Day: March 16, 2019

Rep. Mark Green Says Trump Is Right to Veto ‘Meaningless and Partisan Resolution’ Seeking to Block President’s Emergency Declaration to Build Border Wall

Jason M. Reynolds

U.S. Rep. Dr. Mark Green (R-TN-07) declared his support of President Donald Trump’s veto of Congress’ resolution to block his declaration of a national emergency in order to build a border wall. “President Trump is right to veto this meaningless and partisan resolution,” Green said. “It’s been established by this and former Congresses that securing the border with a physical wall is good policy.” “In 2006, Congress passed the Secure Fence Act of 2006 with widespread Democrat support from then Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Chuck Schumer,” Green said. “And, in the recent appropriations bill, Congress appropriated even more money towards a wall. President Trump is not bucking Congress and doing something they have expressly forbidden. He’s merely expanding on what Congress has already said is a good way to secure our southern border through legal authority Congress gave him through the National Emergencies Act of 1976.” “I applaud President Trump for transcending the fray, fighting back against the rabid anti-Trump Resistance and doing what’s best for Americans,” Green said. In making his declaration, Green joined U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) in supporting the president, unlike their colleague from Tennessee, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who voted against Trump. The…

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Commentary: Life Among the Academic Radicals

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by Evan Osborne   For almost a quarter century I have been a professor of economics at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. After years of working there, I have learned something about how my department’s academic radicals, who by dint of personality but not numbers have near-decisive control over many departmental decisions. WSU economics is a master’s-level department. How its radicals operate is utterly inconsistent with all that is best about Western universities. I would like to share whatever wisdom I have gained from working in this department to give readers a sense of how at least some on the academic left think about academic freedom, collegiality, and what makes for good scholarship and a good curriculum. The department has long had a reputation for advocacy of left-heterodox economics. I use that term, though the term the radicals themselves use is merely “heterodox” economics. That’s because in economics, pro-market schools such as the Austrians, despite being out of the mainstream, are not counted as “heterodox” by the keepers of this term’s flame. So defined, left-heterodox economics is critical of relying on market competition to achieve better economic outcomes, and the main arguments in favor of such competition are dismissed…

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US Regulators Charge Volkswagen, Ex-CEO With Defrauding Investors

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U.S. regulators charged Volkswagen and former CEO Martin Winterkorn with defrauding investors during its massive diesel emissions scandal. The charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission come two years after the German automaker settled with the U.S. over criminal and civil charges, as the company tries to distance itself from one if its darkest eras. The SEC said that between April 2014 and May 2015, Volkswagen issued more than $13 billion in bonds and asset-backed securities in U.S. markets when senior executives knew that more than 500,000 vehicles in the country grossly exceeded legal vehicle emissions limits. Volkswagen made false and misleading statements to investors and underwriters about vehicle quality, environmental compliance, and the company’s financial standing, which gave Volkswagen a financial benefit when it issued securities at more attractive rates for the company, according to the SEC. “Volkswagen hid its decade-long emissions scheme while it was selling billions of dollars of its bonds to investors at inflated prices,” said Stephanie Avakian, co-director of the SEC’s enforcement division. In September 2015 Volkswagen installed software on more than 475,000 cars that enabled them to cheat on emissions tests, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The software reduced nitrogen oxide emissions…

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Mnuchin: Trump-Xi Summit Will Not Happen in March

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A summit to seal a trade deal between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping will not happen at the end of March as previously discussed because more work is needed in U.S.-China negotiations, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday. Mnuchin, speaking to reporters following a U.S. Senate Finance Committee hearing, said both sides were “working in good faith” to try to reach a deal “as quickly as possible.” “There’s still a lot of work to do, but we’re very comfortable with where we are,” Mnuchin said. “I don’t think there’s anything significantly different on the currency issue from where we were last time.” Since Trump delayed a threatened March 1 tariff hike on Chinese goods following a late February round of talks, no new face-to-face meetings have been scheduled in the negotiations. But Trump and other administration officials have since sought to portray the talks as still making progress. “We’re doing very well with China talks,” Trump told reporters Thursday at the White House as he sat down to meet Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. “We’re getting what we have to get, and I think we’re getting it relatively quickly.” At another White House event later Thursday,…

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Commentary: America’s True Cost to ‘Go Solar’

