eddessaknight's Blog

The media are already salivating over the possible removal of a president they have come to loathe more than their great nemeses of the 20th century — Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon. And the media will reward those who echo the call for impeachment…

President Donald Trump has decided to cease cooperating with what he sees, not incorrectly, as a Beltway conspiracy that is out to destroy him.

“We’re fighting all the subpoenas,” Trump said Wednesday. “These aren’t, like, impartial people. The Democrats are out to win in 2020.”

Thus the Treasury Department just breezed by a deadline from the House Ways and Means Committee to deliver Trump’s tax returns.

Thus the White House will invoke executive privilege to deny the House Judiciary Committee access to ex-White House counsel Don McGahn, who spent 30 hours being interrogated by Robert Mueller’s team.

Thus the Justice Department is withholding from the Oversight Committee subpoenaed documents dealing with the decision to include a question on the 2020 Census about citizenship status.

Across the capital, the barricades are going up figuratively as they did physically in the 1960s and ’70s. Once more, it’s us against them.

Cognizant of the new reality, Trump seems to be saying:

These House investigations constitute a massive political assault, in collusion with a hostile media, to destroy my presidency.

We do not intend to cooperate in our own destruction. We are not going to play our assigned role in this scripted farce. We will resist their subpoenas all the way to November 2020. Let the people then decide the fate and future of the Trump presidency — and that of Nancy Pelosi’s House.

In response to Trump’s resort to massive resistance, Rep. Gerald Connolly said: “A respect for the limits of your branch of government, a respect for the role of other branches of government, is sort of the oil that makes the machinery work. … Absent that this breaks down. And I think we’re definitely seeing that.”

Connolly is not wrong. But the requisite mutual respect between the Democratic House and the Republican White House simply does not exist. It broke down a long time ago.

The campaign of 2020 is on. And the stakes are huge. Not only are the first and second branches of government in play, so, too, is the third, the Supreme Court. Many Democrats, refusing to accept the success of the 50-year conservative long march to capture the court, are determined to pack an expanded court with liberal justices to overturn the conservatives’ victory.

With Republicans having won two presidential elections in 20 years, with fewer popular votes, Democrats are also resolved to rewrite the Constitution and abolish the Electoral College.

Not only ex-convicts but felons in prison must now be allowed to vote, says Bernie Sanders, even if that means the Boston Marathon bomber.

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Under the Sanders reform, if someone murders you, he is still entitled to an absentee ballot. The right to vote is apparently more sacred than the right to life. Truly, this is the divination of democracy.

Trump’s defiance of House subpoenas will fire up his base, which sees the world as he does and has never cottoned to what President Gerald Ford cherished as “the politics of compromise and consensus.”

Whatever may be said about the “deplorables,” they are not obtuse. They do not believe that people who call them racists, sexists, nativists and bigots are friends and merely colleagues of another party or persuasion.

Trump’s defiance of subpoenas, however, will force the more moderate Democrats to join the militants in calling for hearings on impeachment in the House Judiciary Committee, which is where we are headed.

The media are already salivating over the possible removal of a president they have come to loathe more than their great nemeses of the 20th century — Joe McCarthy and Richard Nixon.

And the media will reward those who echo the call for impeachment.

This week, two more Democrats running for president, including Sen. Kamala Harris, came aboard. Soon, the House will capitulate to the clamor and the stampede will be on.

The problem for Democrats?

Attempting to overturn the election of 2016 and remove a president who has the passionate support of a third of the nation will sunder the Democratic Party base as surely as it will unite the Republicans.

Should impeachment succeed, a wound would be inflicted on the American body politic that would take years to heal.

In the longer run, however, the question being raised today goes to the long-term health of the republic itself.

America surely does not lack for diversity. Its diversity — racial, religious, cultural, ethnic, ideological, political — is visible and ever-growing. What is missing is the concomitant of unity.

Moreover, it is the more racially, culturally, religiously, ethnically, and ideologically diverse of the parties, the Democrats, that seems the more splintered than a Republican Party that is supposed to be afflicted with the incurable and fatal disease of Trumpism.

