Month: April 2020

Sen. Sherrod Brown Calls for Investigation into Reports Paycheck Protection Program Prioritized ‘Wealthier Clients’

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U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, joined two other Democrats in calling for an investigation into reports some Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) lenders are prioritizing “larger and wealthier clients.”

In a letter to Small Business Administration (SBA) Inspector General Mike Ware, the senators allege some lenders “have prioritized the applications of their larger and wealthier clients to the detriment of smaller [businesses] adversely impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.”

U.S. Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, and Ben Cardin, D-Maryland, joined Brown, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, in sending the letter.

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Crom Carmichael Reflects on Joe Biden’s History of Poor Decision Making, Connections to China, and Tara Reade

Julie Carr
Democrat Joe Biden

During the second hour of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, all-star panelis Crom Carmichael advocated that it was important to get the economy back open and take care of America’s economic wellness. Later in the segment, he reviewed Joe Biden’s stance on China and many of his detestable wrongdoings and current allegations of sexual assault by staffer Tara Reade in 1993.

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Analysis: Interest Rates Indicate Unemployment Will Grow as Trump Administration Eyes Phase Four Relief Spending

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by Robert Romano   The unemployment rate will likely continue rising as the spread between the 10-year treasury on one side, and the 2-year and 3-month treasuries on the other, continue rising over the next weeks and months, an analysis of interest rates over the past four recession shows, according to data compiled by the Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The relationship shows that peak unemployment comes after the inversions and tends to continue until the peak the 10-year-2-year, and the 10-year-3-month spreads, with the average period lasting 26 months from when the inversions ended, and the range being from about 13 months as in the 1982 recession 30 to 31 months in the cases of the 1991, 2001 and 2007-2009 recessions. The question here is how quickly will the U.S. get to peak unemployment? Both the 10-year-2-year and 10-year-3-month spreads uninverted in Oct. 2019, and then another brief inversion happened in the 10-year-3-month last month, but not for the 10-year-2-year. So where to start counting from? October or last month? It’s impossible to know but you can produce a very wide range, and say that unemployment will probably continue rising until at least Nov. 2020,…

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Bill Hagerty Releases New Ad Criticizing Joe Biden and His Ties to China

Chris Butler

  U.S. Senate candidate Bill Hagerty has released a digital ad that he said exposes presidential candidate Joe Biden for defending the Communist Chinese regime — as opposed to Biden holding them accountable for creating a global pandemic. Hagerty posted the ad on YouTube Monday. “As President Donald Trump stands up to China and holds them accountable for the Wuhan virus, Beijing Biden has defended the Communist Chinese regime and even parroted their talking points,” Hagerty said. “Beijing Biden’s family’s close economic ties to China are well known, and his track record of defending China prove that he cannot credibly lead our nation. In the Senate, I will continue to stand with President Trump to push back against the Communist regime’s propaganda and hold them accountable for what has become the crime of the century.” As The Tennessee Star reported earlier this month, Hagerty released a television ad touting the candidate holding China accountable for what he called that nation’s deceitful actions. Hagerty said China’s leaders continue to mislead and cover up their Wuhan coronavirus data. China, Hagerty said, even accuses the United States of starting the global pandemic. “The Chinese Communist regime’s efforts to conceal and destroy valuable evidence – including silencing their own people…

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Audacious: Chinese Government Claims to be Victim of Coronavirus Disinformation, Accuses US of ‘Hiding Something’

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The Chinese government’s foreign ministry portrayed China as the victim of coronavirus disinformation on Monday, before suggesting minutes later that the U.S. government is “hiding something” regarding the pandemic.

“China always stands against disinformation campaign. We are victim rather than producer of disinformation,” the Chinese foreign ministry wrote from its Twitter account.

The account then suggested without evidence that the U.S. government has lied about the extent of the coronavirus pandemic here.

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Democrat Pelosi Praised Kavanaugh Accuser Christine Ford’s ‘Courage,’ But Ignores Biden Accuser Tara Reade

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Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi supported and praised Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser Christine Blasey Ford, but has maintained silence on 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden’s accuser Tara Reade.