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by Edward Ring   Proponents of renewable energy claim that wind and solar energy is now cheaper than fossil fuels. According to USA Today, “Renewables close in on fossil fuels, challenging on price.” A Forbes headline agrees: “Renewable Energy Will Be Consistently Cheaper Than Fossil Fuels.” The “expert” websites agree: “Renewable Electricity Levelized Cost Of Energy Already Cheaper,” asserts “energyinnovation.org.” They’re all wrong. Renewable energy is getting cheaper every year, but it is a long way from competing with natural gas, coal, or even nuclear power, if nuclear power weren’t drowning in lawsuits and regulatory obstructions. With both wind and solar energy, the cost not only of the solar panels and wind turbines has to be accounted for, but also of inverters, grid upgrades, and storage assets necessary to balance out the intermittent power. Taking all variables into account, what might it cost for the entire U.S. to get 100 percent of its energy from solar energy? Speaking the Language of Energy and Electricity According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the United States in 2017 consumed 97.7 quadrillion BTUs of energy. BTUs, or British Thermal Units, are often used by economists to measure energy. One BTU is the energy…

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The Alarmist Talking Points Fueling Kids Climate Change Strikes

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by Michael Bastasch   Thousands of students will skip school Friday over global warming as part of an international movement backed by adult activists and based on a misreading of the latest United Nations climate report. In the U.S., strikers are calling “for the Green New Deal, for a fair and just transition to a 100% renewable economy, and for ending the creation of additional fossil fuel infrastructure,” according to the Youth Climate Strike website. Young activists say “inaction has left us with just 11 years to change the trajectory of the worst effects of climate change.” Isra Hirsi, the teenage daughter of Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, is one of the protest leaders. Her mother joined the planned strike for Washington, D.C.and tweeted in support of the climate protests, “We need to listen to the wisdom of our kids!” Monied environmental organizations are supporting the strikers, and The New York Times said “grown-ups should listen” to children protesters. So, what exactly are these children saying? “The rest of my life is literally on the line,” 17-year-old activist Feliquan Charlemagne told The Washington Post. “I’m going to have to grow up in this if we don’t take action and don’t turn…

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Audit: Greene County Employees Used Taxpayer-Funded Assets for Personal Reasons

Chris Butler

Greene County employees used taxpayer-funded county assets for personal reasons, according to an audit Tennessee Comptrollers released Tuesday. State auditors responded to allegations that county Sanitation Department employees used county vehicles for private purposes and used the department’s garage to work on their personal vehicles. That, auditors wrote, prompted the county attorney and the county’s human resources director to do an internal investigation. “From the summary of the internal investigation and the written reprimands given to the employees, it appears some employees did in fact utilize a county vehicle for private purposes or the benefit of another individual and did use the department’s garage to perform work on or have work performed on their personal vehicles,” auditors wrote. “Two employees were issued written reprimands, which included three-day unpaid suspensions. We reviewed Sanitation Department invoices and were unable to determine if any department purchased auto parts were used on personal vehicles. Sound business practices dictate that county-owned property be used only for county purposes. We did note that the county, upon completion of its investigation, revised several departmental polices.” County Mayor Kevin Morrison, in a written response to Comptrollers, said he has “worked closely with the Director of Solid Waste to…

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JOBS Act Updates Work Requirements for Welfare Recipients

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by Fred Lucas   Republicans in the House and Senate are making another legislative push to enforce work requirements for able-bodied adults on welfare. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee on Thursday announced the Jobs and Opportunity with Benefits and Services Act. The JOBS Act comes as the Trump administration makes a renewed push for work requirements for welfare recipients in its fiscal year 2020 budget proposal. The successful 1996 welfare reform law is now broken, Daines said, asserting that states that find loopholes to avoid imposing work requirements undermine the aim of that law. The 1996 law created the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, passed by a Republican Congress and signed by a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, to tie work and job-training requirements to welfare payments. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families is the largest welfare program in the country, and the Daines proposal would reauthorize and modernize it. “Our welfare programs should be a springboard to work and self-sufficiency, not a sinkhole into government dependency,” Daines said in a statement. “My bill supports struggling low-income families and equips them with the skills and resources they need to find and keep…

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Alleged New Zealand Gunman Chose Firearms for Attack to Impact United States Politics

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by Evie Fordham   An alleged gunman behind Friday’s deadly mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, reportedly chose to attack with firearms to stoke political strife in the U.S. and the entire world. “I chose firearms for the effect it would have on social discourse, the extra media coverage they would provide and the effect it could have on the politics of United States and thereby the political situation of the world,” the man allegedly wrote in a manifesto according to The Guardian. New Zealand and U.S. gun laws share some similarities, but in many respects New Zealand’s laws are stricter. The shootings that left at least 49 dead have already prompted headlines from outlets like CNN about New Zealand’s “lax” gun laws. Like in the United States and Canada, most guns in New Zealand do not need to be registered. The country does not require registry for most rifles and shotguns for people over the age of 16 with entry-level firearm licenses, according to Yahoo! News. Only about 4 percent of its guns are registered, according to researcher Philip Alpers quoted by The Guardian. In the U.S., federal law bars the use of the National Instant Criminal Background Check…

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Far Left Anti-Electoral College Plan Building Momentum