The questions raised by the present state of our politics, which might fairly be described as an American civil war without arms, are these: How does a nation so divided stand united in the world?

And if it cannot stand united in the world, how long does it remain a great nation?

by Patrick Buchanan

Many Happy Returns Jade & on this birth new year may this be the best to come...

Good Health, Prosperity & Long Life  :-)

Eddessa_Knight

As President Trump projected greater economic growth benefits all

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/economy-grows-32percent-in-first-quarter-gdp-shows-in-report-showing-strength-as-well-as-short-term-boosts/ar-BBWjOzA

Judge indicted in Massachusetts for refusing to allow undocumented immigrant to be detained

Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph, 51, of Natick, was charged in the case along with a court officer, Wesley MacGregor, 56, of Watertown.

In court on Thursday, the judge and court officer were released after appearing. The undocumented immigrant is in deportation hearings but not in custody and

“The allegations in today’s indictment involve obstruction by a sitting judge, that is intentional interference with the enforcement of federal law, and that is a crime," said U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling. "We cannot pick and choose the federal laws we follow, or use our personal views to justify violating the law."

According to officials, police in Newton arrested a suspect on March 30, 2018, for being a fugitive on narcotics charges. Officials discovered that the suspect had been deported twice and Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a detainer.

On April 2, 2018, a plainclothes ICE officer came to the district court in Newton to take custody of the suspect and was told to wait in the lobby.

But during the course of the proceedings, Joseph allegedly arranged for the suspect, his lawyer and an interpreter, to leave through a different exit, escorted by MacGregor.

“The actions of the judge in this incident are a detriment to the rule of law and highly offensive to the law enforcement officers of ICE who swear an oath to uphold our nation’s immigration laws,” said Todd M. Lyons, the acting field office director of ICE in Boston.

The defendant, who’s not identified by name in court documents, had been previously deported twice from the U.S., officials said.

According to the court documents, Judge Joseph arraigned the undocumented immigrant facing deportation on those charges, but later in the day she recalled his case. At that point, according to court documents Judge Joseph asked the ICE officer to wait outside the courtroom while proceedings took place.

The indictment includes court transcripts from the hearing which took place on April 2, 2018.

(MORE: ICE arrests more than 280 people in massive workplace raid)

“ICE is gonna get him?” she asks the defendant’s attorney before turning off the court recorder, which the indictment said is a violation of Massachusetts court rules.

TRUMP WIN?? Mexico Arrests 'Hundreds' Of Central American Migrants Attempting To Form Caravan

 

 

By  EMILY ZANOTTI @EMZANOTTI

April 23, 2019

Mexican authorities are reportedly cracking down on migrant caravans from Guatemala and Honduras traveling through southern Mexico, and Monday night, Mexican immigration authorities arrested nearly 400 illegal immigrants near the town of Pijijiapan, not far from Mexico's border with Guatemala.

 

The Associated Press reports that journalists traveling alongside the caravan witnessed hundreds of migrants at the "tail end" of the 3,000 person group being detained and arrested by Mexican immigration officials, "wrestling migrants into police vehicles for transport and presumably deportation."

 

Raids continued throughout the day on Monday, with immigrants reporting they were being "hunted" by immigration officials and targeted for deportation back to Central America.

This is the second wave of mass detentions. The first came last week near Mapastepec, after the Mexican government closed a visa office there and demanded the migrant caravans turn around and return home or face arrest and deportation.

 

President Donald Trump has been encouraging Mexican authorities to take a harder stand against illegal immigrant caravans which have been snaking their way through Mexico to the United States' southern border since last year, flooding Mexican border towns and overwhelming American border and immigration control. After threatening to close the border with Mexico to trade several weeks ago, Trump claimed his counterpart, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, was promising to take the U.S.'s concerns seriously.

 

That seems to now be the case; Mexican officials say they're cutting back dramatically on the number of visas awarded to prospective asylum seekers and claim to be deporting twice the number of illegal immigrants as this time last year. The AP reports that Mexico claims to have deported 11,800 migrants just in the month of April (though Mexico also says it has issued around 15,000 migrant visas since the start of 2019).

