Month: January 2020

If your home isn’t carbon neutral, Elizabeth Warren might not let you build it. And if that means no new homes get built, she’s OK with that.

In an appearance on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Wednesday, the Massachusetts senator and fading presidential candidate talked about her Thunberg-lite plan to help end climate change. (Climate crisis? Catastrophe? What are we going with these days?)

During her appearance, Warren was asked what she’d do to “change the tide of U.S. policy on the issue of climate change” and acted as if she’d been thrown the softball of all softballs.

She promised “to do everything a president can do all by herself, that is, the things you don’t have to do by going to Congress.” This includes putting an end to energy mining and drilling on federal lands or offshore and “not having a coal lobbyist as head of the Environmental Protection Agency.”

You might not be surprised to learn that’s a dig at Andrew Wheeler, President Donald Trump’s EPA administrator, who was previously an attorney representing a coal producer.

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Warren then moved on to her plan for housing, which she said was borne out of the dire predictions scientists have been making.

“What scares me is every time you go back to the scientists, they tell you two things,” the senator said. “It’s worse than we thought, and we have less time.

“That means we’ve got to be willing to do things, for example, like regulation. By 2028, no new buildings, no new houses, without a zero carbon footprint.”

And she’s coming for your car and electricity bill, too.

“By 2030, trucks — light-duty trucks and cars, zero carbon footprint. By 2035, all production of electricity, zero carbon footprint,” Warren said.

“We do three regulations, we can cut our carbon footprint by 70 percent,” she said.

Oh, and there was also talk of some vague idea of social justice — because schemes like this always need to be undergirded with some such vague idea.

“We also need to make environmental justice really at the heart of our climate plan,” Warren said.

“A central part of the plan for me is I want to put a trillion dollars into cleaning up the places that collectively we have destroyed as a nation and bringing them back,” she said.

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Just out of morbid curiosity, I looked at the section of Warren’s campaign website dealing with environmental justice and then rather wished I hadn’t.

“We didn’t get here by accident. Our crisis of environmental injustice is the result of decades of discrimination and environmental racism compounding in communities that have been overlooked for too long,” Warren says on the site.

“It is the result of multiple choices that put corporate profits before people, while our government looked the other way. It is unacceptable, and it must change.”

Warren advocates a “just transition” for all Americans via her flavor of the Green New Deal, which should be interesting when the economically vulnerable and marginalized individuals she claims to care so much about see the price of an electric car or a carbon-neutral home.

That’s going to be especially true when you consider that the only reasonably cheap option for green energy is nuclear, and Elizabeth Warren will be having none of that.

“We’re not going to build any nuclear power plants and we’re going to start weaning ourselves off nuclear energy and replacing it with renewable fuels,” she said during CNN’s mammoth climate town hall back in September.

I wonder how much of Warren’s bluster on the environment is naïveté and how much of it is cynicism.

On the naïve side, this isn’t affordable or practical. It would lead to a mass voter revolt once the bills started coming due.

On the other hand, there’s also the element of cynicism. This has no chance of happening on the timetable Warren is proposing — certainly not with congressional approval, given that there are even some Democrats who would blanch at such an obviously self-defeating suite of environmental laws.

However, when you consider how serious of a candidate Elizabeth Warren is, consider that this is a woman who wants to ban regular old buildings in favor of carbon-neutral ones, all while solving serious social issues — one of which presumably is homelessness. Good luck.

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Watch how Iranian students refuse to step on American & the flag of Israel.

This should embarrassed Iranian regime & their propaganda funeral for #Soleimani where people were told to chant “Death To America”.
Now people in Iran chanting “Death to Islamic Republic dictatorship.” pic.twitter.com/hTxDuxZeaB

— Masih Alinejad 🏳️ (@AlinejadMasih) January 12, 2020

People not walking on the flag yell “Shameful” at the few government stooges who do.

The reins of political power in the U.S. for the next decade could be determined in this year’s elections — not necessarily by who wins the presidency, but by thousands of lower-profile contests for state legislative seats across the country.

