Saturday, July 1, 2017

op ed review 7/2



President Trump celebrated the unanimous per curiam opinion by the Supreme Court, effectively nullifying lower court attempts to stay his travel ban, calling it a “clear victory” for national security.
House passes Kate’s Law, as part of illegal immigrant crackdown.
The Department of Homeland Security will start construction of prototypes for a border wall this summer in the San Diego area
Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Thomas Homan said at a White House press briefing that no illegal immigrant should “be comfortable” in the U.S.
Meanwhile, San Francisco taxpayers could soon pay $190,000 in a lawsuit settlement with an undocumented immigrant who claimed he was reported to federal immigration authorities in violation of the city’s sanctuary city ordinance.

President Trump signed an executive order reestablishing the National Space Council, which he said would launch a “whole new chapter” for the U.S.

When a University of Washington study came out this week showing Seattle’s minimum wage has cost 5,000 jobs and is hurting low income workers, city leaders fired the messenger –- a team of respected economists at Washington’s premiere public university. Now they’ve hired Prof. Michael Reich of UC Berkeley to do a new study.  Before earning his PhD in economics, Reich was a founding member of the Union for Radical Political Economics (URPE), a group seeking a "human-centered radical alternative to capitalism," according to its website.
Maine restaurant workers successfully lobby to reduce their minimum wage.
A nonprofit group founded in part by Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus kicked off a new nationwide campaign aimed at collecting stories from Americans about how the Affordable Care Act hurt them.

Three CNN employees have resigned amid the network’s very fake news scandal in which it was forced to retract a hit piece on President Donald Trump and his associates.
CNN, in an apparent effort to elevate its journalistic standards, welcomed famed Sesame Street puppet Elmo onto a political panel, where he opined on the Syrian refugee crisis.
Mark Steyn: “I'm In Favor of Replacing Jim Acosta With Elmo on CNN”
As the Russia story fizzles, CNN ratings crash and burn…Fox back on top.
Secretly-recorded video shows a CNN associate producer calling American voters "stupid as s***".
Networks Ignore Loretta Lynch Story in Favor of More Trump-Russia Coverage

Actor and filmmaker Rob Reiner was shredded by social media users over the weekend after he called for an “all out war” to resist President Donald Trump.
Two dozen Democrats get behind bill to lay foundation for removing Trump for being mentally 'incapacitated'
Condoleeza Rice:  “President Donald Trump may sound different than other presidents, but he believes in American values and tries to act in the best interest of the United States.”

19th Obamacare Co-Op Folds, Leaving Only 4 Operating in 2018

A student at James Madison University who was working for a political organization affiliated with the Democratic party was sentenced to go to prison for at least 100 days after he pleaded guilty to registering dead people to vote.

Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Missouri, wins First Amendment appeal at the Supreme Court, with a 7-2 majority saying the state may not deny public money to religious institutions competing for grants along with private secular groups.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas had stern words for his colleagues when the Court declined to hear a case challenging California’s handgun laws, saying that the jurists do not understand the importance of self-defense.
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COLUMN OF THE WEEK
Investor’s Business Daily 6/27

When Seattle embarked on its progressive path to force up the minimum wage in the city, the results were predictable: Those it was intended to help would be hurt the most. Will policymakers never learn?

It's tragic, but even policies passed with the best of intentions can hurt those they're intended to help. So it is with Seattle's minimum wage. Last August, we asked: "What will happen when Seattle raises its minimum to $15 an hour in 2017? It could get ugly." Unfortunately, we were right. Economists at the University of Washington looked at the recent increases in Seattle's minimum wage from $9.47 to $11 an hour in 2015 to $13 an hour in 2016. Their findings are devastating for supporters of a higher minimum wage. "We conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9%, while hourly wages in such jobs increased by around 3%."

The math is not favorable: The average low-wage employee in the city saw his or her earnings decline by $125 a month last year due to the "generous" minimum wage increase. That's a $1,500 reduction in pay for those who can afford it least. It's likely to get even worse when they really jack the wage up to $15 an hour, and hundreds if not thousands of people lose their jobs because their employers can no longer afford to pay them.

Even the Washington Post took notice of the Seattle minimum-wage disaster, and what it portends. "The city is gradually increasing the hourly minimum to $15 over several years," wrote Max Ehrenfreund on the Post's Wonkblog . "Already, though, some employers have not been able to afford the increased minimums. They've cut their payrolls, putting off new hiring, reducing hours or letting their workers go, the study found."

