Category: US Politics

Amazon was offered a variety of incentives besides billions of dollars in subsidies and tax breaks from cities aroud the country in return for the company’s newest headquarters location.

Before Amazon decided on New York City and Arlington, Virginia, as the locations for HQ2 this week, the company received appeals from hundreds of cities, counties, and states, which were all willing to give Amazon a range of incentives to entice it into basing its headquarters in the area.

According to BuzzFeed, Atlanta, Georgia, offered Amazon “a state university–affiliated education program featuring 24-week boot camp programs for company employees; an exclusive lounge — with free parking — for Amazon executives at one of the busiest airports in the world, Hartsfield-Jackson International; and the possible addition of a car on Atlanta’s MARTA trains to help ‘distribute products around the city.’”

Boston, Massachusetts, tried to entice Amazon by offering to “help eligible Amazon employees purchase homes in Boston by providing zero-interest loans to help with down payments,” among other financial perks, while Chicago, Illinois, commissioned Star Trek actor William Shatner to voice the city’s appeal video, knowing that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is a Star Trek fan.

Dallas, Texas, offered Amazon “a new university” called “Amazon U,” and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, offered to exempt Amazon from a 1 percent construction tax which applies to everyone else.

All of the cities and states were also prepared to give Amazon hundreds of millions, if not billions, in tax breaks and subsidies.

After facing criticism, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo defended the $1.5 billion in tax credits and $1.2 billion in tax breaks New York gave to Amazon, claiming it, “Cost us nothing.”

Amazon is a billion-dollar company. The idea that it will receive hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks at a time when our subway is crumbling and our communities need MORE investment, not less, is extremely concerning to residents here.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 13, 2018

It was also revealed this week that Virginia will help the company fight Freedom of Information Act requests as part of its deal.

In response to the Internet retail giant choosing New York City and Washington, D.C. neighbor Arlington after making other cities beg, Breitbart News Senior Tech Reporter Allum Bokhari described the move as “sadistic.”

“Amazon has finally picked the new locations of its east-coast headquarters, and they’re pretty obvious choices: New York City and the Washington D.C. metropolitan area. But that wasn’t before the tech giant sadistically made virtually every other metropolitan area beg for its patronage,” Bokhari declared. “It’s no surprise that Amazon chose to locate its new headquarters in NYC and DC, the twin hubs of finance, media, and political power in America. But before the company made its eminently predictable decision, other cities still felt compelled to kiss Jeff Bezos’ ring, in the vain hope of attracting the same tech giant whose rise has gutted their local main streets.”

“Some of the behavior by city governments was pretty humiliating. Kansas City mayor Sly James personally bought and reviewed 1,000 Amazon products (all 5-star reviews, of course), in an effort to persuade the company to set up shop in his city,” he continued. “And in Georgia, the town of Stonecrest offered to rename itself ‘Amazon, Georgia’ if the tech giant picked them.”

Both NARAL and Rep. Joseph Kennedy spread the falsehood that proposed changes from the Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos would require schools to allow the accused to cross-examine their alleged victims of sexual assault. NARAL tweeted the lie out to their 107,000+ followers, then Kennedy tweeted it out to his 700,000 followers.

But the article NARAL cited doesn’t say that at all.

Here’s what the reported change says:

So yes, it’s protecting the accused due process rights which are in many colleges not being protected now. But it is not giving the right or requiring schools to have the accused personally cross-examine the alleged victim, as NARAL and Kennedy claimed. Indeed, it says that when the alleged victim is questioned the accused can’t even be in the same room.

So either NARAL and Kennedy don’t know how to read or they are knowingly spreading false information.

And this again targets Sec. Betsy DeVos who is already under protection because of the threats from crazy leftists. So spreading more falsehoods like this is inciting people against her.

Both NARAL and Kennedy have been informed that their claims are false. They have not yet deleted their tweets.