In many states, the winners of those legislative races will have a role in drawing new districts for Congress or state legislatures based on the 2020 census. If a political party can win control of those state legislative chambers now, it can draw voting districts to boost its chances in future elections.

“The 2020 election is the premier election when it comes to redistricting, because it is the election that will set the players in place who will do redistricting come 2021,” said Wendy Underhill, director of elections and redistricting for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Voters will be electing more than 5,000 state lawmakers in 35 states who will play a significant role in crafting or passing new maps for Congress or state House and Senate districts. Voters also will be electing governors in eight states who could enact or veto those maps.

The Constitution requires a census once every 10 years. That population count then is used to redraw districts for the U.S. House of Representatives and state legislative chambers. States that grow rapidly can gain congressional seats while those that fail to keep pace can lose seats. Migration among cities, suburbs and rural areas also can lead to changes in district lines to try to equalize the number of residents in each voting jurisdiction.

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Seven states have only one congressional district because of their small populations. Of the remaining 43 states, eight use redistricting commissions for Congress that leave little or no role for the state legislature. Eleven of the 50 states rely on independent commissions for redistricting their state House and Senate seats. The rest involve lawmakers in the process, and most also give governors a say.

Republicans generally outmaneuvered Democrats during the last round of redistricting by converting big wins in the 2010 state elections into favorable maps for the future. Democrats successfully challenged some of those maps in court, forcing them to be redrawn, but others have remained in place for the full decade.

This time, Democrats are pouring more money into the redistricting fight. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has boosted its fundraising target from about $10 million during the 2009-2010 election cycle to $50 million in the 2019-2020 elections.

Various Democratic-aligned groups are kicking in tens of millions more, including the National Democratic Redistricting Committee led by former Obama administration Attorney General Eric Holder.

“We’ve got the next 10 years of politics at stake in these elections,” said Patrick Rodenbush, communications director for the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.

The Republican State Leadership Committee, which calls its redistricting campaign “Right Lines 2020,” hasn’t disclosed a fundraising goal for the year. But it had a target of as much as $50 million for state legislative and down-ballot statewide races during the 2017-18 election cycle.

“This is the long-term investment,” Republican State Leadership Committee President Austin Chambers said. “This is about making sure that we have a congressional majority and a conservative majority across the country at the state and local level for the next decade.”

The Big Four

Four of the biggest redistricting prizes in the 2020 legislative elections are Texas, Florida, North Carolina and Georgia. Those states combined account for 90 U.S. House seats, one-fifth of the nationwide total, and Republicans currently hold more than 60 percent of them. Texas, Florida and North Carolina all are projected to gain congressional seats because of their population growth, which would give the party in power an opportunity to shape new districts to their liking.

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All four states have complete Republican control in their state legislatures, giving them an edge in redistricting, although Florida’s constitution says districts can’t be drawn to favor a political party. Texas, Florida and Georgia also have Republican governors who were elected to four-year terms in 2018.

Texas has 36 U.S. House seats, second only to California, and the potential to gain as many as three more because of its rapid growth.

“The reality is Texas is the crown jewel of redistricting,” said Vicky Hausman, co-founder of Forward Majority, a Democratic organization that is targeting key Republican-led legislatures in the 2020 elections.

If Democrats could flip control of at least one legislative chamber in GOP-led states, they could gain leverage for redistricting compromises that could increase their odds of winning future elections and building their majority in Congress.

“A lot of where we’re trying to win would be disruption, like Texas, that has to force Democrats and Republicans to work together for maps,” said Matt Harringer, press secretary for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee.

In North Carolina, all congressional and some state legislative candidates will be running under newly redrawn districts this year after state courts stopped the use of prior maps drawn by the Republican-led Legislature. Democrats had argued that the old districts were an example of extreme partisan gerrymandering. Republicans hold 10 of North Carolina’s 13 seats in the U.S. House, even though statewide elections between Republicans and Democrats are usually close.

Democrats would need to gain five state Senate seats and six state House seats to flip control of the chambers. North Carolina’s governor, a Democrat who is up for re-election in 2020, is irrelevant in redistricting because the office has no power to sign or veto the plans passed by the Legislature.

