Leftist Center For American Progress: Trump Winning On Rule Of Law For Illegal Immigration

By William Teach July 24, 2019 – 7:44 am

Well, now, this is a real shame. Who would have thought that painting illegal immigration with the rule of law would resonate with American citizens, and would make Democrats look bad?

Top liberal think tanks says Trump’s ‘rule of law’ message on immigration is winning

A top liberal think tank has warned that President Trump’s immigration message is actually winning among most voters and makes Democrats appear weak on enforcement.

The Center for American Progress has released a new report arguing that as Democrats drifted away from the “rule of law” message, it allowed Republicans to rebrand their party as the sole party of rule of law.

This created “the false dichotomy of America as either a nation of immigrants or a nation of laws” that then makes Democrats seem weak on enforcing the nation’s laws, according to the Daily Beast that first obtained the report.

Tom Jawetz, vice president of immigration policy at the think tank, added that those supporting humane immigration policy “have ceded powerful rhetorical ground to immigration restrictionists, who are happy to masquerade as the sole defenders of America as a nation of laws.”

Obviously, the hardcore leftist CAP has to put a spin on the reality of the situation, but, I’d expect nothing less.

Democratic 2020 presidential candidates, meanwhile, have been struggling to find an effective message that counter Trump’s rhetoric and without appearing as embracing extreme policies.

But according to the report, radical proposals such as nationwide amnesty or the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) only “fuels louder calls for maximum enforcement, which then strengthen calls for abolition, ad infinitum.”

Those calls from Democrats for Open Borders also makes it impossible to even consider working on any type of fix, especially one that includes some sort of pathway to legalization, because we know what Democrats want. The old “give them an inch they’ll take a mile” is in play, and they’ve hit those miles already for what they want.

Over to that Daily Beast article we read

Jawetz—a former immigration attorney and chief counsel on the Immigration Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, differentiates “the rule of law” and Trump’s “law and order” rhetoric, calling the latter “an enforcement-heavy vision of social control that is generally used as a racially coded dog whistle.” For Democrats to achieve a fair and functional immigration system, they have to patch the immigration system’s fragmented legal framework, Jawetz writes—instead of “relying increasingly upon administrative discretion to save the system from itself.”

Everything is raaaaacist with these folks. Also, calling for Open Borders isn’t exactly patching anything. But, wait, wait, we can’t actually have the rule of law itself, per the opening of the the report.

…The fundamental problem with this debate is that America is, and has always been, both a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws. Debates over a liberal immigration policy actually predate the start of the nation itself; they infused the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, America’s founding document.6

Indeed, it is precisely because these two visions of the country are intertwined that America cannot be a nation of laws if those laws are antithetical to its history and ideals as a nation of immigrants. Put another way, the U.S. immigration system can, and must, recognize both the need for movement and the need for defined borders; it must have clear guidelines but also clear guardrails; and it must live up to the best of the nation’s past while working for its present and future.

Democrat candidates for office and those in already pay great attention to CAP, and they will be reading this, which essentially lays out a path for Open Borders while telling politicians to lie about it.

Read: Leftist Center For American Progress: Trump Winning On Rule Of Law For Illegal Immigration »

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Ilhan Omar “Shuts Down” People Trying To Get Her To Condemn Things

By William Teach July 23, 2019 – 5:24 pm

It’s interesting. She has no problem condemning Trump, Jews, Israel, white people, Conservatives, Republicans, and pretty much anyone who doesn’t agree with her. Like if some people did something (interestingly, most Google links on first few pages are about protecting Ilhan, rather than her tone deaf comment). But

Ilhan Omar Shuts Down Constant Calls For Muslims To Condemn Things

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and other Muslim politicians are constantly being asked to condemn groups and issues that her non-Muslim colleagues are not asked to answer for, and she’s tired of it.

Why would we have to be asked to condemn Islamic extremism and female genital mutilation? Jihad? We aren’t the ones involved in it. And we have actually condemned it, which she refuses to do.

Speaking on the opening panel at the Muslim Collective for Equitable Democracy conference on Tuesday, the congresswoman took a question from Ani Zonneveld, founder of the Los Angeles-based group Muslims for Progressive Values. Zonneveld asked if Omar and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) would come out and condemn female genital mutilation.

Omar, who has previously voted for numerous bills against FGM both on the state and federal levels, immediately called the question “appalling.”

“How often should I make a schedule like this? This needs to be on repeat every five minutes. Should I do that?” she asked Zonneveld.

