Democrats Are Super Enthused To Demand Trump’s IRS Returns In Next House Session

By William Teach November 8, 2018 – 8:06 am

In attempting to force the release of Trump’s tax records to a House committee, there is a large competing interest in invasion of privacy by the government and the public’s right to know. The IRS may not release an individual’s or entities income tax returns without a valid reason, and those returns still cannot be shared beyond the requesting panel, so, what would this gain the Democrats?

Trump Says He Won’t Turn Over His Tax Returns. It’s Not Up To Him Anymore.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he doesn’t want to let Democrats see his tax returns once they assume control of the U.S. House of Representatives next year.

But that’s actually not up to the president ― according to the law, at least.

The leaders of key congressional committees can ask the IRS for anybody’s tax returns. Republicans simply did not want to do so. Democrats said in October that they would ask the IRS for Trump’s returns if they regained control of the House, which they did on Tuesday night. (snip)

Federal law gives congressional tax committees the power to obtain anyone’s tax returns. If the taxpayer doesn’t consent in writing, the committees still have the power to obtain the returns in a secret meeting.

In response to a written request, the law says, “the Secretary [of the Treasury] shall furnish such committee with any return or return information specified in such request.”

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin would review any such request with department lawyers “for legality,” according to a spokesperson.

When we are talking about that law, we need to dip down to (f) Disclosures to Committees of Congress, (3) “Any resolution described in this paragraph shall specify the purpose for which the return or return information is to be furnished and that such information cannot reasonably be obtained from any other sources.” In other words, there needs to be an actual, material reason to see the returns. It can’t be simply because they want to see them. Quora notes

The house and senate both have a subpoena power. This is expressed in the rules of each of body. Specifically in Senate Rule XXVI and House Rule XI . There are some definite restrictions in both rules. The subpoena has to be issued by majority vote of a committee, and according to Wilkinson v US it must meet three conditions to be “legally sufficient”:

  1. First, the committee investigation of the broad subject area must be authorized by its Chamber
  2. the investigation must pursue “a valid legislative purpose” but does not need to involve legislation and does not need to specify the ultimate intent of Congress
  3. the specific inquiries must be pertinent to the subject matter area that has been authorized for investigation

These rules apply to any subpoena. If a subpoena is made against the sitting executive, then issues of separation of powers will arise. These would likely play out by the executive asserting “executive privilege”, which is the power claimed by the President and other members of the executive branch to resist certain subpoenas and other interventions by the legislative and judicial branches of government to access information and personnel relating to the executive branch.

Under what rationale would a Democrat run House committee/subcommittee deem these tax returns of a private citizen (that’s what he was at the time) necessary, rather than just a fishing expedition and/or an attempt to embarrass Mr. Trump?

If those things happens, then if a subpoena goes to Trump or the IRS it’s going to immediately be responded to with an “executive privilege” claim. To overcome that, it will go to Judicial branch. It’s going to be very hard to claim the tax returns are “essential to the justice of the case” without already knowing they prove something specific. No court is going to authorize a fishing expedition.

Let’s further consider that even if a House committee gets their hands on them, per that same law cited above they can only be viewed in closed door executive session, and the information may not be shared with anyone outside of. So, the entire point in attempting to show them to all their Democratic voters would be meaningless, and any leaks would be a federal felony. Since this would be a small group viewing the tax returns, it would be pretty easy to figure out who did it.

Further, they should be careful in playing this game, because, get this: section (g) gives the “President and certain persons” the power to demand the tax returns of citizens in the same way. Do nutters like Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, and others want Trump looking at their returns?

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Hot Take: Gerrymandering Doomed Democrats Taking Back The Senate

By William Teach November 7, 2018 – 5:31 pm

I may be writing this late in the afternoon, but I ran across this early this morning, and it is as scorching of a hot take as they come

The original was from the HuffPost, dropped at 12:06 am by Molly Redden and Nick Baumann

Democrats may be ecstatic that they retook the House of Representatives, but their decisive victory conceals a harsher reality: It took a landslide in the popular vote to get them here, and they are projected to lose seats in the Senate.

