Day: December 15, 2021

Democrat Push for Ballot Drop Boxes Boomerangs as Key Georgia Senator Moves to Outlaw Them

Admin

In the summer before the contentious November 2020 election, the Democrats’ most influential election lawyer, Marc Elias, used the pandemic to urge liberal grassroots groups to press for the deployment of mass drop boxes to collect an expected wave of absentee ballots.

“Local libraries, church groups and civic associations should explore with local election officials setting up secure ballot drop boxes,” he wrote in an op-ed. “There may even be a role for businesses to play in preserving our right to vote through drop box placement and security.”

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Metro Nashville Police Asks COVID-19 Budget Committee to Purchase New Tasers

Peter D'Abrosca

The Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) requested from the city’s COVID-19 Financial Oversight Committee a budget for new tasers, saying the ones they currently use are outdated, obsolete, and do not work properly. 

MNPD Deputy Chief Chris Taylor told the committee in a Dec. 8 meeting that the review of their taser equipment was prompted during COVID-19, while the department addressed how to arrest unruly suspects who were COVID-19 positive.

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Commentary: Justice Department Moves to Conceal Police Misconduct on January 6

Admin

After months of foot-dragging, Joe Biden’s Justice Department is preparing for the first set of trials related to its sprawling prosecution of January 6 defendants: Robert Gieswein, who turned himself in and was arrested on January 19 for his involvement in the Capitol protest, is scheduled to stand trial in February.

A week after his arrest, Gieswein, 24 at the time, was indicted by a federal grand jury on six counts including “assaulting, resisting, or impeding” law enforcement with a dangerous weapon that day. He has been behind bars ever since, denied bail while Judge Emmet Sullivan delayed his trial on numerous occasions. Gieswein is among 40 or so January 6 defendants held in a part of the D.C. jail system solely used to detain Capitol protesters.

Federal prosecutors accuse Gieswein of using a chemical spray against police officers and carrying a baseball bat. Clad in military-style gear, Gieswein climbed through a broken window shortly after the first breach of the building. He told a reporter on the scene that “the corrupt politicians who have been in office for 50 or 60 years . . . need to be imprisoned.” Democratic politicians, Gieswein complained, sold out the country to “the Rothchilds and the Rockefellers,” a remark the FBI investigator on his case described as an “anti-Semitic” conspiracy theory.

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Nashville City Council Continues to Debate Ending Emissions Testing While Five Counties Are Set to End the Program Next Month

Kaitlin Housler

During a Monday joint meeting of the Budget and Finance Committee and the Health and Safety Committee of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County, officials from the Metro Public Health Department recommended council members end the current vehicle emissions testing program and replace it with a $4 fee for each vehicle registration. The $4 fee proposal would go toward air pollution mitigation efforts.

The Tennessee Star reported the resolution filed by Metro Council Member Kevin Rhoten (District 14), RS2021-1251, was filed November 9th. According to the legislation details, “this resolution would repeal Resolution No. RS2018-1171, which authorized the continuation of the Metropolitan Government’s vehicle inspection and maintenance program, also called the emissions testing program.”

The resolution to end emissions testing in Nashville will be further discussed, and most likely voted on, at the council’s next meeting in the new year on January 4th, 2022.

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Producer Price Index Grows the Fastest It Ever Has

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The Producer Price Index (PPI), which measures inflation at the wholesale level, soared 9.6% year-over-year as of November, growing at the fastest rate ever measured, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced Tuesday.

BLS reported that the PPI, which measures inflation before it hits consumers, grew 0.8% in November. As of October, the measure grew just 8.6% on a year-over-year basis and just 0.6% in that month alone, meaning wholesale prices grew more and to a worse yearly figure in November than they did in October.

Economists projected a year-over-year increase of the core PPI, which excludes food and energy prices, to be 7.2% year-over-year and a 0.4% increase from October, according to CNBC. Demand for goods was the biggest driver for the surge in producer prices, increasing 1.2% in November, slightly down from October’s 1.3% figure. Final demand services inflation increased 0.7% in November, much faster than October’s 0.2%.

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Newt Gingrich Commentary: Abolish the Georgia State Income Tax

Admin
Newt Gingrich

The time has come to abolish the Georgia state income tax.

Sen. David Perdue was exactly right in proposing to eliminate the state income tax. He was also right in suggesting that he could work with the Georgia state legislature and find ways to return money to the people of Georgia rather than focusing it on the state bureaucracies.

The money is clearly there. The Atlanta Journal Constitution reported, “Despite pandemic, Georgia ends fiscal year with a record $3.2 billion jump in revenue.” The article went on to note, “The state saw revenue grow 13.5% over 2020. … Besides the boon in state tax collections, Georgia is also receiving about $4.7 billion or so from the latest federal COVID-19 relief plan.”