Notice, the person asking is not a conservative, they aren’t right leaning. She’s part of a group that wants to move Islam into the 21st Century. And that’s how Ilhan responds. Not with “yes, it is despicable and should be stopped.” But, with apoplexy that some dared asked her opinion in a horrible thing done to women.

“So today, I forgot to condemn al Qaeda, so here’s the al Qaeda one. I forgot to condemn FGM. Here that goes. I forgot to condemn Hamas. Here that goes.”

She’s never condemned any of those. Ever.

The Muslim Collective for Equitable Democracy is heavily linked to CAIR, themselves linked to the extremist Muslim Brotherhood. Also present was Abdul El-Sayed, another extremist. Regardless, she has never condemned any Islamic extremism, otherwise the issue would be dropped. She could say “I did. I have. Do your research.”

“I am quite disgusted, really, to be honest, that as Muslim legislators we are constantly being asked to waste our time speaking to issues that other people are not asked to speak to,” she continued, noting the assumption that Muslims “somehow support” these issues.

Mediate called it an appalling question. What’s appalling is that she refuses to answer.

Read: Ilhan Omar “Shuts Down” People Trying To Get Her To Condemn Things »

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If All You See…

By William Teach July 23, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is wine which shall soon disappear due to carbon pollution from fossil fueled vehicles, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Raised On Hoecakes, with a post on a horrible quote from Trump.

Read: If All You See… »

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Repackaged Idea: Pay Every American To Reduce Their Hotcoldwetdry Emissions

By William Teach July 23, 2019 – 10:48 am

This really isn’t anything new, it’s just being repackaged in a way to make Americans say “free money? Cool!”

Let’s pay every American to reduce emissions

As alarm over climate change rises, the idea of a “Green New Deal” is growing in popularity, including among candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. But most of the candidates have been notably skittish about discussing a price on carbon, the climate policy widely advocated by economists as the best way to encourage the investment, innovation, and infrastructure needed for a transition to clean energy.

That’s because there is one big problem with putting a price on carbon: It will raise the prices of gasoline, electricity and everything else that’s made or distributed using fossil fuels. The impact on household budgets will be highly visible, especially if the price is steep enough to make a significant dent in the country’s carbon emissions. Critics rightly note that consumers will be unhappy. And unhappy consumers make for unwilling politicians.

(snip through the old ideas of straight carbon tax schemes)

But there’s another idea that offers a solution to the carbon price conundrum — a carbon dividend that gets sent back to taxpayers.

A version of such a dividend is already in place in Alaska, and to grasp how carbon dividends would work, it’s worth recalling its history. The idea originated with an ex-Marine pilot by the name of Jay Hammond who settled after World War II in a small Alaskan community on the windswept coast of the Bering Sea, the world’s richest fishing grounds for sockeye salmon. There he was struck by the stark contrast between the offshore wealth scooped up by commercial fishing fleets and the onshore poverty of local residents, who lived without basic amenities such as indoor plumbing, electricity, phone service or a high school. The fishery was a natural asset that rightly belonged to the community, Hammond thought, so why shouldn’t benefits from its use accrue to everyone?

When Hammond was elected to the state Legislature in the 1960s, he proposed a remedy: let local governments collect a tax on the fish harvested in their waters and use this money to pay cash dividends to local residents. This would lift local incomes, and thereby strengthen the local tax base, too, yielding more revenue for public goods and services. His effort faltered, but when Hammond was elected Alaska’s governor in 1974 he applied the same logic to an even bigger natural asset: the newly discovered oil on Alaska’s North Slope and extended it statewide. This time he succeeded.

There’s one hell of a difference between the carbon dividend scheme and what became the Alaskan Permanent Fund: taxing the fish (and now oil) didn’t artificially skyrocket the cost of living for citizens nor take money out of their pockets, or leave them dependent on “refunds” from government for the money that government already cost them.

Carbon dividends apply the same idea to parking fossil carbon in the atmosphere. Everyone who consumes less-than-average amounts of carbon comes out ahead, receiving more in dividends than they pay in higher prices. This includes the vast majority of low-income households, since they consume less-than-average amounts of just about everything, including fossil fuels. Most middle-class households break even or come out a bit ahead. Upper-income households, especially the “one-percenters” with outsized carbon footprints from lifestyles that include larger homes and more jet travel, pay more in higher prices than they receive in dividends, but they can afford it. And of course, everyone benefits from cleaner air and a more stable climate.