Those facts speak to just how far the U.S. election system is tilted in the Republicans’ favor. Through a combination of fundamental factors and partisan gerrymandering, Republicans on Tuesday retained their grip on the Senate and many state houses without a national majority.

Um, what? Do Molly and Nick even understand How This Works? Do I need to spend any time explaining to y’all how this works, including that there is no national vote for Senate seats? No, no I don’t. Perhaps if the 17 Amendment was repealed, they might have a case, but, of course, the same thing would happen in gerrymandered Democrat controlled states.

Certain factors give Republicans a natural advantage. In the Senate, the disproportionate representation of small states is part of the body’s original design. But that advantage, which benefits white voters, has become more lopsided than the framers of the Constitution likely ever imagined as the country’s population and demographics evolve. Today, 20 senators from urban states represent roughly half the country’s population, while the other, rural half elects the remaining 80.

And that’s exactly the way it’s supposed to work. But, Democrats do not like that those darned Flyover state people dare have a voice.

But, this wasn’t the only nutbaggery on the subject

Read More »

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If All You See…

By William Teach November 7, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…are horrible burgers from evil carbon polluting cows, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is Jo Nova, with a post on the new top predator in the ecosphere.

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‘Climate Change’ Went Down Hard In Mid-Terms

By William Teach November 7, 2018 – 10:30 am

It did, it really did. This is what happens when people realize that they actually have to pay for their beliefs, that it won’t just be Someone Else paying

From the link

Efforts to nudge the nation away from burning fossil fuels and toward harnessing renewable sources of energy were rejected by voters Tuesday across a swath of resource-rich Western states.

Voters in Arizona, one of the nation’s most sun-soaked states, handily shot down a measure that would have accelerated its shift toward generating electricity from renewables, particularly solar. Residents in oil- and gas-rich Colorado defeated a measure to sharply limit drilling on state-owned land.

Even in the solidly blue state of Washington, initial results looked grim for perhaps the most consequential climate-related ballot measure in the country this fall: a statewide initiative that would have imposed a first-in-the-nation fee on emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of the greenhouse gases that drive global warming. While voters in King County, home to Seattle, turned out heavily in favor of the measure, residents across the rest of the state largely opposed it.

One bright spot for environmental advocates came in Nevada, where voters appeared poised to pass a measure similar to the one Arizonans rejected. It would require utilities to generate 50 percent of their electricity from renewables by 2030. The proposal was leading handily with most votes tallied early Wednesday, but even then there was another hurdle. Before the measure could become law, it has to survive a second vote in 2020.

The failure of the ballot measures underscores the difficulty of tackling a global problem like climate change policy at the state and local level, as well as the huge sums of money any effort is likely to require from both sides. Yet, as scientists warn that the world is running short on time to prevent devastating levels of global warming, environmental advocates and Democratic lawmakers have placed much hope in state and local governments to counter the Trump administration’s rollback of Obama-era efforts to combat climate change. (snip)

“What we learned from this election, in states like Colorado, Arizona, and Washington, is that voters reject policies that would make energy more expensive and less reliable,” Thomas Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, an industry-backed, free-market advocacy group, said in a statement.

Warmists are fine with this when it hurts someone else, but, their own wallets? Not so much.

The Cult of Climastrology spent enormous amounts of money to get their initiatives through, and mostly failed. Imagine had they taken all that money, potentially as much as $100 million, and used it to build solar farms, wind turbines, damns, and, hey, used it to place solar on people’s homes.

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New Twitter Account

By William Teach November 7, 2018 – 8:11 am

I got the permanent suspension from Twitter, and, of course, they do not explain why, even after asking them a second time. I’m assuming it is simply due to being a conservative.

My new account is @WTeach2, or just click here. Follow me and I’ll follow back. Have to rebuild.