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Biden’s Head Start Vaccination Requirement Could Have Detrimental Effects on Montana’s Rural Students

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President Joe Biden’s administration put a policy in place that requires all employees in a federal education program to get the COVID-19 vaccine, which program directors argue will have a detrimental effect on Montana’s programs that assist underserved communities in the state.

If enforced, the requirement will have a negative impact on Montana’s Head Start program, according to program directors and information provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation by the state’s Department of Justice (DOJ). The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), along with the White House, has mandated the vaccine for teachers and staff who work for Head Start and Early Head Start programs nationwide.

Head Start includes preschool programs for 3 and 4-year-old children, while Early Head Start programs are for infants, toddlers and pregnant women to “promote the school readiness of children ages birth to 5 from low-income families by supporting their development in a comprehensive way,” according to its website.

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Biden Says ‘Willing to Lose’ Presidency over Decisions Including Pandemic, Afghanistan, Middle Class

Admin

President Biden this past weekend suggested he would be willing to lose his presidency over his decisions on several key issues including his widely criticized withdrawal from Afghanistan.

In a CBS “Sunday Morning” interview in which he was asked whether he was discouraged by the criticism over his handling of the pandemic and other first-year challenges, Biden answered “No.”

“But look,” he continued. “One of the things we did decide, and I mean this, my word as a Biden, I know what I’m willing to lose over. If we walk away from the middle class, if we walk away from trying to unify people, if we start to engage in the same kind of politics that the last four years has done? I’m willing to lose over that.”

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China Cuts Checks to American Social Media Influencers to Hype Olympics, Downplay Boycotts

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China’s government is paying social media influencers in the U.S. to promote the Beijing Olympics and distract from diplomatic boycotts over its human rights violations, according to disclosures filed with the Department of Justice.

The Chinese consulate is paying Vippi, a New Jersey based public relations firm, $300,000 to have influencers on Instagram, TikTok and Twitch promote the Beijing Olympics, according to the disclosures. The influencers will also be required to promote U.S.-China cooperation on issues including energy and climate change.

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics have inspired diplomatic boycotts from the U.S., Australia and the U.K. due to China’s purported ethnic cleansing and torture of Uyghurs, a Muslim ethnic minority in Western China.

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Analysis: The ‘Green Energy’ Supply Chain Has a Slave Labor Problem

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Jewhar Ilham last saw her father seven years ago.

“I don’t even know if he’s alive,” said Ilham, a Chinese-born Uyghur Muslim. “My cousin, she was a nurse, she was sentenced to 10 years for having a photo and an article of my father in her cell phone.”

Ilham’s father, Uyghur scholar Ilham Tohti, is an accomplished academic, having taught economics at Minzu University of China in Beijing and received several international awards including five Nobel Peace Prize nominations. But Chinese authorities arrested Tohti, who researched human rights violations committed by the Chinese Communist Party-controlled government, in 2014 and later sentenced him to life imprisonment after finding him guilty of “separatism.”

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Commentary: U.S. Drug Agents Ramp Up Fentanyl Counterattack on Chinese Mainland — as DEA Faces Its Own Troubles at Home

RealClearWire

U.S. drug agents are expanding operations in China – six years after America’s largest trading partner and global rival emerged as the main source of chemicals used to make highly lethal fentanyl. It’s now claiming 65,000 American lives a year.

The small crew of about a dozen Drug Enforcement Administration agents, including those in new outposts in Shanghai and Guangzhou, is nearly double the number in 2018. They face what seems like mission impossible: collaborating with Chinese agents to try to bust traffickers hidden somewhere in a sprawling export supply chain that’s linked to 160,000 companies.

“It’s such a massive chemical industry, and then there are layer upon layer of traders, brokers and freight forwarders,” says Russ Holske, the DEA’s director for the Far East, who set up the new offices in China before he retired. “It’s a daunting challenge.”

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Advanced Lawn Solutions Heading Relief Effort for Kentucky Families and Their Children Impacted by Deadly Storm

Morgan Nicole Veysey
pieces of crushed metal in front of someone's house after tornado

Following the deadly weekend tornado that swept through the South on Saturday, a Murfreesboro-based lawn company is collecting donations for families affected in and around Mayfield, Kentucky. Advanced Lawn Solutions will be accepting donations Wednesday, December 15 and Thursday, December 16 at the Advanced Lawn Solutions and Mikey’s Motors in Murfreesboro and Franklin.

“I grew up in Mayfield, so this hits me very hard,” Divisions Manager Ronnie Bone said in a statement shared with The Tennessee Star. “I still have lots of family there and fortunately they survived. But many children in the area were left with absolutely nothing. We will be loading ‘children-focused’ donations into our work trailers and delivering to those hardest hit by this tragic tornado.”