So, basically, this is just making the poor even more dependent on government, and there’s the inherent threat to the poor, and to the middle class, that if they do not cooperate and be good little comrades the money will go away. Further, this is all a lie, because the carbon dividend schemes usually talk about refunding 4/5ths of what it costs citizens, because Government needs operating cash, and, otherwise, the good little comrades will refuse to keep their carbon footprints low.

Carbon dividends are emerging as the political sweet spot for a future bipartisan agreement in Washington. If and when lawmakers get serious about tackling climate change, the best route out of partisan stalemate may well be a carbon dividend. Treating natural assets as universal property that belongs equally to all, and rewarding everyone for using that asset wisely, is an approach that can unite environmentalists and free-marketeers, Democrats and Republicans, on a solution to what is arguably our most urgent national challenge.

People in Canada are now learning the problems with this scheme, and realizing it’s just more of the old in new packaging. Their cost of living is going up up up. Go ahead and push this, Warmists. See how it goes.

Read: Repackaged Idea: Pay Every American To Reduce Their Hotcoldwetdry Emissions »

Posted in Carbon Credits, Global Warming | 2 Comments | Trackback URL

Bummer: Democrat Isn’t Interested In Getting Trump’s NY Tax Returns, Gets Primary Challenger

By William Teach July 23, 2019 – 10:34 am

Not every Democrat is a Social Justice Warrior nor infused with Trump Derangement Syndrome. Some of them just want to go to Congress and do the business of Congress, even if from a Democrat point of view

The one Democrat who can get Trump’s state tax returns doesn’t want to. That’s infuriated the left.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently signed into law legislation designed to make it easier for Congress to obtain President Donald Trump’s state tax returns.

So far, the only Democrat able to use the law wants nothing to do with it.

It’s just one of a series of decisions that have landed House Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., in hot water with those on the left who feel the longtime lawmaker hasn’t done nearly enough to obtain the president’s tax returns.

In a sign of progressives’ anger, a Democrat on Monday announced that he will take on Neal, a moderate who has been in office since 1989, in a primary.

“There’s an urgency to this moment in Massachusetts’ 1st District and our country, and that urgency is not matched by our current representative in Congress,” Holyoke, Massachusetts, Mayor Alex Morse said in a video announcing his candidacy. “We need new leadership that understands that we can no longer settle for small, incremental and compromising progress. We need to be on offense.”

The progressive magazine The American Prospect also has repeatedly taken issue with Neal’s leadership, saying his committee “has shown none of the zeal for oversight exhibited by its counterparts.”

Well, good luck with the challenge. Mass. voters might not be so happy about putting an AOC type nutter into Congress

After the New York law passed, Judd Legum, a liberal journalist, tweeted that it looks as if “House Democrats don’t actually want Trump’s tax returns” and “are doing pretty much everything possible to make sure they don’t get them before November 2020.” And the liberal resistance group Stand Up America demanded that Neal seek the president’s state returns, saying that “any further delay is an injustice to the American people.”

Even if they do get Trump’s taxes, what can they do with them? They can’t legally talk about them or release them to the public. And, really, if they attempt to get them from New York, lawsuits will fly, particularly along the line of the law being aimed specifically at Trump, which is against all sorts of equal justice under the law laws and the NY Constitution, much less the federal Constitution.

Now, Neal says he won’t request the state returns by using the new New York law because he believes doing so would harm his efforts at obtaining Trump’s federal filings through the lawsuit, which could be tied up in the courts for years. Neal told Bloomberg News he thought requesting the state returns would boost the Trump administration’s argument that Congress only wants them for political reasons and that, as chairman, he does not “have jurisdiction over New York taxes.”

He’s right, this is all political. They just want them because Trump won’t give them up and he beat the odds and won the election, which they just can’t handle.

Read: Bummer: Democrat Isn’t Interested In Getting Trump’s NY Tax Returns, Gets Primary Challenger »

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Good News: We Can Create Public Banks To Fund The Green New Deal

By William Teach July 23, 2019 – 7:53 am

It’s a shell game, and it’s still your money being used for their Modern Socialist ideas

Public banking can fund green investment

To ensure the long-term environmental health of the planet, we will have to spend. This spending cannot be wasteful, but must embody a pragmatic investment in our future. Estimates predict that we will have to invest $5.7 trillion worldwide annually to fund green infrastructure and conservation efforts. As a Center for Strategic and International Studies brief notes, this investment gap is concentrated in developed countries.