Ford leveled accusations of sexual assault against Kavanaugh in September 2018, launching a media onslaught and a series of congressional hearings into the allegations against the now-Supreme Court justice. Throughout these events, Pelosi expressed support for Ford.

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Commentary: The Sour Revolution of Bernie Sanders

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Truly transformative social movements usually complete cycles. They start with a crisis, build momentum, organize, gain power, and then institutionalize. The French Revolution combined intellectuals, peasants, and convicts into a force that the mighty King Louis XVI and his professional army could not stop. Their effort culminated with the king’s execution on the guillotine in 1793.

After this, the various revolutionaries had to face the question of which vision of that revolution would be imposed. Many of them did not survive that stage of their revolution. Like their former king, many of them were guillotined and, eventually, all of the elements they detested about the monarchy were restored under Napoleon Bonaparte.

This cycle isn’t unique to the history of France and, indeed, it’s the template for most “revolutions.”

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Nashville’s Small Business Owners Have New Resources to Reopen After COVID-19

Chris Butler

Nashville’s small business owners have new online resources to help them reopen and navigate their way out of COVID-19.

Nashville Metro At-Large Council member Steve Glover announced one new website, SBTFNashville.com at a press conference Monday.

Glover co-chairs the city’s Small Business Task Force. For assistance, business owners may sort through that website for a list of financial resources, he said.

“We are also working with the Metro Health Department in the coming days to try to develop a systematic plan for how we help you and the employees train, get ready for how to reopen and hopefully determine a date [to reopen],” Glover said, adding he and members of the task force are coordinating with Mayor John Cooper’s office.

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Mexico Deports Nearly All of Its Illegal Migrants Amid Coronavirus Fears, Government Reveals

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Mexico has almost completely cleared out all of its migrant centers as a precaution against the coronavirus outbreak, its government announced.

The National Migration Institute (INM), the agency in Mexico that manages immigration, said that it has been deporting immigrants from the country’s 65 migrant facilities since March 21, according to Reuters. The actions are being made in order to comply with safety and health guidelines amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Mexico’s government migrant centers housed a total of 3,759 people in March. In recent weeks, authorities have repatriated 3,653 migrants back to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Guatemala by air and road.

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Detroit Democrat Jonathan Kinloch Pushing Censure of State Lawmaker Says Elected Dems ‘Do Not Belong to Themselves’

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Michigan Democrats plan to censure the state lawmaker who “broke protocol” by thanking President Trump for recommending hydroxychloroquine.  State Rep. Karen Whitsett (pictured right) earlier this month credited the controversial drug for saving her life after she had battled the deadly coronavirus for weeks.

Elected Democrats “do not belong to themselves,” explained Jonathan Kinloch, the chairman of the 13th Congressional District Democratic Party Organization (pictured left).

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Gov. DeWine Encourages Ohioans to ‘Have a Little #SpiritWeekOhio Fun’ and ‘Stay in Your PJ’s All Day’

Jason M. Reynolds

Nearly 1 million Ohioans have filed for unemployment since Gov. Mike DeWine shut the state down, and the governor has responded by calling for a “Spirit Week” to have “#SpiritWeekOhio fun” which includes wearing pajamas.

Six of the state’s most influential business organizations last week sent a letter to Gov. Mike DeWine last week urging him to reopen the economy as nearly one million Ohioans have now filed unemployment claims since the start of the coronavirus pandemic, as The Ohio Star reported Monday. The letter was signed by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Ohio Business Roundtable, the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association, the Ohio Council on Retail Merchants, Ohio Farm Bureau, and NFIB-Ohio.

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Royal Oak Commission to Request Censure, Resignation from Commissioner Who Protested Lockdown

Jordyn Pair

The Royal Oak City Commission is voting on Monday night whether to censure City Commissioner Kim Gibbs and ask for her resignation for attending a rally in Lansing to protest Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s lockdown order.

Gibbs attended a rally on April 15 in Lansing, where she walked on the sidewalk in front of the Capitol building, according to the agenda from the Royal Oak City Commission. During this rally, Gibbs walked near other Michigan residents without wearing a mask.

