Conservatives welcome. Libs & RINOs go away. It's all of you destroying the society and conservatives must no longer appease you!
President Donald Trump reacted to the news Friday that 2020 Democratic candidates are skipping the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference this year.
via Breitbart News
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Recently, Elizabeth Warren and a number of other Democratic candidates for president have suggested that the Electoral College be abolished. Right now, a candidate for president must win a majority of Electoral College votes regardless of the outcome of the national popular vote.
President Donald Trump in 2016 and President George W. Bush in 2000, did not win the popular vote, but they did win a majority in the Electoral College. The Dems claim that this is not fair and that the president should be elected by popular vote. In fact, a number of states are trying to change their Electoral College votes based on the national popular vote rather than the vote within their state.
In theory, a democracy or a constitutional republic makes major decisions based on the desires of the majority of the people. Indeed, it was rule by a generally elite minority, rather than the majority, that was the basis for the founding of our country. However, our forefathers also recognized that the United States of America, while honoring rule by the majority, also realized that individual states must have basic rights and a should have a voice in presidential elections.
Why did our forefathers establish two chambers of Congress?
When Congress was formed there were two bodies created: the House of Representatives and the Senate. Realizing that it would be impossible to have a direct democracy where each citizen voted on each issue, a representative democracy was established. In theory, voters elect representatives who will vote in Congress on issues in a manner that reflects the views of their constituents.
The House of Representatives was set up to reflect the majority of the population so that heavily populated states like California have 53 votes while lightly populated states like Wyoming have only 1. The total of 435 seats is reallocated after each census to reflect the current population. While this configuration ensures that votes passed in the House reflect the majority of the national population, it does ignore what the majority of states may want.
The Senate was established to correct this. Each state, regardless of population, has two votes in the Senate. This means that Wyoming, with just over half a million people has the same voice as California, with nearly 40 million people. This ensures that a majority of states must approve of a law before it is passed.
While this protects states’ rights, it is possible that 82 senators from 41 states vote to approve a law with those senators representing less than 50% of the population, even though that total represents a large majority of states.
That’s because the population of the nine largest states (18 senators) is about 51% of the total U.S. population. If the 18 senators from those nine states are the only ones to vote no on a bill, the bill passes with less than 50% of the population’s support.
The Electoral College recognizes both needs.
The Electoral College was established to try to balance the popular vote with the need for states rights. There are 538 electors in the electoral college. Each state is given one elector for each member of the House of Representatives (435 in total) plus one additional electors for each of the two senators (100 in total). The District of Columbia gets three electors.
If the Electoral College was abolished and the president elected simply by a majority in the national vote, the majority of people from smaller, less populated states would lose their voice in presidential elections. A number of states have already considered having their electors vote for the candidate who gets the majority of the national vote. This would mean candidates would campaign mostly in densely populated states while ignoring the less populated states.
The Electoral College process has worked very well for the U.S. With a few exceptions the Electoral College vote reflected the will of the majority of American voters. For the few exceptions, the results reflected the design of our Constitution by giving all states a voice in the electoral process.
Our legislative system with two chambers of Congress to determine national laws and with the Electoral College to determine the president of the United States has worked well in the past. This system reflects the will of the majority of the people, while allowing for all states to have a voice in the presidential election. There is no reason to change.
Recently, Elizabeth Warren and a number of other Democratic candidates for president have suggested that the Electoral College be abolished. Right now, a candidate for president must win a majority of Electoral College votes regardless of the outcome of the national popular vote.
President Donald Trump in 2016 and President George W. Bush in 2000, did not win the popular vote, but they did win a majority in the Electoral College. The Dems claim that this is not fair and that the president should be elected by popular vote. In fact, a number of states are trying to change their Electoral College votes based on the national popular vote rather than the vote within their state.
In theory, a democracy or a constitutional republic makes major decisions based on the desires of the majority of the people. Indeed, it was rule by a generally elite minority, rather than the majority, that was the basis for the founding of our country. However, our forefathers also recognized that the United States of America, while honoring rule by the majority, also realized that individual states must have basic rights and a should have a voice in presidential elections.
Why did our forefathers establish two chambers of Congress?
When Congress was formed there were two bodies created: the House of Representatives and the Senate. Realizing that it would be impossible to have a direct democracy where each citizen voted on each issue, a representative democracy was established. In theory, voters elect representatives who will vote in Congress on issues in a manner that reflects the views of their constituents.
