An illegal alien living in Williamsburg was arrested on Dec. 14 for allegedly kidnapping a teenaged girl, as confirmed by Breitbart.
However, the public was not alerted that a violent illegal alien, Brando Alex Pastor Batz, 19, had been living among them.
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Since taking office as Commissioner for the Florida Department of Agriculture, Nikki Fried (D) has made numerous moves backing LGBT advocacy issues. One LGBT advocacy group, Equality Florida, has been a large player in Florida’s progressive politics and receiving an official endorsement can lead to major financial contributions.
Equality Florida previously endorsed then-Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum (D) against Ron DeSantis (R) in 2018. As election day drew nearer, the Human Rights Campaign, another pro-LGBT group, bought more than half a million dollar ad buys encouraging voters to support Florida’s Democrats, including Gillum.
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Two Minnesota colleges have joined a handful of schools across the country who will require students to receive a COVID-19 booster shot in order to attend spring semester classes.
“News about the new Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus is undoubtedly on all of our minds, particularly as we spend more time indoors and in close proximity with loved ones over the winter break. While we don’t yet know how this new variant might impact our community, we are paying close attention to its development and will be ready to adjust plans on campus if needed,” Carleton College said on its website.
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A plastics manufacturer, Starplast USA, is setting up a new facility in Chesterfield County and will be eligible to receive state-funded assistance through multiple programs, Gov. Ralph Northam announced.
Starplast USA, which is a subsidiary of the Israel-based Starplast, will invest about $17.7 million for its new facility, which is projected to create 300 jobs. The company creates a variety of plastic products, which includes garden storage, houseware and toys. The specific amount of money Starplast will receive from the state is still not clear.
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Rosemarie Westbury’s life was turned upside down on April 9. Armored vehicles carrying federal agents equipped with fully-automatic rifles and battering rams were looking for her son.
It was 6:30 in the morning and Rosemarie was on her way to work as the sole breadwinner of the family. Her 62-year-old husband, Robert, has had eight strokes.
She received a terrifying call from one of her sons: the FBI was at their door.
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The Biden administration announced a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all branches of the military on August 25, which applies to members of the Arizona Army National Guard (AZARNG). Although six governors are attempting to stop the mandate for their National Guards, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is not one of them.
AZARNG has not begun discharging any soldiers yet, but intends to follow the lead of other branches of the military, which have. The Department of Defense declared that Army National Guard and Reserve members have until June 30 to receive their shots.
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U.S. Representative Steve Cohen (D-TN-09) said on the floor of the House this month that former U.S. President Donald Trump had “the most disgusting presidency in the history of this country.” Cohen said this as he declared he had voted for the Protecting Our Democracy Act. He said the bill, if enacted into law, would prevent presidential abuses of power, and it would also protect elections from foreign interference. The bill would also require Congressional oversight when the president grants self-pardons or pardons family members, administration officials, or paid campaign staffers.
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Twitter suspended the account of Just the News founder John Solomon for sharing an article about the legal distinctions between Pfizer’s fully approved and emergency use authorization (EUA) COVID-19 vaccines, which could affect the legality of vaccine mandates.
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Thieves in Nashville this year have stolen exactly 1,259 guns out of vehicles, according to statistics, as compiled by the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD). “More than 70 percent of ALL guns reported stolen in 2021 (1,789) were taken from vehicles. Last week, 49 guns were stolen from cars and trucks. Many of the guns taken last week came from vehicles parked outside nightclubs, apartment buildings and hotels,” MNPD officials said in a press release last week.
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Memphis set a new record for homicides in a single year this week, topping last year’s record number of homicides as violent crime spikes nationwide.
“On Thursday, Memphis police reported 333 homicides, meaning the city has officially passed the grim record set in 2020 of 332 homicides. Of those 333 homicides occurring this year — 292 are classified as murders,” Commercial Appeal said. “The remainder of the deaths fall into categories such as justified homicides or instances of negligent manslaughter.”