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Organization Claims Minnesota Legislative Committees Meeting in Small Groups to Avoid Open Meetings Law

Anthony Gockowski
ACLU Minnesota John Gordon

A legal organization said members of the Minnesota Legislature are holding committee meetings in small groups in order to avoid triggering the state’s “Open Meeting Law.”

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Minnesota said legislators have been deliberately meeting in small groups so they can bypass the law, which generally requires that all meetings be open to the public.

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Jesse Ventura ‘Testing the Waters’ for Green Party Presidential Bid

Anthony Gockowski

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura said Monday that he has decided to “test the waters” on a third-party presidential bid.

“If I were going to run for president, the Green Party would be my first choice. I’ve endorsed the party and I’m testing the waters,” the former professional wrestler said on Twitter.

Ventura said he hasn’t filed for candidacy but simply authorized a letter of interest sent to the Green Party on his behalf.

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Michigan to Face More Budget Cuts as Tax Revenues Plummet

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A storm of skyrocketing unemployment paired with plummeting tax revenue have plunged the state budget into a multi-billion dollar deficit.

State Budget Office Communications Director Kurt Weiss told The Center Square in an email that tax revenues for this fiscal year are projected to drop between $1 billion and $3 billion.

There’s another $1 billion to $4 billion projected for Michigan’s next fiscal year, Weiss said.

Over 1 million people have filed for unemployment benefits, more than a quarter of the state’s workforce.

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Model Developed by UT Prof Claims Jails Will Act as ‘Volcanoes’ for Spread of COVID-19 as State Prison Sees Massive Outbreak

Anthony Gockowski

A new model developed by a professor at the University of Tennessee and other academics suggests that most models on the coronavirus pandemic have failed to consider one important variable: jail populations.

Most standard COVID-19 models predict that America will experience about 101,000 deaths during the course of the pandemic, but that number increases by 98 percent to 200,000 deaths when jails are accounted for, the new model claims.

The model was developed by Dr. Nina Fefferman at the University of Tennessee, Dr. Eric Lofgren at Washington State University, and Dr. Kristian Lum from the University of Pennsylvania, in collaboration with Aaron Horowitz and Brooke Madubuonwu of the ACLU’s data analytics team.

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Joe Biden Tells Al Gore He Will Rejoin Paris Climate Accords

Chris Butler

Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden and former vice president and environmental activist Al Gore, apparently from his Nashville home, had an online environmental pow wow this past week.

During this Climate Change Town Hall, Biden accused President Donald Trump of ignoring science. Biden promised that, if elected, he would make the United States rejoin the Paris Climate Accords.

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Commentary: If You’re Going to Dance on Someone’s Constitutional Rights, You’d Better Have a Good Reason

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Curves are flattening worldwide thanks to stringent lockdown efforts.” That bulletin from one of my favorite magazines made me sit up. “Really?” I thought, “Is it because of the stringent lockdown that the ‘curves’ are flattening?”

For that is what “thanks to” means here, right? Because, “propter” in Latin.

No one needs to ask what sort of curves we are talking about here. There is only one subject that is being discussed now towards the end of April 2020: coronavirus, the insidious cold bug brought to the world by the Chinese Communist Party.

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Tennessee has Nearly 10,000 COVID-19 Cases as of Sunday

Chris Butler
COVID-19

Nearly 10,000 Tennesseans have tested positive for COVID-19 as of Sunday night, according to The COVID Tracking Project’s website.

Updated numbers showed 9,667 Tennesseans tested positive for COVID-19 since it broke out, while the virus had hospitalized 828 state residents. COVID-19 had claimed the lives of 181 Tennesseans as of Sunday, according to The COVID Tracking Project’s website.

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Amid Rumors of His Demise, Photos Show Train at Kim Jong-Un’s Compound in Resort Town

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New photos obtained via satellite show North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s train at his “vacation compound” in a resort town on the eastern coast of North Korea.

38 North – a foreign affairs news and information website that focuses on North Korea – released the photos, reporting the images were captured between Tuesday, April 21 and Thursday April 23.

The news comes amid a flood of rumors recently that the reclusive leader has suffered a catastrophic injury during a heart procedure.