The House of Representatives was set up to reflect the majority of the population so that heavily populated states like California have 53 votes while lightly populated states like Wyoming have only 1. The total of 435 seats is reallocated after each census to reflect the current population. While this configuration ensures that votes passed in the House reflect the majority of the national population, it does ignore what the majority of states may want.
The Senate was established to correct this. Each state, regardless of population, has two votes in the Senate. This means that Wyoming, with just over half a million people has the same voice as California, with nearly 40 million people. This ensures that a majority of states must approve of a law before it is passed.
While this protects states’ rights, it is possible that 82 senators from 41 states vote to approve a law with those senators representing less than 50% of the population, even though that total represents a large majority of states.
That’s because the population of the nine largest states (18 senators) is about 51% of the total U.S. population. If the 18 senators from those nine states are the only ones to vote no on a bill, the bill passes with less than 50% of the population’s support.
The Electoral College recognizes both needs.
The Electoral College was established to try to balance the popular vote with the need for states rights. There are 538 electors in the electoral college. Each state is given one elector for each member of the House of Representatives (435 in total) plus one additional electors for each of the two senators (100 in total). The District of Columbia gets three electors.
If the Electoral College was abolished and the president elected simply by a majority in the national vote, the majority of people from smaller, less populated states would lose their voice in presidential elections. A number of states have already considered having their electors vote for the candidate who gets the majority of the national vote. This would mean candidates would campaign mostly in densely populated states while ignoring the less populated states.
The Electoral College process has worked very well for the U.S. With a few exceptions the Electoral College vote reflected the will of the majority of American voters. For the few exceptions, the results reflected the design of our Constitution by giving all states a voice in the electoral process.
Our legislative system with two chambers of Congress to determine national laws and with the Electoral College to determine the president of the United States has worked well in the past. This system reflects the will of the majority of the people, while allowing for all states to have a voice in the presidential election. There is no reason to change.
via American Thinker
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Nearly four years after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking all emails sent and received by Hillary Clinton and her staff via her unsecured private email server when she served as Secretary of State, Judicial Watch has finally received what appears to be the "final batch"
via Daily Wire
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All three networks spent Thursday morning gushing in favor of New Zealand’s new gun ban, touting that it had “widespread, bipartisan support” with “very little opposition.” ABC, NBC and CBS also spent time shaming the U.S. for not adopting a similar buyback measure.
via NewsBusters – Exposing Liberal Media Bias
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(Photo by Wojtek Laski/Getty Images)
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In this episode of “Inside Judicial Watch,” host Bruce Schlesman joins JW President Tom Fitton to discuss the latest news on the Clinton email scandal, the Deep State targeting President Trump and protecting Hillary Clinton, Judicial Watch’s battle for election integrity, & more!
via CanadaFreePress.Com
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Promise delivered? Earlier this month, Donald Trump told a packed house at CPAC that he would force college campuses to protect speech rights for conservatives and pro-life activists. This afternoon, Trump will sign an executive order that threatens to cut off federal funding for schools that do not take steps to ensure free speech on their campuses.
US News contemplates how Trump’s EO will complicate efforts by schools to do a “balancing act” between free speech and hate speech:
Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order Thursday afternoon that would withhold federal funding from public and private colleges and universities that do not protect free speech on campuses.
As explained by a White House senior official, in order to qualify for federal research dollars, public colleges and universities would have to certify that they are complying with the First Amendment, and private colleges and universities would have to certify that they are in compliance with their own policies. …
The move comes as schools across the country have grappled with how to protect the right to free speech on college and university campuses, including for those who may harbor white supremacist, anti-Semitic or other hateful views. The balancing act encompasses ensuring the safety both of on-campus speakers and students who may feel threatened by their views, as well as how to safeguard the campus community from demonstrations associated with such speakers.
The safety issue is a smoke screen. Colleges use it to penalize speech they don’t like by burdening speakers with extra costs and unmeetable conditions. Private schools have the latitude to do so, but public schools shouldn’t. Besides, despite constitutionally impaired media analyses such as these, “hate speech” is still covered by the First Amendment, outside of Brandenburg-level incitement to violence, and cannot be shut down by the government.
What impact will the EO really have, however? Until we know more about the follow-through, it’s impossible to tell:
Public universities will have to show they are adhering to the First Amendment, while private schools will have to show they are living up to their “intended policies” on “open inquiry,” according to the official.
