Day: February 25, 2023

Train Company Hit with Class Action Lawsuit After Toxic Derailment in Ohio

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Ohio residents filed a class action lawsuit on Thursday against the railroad company Norfolk Southern after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in early February and cast a toxic plume of chemicals over the town and polluted the air and water, according to the lawsuit’s text.

Johnson and Johnson, a Youngstown, Ohio, based firm and Hagens Berman represent residents within a 30 mile radius of the East Palestine crash site, according to the lawsuit’s text. Residents reported various health concerns including headaches and rashes and worry about the long-term impact that the derailment could have on the community.

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Tennessee State University Leaders Push Back Against State Comptroller’s Report

TC Weber

On Thursday, Tennessee State Legislators heard directly from Tennessee Comptroller Jason Mumpower on issues outlined in a newly released report on Tennessee State University’s housing crisis. The report, came after his office received 14 separate complaints involving TSU’s lack of student housing. While the housing issue was the focus of the report, the comptroller also found issues in other separate areas.

The report cites the university’s lack of a sound final policy, offering several examples of leaders giving conflicting statements and several instances of them not approving funding in a timely fashion. It was determined that TSU’s lack of planning and management, especially regarding scholarship practices, exacerbated the university’s housing problem. Furthermore, it is the belief of the comptroller’s office that TSU will continue to face a housing crisis for the foreseeable future.

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Colleges ‘Scrambling’ for New Ways to Discriminate with Race-Based Admissions Action Expected to End

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With the United States Supreme Court set to rule against race-based admissions policies, colleges are looking for news ways to continue to factor race when admitting students, according to Axios.

In October, after hearing oral arguments against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s use of affirmative action in their admissions processes, the Supreme Court showed favor towards ruling against the use of race-conscious admissions policies. In the event that the Supreme Court rules against the admissions practices, universities may axe standardized tests, which schools argue discriminate against minority students, according to Axios.

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Legal Insurrection’s ‘Equal Protection Project’ Launches to Defend Americans Against Biden’s ‘Equity Discrimination’

Susan Berry, PhD

President Joe Biden issued a sweeping executive order last week that will embed woke critical race and gender ideologies into every agency of the federal government, an agenda Legal Insurrection’s Professor William Jacobson asserts amounts to “outright discrimination on the basis of race.”

Jacobson announced the launch of the Equal Protection Project Thursday night on Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Tonight.

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Tennessee Titans Stadium Proposal Submitted to Metro Council for Approval

Kaitlin Housler

A final budget proposal for how the new Tennessee Titans football stadium will be funded has been submitted to the Nashville Metro Council by Nashville Mayor John Cooper and the football team.

The legislation will be subject to three readings, beginning at the council’s next meeting on March 7th. April 4th is the earliest possible date for the agreement to be finalized.

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Arkansas Senate Passes Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ Massive Education Reform Bill

Susan Berry, PhD

The Republican-led Arkansas Senate Thursday passed Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ (R) Arkansas LEARNS Act, a comprehensive education reform plan that seeks to eliminate Critical Race Theory (CRT) in classrooms, increase the salaries of teachers, and broaden school choice in order to “empower parents.”

“We are one step closer to unleashing the boldest, most comprehensive, conservative education reform package in the nation — a blueprint for success for the rest of the country,” Huckabee Sanders tweeted.

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Fed’s Favorite Inflation Index Blew Past Expectations in January

Admin

The Federal Reserve’s preferred measure of inflation, the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, surged past economists’ expectations in January, breaking a recent downward trend, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Friday.

The PCE price index jumped by 0.6% on a monthly basis, and climbed to 5.4% on a year-over-year basis, up from 5.3% in December, the BEA reported. Economists had predicted the year-over-year number would continue to fall to 5% in January, but prices instead shot up at the highest levels since June, The New York Times reported.

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Biden’s Border Admissions Program Is Leading to Family Separations

Admin

The Biden administration’s program to admit migrants using an exception to a major expulsion order if they crossed illegally is leading to family separations, according to multiple reports.

The program allows individual migrants to make appointments through a phone application, known as CBP One, to apply for an appointment to get an exception to Title 42, the Trump-era expulsion order used to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Parents are being forced to weigh a difficult decision of sending their children to cross the border when they can’t get appointments with the family for the admissions process, an immigration lawyer and advocates told Border Report.