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by CHQ Staff   What would you say if we told you Democrats have a plan to change the Constitution without going through the arduous process of amending it according to the process set forth in Article V of our government’s founding document? Well, get ready, because they do, and according to our friend Hans von Spakovsky, senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation and a former commissioner on the Federal Election Commission, their anti-Constitutional plan is gaining ground. Democrats have long opposed the Electoral College because with overwhelming margins of victory in high-population states like California they could dominate future presidential elections based on the popular vote, so they have concocted a plan to try to bypass the constitutional amendment process by constructing a multi-state compact to allocate their Electoral votes according to the popular vote. von Spakovsky says the movement going on in all 50 states is sponsored by the National Popular Vote, an advocacy group in California, that claims they can get rid of the Electoral College’s effects by having the states agree to a state compact. “The state compact they are pushing is for state legislatures to agree that in future presidential elections they will not…

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IRS Penalizes Jackson County, Tennessee Over Obamacare

Chris Butler

The Internal Revenue Service fined Jackson County officials a sum of $86,147 for failing to comply with Obamacare, according to an audit Tennessee Comptrollers released Tuesday. That penalty money, of course, will come from county taxpayers. This is the third county in Tennessee this calendar year that must pay a huge sum of money to the feds because of the controversial health care law. Jackson County’s failure to comply with Obamacare occurred during the 2015 fiscal year, auditors wrote. “The county did not provide health insurance to employees from January through October 2015,” Comptrollers wrote. “Beginning November 2015, the county provided health insurance coverage to employees; however, this coverage was not in compliance with federal regulations for certain employees. This deficiency resulted from a lack of management oversight.” In a written response to auditors, the county mayor concurred with the findings. The current county mayor is Randy Heady, according to the county’s official website. “The county mayor and commission had been told by an affiliate with Zane Benefits, with whom we entered a contract, that the cafeteria plan we started in January 2015 made our county ACA compliant,” the county mayor wrote. “In October 2015 we found that in fact…

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Ohio Governor Mike DeWine Cites Bible in Budget Proposal That Increases Spending by Seven Percent

Anthony Gockowski

Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) released his first two-year budget proposal Friday morning in what he is describing as a $69 billion investment in “Ohio’s future.” “As I shared in my State of the State address, the Bible tells us that there is a time and a place for everything. Now is the time for us to invest in Ohio,” DeWine said in a letter addressed to his “fellow Ohioans.” “We must invest in our children to help our youngest Ohioans get the best start in life. We must invest in efforts to fight mental health and substance use disorders so our fellow Ohioans can lead fulfilling, healthy lives. We must invest in Ohio’s workers and in innovation and technology that spurs job creation so our families can prosper. And, we must invest in preserving and protecting Lake Erie and all of Ohio’s waterways, so that all Ohioans have access to clean water and our outdoor spaces are preserved for generations to come,” he continued, touching on the main priorities of his budget. While the proposal places a significant emphasis on mental health and child support services, DeWine identified five core areas for his budget, including: Children and Families Local Communities…

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Mass Looting Plagues Venezuela Amid Power Crisis

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by Tim Pearce   Looters have all but emptied stores and warehouses across western Venezuela as large parts of the country remain without power more than a week after a mass blackout. The mobs overwhelmed Venezuela’s security forces and broke into buildings. People stole cars, trucks and equipment. Hundreds of businesses in the Venezuelan oil capital of Maracaibo were emptied and left in shambles. VENEZUELA: Reports of looting in some cities as nationwide blackout, now in its 100th hour, continues https://t.co/wLWp3BkSBL — BNO News (@BNONews) March 12, 2019 Looters broke through the cinder-block walls of a Pepsi plant and took thousands of cases of beer and soda and 160 pallets of food. They destroyed or stole 22 trucks and five forklifts, Bloomberg reported Friday. “If people made enough to make ends meet, we wouldn’t be trying to get by like this,” Enrique Gonzalez, an 18-year-old bus conductor, told Bloomberg. “This country has gone to hell.” Police and other emergency officials have stayed away from the carnage and refused to help businesses and property owners protect their property and assets. “It’s hard to swallow,” Bernardo Morillo, a 60-year-old mall manager, told Bloomberg. “The national guard stood by as this vandalism happened…

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President Trump to Veto Congressional Resolution Attempting to Stop Him From Building the Wall

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by Robert Romano   “VETO!” That was President Donald Trump’s one-word response on Twitter to the Senate after it passed a resolution to overturn his national emergency declaration on the southern border. The resolution passed 59 to 41, with 12 Senate Republicans voting in favor. VETO! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 14, 2019 That was enough to pass the Senate, but 59 votes is not enough to override a veto. That takes two-thirds majorities in both chambers of Congress: 67 votes in the Senate, plus another 290 in the House. And it seems doubtful there will be the votes in either chamber to do so. In February, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) dismissed the idea that the veto would be overridden with the help of House Republicans, saying, “I don’t see any way that would get overridden, if it were vetoed, in any way shape or form.” Similarly, House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) declared, “there will be nowhere near the votes to override a veto.” Meaning, in all likelihood, the veto will stand. That’s that. In Trump’s emergency declaration, he reprogrammed $8.1 billion of uncommitted military construction funds to building the wall and steel barriers along the…