 

But the Mexican government says it's not just responding to Trump — it's responding to its own people, who are tired of hosting thousands of migrants waiting to declare asylum in the United States.

 

The United States Customs and Border Patrol is already having difficulty processing asylum seekers, and those who aren't allowed in the United States pending adjudication on their claims are left to wait in Mexican border towns. Those towns are now overrun with members of migrant caravans, as are designated stopping towns along the way from the Guatemalan border to the United States border.

Those towns are similarly overwhelmed, and residents are far less supportive of the migrants now than they were a year ago, when the endless stream of asylum seekers began.

 

Mexico also says their crackdowns aren't targeted at immigrants, per se, but at a criminal element that seems to be using the caravans as cover for human trafficking operations.

“We don’t want for them to just have free passage, not just out of legal concerns but for questions of safety,” Mexican President López Obrador told a press conference Tuesday, in response to an outcry from pro-immigrant groups over the mass detentions.

He also said that migrants who are detained in the immigration raids don't necessarily have to return home. His Interior Secretary, Olga Sanchéz Cordero, was quick to note that migrants pulled from caravans will be offered two options: temporary work visas that allow them to remain in Mexico and eventually apply for Mexican citizenship, or a ride back to their nation of origin.

Letter from one of my "employees . . . "

 

I have enjoyed working here these past several years.

You have paid me very well and given me benefits beyond belief. 

I have 3-4 months off per year and a pension plan that will pay my salary till the day I die, and then pay my estate a one year salary death bonus and then continue to pay my spouse my salary with increases until she or he dies, and a health plan that most people can only dream of having.

Despite this, I plan to take the next 12-18 months to find a new position.

During this time, I will show up for work when it is convenient for me.

And in addition, I fully expect to draw my full salary and all the other perks associated with my current job.    Oh yes, if my search for this new job proves fruitless, I will be coming back with no loss in pay or status.  Before you say anything, remember that you have no choice in this matter. 

I can, and I will do this.

 

Sincerely,

Every Senator or Congressman running for President in 2020 . . . !!

Are we stupid or what???

 

  Global Intelligence Gathering, Analysis, and Reporting…

Progressive Revolution Will End in Socialism 



This is a must-read. 

 

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/04/progressive-revolution-ends-in-socialism/

 

As 290 innocent civilians murdered by terrorist extremist Muslims in Sri Lanka,  500 wounded and counting.. Deadliest violence since civil war ended. 9 bombings of churches, luxury hotels plus other sites targeted-13 suspects arrested so far :-(

Equal Death Day’: May 3, 2030

Another unequal fact of life: Men are more likely to be killed on the job.

By The Editorial Board

April 8, 2019 6:36 p.m. ET

 

Activists, community leaders, union members and politicians gather on the steps of City Hall in New York to rally against pay disparity 

 

Last Tuesday was “Equal Pay Day.” This unofficial holiday was first declared in 1996 to protest the “wage gap” between the sexes. In the latest data, according to proponents, American women who work full time earned only 80 cents for each $1 earned by men. Hence, to catch up with a man’s pay from 2018, a woman must keep working until roughly April 2.

 

The problem with comparing this raw, aggregate data is well documented. Women on average go into lower-paying fields, such as education. Mothers are likelier than fathers to choose flexibility over career advancement. Men tend to work slightly more hours on the job.

 

 

A Conservative Upset in Wisconsin

A conservative upset in Wisconsin and Pete Buttigieg's rise.

 

 

The “wage gap” crowd says these factors can’t account for the entirety of the difference. But even assuming they’re correct, then would they please stop citing the tendentious 80 cents figure? Resetting “Equal Pay Day” to fall on, say, Jan. 25 would be less dramatic, but much less dishonest.

 

And what about other ways the labor market is unequal? To illustrate one example, Mark Perry, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, has suggested “Equal Occupational Fatality Day.” The basic point is that, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, men in America are much more likely to be killed while working.

 

Fishery workers had the highest rate of fatal on-the-job injury in 2017: nearly 100 per 100,000 people. The industry is so small that the BLS doesn’t provide detailed data, but presumably most commercial fishermen were men. The second-most dangerous job was held by lumberjacks (and a few lumberjills, but 98% were male). Next were aircraft pilots (94% male), roofers (99%), garbagemen (88%), and so forth.