Federal prosecutors in Wisconsin are accusing a Mexican national of allegedly re-entering the United States and getting caught with weapons and drugs in amounts suggesting distribution purposes. He also faces charges involving prostitution.

Jose Facio-Santos, 39, was indicted Friday for a variety of alleged federal violations ranging from illegal re-entry to felony drug possession.

The nine-count indictment includes illegal re-entry as a previously deported alien, three counts for unlawful possession of firearms, three counts for drug distribution, and two counts for aiding the transit of women across state lines for prostitution purposes.

The variety of charges, if convicted and sentenced according to maximum guidelines, could land Facio-Santos in prison for a lifetime and pay $4.5 million in fines, according to the Justice Department.

The DOJ notes the indictment was brought forward due to a collaborated effort between the Milwaukee Police Department, the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement – Homeland Security Investigations, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

The case is slated to proceed in the U.S. Eastern District of Wisconsin.

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Newly elected Representative Ilhan Omar, the Somali-heritage Muslim from Minneapolis who replaces Keith Ellison, has already reversed her position on the BDS (Boyott, Divest, Sanction) Movement that seeks to delegitimize Israel now that she is safely elected. Since she has cited no reasons for changing her mind, she must have been lying. Brent Scher of the Free Beacon reports:

Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar came out against the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement during her campaign, but after winning election, she now says she “supports the BDS movement.”

Omar, a Muslim Somali-American elected last week to replace outgoing Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) in the House, fought accusations that she held anti-Israel views during her campaign. As part of that effort, she told a group of Jewish voters in the state that she opposed the economic boycott of Israel, calling it “counteractive” and “not helpful in getting that two-state solution.”

But Omar’s tune has changed since winning the election. In an interview published Sunday by MuslimGirl, Omar said she “supports the BDS movement.”

Congressowman-elect Omar in 2016 (Photo credit: Lorie Schaull)

Her predecessor Keith Ellison also lied to Jewish voters when distanced himself from Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. I have seen no data indicating what share of the Jewish vote she got in the Fifth Congressional District, but my guess is that it was substantial.

Newly elected Representative Ilhan Omar, the Somali-heritage Muslim from Minneapolis who replaces Keith Ellison, has already reversed her position on the BDS (Boyott, Divest, Sanction) Movement that seeks to delegitimize Israel now that she is safely elected. Since she has cited no reasons for changing her mind, she must have been lying. Brent Scher of the Free Beacon reports:

Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar came out against the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement during her campaign, but after winning election, she now says she “supports the BDS movement.”

Omar, a Muslim Somali-American elected last week to replace outgoing Rep. Keith Ellison (D., Minn.) in the House, fought accusations that she held anti-Israel views during her campaign. As part of that effort, she told a group of Jewish voters in the state that she opposed the economic boycott of Israel, calling it “counteractive” and “not helpful in getting that two-state solution.”

But Omar’s tune has changed since winning the election. In an interview published Sunday by MuslimGirl, Omar said she “supports the BDS movement.”

Congressowman-elect Omar in 2016 (Photo credit: Lorie Schaull)

Her predecessor Keith Ellison also lied to Jewish voters when distanced himself from Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. I have seen no data indicating what share of the Jewish vote she got in the Fifth Congressional District, but my guess is that it was substantial.

Dash cam video shows a Grand Rapids Police officer taking out a fleeing homicide suspect by running into him with a police cruiser.

MLive reports that Adam Nolin allegedly “killed his girlfriend, Tia Randall, 27, at their Wyoming home before he led police on a high-speed chase and shootout that ended on the expressway.”

The suspect crashed while navigating a turn during the chase. He then exited his vehicle and allegedly opened fire on police before being run down by an officer:

The murder of Tia Randall was discovered on September 27, 2018, and the high-speed chase that led to Nolin’s being run down occurred that same day.

The video of the incident was just released via a Freedom of Information request.

Nolin has been charged with murder.

