trump voiced hostility for the country’s southern neighbor, Mexico, which is partnering with the United States and Canada in an unprecedented bid to host the World Cup in…

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Trump: US Has ‘Little to Give’ in Trade Talks with China

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Smartphones

President Donald Trump says the United States has “little to give” in contentious trade talks with China, and Beijing has a lot to give, because he says the United States for years has been losing trade battles with China. Wednesday, he defended his call to rescue China’s giant technology company ZTE, which the U.S. Commerce Department last month barred from buying American-made components for its consumer products for seven years after it was caught violating U.S. trade bans with Iran and North Korea. ZTE said with the cut in U.S. parts it had ceased “major operating activities.” “Nothing has happened with ZTE except as it pertains to the larger trade deal,” Trump said on Twitter. His assessment came days after he said “too many jobs” were being lost in China because of ZTE’s difficulties and that he had “instructed” the Commerce agency to “get it done!” to help ZTE “get back into business, fast.” The U.S. and China, the world’s two biggest economies, are in the midst of contentious trade talks this week in Washington, after Trump threatened to impose higher tariffs on $150 billion worth of Chinese exports and Beijing responded in kind to say it would impose higher…

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Commentary: Trump-Supporting Would-Be Democrats Earn Scorn for Telling the Truth

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by Jeffery Rendall   There’s little doubt in today’s hyper-polarized American political climate that it takes guts to buck a trend. Rapper Kanye West earned much media and cultural interest recently for his overtly pro-Donald Trump tweets, drawing praise from conservatives and Republicans for his willingness to defy the politically correct thought police in order to voice opinions he knew would provoke an angry backlash from liberals and the hate-Trump-all-the-time crowd. West’s “sin” in the eyes of his leftist critics was providing the impression (among liberal members of the black community) that he voluntarily tossed his own kind under the proverbial bus in order to selfishly inflate his reputational profile with people (sometimes known as “the deplorables”) who supposedly dislike the guy because he’s black. The cruelest of West’s leftist faultfinders suggest he’s only after money and fame – and that Trump and conservatives are embracing West now because they envision some sort of political benefit deriving from being liked by a black entertainment figure. In a piece called “Trump’s useful idiots,” Juan Williams wrote at The Hill last week, “For years, I have been critical of liberals who demean conservative black intellectuals as sellouts or Uncle Toms. Frankly, it is hypocritical of liberals in…

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Leftist Groups Flood Legislative Plaza in Nashville With Young Crowd Who Want Gov. Haslam to Veto ‘Racist’ Anti-Sanctuary City Bill

Tennessee Star Staff
HB2315 Protest

    The usual Nashville left wing organizations–including the ACLU and  the Tennessee Immigrants and Refugee Rights Coalition [TIRRC]–flooded Legislative Plaza on Wednesday with a crowd comprised of mainly teenagers and young adults in their twenties, decrying the “racist” anti-sanctuary cities legislation sitting on the desk of Gov. Haslam, awaiting his decision to sign, veto, or allow the bill to become law without his signature. One protester held up a large pink and blue sign that read “HB-2315 is Racist.” Another man in his twenties, with a cell phone to his ear, held up a sign that read “Gov Haslam Stop Deportations Veto: Bill HB 2315.” A young woman in her twenties held up a green handmade sign that read “We’re Helping Nashville to be Great. Please Stop HB 2315.” A number of elementary school and junior high school children were in the crowd. A young boy, about 12 years old, stood on the Legislative Plaza steps, holding one edge of a Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition Banner. The other edge of the banner was held by a woman in her twenties. A young girl, about 11 years old, stood on the front row and held the edge of…

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