North Carolina “is going to be one of the top spends for our committee in 2020, and we’re going to do everything in our power to maintain the state House and the state Senate,” said Chambers, of the Republican state committee.

Margins Matter

Ohio has long been a top redistricting target for the political parties. After the 2010 census, Republicans controlled the House, Senate, governor’s office and other key executive offices that gave them firm control over redistricting. Republicans still control Ohio government.

But a pair of constitutional amendments approved by voters since the last census have changed the redistricting process to inject greater bipartisanship. After the 2020 census, a congressional redistricting plan must receive a 60 percent vote in both the House and Senate — including support from at least half the minority party members in each chamber — to last for the full decade. A similar bipartisan threshold is required from the commission of elected officials that handles state legislative redistricting.

Winning control of the Ohio House or Senate would be difficult for Democrats, yet each seat they can gain will increase the number of Democratic votes needed for the Republican majorities to enact new districts.

Slim margins also could make a big difference in the historically Republican state of Kansas.

Gov. Laura Kelly, a Democrat, will be able to veto redistricting plans passed by the Republican-led Legislature. The question is whether Republicans will have the two-thirds majority needed to override a veto and be able to stick together if they do. In the Senate, Republicans currently hold 29 of the 40 seats — two more than the override threshold. In the House, Republicans hold 84 of the 125 seats — exactly what’s needed for an override.

Split Power

In some states with politically divided governments, Democrats will be making a play in the 2020 elections to win full control of redistricting while Republicans will be seeking to hold on to a seat at the table.

Minnesota currently is the only state where Democrats control one legislative chamber and Republicans the other. But the 75-59 Democratic majority in the House is more solid than the 35-32 Republican majority in the Senate. If Democrats gain two Senate seats, they would hold the trifecta of redistricting power, because they already control the governor’s office.

In New Hampshire, the redistricting battle centers around the 2020 gubernatorial election. Democrats currently control the state House and Senate while the governor’s office is held by Republican Chris Sununu, who is running for re-election. In August, Sununu vetoed a bipartisan measure that would have created an independent commission to redraw the state’s legislative districts. Sununu said there was no need for it because the current process — which allows the governor to veto redistricting plans passed by the legislature — is fair.

Pennsylvania and Wisconsin also are redistricting targets for both Democrats and Republicans. Both states have Democratic governors who aren’t up for re-election in 2020 and Republican legislative majorities that remain short of the threshold needed to override vetoes. Unless one party wins big in the 2020 legislative elections, compromise may be necessary during the next round of congressional redistricting.

Redistricting Bystanders

The 2020 elections won’t matter at all in some states — at least not when it comes to redistricting.

That’s the case in the nation’s most populous state of California, which will use a 14-member citizens commission to draw its congressional and state legislative districts after the 2020 census. Not only are lawmakers excluded from the commission, but so are other federal and state employees, political party officials, campaign staff members, lobbyists and big political donors.

The only role for state legislative leaders is in whittling down the list of applicants before the members — five Republicans, five Democrats and four independents — are randomly selected.

Michigan had been expected to be a big redistricting battleground in the 2020 legislative elections. But a ballot measure approved in 2018 by voters created an independent commission to handle the task that had previously been the domain of the legislature and governor. Michigan’s process is now similar to California’s.

Other states with independent redistricting commissions include Arizona, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, New Jersey and Washington.

Missouri and Pennsylvania use independent commissions only for state legislative districts, not congressional ones, so the 2020 elections still can have an impact on redistricting in those states.

Though Republicans aren’t likely to lose their grip on Missouri’s legislature, Democrats are mounting a challenging to the incumbent GOP governor this year.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Less than two weeks into the new year, New York’s latest criminal justice reform effort is reportedly already coming back to burn the state.

A serial robbery suspect released from police custody without bail this week is now wanted for yet another alleged bank robbery that took place just one day after his initial release, the New York Post reported.

According to the outlet, 42-year-old Gerod Woodberry was charged with grand larceny Thursday after a “mini bank-robbing spree” in which the suspect allegedly slipped robbery notes to four bank tellers from Harlem to the West Village, making off with more than $2,000 total.

