Day: September 2, 2018

IKEA Corporate Welfare Documentary Earns Beacon Center of Tennessee Nomination for National Award

Jason M. Reynolds
Beacon

Think tank Beacon Center of Tennessee is one of three finalists for a national award in the category of Best Issue Campaign. The Beacon Center was nominated for its award for a mini-documentary titled “Rigged: The Injustice of Corporate Welfare.” The Bob Williams Awards for Outstanding Policy Achievement celebrate state think tanks that develop credible research to help states create free-market solutions with national impact. The Bob Williams Awards are hosted by the State Policy Network. The national nonprofit promotes “a vision of an America where personal freedom, innovation, opportunity, and a more peaceful society help all Americans flourish.” The organization supports the growth of a collaborative network of 64 state think tanks and 90 affiliate partners. These partners strengthen working families and defend rights. They do this by promoting policies to create a level playing field and promote freedom, economic liberty, rule of law, property rights and limited government. SPN works these think tanks “to catalyze thriving, durable freedom movements in every state, anchored with high performing independent think tanks so that every American has a voice.” SPN was founded in 1992 by South Carolina entrepreneur Thomas Roe at the urging of former President Ronald Reagan. The Beacon Center’s mini-documentary told…

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Socialist State Senate Candidate Caught Lying About Supposed ‘Working-Class Background’

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Julia Salazar

by Joe Simonson   A socialist millennial running for a state senate seat in New is facing further scrutiny about her campaign after her brother implied she has been dishonest about her family upbringing in several interviews with leftist outlets. Julia Salazar, an ally Democratic Socialists of America member Alexandria Orcasio-Cortez, has centered her campaign, among many things, on her ability to relate to the issues faced by her constituents. Yet reporting by City & State New York reveals that Salazar might be deliberately misrepresenting her personal story in a bid to appear as an authentic representative of Americans struggling paycheck to paycheck. According to her brother Alex Salazar, the two grew up in a “middle class” house “along the river” in a “beautiful neighborhood” in Jupiter, Florida, thanks to her father’s “six-figure paycheck.” In previous interviews, like one she gave to the leftist Jacobin Magazine, Salazar spoke about her family struggling as her “mom ended up raising my brother and me as a single mom, without a college degree.” “[I grew up in a] working-class background,” Salazar told Jacobin. A picture of Salazar’s childhood home obtained by City & State shows a residence far from an average person’s idea of “working class.” While Salazar…

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Commentary: Yes, Aliens, Including Illegal Aliens, Vote in Our Elections

Tennessee Star Staff
vote

by CHQ Staff   Back in February of 2017 Time Magazine’s Wendy Weiser And Douglas Keith published “The Actually True and Provable Facts About Non-Citizen Voting,” claiming that “Like voter fraud generally, non-citizen voting is incredibly rare. Simply put, we already know that ineligible non-citizens do not vote in American elections — including the 2016 election — except at negligible rates.” They based their analysis on state prosecutions of vote fraud, but what they failed to account for was the fact that few states, even those run by Republicans, conduct the kind of investigations necessary to uncover vote Illegal votingfraud, and even fewer elected officials want to risk the charges of racism and vote suppression typically hurled at any official conducting such an investigation. Indeed, during the Obama years the US Department of Justice was actively working on the other side to discourage and impede such investigations. Liberal federal judges also joined in to strike down state voter ID laws and force consent decrees upon the Republican Party and elected officials who might be inclined to strict enforcement of voter registration and election laws. In such an environment the federal Motor Voter bill’s “honor system” for voter registration made it…

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Thirteen Illegal Immigrants Indicted After ICE Detained Over 100 at Ohio Company