Both public and private schools will have to “certify” that they are following the existing criteria and the new ones for free speech, the official said. But the official was unable to describe in any depth just how the Trump administration will verify those certifications.
Such “implementation details” will be finalized in “a few weeks,” the senior official said, adding the EO will direct the Department of Education to compile a report on risk-sharing for higher education institutions related to student loans.
Given the resistance to using federal authority to dictate matters within the GOP and in the Trump administration, it might be safe to call this merely an advisory EO:
The order comes as some leading Republicans, like Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Chairman Lamar Alexander, of Tennessee, and members of Trump’s Cabinet, like Education Secretary Betsy Devos, have voiced opposition to the federal government defining free speech.
Since DeVos would have to enforce the EO, one can assume that enforcement won’t be terribly assertive. CNN worries that anything heavier than just a guidance might tend to quash more speech than it liberates, but also inadvertently points to the problem:
There are valid concerns about the climate for free expression on campus. Protests have silenced invited speakers. Students have mounted national campaigns to get professors fired for offensive Facebook posts and tweets. Administrators have shut down campus art exhibits deemed objectionable.
Certain terms, topics and theories are now deemed so offensive on racial, gender, religious or other grounds that for many the easiest answer is not to speak them at all, even if for purposes of scholarly analysis. Hardly a week goes by without a group on the left or right calling to silence those on campus with whom they disagree.
President Trump has declared that his forthcoming order will use the cutting or denial of federal research funds as a cudgel to force compliance with free speech edicts. Such provisions are a recipe for politicization. Tie-ins between campus speech and appropriations or research funds are meant to strike fear in the hearts of administrators, prompting them to consider the political leanings at the state and federal level in deciding which speakers to invite and how to adjudicate speech-related controversies.
Such measures are intended not to keep speech open, but rather to put universities on notice that they are being watched and will face the consequences if their decisions fall afoul of politics.
Actually, that’s the problem now. Speech on campuses hasn’t been open and free to all viewpoints for a generation or more thanks to longstanding politicization within Academia, where anything to the right of Cory Booker routinely gets cast as “hate speech” and efforts made to shut it down. Almost all of the shutting down goes in one direction, and it’s not to the Left. Administrations set these rules in place long ago; conservatives want to return the favor by politicizing the politicization.
Calling the situation as it exists now as “ripe for politicization” is an outright laughable line.
Of course, the problem here is that we’re compounding the problem rather than solving it. That may be because there’s no really good solution to politicization of Academia short of starving it to death, which isn’t as good of an idea as it sounds. Starving it of market-distorting federal subsidies is actually a good idea for other reasons, which efforts like this might needlessly politicize. And this sets a precedent for federal intervention into campus speech that conservatives might not like when the next president is Kamala Harris rather than Nikki Haley.
But hey, we stopped worrying about precedent and unintended consequences years ago. Some day, when our backs are against the wall and a “Democratic Socialist” president issues EOs declaring national emergencies that require the nationalization o the energy and health-care sectors and bars free-market speech in campuses, conservatives will rally against expanding federal authority and executive power. But today is not that day.
The post Trump EO to colleges: Protect free speech or lose funding appeared first on Hot Air.
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Inside Defense magazine recently reported that the Department of Defense returned $80 billion to the Treasury in canceled funds over the past six years. That has drawn charges from some corners of Congress that the Pentagon has more money than it knows what to do with.
If only.
While $80 billion is indeed a startling number, the return of canceled funds is more indicative of the byzantine nature of our federal budget than evidence of mismanagement, waste, or excessive appropriations.
Article I of the Constitution states that “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” That places Congress, the appropriating branch of government, squarely in the driver’s seat regarding the use of taxpayer dollars.
Congress, therefore, makes rules to ensure that the money it appropriates will be spent on a certain thing during a certain time frame. But while these rules facilitate oversight, they do not ensure efficiency.
The result is that the defense
funds are spread through multiple accounts, each with differing expiration
dates and rules. For example, operations and maintenance funds must be
obligated in the same year as they are appropriated, whereas military
construction funds can be obligated over a five-year period.
After the initial period for all obligating funds, the Defense Department has an additional five years in which it can adjust expenditures and outlays of those funds, but it cannot incur any new obligations.
What the heck does that mean?
Well, suppose that over the five-year period, a project needed less personnel than expected. The Pentagon can’t just take those “savings” and spend it on something else. At the end of the five years, the unspent funds are “canceled” and must be returned to the Treasury.