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Non-Citizens Should Totally Be Allowed To Vote Or Something

By William Teach November 7, 2018 – 7:48 am

By non-citizens, Ron Hayduk of Jacobin means illegal aliens, and really exposes what the Democrat agenda is all about

Why Non-Citizens Should Be Allowed to Vote

Imagine: what if today, instead of being consigned to the shadows, the more than 22 million noncitizen immigrants in the US were heading to the polls? Sound preposterous?

Voting by non-citizens is actually as old America itself. From the founding of the American Republic, voting rights were determined not by citizenship but by other criteria, such as race, gender, and property holdings. When women, post-emancipation African Americans, and poor white men were denied voting rights, it was due to elite antipathy — not because they lacked citizenship. Non-citizens in those years picked electoral winners and losers, and even held political office. What brought this period of “alien suffrage” to a close was simple nativism.

The case for noncitizen voting remains compelling: all residents are part of the political community in which they live and should therefore have a say in the local, state, and federal laws to which they’re subject. Without the means of choosing representation, non-citizen immigrants are a non-voting caste — disenfranchised pariahs in their adopted country. Noncitizen voting is a logical step to correct this injustice, and to make the ideals of American democracy more of a reality.

Today, about one in fourteen people in the US are noncitizen immigrants (lawful permanent residents, unauthorized immigrants, or legal residents on temporary visas). They live in virtually every state, city, suburb, and town. They’re teachers and students, physicians and nurses, musicians and construction workers. They pay taxes, raise their families, send their kids to schools, and make countless social and cultural contributions every day.

It’s a long, long, long screed which attempts to make the case, but, really, it falls flat and misses an important point: want to vote? Go through the process to become a citizen. You’re welcome to read the whole thing, which ends with

Just as the Civil Rights Movement fought to extend the franchise to African Americans, expanding the franchise to new Americans would empower the excluded and help forge winning voting blocs. It would make American democracy more inclusive and vibrant. And it would tilt political power away from elites.

So ignore the nativists. Let noncitizen residents vote.

So, we’re supposed to let people who are here on short term visas the right to vote, including in federal elections? People who crossed our borders illegally/overstayed their visas? Why? It’s simple: to get them to vote Democrat. Democrats couldn’t really give a damn about these people except in terms of voting blocs, much like they really do not care about blacks except when they need their votes. That’s it. Nothing else.

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Election 2018: Dems Get A Small Wave For The House, GOP Keeps The Senate

By William Teach November 7, 2018 – 7:30 am

Congratulations, Democrats! You did what pretty much happens in a good chunk of mid-terms

(Fox News) Democrats reclaimed control of the House of Representatives Tuesday night after eight long years out of power, dealing a major setback to President Trump’s legislative agenda — but Republicans were able to expand their narrow Senate majority and, with it, preserve the ability to confirm crucial judicial nominees.

The split decision on Capitol Hill follows one of the most intense and chaotic midterm campaign seasons in recent memory, in which President Trump barnstormed the country for GOP candidates and powerful Democrats, including predecessor Barack Obama, did the same for the other side.

For his part, Trump was able to help prevent a total Democratic takeover in Congress, and he avoided a repeat of President Obama’s first midterm elections in 2010, when his party lost 6 seats in the Senate and 63 in the House.

Retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., said in a statement that “history had repeated itself” Tuesday night, noting that since 1862, the president’s party has lost an average of 32 House seats during the midterms. After Tuesday’s elections, Democrats appeared poised to gain approximately two dozen seats in the House, while Republicans looked to net at least two Senate seats.

At the moment, Democrats have 219 seats and the GOP has 193, with a few still pending. 218 is needed for House control.

In the Senate, it’s sitting at 51-45 GOP, with the Republicans picking up at least two extra seats. Claire McCaskill and Heidi Heitkamp were two of the Democrats who lost, as did Joe Donnelly (D) in Indiana. A few others may occur, or not. Some races are too close at this time, like between McSally (R) and Sinema (D) in Arizona (how Arizonans vote for a woman, Sinema, who hates Arizonans, is unbelievable). And it is super close between Democrat Jon Tester and Republican Rosendale in Montana.

And you have Romney winning the GOP held seat in Utah. Magic underwear for everyone!!!