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Climate Activists Want Michael Moore’s Doc Panning Green Energy Banned, Say It’s Chock Full of ‘Misinformation’

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Anti-fossil fuel activists unsuccessfully attempted to browbeat the film producer behind a new Michael Moore documentary panning green energy into permanently removing the movie over claims that it contains pro-oil industry misinformation.

Activist Josh Fox, climate scientist Michael Mann, and other environmentalists signed onto a petition Friday asking the  producer to take down Planet of Humans, claiming Moore’s film relies on old data to claim solar and wind energy is dependent on fossil fuels. Films for Action initially nixed the film before putting it back online, saying the move was meant to engage in debate.

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Missouri and Mississippi File Lawsuits Against China for Unleashing COVID-19 on the World

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The attorneys general of Missouri and Mississippi announced this week that they are filing lawsuits against the Chinese government over its handling of the coronavirus, which first appeared in Wuhan late last year and was allowed to spread to the rest of the world.

Missouri AG Eric Schmitt says that China’s “campaign of deceit” has led to great human suffering across the globe.

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Commentary: Big Tech, Privacy, and Power

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The ground is shifting quickly beneath our feet when it comes to tech, privacy, and power. And, although tech companies, their advocates, and even some policymakers, would like us to imagine these issues are cut and dried, they are not.

In their book The Sovereign Individual, published on the eve of the year 2000, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg attempt to grapple with the forthcoming technological changes that the new millennium inevitably would bring. “As technology revolutionizes the tools we use,” they wrote, “it also antiquates our laws, reshapes our morals, and alters our perceptions.”

This is the dynamic that has been unfolding slowly over the last 20 years, as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms have transformed how we engage with communications, culture, commerce, and one another.

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Star Political Report: Trump Takes Weekend Off from Wuhan Flu Briefings; President Reaches Out to Catholic Prelates, Educators; Happy Birthday, Melania!

Neil W. McCabe

  President Donald Trump took a break from his daily showdowns with the White House press corps Saturday and Sunday that does not mean that the president is staying away from the West Wing press briefing room as he leads the administration’s response to the Wuhan Flu. There was some confusion about whether or not there would be a briefing Sunday. The White House press pool, reporters selected to cover events where it is impractical to have a large crowd was supposed to come in at 4 p.m., at which point they would either cover something or be dismissed. In the pre-Wuhan Flu days, the weekend pool would show up by 9 a.m., load up into a van and then join the president’s motorcade to his Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia, where Trump would golf and the reporters would hang out at an Italian restaurant just outside the club’s gate. Those days seem like a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. At or about 3:45 p.m., the pool was told to be at the White House for 6 p.m., which got people excited for the return of the COVID-19 briefings, but an hour later,…

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Minnesota’s State and National Dems Want to Cancel Rent and Mortgage Payments

Anthony Gockowski

  An executive order from Gov. Tim Walz bans evictions, foreclosures, and lease terminations for the duration of the state’s peacetime emergency, but one Democratic lawmaker wants to take things a step further. State Sen. Jeff Hayden (DFL-Minneapolis) recently called for a “rent and mortgage moratorium” in Minnesota, an idea championed by Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) in the U.S. Congress. “Every Minnesotan deserves to have a safe, reliable place to call home. Right now, communities across the state are facing loss of income and increasingly exacerbated economic hardships during this public health emergency, while their rent and mortgage obligations continue to pile up,” he said in a statement. Without the “suspension of these payments,” the state will continue to see “devastating consequences both during this public-health emergency and after,” according to Hayden. “Our priority should be to provide the immediate relief Minnesotans so greatly need in a timely manner, and that includes a moratorium on rent and mortgage payments,” he concluded. The Minnesota House is currently considering a bill that would appropriate $100 million from the general fund for housing assistance grants. Under that bill, Minnesotans who are unable to pay their rent or mortgage because of a public-health emergency…

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Gov. Whitmer on Bankruptcy Comments: ‘It’s Outrageous for Senator McConnell to Even Suggest That’

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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Sunday that bankruptcy is not an option for Michigan in response to comments last week from U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Whitmer appeared on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” on Sunday. Stephanopoulos asked her if default was on the table for Michigan.