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News, the host of the Breitbart podcast Bullets with AWR Hawkins, and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. Sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

Researchers seeking to prove evidence of climate change recently published a study which claimed that ocean temperatures were increasing at a rate dramatically higher than previous estimates. Of course, it was unquestioningly accepted by believers in the climate change/global warming theory.

However, those researchers have since had to walk back their bold claims after a mathematician reviewed their findings and almost immediately spotted errors that called the legitimacy of the entire study into question.

The San Diego Union-Tribune reported that researchers from Princeton University and UC San Diego’s Scripps Institute of Oceanography published a paper on Oct. 31 in the esteemed Nature journal. The paper claimed that ocean temperatures had actually warmed at a rate 60 percent higher than what had been previously estimated by the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Unfortunately for those researchers, a mathematician named Nic Lewis — who is known to be skeptical of the so-called “scientific consensus” surrounding climate change claims — reviewed that study. He published his own findings on a climate change-skeptical blog known as Judith Curry, which pointed out a “major problem” with the ocean warming claims, one that may have inflated the supposed findings by as much as 600 percent.

Lewis pointed out how the main authors of the study — Princeton’s Laure Resplendy and Scripps Institute’s Ralph Keeling — had devised a “novel method” to determine the estimated rate of temperature increase in ocean waters and — literally on the first page of the study, as well as elsewhere — discovered major errors in their calculations that essentially changed the entirety of the study’s findings.

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That “novel method” utilized by the researchers involved calculating heat based off of measurements of the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide rising above the oceans in various research station locations around the globe, a vast difference from the typical method that relied upon actual ocean temperature data obtained by robotic devices suspended at various depths of the ocean in different parts of the world, a method that admittedly has gaps in it.

In his sharp critique of their methods and calculations, Lewis concluded, “The findings of the Resplandy et al paper were peer reviewed and published in the world’s premier scientific journal and were given wide coverage in the English-speaking media. Despite this, a quick review of the first page of the paper was sufficient to raise doubts as to the accuracy of its results.”

“Just a few hours of analysis and calculations, based only on published information, was sufficient to uncover apparently serious (but surely inadvertent) errors in the underlying calculations,” he continued.

“Because of the wide dissemination of the paper’s results, it is extremely important that these errors are acknowledged by the authors without delay and then corrected,” he added. “Of course, it is also very important that the media outlets that unquestioningly trumpeted the paper’s findings now correct the record too. But perhaps that is too much to hope for.”

To his credit, one of the main authors of the study — Ralph Keeling — responded to Lewis’ critique, took full blame for the mistakes that had occurred and expressed his gratitude to Lewis for discovering and alerting him to those mistakes.

“When we were confronted with his insight it became immediately clear there was an issue there. We’re grateful to have it be pointed out quickly so that we could correct it quickly,” said Keeling.

The researcher said his team had gone back and redone their calculations with Lewis’ critiques in mind. While they still concluded that ocean waters were likely warming at a faster rate than the UN-IPCC estimate had previously determined, that rate was also most likely far less than they had originally deduced, within a wide probability of 10 to 70 percent, rather than 60 percent, meaning they could have overestimated the warming rate by as much as 600 percent.

“Our error margins are too big now to really weigh in on the precise amount of warming that’s going on in the ocean. We really muffed the error margins,” Keeling admitted.

In other words, the study is now worthless bunk that can’t be relied upon for anything, and should be retracted, though the researchers merely sent a correction to the Nature journal.

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As for the “novel method” used by his research team, Keeling said his team would continue to use it and work to “fine tune” the process. “It’s a promising new method, but we didn’t get the precision right on the first pass,” he said.

No, they sure didn’t get it right, and the fact that their wildly miscalculated values were somehow able to make it past peer-review to be published as virtual gospel should be viewed as an embarrassment to all of those who advocate the belief in massive climate change and the leftist agenda to address it.

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