What now?

Pelosi and top Democrats have vowed to open a series of investigations into the White House upon reclaiming the House, including probes into Trump’s unreleased personal tax returns, alleged collusion with Russia, and potential ethics violations by administration officials.

Prominent firebrands including Democratic Reps. Maxine Waters, Adam Schiff, and Jerry Nadler are slated to be elevated to lead the House Financial Services Committee, Intelligence Committee, and Judiciary Committee, respectively. With control of those and other key committees, Democrats will have the legal authority to issue subpoenas to compel Republicans and others to provide documents or appear at hearings — and to seek contempt proceedings if they don’t comply.

“We will be able to get answers the Republicans were unwilling to pursue,” Schiff told CNN in October. “Records that the Republicans wouldn’t ask for.” (Pelosi has said that trying to obtain Trump’s tax returns would be “one of the first things we’d do.”)

Schiff added that he would place a “very high priority” on determining whether the Trump Organization had laundered money through Russia.

It’s going to be investigation-palooza, which will just fire Trump up even more. Watch him take a page out of Obama’s playbook and stonewall and ignore the investigations. Even the uber-leftist NY Times Editorial Board thinks Democrats should be really careful, and start with pushing policies. Ones that are not uber-leftist. That they should avoid impeachment (good luck with this, they will hold all sorts of crazy hearings). And that they should not go crazy with subpoenas. Good with this, too.

Here in NC

As of this morning, with 99% reporting, it is sitting at 56% approve. You also have Marcy’s Law, which is about victim’s rights, which will pass with 62%. NC Democrats were 100% against it, and offered up some weak excuses, which mostly boiled down to “hate anything GOP pushes.” All six of the amendments offered by the GOP majority look to pass.

In Washington state the carbon tax initiative looks like it will fail

If Democrats ever want to fight climate change at the national level, they’ll need help from state-level progressives first. Blue states will need to function as “laboratories of democracy,” trying out creative new climate policies and finding their faults before their debut on the national stage.

On Tuesday, Democrats didn’t get that help.

Though progressives cruised to victory in Washington State—Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat, easily won reelection—by late Tuesday night, voters appeared almost certain to reject Initiative 1631, a ballot question that would have established the nation’s first carbon tax. With 64 percent of the vote counted, 56 percent of voters opposed the measure—enough of a rout that The Seattle Times declared it defeated. The Associated Press has yet to call the race.

Even liberals weren’t buying this scam. But, hey, fortunately we have California!

Read: Election 2018: Dems Get A Small Wave For The House, GOP Keeps The Senate »

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Study: Natural Processes Pretty Much Causing Arctic Sea Loss

By William Teach November 6, 2018 – 3:56 pm

The authors of this study, and the various articles about it, try and paint a picture where Mankind is also very much a cause, but, nope, move on Warmists

Models show natural swings in the Earth’s climate contribute to Arctic sea ice loss

Arctic sea ice loss in the last 37 year is not due to humans alone. (in other words, not due to humans except for a tiny bit)

New research by a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientist and collaborators show that Arctic sea ice loss is enhanced by natural climate fluctuations such as El Niños and La Niñas. With manmade greenhouse gases on top of the natural climate variability, the decrease in sea ice is even more severe than climate models originally estimated.

Using a series of climate models, the team used a “fingerprint” method to estimate the impact of natural climate variability. Natural swings in the Earth’s climate contribute to about 40 percent to 50 percent of the observed multi-decadal decline in Arctic sea ice.

“Internal variability can enhance or mute changes in climate due to greenhouse gas emissions. In this case, internal variability has tended to enhance Arctic sea ice loss,” said Stephen Po-Chedley, an LLNL climate scientist and a co-author on a paper appearing in the Nov. 5 edition of Nature Geoscience.

As it turns out, observations of sea ice loss were larger than models predicted. Sea ice loss since 1979 has increased due to natural variability; observations show more Arctic sea ice loss than the climate models average

In other words, the reality is, once you remove the biases from the computer models, that the sea ice loss since 1979 (interesting that they aren’t looking at data from all through the Modern Warm Period, which includes warming spikes and pauses/cooling) (double, 1979 is the start of a warming spike through the mid-1990’s) is 50-60% caused by Mankind, you end up with the notion that it’s probably somewhere above 80% natural, if not more.