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Joe Biden, first as a candidate and then in the White House, from the outset saw the COVID-19 pandemic mainly as a means of leveraging political support, from the manner in which the lockdowns allowed him to run a virtual campaign from his basement to equating Donald Trump with the COVID-19 virus.
Like many on the Left, Biden was overt in such cynicism. So were Hillary Clinton, Gavin Newsom, and Jane Fonda—who claimed that COVID was a “never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste” moment. Panic and lockdowns could help achieve single-payer health care, or a recalibrated capitalism, or the end of Donald Trump himself.
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A Nashville-area hospital announced new limits to the number of visitors a patient is allowed to have as coronavirus cases continue to increase.
TriStar Summit Medical Center will implement a mandate that will only allow one visitor per inpatient, according to a release from the group.
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A new Beacon Center report shows while Tennessee’s truth-in-taxation law creates transparency in the process of property tax assessments, it lacks the power to prevent large property tax increases.
Tennessee was the first state with a truth in taxation requirement, but it is now one of four states without a cap on property tax increases.
Truth in taxation in Tennessee requires local governments to inform residents of any property tax rate increases and local entities to consider means that do not increase property taxes alongside rate or levy increases.
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Iran fired missiles in a provocation toward Israel and invited Venezuela’s socialist leader for a visit as it continued to antagonize the West in the midst of slow-moving negotiations to stop Tehran’s nuclear program.
The official IRNA news agency reported the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps fired 16 surface-to-surface missiles Friday at the end of five days of military drills in the desert, airing footage of the missile launches and suggesting it was a warning to Israel.
“These exercises were designed to respond to threats made in recent days by the Zionist regime,” Major General Mohammad Bagheri told the state television network.
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Thousands of flights were delayed or canceled on multiple airlines across the United States over the holiday weekend, leaving thousands of travelers frustrated and stranded, according to FlightAware.
Sunday saw a total of 5,936 delays and 1,387 cancellations of flights within, or out of the United States on Sunday. United, Delta, and JetBlue blamed the flight disruptions on staff shortages due the highly transmissible Omicron variant, US News reported.
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Six party committees have raised a combined $716 million over the first ten months of the 2022 election cycle. In November, the committees raised $54 million, according to recent filings with the Federal Election Commission. This was the lowest cumulative fundraising month of the 2022 election cycle.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) raised $12.6 million and spent $6.4 million in November, while the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) raised $7.3 million and spent $7.9 million. So far in the 2022 election cycle, the DCCC has raised 6.8% more than the NRCC ($130.8 million to $122.1 million). November was the fifth consecutive month where the DCCC outraised the NRCC.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) raised $8.4 million and spent $8.0 million, while the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) raised $6.8 million and spent $4.5 million. So far in the 2022 election cycle, the NRSC has raised 14.3% more than the DSCC ($93.6 million to $81.1 million). This was the 10th consecutive month where the NRSC outraised the DSCC.
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The world’s three largest auction houses reported record sales of over $15 billion in 2021, highlighting a surge in global wealth and more first-time, young collectors entering the market, multiple sources reported.
Christie’s reported total sales of $7.1 billion in 2021 on Monday, marking the highest figure in five years, according to CNBC. Sotheby’s saw sales surge to $7.3 billion in 2021, the company announced Wednesday, the best year in its 277-year history, and Philips said its sales hit a record high of $1.2 billion.
“Every single category is outperforming,” Guillaume Cerutti, chief executive of Christie’s, told CNBC.
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Roughly 6-in-10 parents are concerned about the current quality of American education, according to a survey conducted by an education advocacy group.
An overwhelming number of parents believe they should be able to determine what their kids are taught in the classroom, according to a Free to Learn (FTL) poll. Concerns over COVID-19 mitigation measures, Critical Race Theory (CRT), gender ideology and virtual learning have been on the rise since the start of the pandemic.