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Texas and Michigan to Receive Toxic Wastewater and Contaminated Soil from East Palestine, Ohio

Hannah Poling

According to a county official in Texas, toxic wastewater used to put out a fire after a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio was carried to a suburb of Houston for disposal. According to the Ohio Emergency Management Agency, most of the contaminated soil is going to Michigan.

The wastewater is being delivered to Texas Molecular, a company that disposes of hazardous material by injecting it into the ground.

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Explosive Testimony at Senate Elections and House Municipal Oversight & Elections Joint Meeting Accuses Hobbs, Fontes, Runbeck, and Judges of Racketeering

Rachel Alexander

The Arizona Legislature’s Senate Elections Committee and House Municipal Oversight & Elections Committee held a joint hearing on Thursday featuring testimony from several people involved in researching the voter disenfranchisement that occurred in 2020 and 2022. The testimony by Arizona forensic investigator Jacqueline Breger accused multiple statewide and county officials, including Governor Katie Hobbs and Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, of racketeering connected to the Sinaloa Cartel. Democrats on those committees refused to attend the hearing.

Breger said she has been working with a law firm investigating multistate racketeering and corruption, but in the process discovered election fraud as well. She said neither she nor the attorney she works for are very political; he didn’t vote in the last two elections and she is a registered independent. While investigating racketeering involving the Sinaloa Cartel, their team accidentally discovered election fraud, she said, including finding that Maricopa County’s database is being infiltrated from the outside. “The Maricopa County database has absolutely no integrity whatsoever,” she declared. “Racketeering enterprises are inextricably intertwined with election fraud.”

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Commentary: Abolish the IRS

Admin
Outside of IRS building

The American public has long held an unfavorable view of the Internal Revenue Service, as evidenced by several historical surveys. A Gallup poll taken more than 25 years ago in October 1997 found that 69 percent of the American public held the opinion that the IRS “frequently abuse[d] its powers.” Fast forward to October 2022, when another Gallup poll was taken on the American public’s job-performance rating of 11 federal agencies. The poll ranked the IRS dead last, with only 34 percent of Americans regarding the job performance of the IRS as “excellent/good.”

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Florida Seeks to Replace SAT with CLT, Following Classical Education Trend

Admin

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ feud with the College Board is calling attention to alternatives in standardized testing methods, including the Classical Learning Test (CLT).

DeSantis began pushing back against the College Board, which administers the SAT entrance exam and Advanced Placement (AP) curricula, in January when his administration rejected the trial-run of the AP African American Studies course in the state of Florida.

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Poll Finds Overwhelming Support for Michigan Taxpayer-Funded Business Subsidies

The Center Square

A significant majority of the state’s voters support using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private businesses.

According to a statewide poll conducted by the Glengariff Group, Inc., and commissioned by the Business Leaders for Michigan, 76% of respondents favor government grants to businesses seeking to relocate or expand their footprint in the state.

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Connecticut Gov. Lamont Unveils Plan to Reduce Connecticut’s Healthcare Costs

The Center Square

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont has unveiled a raft of proposed health care reforms he says will cut medical costs and make care more affordable. 

Lamont has filed a pair of bills that, if approved by the state Assembly, would ban the use of anti-competitive health care contracting practices, improve transparency in pricing for medical treatments, cap out-of-network insurance charges, and join a multi-state bulk purchasing program to lower prescription drug costs, among other changes.

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Penn Medicine’s Resident Physicians Move to Unionize

The Center Square

Hundreds of medical residents at the University of Pennsylvania Health System may become the first group of its kind in the state to unionize as their demands for higher pay and better working conditions have gone ignored.

Unionization efforts sparked nationwide after the pandemic pushed long working hours from routine to unsustainable. As such, the residents at Penn Medicine’s main campus in West Philadelphia decided to add their name to the growing list of those seeking representation.

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Lawmakers Approve Income Tax Subtraction Increase for National Guard

The Center Square

Virginia could soon increase the income tax subtraction for certain members of the National Guard under a proposal passed by lawmakers in the Virginia General Assembly this week. 

The proposal, contained in HB 2373, would increase from $3,000 to $5,500 the income tax subtraction for certain members of the Virginia National Guard. The income tax subtraction would apply starting in the 2023 taxable year, and would be eligible to O-6 and below – a rank designation that is a Colonel in the Army, Air Force and Marines, and Captain in the Navy. 