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Commentary: The Corrupt and Mediocre Heroes of the Left Are Imploding

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With fits and starts, we are slowly returning to reality after four years of mass hysteria. Our media-deified, progressive icons are finally being exposed as the deceivers they always were.

From the moment details emerged surrounding Jussie Smollett’s hate-crime hoax, any sane, non-woke person could have recognized he was more than just a pathological liar. Smollett was also a conniving, mean-spirited egoist. He was intent on rescuing his fading acting career by libeling the Chicago police, smearing white Trump supporters as violent racists, and self-servingly advancing the lie of a purported hate crime epidemic against blacks.

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Supermarket Giant Strips Unvaccinated Employees of Their Benefits

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Supermarket chain Kroger announced Tuesday it will eliminate paid emergency leave for unvaccinated employees who contract COVID-19 in addition to requiring some of them to pay a monthly $50 health insurance surcharge starting in 2022, according to a company memo.

The country’s largest supermarket chain, which employees roughly 465,000 workers, issued an internal company memo announcing the changes, which will start on Jan. 1, a company spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Kroger is tightening their COVID-19 related policies as U.S. businesses face uncertainty over President Joe Biden’s recent federal vaccination mandate.

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Phill Kline Commentary: It’s Not Good When Public Officials Fear Transparency

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Politics is getting in the way of government transparency, preventing the sort of accountability on which our governing institutions depend for maintaining public trust and legitimacy.

In Wisconsin and elsewhere around the country, public officials are steadfastly refusing to answer basic questions about their official conduct from the people’s elected representatives. These are not salacious questions about their personal conduct, or fishing expeditions designed to stir up political scandal. Legislators are merely seeking to better understand how appointed bureaucrats and elected officials administered the 2020 elections amidst a pandemic and an unprecedented, and in many cases unlawful, infusion of private monies into public election offices.

Pennsylvania’s Attorney General, for instance, has sued to block a legislative subpoena seeking voter information as part of an investigation of the state’s voter registration system, known as SURE. Even though there is ample precedent for disclosing this type of information, the AG’s lawsuit argues that it would violate citizens’ right to privacy, as though allowing lawmakers to access government records would automatically compromise the security of that information.

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Facing Labor Shortages, Several Large Hospital Systems Drop Vaccine Mandates

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Several large U.S. hospital systems have dropped their COVID-19 vaccine requirements for employees in the wake of a U.S. district court’s temporary halt of the Biden regime’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers.

After months of protests, the mandate forced thousands of hospital employees to either resign, or be terminated because of their refusal to get vaccinated.

Louisiana-based federal Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction on November 30, blocking the federal government from mandating the experimental injections for workers at Medicare or Medicaid-funded healthcare facilities in 40 states.

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Decatur County Residents Advised to Boil Water Before Consuming ‘Until Further Notice’

Morgan Nicole Veysey

Residents of  Decatur County received a warning this week from the Decatur County Sheriff’s Office to boil their water before consuming it. 

The notice said due to a recent drop in water pressure until further notice, residents would be advised to run their water through a clean cloth to remove any sediment or floating material, and to bring the water to a rolling boil for at least a minute to ensure the disinfection.

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Pennsylvania Bill to Restrict Private Money in Election Administration Passes House

Bradley Vasoli

Republican legislation to stop private organizations from donating selectively to Pennsylvania localities’ election activities passed the state House of Representatives along party lines yesterday. 

State Reps. Eric Nelson (R-Greensburg), Clint Owlett (R-Wellsboro) and James Struzzi (R-Indiana) offered the bill after revelations that the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) issued grants to counties last year, with much more money reaching Democrat-heavy areas. Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan contributed $350 million to CTCL in 2020. Former Obama Foundation Fellow Tiana Epps-Johnson serves as the organization’s executive director.

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Minnesota Mayor: Our City Is ‘Under Attack from Mobile Criminals’

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The mayor of Edina, a Minneapolis suburb in Hennepin County, has called on city leaders and residents to work together to extinguish increasing levels of crime.

Mayor Jim Hovland said in a recent letter to residents that the majority of criminals, out to steal cars and other property, are not from Edina. He called them “mobile criminals,” adding that some of them have assaulted their victims and even Good Samaritans.

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Pro-Immigration, BLM Supporting Former Tucson Police Chief Sworn in to Lead Customs and Border Protection

Peter D'Abrosca
Christopher Magnus

The new head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), sworn into his new role Monday, is an open borders extremist and left-wing activists for causes like Black Lives Matter (BLM).

Former Tucson Police Chief Christopher Magnus is the new CBP, which former Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and immigration hardliner Tom Homan described as the “final nail in the coffin for immigration enforcement.”