“No, and it’s outrageous for Senator McConnell to even suggest that,” Whitmer said. “But that’s what the matter is. Our general fund budget when adjusted for the inflation is the same size it was during – when Richard Nixon was our president. We have been incredibly smart stewards and we have not made some of the investments I think we should have as a state because of this artificially low number that we’ve been working with.”

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Senate Democrats Propose Criteria for Reopening Ohio Economy

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As Ohio works to reopen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic starting May 1, Senate Democrats are urging Gov. Mike DeWine to ensure the state is prepared.

Specifically, they want the governor to require the use of masks in public and to guarantee Ohio has an adequate supply of sanitation items and personal protective equipment (PPE). They also want clear and publicized guidelines for businesses, protections for whistleblowers, child care accommodations for employees who need it and continued teleworking for employees who can or who are in high-risk categories.

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Judge Rules Tennessee Must Allow ‘Constitutional Right’ of Abortions

Jason M. Reynolds

  A panel of federal judges ruled 2-1 that Tennessee must allow the “Constitutional right” to abortion during the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic. The decision came Friday from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati, available online here. Ruling in favor of abortion were Judges Karen Nelson Moore (pictured left) and Helene N. White. The dissenting opinion came from Judge Amul R. Thapar (pictured right), appointed by President Donald Trump in 2017. Moore was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1995 and White was appointed by President Barack Obama in 2008. Moore and White ruled that the so-called right to an abortion applies even during the state’s ban on elective medical procedures during the COVID-19 crisis. And, here, although we have great respect for the challenges Tennessee faces as it responds to this novel public health crisis, we agree with the district court that the State’s response, in this one respect, unduly curtailed constitutional liberty, and that judicial intervention was thus warranted. By the same token, however, we also conclude that, when it comes to the precise scope of the district court’s injunction, the district court went too far in asserting its authority. The case was an…

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Commentary: Reopening Georgia and Colorado Is a Study in Double Standards

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When President Trump first unveiled his three-phase strategy for lifting the job-killing stay-at-home orders imposed by most states in an effort to “flatten the coronavirus curve,” among the first to embrace the guidelines were Govs. Brian Kemp of Georgia and Jared Polis of Colorado. Moreover, their reopening plans were quite similar. Both, for example, will permit hair salons, tattoo parlors, and other personal services to resume operation. Yet the reception by the legacy media and various “experts” has been dramatically different. While the Polis plan has excited little comment, Kemp’s program has been denounced by the press and President Trump’s public health advisors have quite literally disowned it.

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Commentary: Harvard Magazine Is Wrong When it Called for a ‘Presumptive Ban’ on Homeschooling

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As a Harvard alum, longtime donor, education researcher, and homeschooling mother of four children in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I was shocked to read the article, “The Risks of Homeschooling,” by Erin O’Donnell in Harvard Magazine’s new May-June 2020 issue. Aside from its biting, one-sided portrayal of homeschooling families that mischaracterizes the vast majority of today’s homeschoolers, it is filled with misinformation and incorrect data. Here are five key points that challenge the article’s primary claim that the alleged “risks for children—and society—in homeschooling” necessitate a “presumptive ban on the practice”:

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Commentary: The Big Red Fake News Machine

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In the late 1990s, Latin America underwent a seismic shift away from its northern neighbor as a result of the domineering and interventionist policies of successive U.S. administrations dating back to the 19th century. This led to the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez Frias as president of Venezuela, and a chain reaction of similar governments of varying leftist ideological stringency coming to power in nations such as Nicaragua, Bolivia, Uruguay, Brazil, and Ecuador. 

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Ohio Couple Sentenced for Conspiring to Import, Distribute Chinese Fentanyl

Samantha Witwer

An Akron couple was sentenced Thursday for their roles in what prosecutors described as an operation that brought large amounts of fentanyl and carfentanil from China for sale in Northeast Ohio.

Donte Gibson, 41, was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison. His wife Audrey Gibson, 36, was sentenced to 10 years, 10 months in prison. Chief U.S. District Judge Patricia Gaughan sentenced the pair by video. The Akron couple were arrested in February 2018 and pleaded guilty to drug and money laundering conspiracy charges.

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