“I can’t believe they let me out” were Woodberry’s words as authorities prepared him for his release, returning personal items taken during his arrest at the hands of Manhattan patrol officers, the Post reported, citing anonymous sources. “What were they thinking?”

What motivation does this suspect have to return to court? None.

This makes NYPD cops’ jobs harder, and makes New Yorkers less safe. https://t.co/ZNIQXocLSr

— Commissioner Shea (@NYPDShea) January 11, 2020

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Well, if that question was being asked of New York City’s law enforcement personnel, the answer seems fairly simple.

I can only imagine they were thinking their hands were tied and they had to comply with the state’s brand new “no bail” criminal justice reform law, which took effect Jan. 1.

If it was asked of New York’s legislative elites and naive criminal justice reform idealists, however, the question becomes far, far harder to answer.

What in fact was the New York state legislature thinking when its Democratic majority went for broke on the “Bail Elimination Act of 2019,” all but abolishing cash bail for those charged with one or more of the nearly 400 crimes deemed nonviolent by the state?

The thought must have been rather convoluted, if a single lawmaker voting in favor was thinking at all.

Because that list includes not only misdemeanors, but a handful of felonies as well, meaning even those accused of criminally negligent homicide or selling drugs on or near school property will now walk free, according to WCBS.

In fact, judges are often barred from even considering the accused’s criminal history when determining bail — a factor that should already have members of the legislature moving forward with major amendments to the new law.

As well they should, considering Woodberry is far from the only individual released as a result of the law and wanted in connection with a subsequent offense.

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New York City’s own “Burberry Bandit” Cornell Neilly, charged in connection with more than a dozen bank robberies since 2012, was released from jail last month, according to the Post, only to be scooped up by authorities once again last week after another alleged bank robbery.

Long Island woman Maria Campione has been released without bail more than four times already this year, according to WCBS, having been held on $25,000 bail late last year for a sizable burglary until the bail reform law took effect on Jan. 1.

Are we sensing a pattern here? Clearly, something isn’t working.

And I’m no expert, but I would have to assume it’s Democratic New York’s radical new soft-on-crime approach — especially considering it wasn’t long ago that New York City was seeing a big decline in all forms of major criminal activity.

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The Medal of Courage will be awarded to the man who took down an active shooter at a church in White Settlement, Texas, on December 29.

Jack Wilson is a member of the volunteer security team at West Freeway Church of Christ, where two innocent congregants were shot and killed by a man who opened fire during the morning service.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said on Friday that this Monday, he will present Wilson with the medal, the highest award given to civilians by the governor.

Abbott stated that the medal was given to individuals who “display great acts of heroism by risking their own safety to save another’s life.”

Despite the attention he received for his courageous act, Wilson said he does not consider himself a hero.

“I don’t feel like I killed a human, I killed an evil and that’s how I’m coping with the situation,” he commented.

In a Facebook post on January 3, Abbott shared a photo of himself and Wilson shaking hands and praised him for his bravery in the face of danger.

“This is the good guy with a gun who stopped a bad guy with a gun at the church in White Settlement. It took 6 seconds. He saved countless lives. He is Jack Wilson and a true Texas hero,” the governor wrote.

On December 30, President Trump highlighted that Wilson and his fellow church members saved many lives because they were legally carrying firearms in church:

Our prayers are with the families of the victims and the congregation of yesterday’s church attack. It was over in 6 seconds thanks to the brave parishioners who acted to protect 242 fellow worshippers. Lives were saved by these heroes, and Texas laws allowing them to carry arms!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 31, 2019

Following the shooting, Wilson said in a Facebook post that he did what he had to do in the face of evil.

He wrote:

I just want to thank all who have sent their prayers and comments on the events of today. The events at West Freeway Church of Christ put me in a position that I would hope no one would have to be in, but evil exists and I had to take out an active shooter in church.

“I am very sad in the loss of two dear friends and brothers in CHRIST, but evil does exist in this world and I and other members are not going to allow evil to succeed,” Wilson concluded.