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Virginia Gov. Northam Proposes Partial Grocery Tax Cut, Other Youngkin-Inspired Tax Policies

Eric Burk

Continuing his “Thank You, Virginia” tour, Governor Ralph Northam announced that his upcoming budget proposal will include tax cuts and refunds, including some similar to those Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin has called on Northam to include in his budget.

“When Virginia cuts taxes next year, it should be done in a way that benefits working people,” Northam said in a Tuesday press release. “Many professionals made it through the pandemic fine, as their work simply moved online. But workers haven’t been so lucky when their jobs require close contact with other people. Some jobs simply can’t move online—restaurant workers, early childhood educators, home care attendants, and others—and we all depend on the people who do this work. Virginia can help working people by eliminating the state grocery tax, providing one-time rebates, and giving a tax break to people who are working.”

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U.S. Supreme Court Won’t Stop Wisconsin Gov. Evers’ Invite-Only Press Briefings

The Center Square

Wisconsin’s governor can continue to exclude certain news organizations from specific news conferences.

The United States Supreme Court on Friday declined to take a case entered by John J. MacIver Institute that challenged the governor’s invite-only press briefings.

MacIver sued in 2019, saying Evers violated the First Amendment by excluding its reporters from the annual budget briefing.

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Arizona Lawmakers Hold Hearing in Pima County Analyzing 2020 Voter Fraud Allegations

Rachel Alexander

Nine Arizona legislators held a hearing Monday in the Democratic stronghold of Pima County and Tucson over persistent rumors of election irregularities, including one anonymous allegation that 35,000 fraudulent votes were added to the final tally.

State Sen. Kelly Townsend (R-Mesa) explained why the Pima County election integrity hearing was necessary.

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EXCLUSIVE: Lisa Hanson Files Writ of Habeas Corpus with United States District Court of Minnesota

Hayley Feland

A Writ of Habeas Corpus has been filed against two sheriffs in charged of handling the incarceration of Melissa “Lisa” Hanson as of Tuesday morning. Hanson, who represented herself sui juris, was charged and convicted last Thursday with six counts of violating executive orders and sentenced to 90 days in jail and a $1,000 fine. for opening her restaurant during Gov. Tim Walz’s (D) COVID emergency shutdown. 

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Florida State Rep. Sabatini Removed from House Committee for Unexcused Absences

Grant Holcomb

State Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R-FL-7) has been removed from a the Children, Families and Seniors Subcommittee in the Florida House. He received two unexcused absences from the committee, when committee members are only allowed one.

Sabatini requested an excused absence from committee chair Thad Altman the day before his absence on October 21. He did not respond to Altman’s follow-up asking for an explanation.

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State Freedom Caucus Network Launches with Seven Named Members of the Georgia General Assembly

Laura Baigert

ATLANTA, Georgia – The newly formed State Freedom Caucus Network launched at the Georgia State Capitol, as the first state to join with seven named members of the Georgia General Assembly making the public announcement via a press conference Tuesday.

Led by Representative Philip Singleton (R-Sharpsburg), Georgia legislators named as Freedom Caucus members (pictured above in the front row) included fellow Representatives Timothy Barr (R-Lawrenceville), Charlice Byrd (R-Woodstock), Emory Donahoo (R-Gillsville), and Sheri Gilligan (R-Cumming) as well as Senator Greg Dolezal (R-Cumming) (pictured above at the podium), who Singleton said is a founding member and first chairman of the Georgia Freedom Caucus as well as Burt Jones (R-Jackson), candidate for Lt. Governor.

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Ohio Unemployment Recovery Remains Among Worst in Nation

The Center Square

Ohio’s unemployment recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic improved last week but remains one of the worst in the country, according to a new report.

The state ranked 26th out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia last week, comparing data with the same week of 2020, according to a report from WalletHub, a personal finance website. That ranking was significantly better than the state’s position when compared with the beginning of the pandemic.

Ohio ranked 43rd in overall unemployment recovery from the beginning of the pandemic.

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Virginia Redistricting Map Proposals Draw Fire for Lack of Incumbent Protection, Reducing Minority Representation

Eric Burk

The Virginia Supreme Court will approve final redistricting maps for Virginia later this month, after the Virginia Redistricting Commission failed to complete any maps. Draft proposals from the Court’s special masters released maps last week with no consideration for protecting incumbents, which has triggered complaints from both parties.

“Virginia’s first draft Congressional map is a disaster that completely fails to deliver fair representation that reflects the Commonwealth. Virginia voters wanted a bipartisan and transparent process. What they got was two people hastily drafting a map behind closed doors and ignoring public input,” Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chair Congressman Sean Patrick Maloney (D-New York-18) said in a press release.

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