It's a fact that those who earn minimum wages are not equipped to earn more without further training, education or skills acquisition. As economist Mark J. Perry, a fellow with the American Enterprise Institute and professor at the University of Michigan, noted back in 2015, "minimum-wage workers tend to be young, single, part-time workers with less than a high school diploma." What do you call people of that description after government forces a business to pay them far more than their productivity suggests they're worth? Disposable. They lose jobs, or have their hours cut. It's devastating.

Nor is the University of Washington study some kind of statistical outlier. In what has turned into an indictment of the union-backed "Fight for $15" movement, a study by economist David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine tallied the results of over 100 minimum-wage studies going back two decades. His findings were depressing: 85% of the studies said that minimum-wage laws destroyed jobs, led to fewer hours worked, and caused small businesses to close. So saying huge forced hikes in the minimum wage destroy jobs and reduce earnings isn't exactly controversial.

Even the federal government, which itself imposes a national minimum wage on businesses, understands this. A 2014 study by the Congressional Budget Office predicted that raising the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour to $10.10 an hour and indexing it to inflation would kill 1 million jobs.

Who is hurt worst? Young minority workers, African-Americans and Latinos, mostly. Statistically, they have the least education, training and skills of any group in the workforce. If you wonder why the youth unemployment rate for minority youth remains stuck in the double digits, look no farther than the minimum wage.

A job provides a ladder of opportunity to gain work and life skills and training that ultimately can lead to better things down the road. But what happens when the ladder is removed? Responding to growing pressure around the country and the prospect of a national $15-an-hour minimum wage, companies such as Wal-Mart, McDonald's, Wendy's and many others today are busy automating their operations, installing digital cashiers in place of human ones, and looking for other ways to cut swelling labor costs. It's a logical and inevitable response to soaring wages for unskilled workers.

With thousands and thousands losing their jobs, the progressive Democrats and union activists who are behind the "Fight for $15" movement and many local minimum-wage-hiking initiatives have much to answer for. They talk a great game about helping the poor and uneducated better their lives, but then push destructive policies that ensure those very same people lose their jobs and end up on welfare.  "Fight for $15"? How about a new movement, one based not on destroying jobs and reducing incomes, but on creating jobs and raising workers' earnings. Call it "Fight Against $15."

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OTHER COLUMNS
 “In a new paper, Peter Sprigg estimates (based on the Left’s own assumptions!) that opening the [military] doors to people who identify as transgender will cost a whopping $3.7 billion over the next 10 years for medical costs and lost deployment time. … With the price tag of $89,050 for female-to-male procedures and $110,450 for male-to-female procedures, taxpayers would be forking over hundreds of millions of dollars a year for people who are just using the military as their free ticket to elective surgery! And that’s just the surgery — not the cost of hormone treatment and counseling, which can run in the thousands per person. To put it in perspective, over the next ten years America would be spending roughly half of its annual ballistic defense budget on elective sexual reassignment surgery! While our troops are literally scavenging museums for jet parts, which would you rather pay for: hundreds of gender transitions or 22 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Planes? Obama’s extreme transgender agenda or 3,700 tomahawk missiles? Political correctness run amok or half of our annual cyber defense budget? I’m sure ISIS will sleep better at night knowing that we sacrificed 116 Chinook helicopters so that our troops could get radical makeovers.”
          -Tony Perkins

The good news:  “A controversial Pentagon directive that would allow transgender men and women to join the military beginning this summer now faces indefinite delay as senior leaders within each of the services voice lingering concerns about the Obama-era policy...”

“Politicians like to defend some law on the grounds that ‘if it saves just one life, it’s worth it.’ But by that logic we should make the speed limit 5 mph. That would surely save lives. Are you a murderer if you oppose such a move?”
           -Jonah Goldberg
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BOOKS
Eric Bolling’s new book is "The Swamp: Washington’s Murky Pool of Corruption and Cronyism and How Trump Can Drain It”.  Wow! I could not put this down….Bolling gets to the truth of what really goes on in Washington DC!