CRT holds that America is fundamentally racist, yet it teaches people to view every social interaction and person in terms of race. Its adherents pursue “antiracism” through the end of merit, objective truth and the adoption of race-based policies.
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The 1619 Project Creator said she doesn’t understand the argument “that parents should decide what’s being taught” to their children in school on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.
The 1619 project was created by Nikole Hannah-Jones, a writer for The New York Times, and it promotes the idea that America’s ‘true founding’ occurred when slaves arrived in the colonies, framing the history of the country around race and slavery.
“I don’t really understand this idea that parents should decide what’s being taught,” Hannah-Jones said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I’m not a professional educator. I don’t have a degree in social studies or science,” she said.
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Vanderbilt University announced last week that they would continue the partnership with the Japanese-based Ono Pharmaceutical Company through November 2023. Vanderbilt has been working with Ono since 2015, and this is the fourth extension of their contract.
“Such a successful cooperative effort is never guaranteed, so it is great to be able to continue and extend what has been Vanderbilt’s longest ongoing drug discovery collaboration with Ono,” said Thomas Utley, senior licensing officer at the Center for Technology Transfer and Commercialization. “The collaboration is only possible because of the great working relationship that Ono brings to the table.”
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On Tuesday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it would be permanently extending the early release of thousands of federal inmates who were set free due to a spike in COVID cases, as reported by the New York Post.
In doing so, the DOJ reversed an order previously made by President Donald Trump in January that would have seen such prisoners eventually returned to confinement. Instead, over 5,000 prisoners will now either remain in home confinement or be allowed to roam completely free.
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It’s no secret that there is an obsession with race among our nation’s colleges.
On every campus, there seems to be another multicultural center for BIPOC students, or a class on how to be woke, or a bias response team.
And while the country is finally waking up to just how far left American society has drifted recently, such politics have been the norm on college campuses for years.
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State Senator Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) on Monday launched a campaign for mayor of Milwaukee, joining a crowded field of more than a half dozen individuals.
Taylor made the announcement following her decision to suspend her campaign for Wisconsin Lieutenant Governor.
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Astronomers with the European Space Agency have proposed a new astrophysical model in which black holes formed directly after the Big Bang, a postulation which, if true, may explain the current structural formations present throughout much of the present-day cosmos.
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Recently-released surveillance video from inside the lower west terrace tunnel at the Capitol building from last January 6 confirms what American Greatness has reported for months: law enforcement officers from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department and U.S. Capitol Police led a brutal assault against Trump supporters trapped inside that tunnel during the Capitol protest.
The three-hour clip offers one angle of what happened between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. in the tunnel, the site of the most violent clashes between police and protesters. It also is the location where Rosanne Boyland, a Trump supporter from Georgia, died.
One clip shows the attack on Victoria White, a Minnesota mother of four who was viciously beaten by at least two D.C. Metro officers including a supervisor:
The video supports what White told me in a series of interviews earlier this month; she was repeatedly beaten on the head with a baton and punched directly in the face numerous times by police. One officer grabbed her by the hair and shook her head side to side. Government charging documents, however, claim White—who is 5’6”, weighs 155 pounds, and had no weapon—was the aggressor:
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In the current day and age, energy security is a prerequisite for national security. When America became energy independent in 2019, it freed us from the political whims of unstable countries. But dogmatic leftists across the world have made it clear that they will sacrifice energy security for their idea of necessary climate policy, seemingly undisturbed by the transfer of that security to communist and authoritarian regimes in China and Russia. As a result, the world might see a Red Revolution before it ever sees a Green one.
While in recent years the US has embraced its liquified natural gas (LNG) boom, European countries steered the other way, ramping down fossil fuel production and increasing their dependence on fossil fuel imports. They have justified this as a “necessary” sacrifice until solar and wind deployment catches up. They are seemingly unconcerned that Russia has become the EU’s largest supplier of fossil fuels, supplying around 40% of the EU’s LNG and coal.