 

After running the numbers, Mr. Perry wrote last week: “The next ‘Equal Occupational Fatality Day’ will occur more than 11 years from now—on May 3, 2030. That date symbolizes how far into the future women will be able to continue working before they experience the same loss of life that men experienced in 2018 from work-related deaths.”

 

This increased risk no doubt shows up in men’s paychecks. Not all dangerous occupations, obviously, will get you rich. Logging workers average $42,340 a year. Still, that’s more than preschool and kindergarten teachers ($40,070), who are 98% female.

 

The broader point is that humanity is complicated. Millions of men and women make their own choices about which careers, jobs and family structures will work best for them. Who but a committed social engineer could demand that their median pay precisely match!

Everyone’s favorite boom town just happens to be located in a business-friendly state.

 

By 

James Freeman

Updated April 16, 2019 6:26 p.m. ET

 

Pedestrians enjoy downtown Nashville 

Today the Drudge Report has been linking to the latest  newspaper story  on the long-running economic and cultural boom in Nashville, Tennessee. Like many such stories today’s dispatch in the Guardian mentions the vibrant music scene, which goes way beyond the country acts that made the city famous, as well as the growth of various industries from health care to technology. Also, as in many such stories, there’s no mention of the fact that Nashville happens to be located in a state with no tax on wage income.

 

Being the Guardian, there are gripes about gentrification and income inequality, but the paper’s Khushbu Shah makes clear that Nashville is thriving:

 

Approximately 14 million people visit the city each year, the Chamber of Commerce estimates. This year, around 100,000 are due to show up in late April alone for the National Football League (NFL) draft. In explaining its choice of city, the NFL published a list citing Nashville’s music, barbeque, and Broadway as factors making it the perfect location for 2019.

 

Nashville, unequivocally, is an economic success story, and not just in recent years, when outlets like the New York Times dubbed it the “it city”.

 

In that 2013 Times  story on the city’s prosperity, the lack of a state income tax on wages made a brief cameo appearance in paragraph 23. Last December, another Times  report put Nashville’s success in historical and regional context, but this time with no mention of the Tennessee tax advantage:

Forty years ago, Nashville and Birmingham, Ala., were peers. Two hundred miles apart, the cities anchored metropolitan areas of just under one million people each and had a similar number of jobs paying similar wages.

 

Not anymore. The population of the Nashville area has roughly doubled, and young people have flocked there, drawn by high-paying jobs as much as its hip “Music City” reputation. Last month, the city won an important consolation prize in the competition for Amazon’s second headquarters: an operations center that will eventually employ 5,000 people at salaries averaging $150,000 a year.

Birmingham, by comparison, has steadily lost population, and while its suburbs have expanded, their growth has lagged the Nashville area’s. Once-narrow gaps in education and income have widened, and important employers like SouthTrust and Saks have moved their headquarters. Birmingham tried to lure Amazon, too, but all it is getting from the online retail giant is a warehouse and a distribution center where many jobs will pay about $15 an hour.

 

Also unmentioned was that one of the ways Tennessee encourages the creation of jobs paying more than $15 per hour is by avoiding mandating them. The appropriately named Volunteer State hasn’t followed the trend of ordering wages above the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour, preferring to allow unskilled workers to decide whether to take a low entry-level wage to gain experience. The state also ensures that workers are free to decide whether to join a union or not. As if by magic, many businesses have arrived to offer jobs to these workers.

 

The American Legislative Exchange Council’s annual Rich States, Poor States  report notes  various other aspects of Tennessee’s economic environment which may not make it into stories about the Nashville boom. The report, written by Jonathan Williams, Art Laffer and former Journal editorial writer Steve Moore, ranks Tennessee seventh among the 50 states in terms of policies supporting future growth.

 

The ALEC report notes that along with no tax on wage income, Tennessee also has no death tax and relatively light taxes on property. Public employees make up a relatively small slice of the population  and yet, as Fox Butterfield might observe, the place is thriving.

Come to think of it, it’s probably best for Nashville residents not to discuss these facts unless they want media folk to stop calling their hometown the “it city.”

Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris likely destroyed by fire — LIVESTREAM

Zuckerberg Cronyism

A Commentary By John Stossel

 

iPlease, regulate me!

That was Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg's message to Congress recently.

"Lawmakers often tell me we have too much power over speech, and frankly I agree," he wrote in an op-ed. "(W)e shouldn't make so many important decisions ... on our own."

 

It sounds so self-sacrificing.

 

But give me a break. Big companies use regulation to their advantage.

 

His smaller competitors can't afford the squads of "compliance officers" that Facebook employs.

"You, as a company, welcome regulation?" Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., asked Zuckerberg during a congressional hearing.

 

"If it's the right regulation, then yes," replied the CEO.

"Would you work with us in terms of what regulations you think are necessary in your industry?"

 

"Absolutely," replied Zuckerberg.

 

Zuckerberg's no dope. He sees which way the wind is blowing. He issued his plea to be regulated after receiving months of criticism from politicians.

 

If he cooperates early and enthusiastically, Facebook is likely to get to work with the regulators to shape the rules.

This is sad for two reasons.

 

One, the First Amendment says Congress "shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech." I'd think Zuckerberg would know that, but no, he called for government to "require companies to build systems for keeping harmful content to a bare minimum."

 

Currently, his own website is a wonderful forum for all kinds of useful speech. There's hateful speech, too, but it's the private company's job to decide whether to police that, not government's.

 

The second reason Facebook working with regulators is sad is that if anyone should fight for permissionless, unregulated innovation, it should be people like Mark Zuckerberg.

 

It's no accident that the amazing wealth creation that brought us Facebook, Google, Instagram, Microsoft, Amazon, etc., happened in the two big metropolitan areas farthest from Washington, D.C.

 

As Yaron Brook, chairman of the Ayn Rand Institute, says: "Microsoft in the early 1990s was the largest company in the world, incredibly successful. They spent exactly zero dollars on lobbying, on cronyism, on lawyers. They had no presence in Washington, D.C. -- not a single lawyer, not a single building."

 

Instead of investing in lawyers and lobbyists, Microsoft spent money on technology.

But then the sleepy codgers in Washington, D.C., noticed Microsoft's success.

 

"They were literally brought in front of Congress," recounts Brook, "yelled at by a Republican, Orrin Hatch from Utah. He said, 'You guys need to get involved here in Washington, D.C. You need to build a building here, hire lawyers here.' ... The unspoken text: 'You need to bribe me.'"

The company didn't immediately obey.

 

"Microsoft said, you know what? You leave us alone," says Brook. "We're busy. We're running the biggest company in the world. There's a lot to do!"

 

But that wasn't the end of it.

 

"Six months later, knock on the door at Microsoft: 'We're from the Justice Department and we're here to prosecute you because you're offering ... customers a product for free,'" paraphrases Brook. "Internet Explorer. At a time when (customers) were paying money for Netscape, they offered it for free."

 

The government called that a violation of anti-trust law. Free services might make Microsoft too popular.

 

"For 10 years they had to fight that lawsuit," says Brook. "They lost. They got regulated. They got controlled. Guess how much Microsoft spends today in Washington, D.C.? Tens of millions of dollars."

 

A company that should focus on pleasing customers had to start thinking more about pleasing government.

Today, "they have a beautiful building about equal distance from the White House and from Congress. They have lawyers, lobbyists, they spend a lot of money," says Brook, "and indeed a lot of other tech companies like Google learned the lesson."

 

The lesson is that if you don't want politicians destroying your business, you must go to Washington to give them money. Kiss their rings.

 

"A lot of the lobbying and so-called cronyism," explains Brook, "is self-defense."

 

Yes, Zuckerberg is acting in self-defense, but it's still ugly. And this crony capitalism is a threat to future innovation. Entrepreneurs will learn to do things government's way instead of heeding the market.

 

"If we really want to end cronyism, reduce the power of politicians over our lives," argues Brook, correctly. "Separate economics from state."

 

John Stossel is author of "No They Can't! Why Government Fails -- But Individuals Succeed." For other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit  www.creators.com.