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Klobuchar Defends Mistreating Staff by Saying It Will Help Her Deal With Putin

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by Henry Rodgers   Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar defended reports about treating her staff poorly, saying she is tough enough to deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin if elected president. Klobuchar was one of the first Democratic senators to announce her candidacy for the 2020 presidential campaign. The Minnesota Democrat made the announcement on Feb. 10 in her home state. After her announcement, reports broke that she has a history of being rude to staff, making many of her employees cry, as well as reportedly hitting one of her staffers with a binder. “If you are a boss, you have to have high standards, and that is what I have always had. And that doesn’t mean it’s a popularity contest all the time,” Klobuchar said in an interview with CNN released Thursday. “And so I’ve had high standards for myself, high standards for our staff, and mostly I’m going to have high standards for the country.” Klobuchar also said whoever is going to be president next needs to be “tough” in order to deal with Putin. “When you’re out there on the world stage and dealing with people like Vladimir Putin, yeah, you want someone who’s tough. You want…

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Efforts to Subpoena DHS Inspector General to Discuss Child Care Fraud Repeatedly Blocked

Anthony Gockowski

Minnesota House Republicans made multiple attempts this week to subpoena Department of Human Services Inspector General Carolyn Ham to discuss the fraudulent activity in the state’s Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), but those efforts were repeatedly thwarted. On Wednesday, the Office of the Legislative Auditor released its long-awaited report on the fraud allegations against CCAP, confirming that millions of dollars in government payments went to fraudulent child care centers. The report also described a “serious rift” among officials running CCAP, and confirmed that some “child care center owners have recruited CCAP eligible mothers by offering to pay kickbacks to entice the mothers to advice county CCAP staff that their children are attending a particular center.” “I’m outraged at this, and so should Minnesotans be outraged,” Gov. Tim Walz told The Star Tribune in response to the report. “If we allow fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement, we’re depriving people on waiting lists and undermining trust in the system.” Republican lawmakers called for Ham’s resignation upon reading the report. Others raised questions about why her office is housed in the Department of Human Services in the first place, since her main task is to investigate the department’s programs, Rep. Mary Franson (R-Alexandria)…

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The Abortion Battle of a Generation Could Be Starting In Ohio

Andrew Shirley

The Ohio Senate’s decision to pass Senate Bill 23 (SB 23) on Wednesday has set the stage for a major political battle. While the bill still needs to clear both the Ohio House of Representatives and the Governor’s desk, advocacy groups from both sides are already preparing for a legal battle that could determine the fate of Roe v. Wade itself. After clearing the Senate, SB 23 was formally introduced into the Ohio House of Representatives on Thursday. There are two very distinct aspects of the legislation: the law as it is written and the law as it will affect current legislation. The law, as written, seeks to limit abortions to before a heartbeat can be detected. While this is largely dependent on available technology, the range in which a fetal heartbeat can be detected is, generally, six to nine weeks. This would essentially limit all abortions in Ohio to before six weeks. In an interview with The Ohio Star, Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio Vice President of Government Affairs and Public Advocacy Lauren Blauvelt-Copelin stated that: SB 23 is absolutely crafted to end access to safe legal abortion in Ohio. It’s a six week ban…It bans abortion before most people know they…

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Warrants Show 2018 FBI Activity In North Carolina’s 9th Congressional Investigation

A.P. Dillon

Recently released three warrants in the North Carolina 9th Congressional district absentee ballot investigation show the FBI activity, including surveillance and bank searches prior to the 2018 election. Three warrants were executed; one in December 2018 and two in January 2019.  Phone, text and bank records and were the main target of the warrants. Affidavits attached to the warrants contained interviews with multiple associates of Leslie McCrae Dowless, the man at the center of the absentee ballot investigation.  The affidavits show that between October and December of 2018, agents with the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) had contact with Kelly Hendrix, Caitlyn Croom, Tonia Gordon, and Matthew Mathis. In the attached documents for phone records, a statement was included that showed FBI Special Agent James Kaylor and SBE Agent Faircloth had interviewed Tonia Gordon in Bladen County on Oct. 17, 2018.  The statement indicates Gordon told them Dowless would give her blank absentee ballots to have people fill out and he would pay her $5.00 each one she returned to him. Both the SBI and the FBI were surveilling Dowless on May 3, 2018, according to the warrants.  The primary for the 9th district was just five days later on…

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