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Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., is leading a coalition of Republicans in Congress to sponsor legislation that would ban federal funding to states or localities that allow foreigners to vote in U.S. elections.
The new legislation, dubbed the Protecting Our Democracy by Preventing Foreign Citizens from Voting Act, was introduced after many liberal municipalities from San Francisco to New York have moved in 2021 to allow non-citizens to cast ballots in local elections
“It’s ridiculous that states are allowing foreign citizens to vote,” Rubio said. “However, if states and localities do let those who are not U.S. citizens to vote in elections, they shouldn’t get U.S. citizen taxpayer money.”
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Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly and the Legislature’s Democratic leadership on Thursday released a draft bill to get rid of the food sales tax in the state.
Known colloquially as the “Axe the Food Tax” bill, the legislation would eliminate the state’s 6.5% sales tax on food. The draft bill also includes a full exemption on state and local taxes for items bought at farmers markets.
Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, D-Lenexa, and House Minority Leader Tom Sawyer, D-Wichita, helped craft the legislation and are formally looking for co-sponsors.
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Virginia Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin announced his new finance secretary and vowed his team will promote lower taxes and greater fiscal responsibility in Richmond.
The governor-elect’s incoming finance secretary will be Stephen Emery Cummings, the former president and CEO of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group.
“Lowering taxes and restoring fiscal responsibility in Richmond is a primary focus of our Day One Game Plan, and Steve’s experience and expertise will help make sure we deliver real results for Virginians,” Youngkin said in a statement.
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Rosemarie Westbury’s life was turned upside down on April 9. Armored vehicles carrying federal agents equipped with fully-automatic rifles and battering rams were looking for her son.
It was 6:30 in the morning and Rosemarie was on her way to work as the sole breadwinner of the family. Her 62-year-old husband, Robert, has had eight strokes.
She received a terrifying call from one of her sons: the FBI was at their door.
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In a year, Ohio’s highway system fell from consideration as one of the best in the nation to average, based on a recently released report from the Reason Foundation.
The state ranked 13th in the nation a year ago in the report that analyzes overall cost-effectiveness, along with condition, fatality rates and time spent commuting. It remains above average, however, coming in at a 24th ranking in the nation in the most recent report.
“To improve in the rankings, Ohio needs to reduce its administrative disbursements or have those costs translate into better system performance. The state’s disbursements are three times higher than Ohio’s peer states. The state also needs to improve its urban arterial pavement condition,” said Baruch Feigenbaum, lead author of report and senior managing director of transportation policy at Reason Foundation. “Ohio’s administrative costs have increased significantly from the last report. The state’s three fatality rates have increased slightly as well.”
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Pennsylvania was by far one of the most contentious battleground states in the 2020 election, but new analysis shows even in Philadelphia Democrats are only treading water.
In 2020, both Democrat and anti-Trump groups dumped millions into Philadelphia and surrounding suburbs, with roving food vans that would extract votes out of people in exchange for a meal, or the use of “street money” to incentivize election-day door knockers to push people to the polls.
Despite these borderline-bribery efforts to drag people out to vote against Trump in 2020, Democrats gained less than 20,000 votes in Philly compared to 2016 numbers.
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Federal officials have announced eight new assistant U.S. attorneys for the Northern District of Georgia. One of them, Mary Jane Stewart, as referred to in a press release is “a career public servant.”
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Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed legislation that will help expand access to broadband internet throughout the state.
House Bill 2071, sponsored by a trio of lawmakers in the House of Representatives, will establish the Pennsylvania Broadband Development Authority, an agency that will help award grants to underserved areas throughout the state.
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The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has scheduled a time when it will hear a challenge to a Florida law that bans 18 to 20-year-olds from purchasing rifles and shotguns. The court will hear the arguments during the week of March 21, 2022.
The law in question is the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, named after the school where the Parkland school shooting took place. The assailant was underage and used a modern sporting rifle during the shooting.