It is funny that they find that sea ice loss is more than the models average, eh? Models are not reality.

Further, how do we know that this isn’t entirely normal? We cannot know the true extent of sea ice change during the previous warm periods from direct observation, which would set the standard and averages to understand what is happening today.

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If All You See…

By William Teach November 6, 2018 – 1:00 pm

…is a sea that will soon rise up and swamp the land, you might just be a Warmist

The blog of the day is A View From The Beach, with a post on yet another reason Trump was elected.

Good grief, second day in a row for tagging the photo. Replaced with something else.

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“It’s OK To Be White” Fliers Found At NJ College, People Lose It

By William Teach November 6, 2018 – 10:30 am

I’ll be honest, when I see stuff like this I really do consider whether it’s really a false flag. It’s not like Leftists haven’t been responsible for creating all sorts of fake “hate” crimes. And then use the fake but real excuse when caught

‘It’s okay to be white’ fliers at N.J. college called ‘abhorrent and cowardly act’

Fliers linked to the white supremacist movement that declare “it’s okay to be white” were posted on the William Paterson University campus last week, drawing a sharp rebuke from the school’s president.

The posters, which recently appeared at college campuses around the country, have been traced to white supremacist groups and posts on internet forum 4chan, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

William Paterson University President Richard J. Helldobler said campus officials removed the fliers after they were discovered Thursday.

“Based on recent media reports, our preliminary understanding is that these fliers are part of a campaign to feed social unrest and promote white supremacy,” Helldobler said in a statement.

“This is an abhorrent and cowardly act and does not reflect our values of diversity and inclusion. These moments do not define us, but it is how we respond that demonstrates our character and moral mindset. In that spirit, let us take time to treat each other with kindness during this turbulent time,” Helldobler said.

Got that? They’re all about diversity and stuff, as long as it doesn’t include white people. The same people were utterly fine (or afraid to say something) when the Black Lives Matter issue was bubbling up, which included derision of white people, calling for them to be hurt and killed, telling them they weren’t allowed to speak, and so much more. And, quite frankly, the more that SJWs freak out, the more you will see stuff like this. The more you will see a growing divide between blacks and whites. Just like we saw during the Obama years. If you divide people along racial lines, people will fight back. You will get more who are white separatists or white nationalists (they aren’t the same). And more who are white supremacists. These are the ones who truly hate blacks, much like so many of the BLM folks hate whites.

It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the fliers or if they were connected to the same messages reported at other schools within the past several days.

Huh.

The “it’s okay to be white” message is linked to an online trolling effort to provoke responses that would supposedly hurt the credibility of the media and others, according to a report from the ADL.

“The idea was to create a flier that had an (ostensibly) inoffensive phrase on it that would nevertheless be treated as racist by people who viewed it, particularly liberals or members of the media,” the ADL said in a November 2017 report. “Their subsequent ‘overreactions’ would in turn ostensibly make those people lose credibility in the eyes of others and seem like hypocrites.”

It’s working.

“It’s okay to be white” posters also appeared at campuses in states, including Vermont, Colorado, Delaware and North Carolina, InsideHigherEd reported Monday.

They appeared at NC State and Duke University last week, causing meltdowns and people to run for their safe spaces with non-GMO, fair trade cocoa and coloring books.

Of course it is OK to be white. It’s the motives behind the posters that are at question. Much like with the BLM folks. Of course, they tell us their actual motives.

These people complaining are also against 1st Amendment Free Speech rights. Go figure. And I’m confident I’ll be called a white supremacist for daring to drop this post.

At William Paterson, officials said students with safety concerns should call university police. It was not clear if the incident was being treated as a criminal matter. Schools generally have policies around posting fliers on campus.

Sticks and stones will break my bones but WORDS ARE THE ZOMG WORST!

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