“False Black Power?” by Jason Riley.   Riley believes that America’s African-American community has been badly served by the emphasis on achieving political power as a means to advance. Much more important, in his view, are the “skills, habits, and values” that are necessary to personal ambition and achievement.
“The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote” by former CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson.
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LEFTIST WATCH
A Florida leftist was arrested this week after threatening to kill Republican state Rep. Jose Felix Diaz (R-Miami).

Since the election, scores of activists have taken to the streets, town halls and rallies to blast President Trump. That’s all with the blessing of their boss thanks to “social justice benefits” and paid time off work policies that are growing in popularity. At San Francisco marketing firm Traction, social justice benefits take the form of two so-called "Days of Action" a year.

Last week, a group of female protesters dressed as handmaids from the popular show "The Handmaid´s Tale" ventured through the Ohio Statehouse in protest of Senate Bill 145, which would restrict abortion methods. “Although protesting often involves hyperbole designed to make a point, this goes too far. Equating the abortion debate to a dystopian show where women are used as incubator slaves is intellectually dishonest––and, frankly, deeply offensive.”

On Thursday’s Hardball, MSNBC pundit Chris Matthews compared the President to not only communist Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam and a modern-day Romanov but also channel Benito Mussolini having son-in-law Jared Kushner murdered. Matthews reiterated his belief that Kushner and wife Ivanka Trump are akin to the murderous sons of Saddam Hussein, Uday and Qusay.   Matthews's joke about Trump murdering his son-in-law was brought to you by Cascade, Johnson's baby lotion, and Lincoln Financial.”

The National Endowment for the Arts is funding a progressive rendition of Pride and Prejudice, a choreographed traffic jam, and a play about climate change causing the end of the world. Aside from spending $20,000 on a musical about a lesbian illegal immigrant in love with an ICE agent and giving $100,000 to the theater company that put on a Trump assassination play, the NEA´s list of new grants includes numerous frivolous art projects.  The San Francisco arts center "Fresh Meat Productions" received $15,000 for a "full-throttle" gay and transgender dance performance about AIDS.

Children at a Christian preschool in Sweden are no longer allowed to say grace at mealtimes, “Amen”, or talk about the Bible, after a ruling by the Umeå municipality.
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GLOBALONEY
“Al Gore is an idiot’ who only made his vast fortune just because he happened to get lucky by obsessing about climate change. Possibly we’d all guessed this already. Now it has been confirmed by an expert in the field of finance – Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman and fellow investment billionaire Charlie Munger.”

Global Warming: The Imminent Crisis That Never Arrives
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ARTICLES
During almost seven years of Barack Obama’s tenure, congressional Republicans held useless Repeal Obamacare rehearsal votes dozens of times. The law was unpopular, so they raised millions off a promise to repeal it for real once they got a GOP president. And, lo and behold, Republicans last November won control of Congress and the White House. But now that they hold the offices, they can’t seem to get it done. So, how do Republicans respond? They start fighting among themselves while Democrats watch with glee.

Thomas Lifson suspects a strategy behind Trump tweets:  “As usual, President Trump is outraging the political-media establishment, who all assume that his early-morning tweets yesterday zinging the Morning Joe odd couple, "hitting back ten times as hard," as wife Melania once characterized his tactical doctrine, were the result of some form of derangement.  They are not equipped to understand the strategy that lies behind his tweets.  Like fish unaware of the water in which they swim, they operate on the basis of unconscious beliefs. President Trump understands that the current informal-but-very-real rules of the game have allowed Mika and Joe (and the rest of the media-political world as well) free rein to savage him and his family, while he is supposed to be a gentleman and just take it while they get support for attacking him. That's what President George W. Bush did, and it cost him dearly, unto this day.  His suffering may be noble, but that form of greatness does not seem to interest President Trump. Trump understands that the culture governing D.C. and the media has to change because it systematically favors his opponents

PHOTOS, VIDEOS, LISTS, CHARTS
Must see, very powerful NRA ad.  This ad is driving the left crazy.

Another powerful NRA ad by Charlie Daniels, legendary American singer, song writer, guitarist, and fiddler.
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WISE WORDS
 “There are certain social principles in human nature, from which we may draw the most solid conclusions with respect to the conduct of individuals and of communities. We love our families more than our neighbors; we love our neighbors more than our countrymen in general. The human affections, like solar heat, lose their intensity as they depart from the centre.”
            -Alexander Hamilton

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