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Arizonans enjoyed a cooler and wetter summer in 2021 but so did mosquitos, which caused West Nile virus infections at rates multiple times higher than previous years.
As of Dec. 23, the Arizona Department of Health Services recorded 1,567 known or probable cases of the virus. The agency attributes 99 deaths to the virus.
By contrast, 2020’s dry summer saw 11 total cases and two deaths, one of the lowest years of transmission since the virus was first discovered in 2003. The only year Arizona recorded more cases was in 2004, when the state had 391 cases.
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The population continues to decrease in rural Minnesota. Additionally, rural Minnesota continues to experience the highest increase in wages along with the highest job vacancy rates, according to a report released Monday by the Center for Rural Policy and Development.
Marnie Werner, CRPD vice president, research, and Kelly Asche, CRPD research associate, wrote the nonprofit policy research organization’s “The State of Rural” 2021 update.
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The Pfizer BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine authorized under the Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) has a different label than the FDA-approved Comirnaty label for the vaccine, and Pfizer has said they will continue to distribute the vaccine made under the earlier label until stocks run out.
The EUA was granted before the risk of myocarditis for men under 40, caused by the vaccine, was known, and the Comirnaty package insert found on the FDA website includes warnings about the rare side effect. A fact sheet distributed with the EUA vaccine also includes a warning about the risk.
On Tuesday, an FDA official told The Virginia Star on background that the FDA has to ensure that EUA vaccine recipients are informed of the EUA, the extent and benefits of the vaccine, that the vaccine is optional, and of alternatives to the vaccine. Normally that data is communicated through a fact sheet for EUA vaccines. A package insert is used with fully approved vaccines like Comirnaty.
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by Paul Gottfried In a widely noted analysis of wokeness at The American Conservative, Scott McConnell indicates that there’s good news ahead. Woke culture may soon be a spent force. It may be following the paths of other attempted revolutions like communism and Jacobinism, which reached a high point in power and popularity and then precipitously declined. According to McConnell, these periodic eruptions “seem to have a natural lifespan,” of about five years, only to peter out. If we show enough “will power” and presumably patience, that will happen in this case. An End to Wokeness A reaction is supposedly already setting in with the woke ideas of American educational and media elites. It seems these zealots have pushed their weird notions of white systemic racism, gender fluidity, and anti-Westernism beyond the point of public endurance. Pushback has supposedly begun; and most of McConnell’s detailed commentary is an attempt to flesh out how this perhaps inevitable reaction to wokeness is unfolding. Asian and Hispanic voters are breaking from the woke-intoxicated Democratic Party; and in the Virginia gubernatorial race in November, a Republican candidate who ran against critical race theory shocked the cultural Left by winning. Moreover, Glenn Youngkin’s Democratic opponent, rather…
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Virginia has the best business climate in the country in 2021, according to Business Facility’s annual business ranking released this week.
“The commonwealth’s location, right next to the District of Columbia, combined with its pro-business work environment, strong workforce and educational systems, makes it [a] great place to do business in,” Business Facility Editorial Director Seth Mendelson said in a statement.
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A bill that aims to exempt additional voter registration data from Florida’s public records laws was introduced Sunday by State Representative Cyndi Stevenson of St. Augustine.
In addition to data such as a voter’s social security number and address that were already exempt, Stevenson’s bill (HB 983) looks to shield the public from a voter’s date of birth, telephone number, e-mail address, and party affiliation.
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The Ohio Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Tuesday, relating to the constitutionality of new congressional maps that were recently signed into law by Governor Mike DeWine.
The new map, passed earlier this year by the state legislature, established new boundaries for federal and state representation following new data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
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Republican Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters is selling a line of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to finance his campaign, Axios reported.
NFTs are unique packets of data stored on the blockchain, a decentralized public ledger distributed across multiple servers, that often correspond to media such as a piece of digital art. Masters’ NFT includes a digital copy of the cover art of “Zero to One,” a book he co-authored with tech billionaire Peter Thiel, along with a signed hardcover print of the book, according to Masters’ website.