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Arizona State Senator Calls Out Katie Hobbs After Forced Resignation of Department of Child Safety Director Nominee

Neil Jones

Arizona State Sen. Jake Hoffman (R-Queen Creek), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Director Nominations (CDN), announced Wednesday that Hobbs’s choice to lead the Arizona Department of Child Safety (DCS), Matthew Stewart, was allegedly forced to resign following questionable behavior.

“It’s disgraceful that Katie Hobbs either did not conduct a thorough review of Mr. Stewart prior to offering him the position as DCS Director, or she thought she could sweep his history under the rug. This agency is tasked with protecting vulnerable children. While Katie Hobbs openly touted skin-color as her seemingly only priority in the search for the next potential DCS Director, it might have also been a good idea to look at experience and qualifications too,” said Hoffman.

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Arizona Bill Would Require a State Income Tax Cut After Budget Surplus Years

The Center Square

Arizona taxpayers could soon get half of the state’s annual surplus of funds sent back to them as an income tax cut the following year.

The state Senate passed SB 1577 Wednesday afternoon. Sponsored by Chandler Republican Sen. J.D. Mesnard, the bill would require the Joint Legislative Budget Committee to assess state revenue numbers. If the committee certifies an ongoing surplus after accounting for population increases and inflation, the Department of Revenue must cut the individual income tax rate to lower revenue by 50% of that surplus.

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Changes to Proposed Ohio Transportation Budget Calls for Increasing Train Regulations

Hannah Poling

Billions of dollars are being allocated in Ohio’s transportation budget. As the train derailment in East Palestine is still fresh in people’s minds, lawmakers are considering a few amendments to try and prevent what happened there from happening again.

“We’ve got broad support across party lines to get this done,” state Representative Jay Edwards (R-Nelsonville) said.

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Toxic Train Derailment Killed More than 43,000 Aquatic Animals, Department Says

Admin

Officials estimate that more than 43,000 aquatic animals were killed after a Norfolk Southern train derailed earlier this month in eastern Ohio, causing toxic chemicals to be released into the air and water, the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (DNTR) announced Thursday.

Residents began reporting incidents of dead fish floating in local creeks after a controlled burn was performed to prevent an explosion from train cars carrying toxic chemicals including vinyl chloride. The total estimate was calculated based on observations on Feb. 6 and 7, DTNR Director Mary Mertz said, according to Fox 8.

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Key Hunter Biden Associate Cooperating with Congress, Opening Crucial Window into Joe Biden Dealings

Just the News

Congressional investigators have scored a major breakthrough by securing cooperation from Eric Schwerin, a close business associate of Hunter Biden who also had dealings with Joe Biden’s business and tax affairs.

“He is cooperating with us,” House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) revealed Thursday evening on the “Just the News, No Noise” television show. “His attorneys and my counsel are communicating on a regular basis. Now, I feel confident that he’s going to work with us, and provide us with the information that we have requested.”

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Commentary: Ohio Train Derailment Shows We Need an America First Infrastructure Policy Now More than Ever

Admin

After the massive train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, on Feb. 3, our nation’s infrastructure issues are now top of mind for many American citizens. While East Palestine experienced a landmark environmental disaster after nearly 50 train cars were derailed, Biden administration officials remained silent for weeks. The derailment demonstrated a fact that is all too apparent in recent months: America’s infrastructure is being neglected, and the Biden administration’s policies are not the answer to the problems we face.

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Commentary: FDR Did Not Create America’s Middle Class

Admin
President Franklin D. Roosevelt

This week I have a question from Ryan who asks about economic development in America. Ryan says,

I was having a discussion with an acquaintance the other day over the causes of the post WW2 economy, more specifically why the middle class grew so large compared to the past and today. My claim was that the war devastated other countries’ industries, forcing other countries to buy from the US. This combined with the return of many men from the military to the workforce was the primary cause.

He claims that while those produced a large GDP, it did not explain why the middle class grew. Instead he advocates that the primary cause was the FDR policies of wealth redistribution, high tax rates, and strong labor unions. As such, he advocates for a return to those policies today.

What would be your perspective on this and where might one go to further research it?

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