In recognition of America’s responsibility for swift and consequential action, legislators have introduced the Green New Deal—a policy proposal for addressing climate change and environmental deterioration. Yet, even the lower end of estimates put the plan’s sticker price in the multi-trillions of dollars.

Investments in infrastructure, or other massive policy initiatives of the kind that environmental crises require, have historically been shared between the federal government and the states. While the national body would provide some funding and expertise through grants and federal agencies, states would identify the most profitable investment opportunities and the areas of the most need. But, with a decade sincethe last major federal infrastructure bill, the federal government has become an unreliable source of green investment funding. And it’s no surprise why. The federal debt is above $22 trillion, the annual deficit projected near $1 trillion and politicians have prioritized other issues.

Also, if you’ll remember, most of the “green” money from the Stimulus was used to hook up Obama donors, and, what have we gotten from it? Almost nothing. A majority of those loans have resulted in nothing, as well as lots of defaults/un-repaid. Solyndra was the poster child of irresponsible loans.

This has put states in a compromising position. On the one hand, they need to invest in sustainability and conservation to protect their citizens, their environments and their economies from ecological disaster. On the other hand, they face their own pressing budget issues and an increasingly reluctant partner in the federal government. Through the establishment of state public banks, state governments can escape this dilemma and deliver affordable, green investment to their communities.

This is how it works: A state grants a charter to a bank of its own creation. The conditions of the charter give the bank a “public purpose” that ensures that the bank and its officials maximize community benefits and not profit. The state, once the bank has been established, moves most of its existing funds into the bank as deposits. These deposits allow the bank to create loans and other financial instruments with the goal of reinvesting state money back into the state economy.

There are two ways in which a state bank can fund state investment for a greener future. First, the bank can provide loans, bonds and other forms of financing for investments to the state government and private organizations on better terms than those available in regular markets.

As a part of the bank’s orders to serve the public interest, it can prioritize societally-beneficial investments over profit-making. As a result, it can afford to provide credit at lower interest rates or with lower fees, or both, than most profit-seeking banks can afford.

Where are they getting the backing money? Your pocket, of course. For social justice stuff. There’s no possible way this could be abused, right, especially with below market rates, right?

Second, a public bank will improve a state’s fiscal health. By holding state deposits as assets, the bank’s profits can be returned to state coffers to fund direct state investment. Additionally, the activity of the state bank – which will prioritize investing state assets and extending credit within the state for the benefit of the state – will improve the state economy. Exploratory analyses in New Jersey, Washington and Maryland have all estimated the creation of thousands of new jobs and millions of dollars in economic growth from the establishment of a public bank. These economic gains will flow back to the state through increased revenues, which can then be reinvested into essential environmental projects.

And will mostly increase the size of government. The article mentions that the state of North Dakota has done this, but, then, ND isn’t big into the Social Justice Warrior scene, nor in pissing their citizen’s money on Hotcoldwetdry stuff. It’s a state that relies on its fossil fuels industry. How well will this work in places like NJ, Washington, and Maryland, among other left leaning states? What happens when the loans default? Will the state come after the money, or, will they just write it off as serving the public interest?

It comes down to the notion that private banks won’t piss away the money deposited for projects bound to fail, so, let’s create something run by government. And you know it would work quite differently than in North Dakota. And when that doesn’t work, will they come after the private banks, much like they did with private student loans? Remember, the use of, cost of, and default of those student loans has skyrocketed since Obamacare created a virtual takeover of the student loans business.

Further, if this is so darned important, why are True Believers funding this? Why do Warmists always want to use Someone Else’s money?

Read: Good News: We Can Create Public Banks To Fund The Green New Deal »

Posted in AGW Socialism, Global Warming | 4 Comments | Trackback URL

AOC: Now, We’re Totally Not Open Borders

By William Teach July 23, 2019 – 7:31 am

This surely isn’t Open Borders

https://twitter.com/ScotsFyre/status/1153279001139523589

Remember, we aren’t supposed to consider this Open Borders. Here’s a full quote via Ed Morrissey

I think migration, to me, is liberation. It’s the ability to move and be — it’s the freedom to be, really, is what we’re talking about.  And I think that all people should be free to here, and in our communities. Because I think that when you start viewing human beings as intrinsically valuable, you feel blessed that they have come to you with their presence. And that’s really the shift I think that we need to make as a country …

Ed also notes “The fact that AOC’s lecturing on the “blessing” of unexpected and unannounced migrants makes this an obvious plea for open borders and no bar on migration at all. ” It is open borders. Then we have this from the same town hall

(Breitbart) Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said over the weekend that the United States government must have a “lifelong commitment” to illegal immigrant migrants separated from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border and provide “mental healthcare services” to them “for the rest of their lives.”