“This is the first NFT we’re issuing to help share the book’s cool history, and to help raise money for my U.S. Senate campaign, so we can help use Zero to One thinking to save America from the brink of destruction,” Masters, who serves as chief operating officer of Thiel Capital, wrote in announcing the NFT.
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California may not be what it used to be, but it still looks tempting in the middle of a Minnesota winter. So tempting two of Hennepin County’s highest paid public employees made the Golden State their home base for working remotely during–and now–after the pandemic.
Michael Rossman takes home $189,000 in salary as Chief Hennepin County Human Resources Officer supervising 70 employees from his Palm Springs pad, while Chad Helton gets paid $184,000 to lead over 500 employees of the Hennepin County Library system out of Los Angeles.
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An Allegheny County legislator indicated last week that he is preparing to offer legislation to iron out complexities in Pennsylvania’s tax system.
State Rep. Robert Mercuri (R-Wexford) has underscored the current lack of conformity between Pennsylvania’s tax rules and those of the federal government. The chief concern the lawmaker said his upcoming bill would address is reforming the Keystone State’s legal treatment of depreciation of corporations’ assets and of property transferred or sold during a taxable year.
“It is essential that we take steps now to make it simple and advantageous to do business within the Commonwealth, positioning our communities for investment and growth as we continue to recover from the economic uncertainty that has arisen as a result of COVID-19 policies,” Mercuri wrote in a memorandum to fellow House members.
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Members of the Tennessee State Building Commission last week approved a budget that more than doubles the amount for infrastructure improvements at the Megasite of West Tennessee.
State Building Commission members and the State Building Commission’s staff did not return The Tennessee Star’s requests for comment Monday.
Tennessee Speaker of the House Cameron Sexton (R-Crossville) serves on the Building Commission, according to the Office of the State Architect’s website.
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The Memphis Police Department (MPD) reported that the city had a violent Christmas Eve and a violent Christmas day, including four homicides. MPD officials tweeted about one shooting homicide that occurred at 2:26 a.m. Saturday at the 1000 block of Haynes Street. Authorities transported the shooting victim to Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital in Memphis, where staff pronounced him deceased. MPD officials said they had no information about a suspect.
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For many years, the U.S. military has been among the most trusted of American institutions, certainly the most trusted part of the U.S. government. It has maintained that status despite its failure to achieve success in the post-9/11 wars. Americans seem to have accepted the argument that this failure has more to do with the political constraints placed on the military than on the military’s doctrine, planning, and execution. They have continued to accept the military’s self-image as a profession rather than a self-interested bureaucracy, and have supported its professional ethos understood as duty, honor, and sacrifice.
But attitudes toward the military seem to be changing. According to a recent survey conducted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, the number of Americans who express a great deal of confidence and trust in the military has dropped from 70 percent to 45 percent in just the past three years, including an 11 percent drop since February.
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Inflation, “softness” in the White House, and pandemic uncertainty make up some of the biggest risks to the U.S. economy in 2022, according to a Washington consulting firm.
“Every quarter, I take a macro look at trends driving politics and policy looking both backward and forwards and identify where key political risks may lurk and where political opportunities may present themselves,” Bruce Mehlman, former assistant secretary of Commerce in the George W. Bush administration, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “The most recent analysis targets 2022 and identifies the emerging risks business and government leaders should anticipate and prepare for.”
A founding partner of the Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm Mehlman Castagnetti Rosen & Thomas, Mehlman advises prominent companies to understand and prepare for emerging trends and risks critical to the ever-evolving policy environment.
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Nashville real estate is selling in 12 days on average, according to The RE/MAX National Housing Report for November 2021. The rate, which is the fastest of any other metro area in the county, is twice as quick as the overall average rate in November which is 29 days.
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