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ICE arrest

by Neetu Chandak   Thirteen illegal immigrants were indicted for immigration-related offenses Wednesday as a result of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arresting more than 100 workers at a Ohio food company in June. The 13 were indicted on charges of providing false statements of citizenship and presenting fake forms of identification, like driver’s licenses and social security cards, according to Cleveland.com on Thursday. The individuals allegedly provided false information to be eligible for employment opportunities in the U.S. Eleven were from Guatemala and two were from Mexico with ages ranging between 18 and 46 years old, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio reported Thursday. ICE arrested 146 people at Fresh Mark, a meat supplier, in the Salem and Massillon locations, according to Cleveland.com. Those arrested primarily originated from Guatemala and were arrested because authorities believed them to be in the U.S. illegally. Over “80 were detained for immigration proceedings and about 40 remain in custody, according to an ICE spokeswoman,” reported The Vindicator. The ICE spokeswoman added that many of the detainees were released for health and family concerns while volunteers said some entered the U.S. legally, but did not have proper documentation at the time of arrest, according to The…

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Report: Google And Mastercard Strike Secret Deal To Track Customers In-Store Purchases

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by Kyle Perisic   Google and Mastercard have reportedly struck a secret deal to monitor users’ in-store purchases, to collect data on what Google ads have resulted in purchases. After years of negotiations, Google paid Mastercard millions of dollars for its customer data, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing two anonymous sources. The two could be sharing ad revenue, Bloomberg added but also reported a Google spokeswoman denied that claim. “People don’t expect what they buy physically in a store to be linked to what they are buying online,” said advocacy group Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Christine Bannan. “There’s just far too much burden that companies place on consumers and not enough responsibility being taken by companies to inform users what they’re doing and what rights they have.” Knowing which ads have resulted in purchases would make targeted ads — specialized ads tailored to specific individuals — much more valuable. Thus far, it has been almost impossible to tell if an online ad has resulted in a purchase. “Before we launched this beta product last year, we built a new, double-blind encryption technology that prevents both Google and our partners from viewing our respective users’ personally identifiable information,” Google said in a statement, according to Bloomberg.…

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Confusion In Super Close Alaska Primary After 17 Voter Registrations Trace Back To A Single Mobile Home

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by Evie Fordham   A potential investigation hangs over an Alaska State House Republican primary after the race came down to a few votes, but irregularities like 17 voter registrations that trace back to a single mobile home address caught the attention of the Alaska Division of Elections. Incumbent Gabrielle LeDoux leads challenger Aaron Weaver by 113 votes after Tuesday’s election, but at least 26 absentee ballots for LeDoux are classified as “suspect” by the state Division of Elections, reported KTVA. The state Republican Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock is calling for an investigation. LeDoux fell out of favor with her party in 2016 after she abandoned the Republican caucus. The 17 Republican voter registrations linked to a single mobile home are in a section of House District 15 that is home to members of the Chinese Hmong community. A woman who answered the door of the mobile home and identified herself as Laura Chang told KTVA she did not know many of the people who registered to vote using the address. Another mobile home in the same park has 14 registered Republicans according to voter registrations, reported Anchorage Daily News. The irregularities in voter registrations appear to trace back to a single man, Charlie Chang.…

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Shelby County Commissioners Vote Themselves $6 Million More in Benefits

Chris Butler
Walter Bailey

Certain Shelby County commissioners are getting an upgrade in their health and life insurance benefits, and county taxpayers must pay an additional $6 million to $10 million a year because of it. Commissioner Walter Bailey Jr., in stealth mode, and using possible ninja-like reflexes, snuck the proposal through and got it passed under the other commissioners’ noses. According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, commissioners voted to reduce the years required for them to serve to collect retiree health and life insurance benefits. They changed that number from 15 years to eight years, “making previously ineligible commissioners — among 2,500 other employees — eligible.” The vote was 7-2, according to the paper. Outgoing Commissioner Heidi Shafer told The Tennessee Star many of her colleagues didn’t know what they were voting for. “But I voted against it,” Shafer said. “It was never brought up in discussion. There weren’t supporting documents in the system to show what it was really about, and we were hearing it was about county retirees. I’m not going to vote to change something without any numbers or figuring out whether it’s a good move.” Most other commissioners, Shafer went on to say, had no idea they were voting on something that…

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