Speaking at a town hall event in Queens, New York, Ocasio-Cortez, who has referred to migrant detention centers as “concentration camps,” reportedly argued that the U.S. government must make a “lifelong commitment” to migrant children because “even if you separate a kid from their parents for two days, you have already created life-long lasting trauma.”

“I believe we have responsibility to provide mental healthcare services to those children for the rest of their lives,” Ocasio-Cortez said, according to a Guardian report. “And there are children who have been separated that we have reunified, and it took about a year to reunify some of these kids with their parents. Lifelong trauma for which we, the United States, are responsible… And it chills me to my core to think about 20 years from now, when these kids grow up, the story that they will have about America.”

She’s advocating for every person who has shown up at the border unannounced/entered illegally to allowed to stay with no conditions. That’s open borders.

Go ahead, Democrats, run on this.

Read: AOC: Now, We’re Totally Not Open Borders »

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We’re Saved: S. Korea Cuts Down 2 Million Trees, Replaces Them With Solar Panels

By William Teach July 22, 2019 – 3:48 pm

This is some crazy logic

https://twitter.com/csfc67/status/1153236487908909057

Killing Gaia to save Gaia from having a fever (it’s not really a new article, from back in April, but, folks are noticing and it’s a good illustration of just what these Cultists are doing)

More than 2 million trees have been cut down in South Korea over the last three years to make space for solar panels, according to opposition lawmakers who argue that the government’s renewable push should not be a replacement of nuclear energy.

Since the government strongly pushed for solar power business in 2017, 4,407 hectares of forest have been damaged, 15 times the space of the Yeouido area of Seoul, according to Rep. Yoon Sang-jin of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party on Thursday.

The removal of trees, which stood at around 310,000 in 2016, jumped to about 670,000 in 2017 and over 1.3 million in 2018.

So, beautiful, natural trees removed, nice forest areas and wild spaces, to be replaced with ugly solar panels.

Read: We’re Saved: S. Korea Cuts Down 2 Million Trees, Replaces Them With Solar Panels »

Posted in AGW Idiocy, Global Warming | 41 Comments | Trackback URL

If All You See…

By William Teach July 22, 2019 – 1:00 pm

…is a world flooded from carbon pollution, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is A View From The Beach, with a post on a good question on bans on plastic straws.

Read: If All You See… »

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Jew And Israel Hating Omar And Tlaib To Be Allowed In To Israel

By William Teach July 22, 2019 – 10:35 am

There’s no doubt that Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are Jew and Israel haters. It is smart politics of Israel to let them in, though

U.S. Envoy: Israel to Allow Omar, Tlaib Entry ‘Out of Respect for Congress’

Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer said Israel would allow BDS-supporting Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib to visit “out of respect for Congress.”

“Out of respect for the U.S. Congress and the great alliance between Israel and America, we would not deny entry to any member of Congress into Israel,” Dermer told the Haaretz daily on Friday. (snip)

Speaking to the Jewish Insider on Wednesday, Omar said that she and Tlaib were planning to visit Israel and the West Bank in “a few weeks.”

“Everything that I hear points to both sides feeling like there is still an occupation,” Omar told the paper.

Her comments were made after pushing a pro-BDS resolution in Congress, co-sponsored by Tlaib (D-Michigan) and Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), that seeks to “oppose unconstitutional legislative efforts” against boycotts. While the text does not mention the BDS movement by name, Omar admitted that the bill’s intention was to allow “an opportunity for us to explain why it is we support a nonviolent movement, which is the BDS movement.”

Israel should let the pair of anti-Semites visit. Let them wander around. Go where they want. And make sure that someone is there to record every interaction they have with Palestinians and BDS folks, expose them for the pro-Palestinian terrorist supports and Jew haters they really are. To paraphrase, “never interrupt a Jew hater in the midst of exposing their Jew hatred.” You know these two “Congresswomen” will not be able to control themselves, and, probably, they really do not care if they show their Jew hatred. They really haven’t so far.

Read: Jew And Israel Hating Omar And Tlaib To Be Allowed In To Israel »

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