Anti-Israel professors overwhelmingly stack their Israel-Palestine courses with pro-BDS content, according to a recent study, which noted that its results strongly suggest that academic BDS-supporting professors “are using their Israel-related courses to promote a politically motivated, anti-Israel perspective” in compliance with “guidelines calling on faculty to work against ‘the normalization of Israel in the global academy.’”

Professors in support of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement are stacking their courses with material by pro-BDS authors, according to a study by the non-profit anti-Semitism watchdog group, AMCHA Initiative.

BDS is a movement which seeks to systematically destroy the world’s only Jewish state through financial means, by boycotting companies that do business with Israel.

According to AMCHA,  BDS-supporting professors include an average of 78 percent of readings authored by BDS supporters in their courses.

“All of the academic BDS-supporting instructors had a majority of their readings authored by BDS supporters, whereas only 2 of the 35 syllabi of non-BDS-supporting instructors had a majority of their course readings authored by BDS supporters, and none more than 60%,” noted the study.

“These results strongly suggest that faculty who support an academic boycott of Israel engage in politically-motivated efforts to implement the anti-normalization component of the boycott in their classrooms, by exposing students to an overwhelming preponderance of authors and readings likely to portray Israel as an illegitimate country unworthy of normalization,” the report added.

AMCHA’s research methods included a review of 50 syllabi from courses “focusing primarily on the contemporary Palestinian-Israeli or Arab-Israeli conflict,” and spanning from Fall 2008 to Spring 2019 semesters.

“In order to isolate the impact on course readings of support for academic BDS and its explicit call for the anti-normalization of Israel in the academy, syllabi were only included in the study if the course instructors were determined to support an academic boycott of Israel, or determined to not support either an academic boycott of Israel or BDS more generally,” said AMCHA.

The study added that 48 of the 50 syllabi were from courses taught by tenure-track faculty or visiting professors.

“There was a very large, highly significant difference between the average percentages of BDS-authored readings in the syllabi of instructors who support the academic boycott of Israel (median 78%), and those who do not support any form of BDS (median 17%),” noted the study of its results.

The study continued:

In addition, the two groups of instructors showed almost no overlap in the distribution of percentages of course readings with BDS-supporting authors: 13 of the 15 syllabi of academic boycott supporting instructors had at least two-thirds of their readings authored by BDS-supporters, whereas only 2 of the 35 syllabi of non-BDS-supporting instructors had more than half of their readings authored by BDS-supporters and none of them with more than 60% of readings authored by BDS-supporters.

The stark difference between the average percentage of course readings with pro-BDS authors in the syllabi of academic BDS-supporting instructors (78%) and in the syllabi of instructors who had not expressed public support for any kind of BDS (17%), with almost no overlap between these two groups, leaves little doubt that instructors who support academic BDS make a calculated choice to heavily weight their course materials with readings authored by BDS supporters.

“This, in turn, strongly suggests that academic BDS-supporting instructors are using their Israel-related courses to promote a politically motivated, anti-Israel perspective that is compliant with the PACBI/USACBI guidelines calling on faculty to work against ‘the normalization of Israel in the global academy,’” added AMCHA.

Given the results of the study, AMCHA suggests that universities publicly affirm that pro-BDS activity among their faculty is harmful to the education and opportunities of its students.

“While freedom of speech protects faculty’s right to sign petitions and make extramural statements in support of academic BDS and academic freedom generally protects their right to develop and teach courses as they see fit, it is important to point out the harmful consequences of politically-motivated faculty weaponizing their course curricula to ensure that Israel is not ‘normalized’ in the academy,” said AMCHA.

“Faculty should be urged by university administrators to establish their own safeguards against the politicization of the academy,” the organization added.

It is apparent that anti-Israel bias is growing on college campuses across the United States via the academic boycott of Israel.

In September 2018, a professor at the University of Michigan refused to write a letter of recommendation to a student that was planning to study abroad in Israel. In November 2018, faculty at Pitzer College voted to suspend its study abroad program in Israel.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.