Those canceled funds, reportedly totaling $80 billion between 2013 and 2018, are the ones that have so recently captured the attention of Congress in news reports.
Naturally, since this is government, it’s not as simple as it sounds. Further complicating the Defense Department’s efforts to budget and spend efficiently is Congress’ all-too-frequent failure to enact appropriations when it’s supposed to.
Too often, lawmakers fail to agree on appropriations by the start of a new fiscal year, leaving government to operate on continuing resolutions—i.e., last year’s budget.
The longer lawmakers dither over appropriations, the less time the Pentagon has to obligate the new fiscal year’s funds. Instead of one year, there might be a little under five months, as was the case in 2017, or 9-1/2 months, as in 2015.
Adding up all the days spent under a continuing resolution in between 2013 and 2018, the Defense Department lost, on average, 4-1/2 months of every fiscal year.
Considering the reduced time available, it’s impressive that the Defense Department was able to obligate most of one year’s worth of resources in under eight months.
That raises the question of how much does the $80 billion represent of the defense budget. According to the data available, the Department of Defense returned an average of $13.5 billion per year. Over the past six years, the base defense budget (excluding war funding) has averaged $509 billion. Thus, on average, the department had 2.6 percent of its budget canceled.
When you consider that the planning process for the defense budget, under ideal circumstances, starts close to three years before the start of the fiscal year and ends eight months before, getting it 97 percent right is an amazing accomplishment.
If you were budgeting your lunch money for three years from today, you would probably be delighted to get it 90 percent right.
It becomes even more impressive when you consider the volatile and uncertain environments in which the Pentagon operates—namely, war zones, contingency operations, and evolving technologies.
Another important caveat is
the “use it or lose it” pressure that exists at every level of every government
agency. Washington is littered with stories of financial managers who reach the
final months of the fiscal year with leftover money and rush to spend before they
have to hand it back.
Economists Jeffery Liebman and Neale Mahoney have determined that, in the area of information technology, projects approved near the end of the fiscal year have substantially lower quality ratings.
If the choice is between returning the money to the Treasury or making a bad-quality decision with taxpayer dollars, the preference should always be to return the money.
The $80 billion returned to the Treasury is not a sign of waste, mismanagement, or budget padding. Rather, it is a symptom of a budget process that optimizes oversight, not efficiency.
The constraints and limitations that Congress imposes on the Pentagon will inevitably lead to a fraction of the resources being returned to the Treasury. Until we change our current convoluted system, it’s an unfortunate part of the cost of doing business.F
The post Pentagon’s $80 Billion in Unspent Funds Shows Need for a Better Budget Process appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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Terror-tied CAIR took a huge hit after vigilant parents sued San Diego School District for promoting pro-Islam propaganda to their kids.
Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator of the largest terrorist funding case in US history, slithered their way into the San Diego School District shortly after the 2016 presidential election.
In 2017, CAIR introduced their “Anti-Islamophobia Initiative,” which: (i) singled out Muslim students for special protections; and (ii) empowered Islamist CAIR to change the District’s curriculum to portray Islam more favorably, reported the Middle East Forum.
Recall, TGP posted a video in May of 2017 of a furious father and patriot named Christopher Wyrick who stood in front of the San Diego Unified School District board and unleashed on the members because he was fed up with Islam being shoved down his child’s throat.
“You’re gonna have to drag me outta here,” Mr. Wyrick said as the board members tried to silence him.
Watch again for inspiration:
?Dad Christopher Wyrick,Finds Out School Is FORCING #Islam #ReligionBeliefs Down His Son’s Throat!His #PATRIOTIC Reply Goes VIRAL!#BanSharia pic.twitter.com/8yKcFvOiRk
— TRUMP ANOMALY® (@ANOMALY1) May 4, 2017
The Middle East Forum, who largely funded the lawsuit against the school district on behalf of five brave San Diego families explains the settlement agreement:
The District enacted its initiative in 2017 at the behest of CAIR, which claimed that “Islamophobia” was sweeping through schools after the November 2016 elections. According to the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund – which brought the lawsuit on behalf of five San Diego families – CAIR activists were teaching schoolchildren “how to become allies to Muslim students” and conducting Islamic education workshops for teachers, among other inequities.
Under the terms of the court settlement:
- “Educators should treat each religion with equal respect, with the time and attention spent discussing each religion being proportionate to its impact on history.”
- “Educational material on religious subjects must be neutral and may not be presented in a manner that promotes one religion over another.”
- “Educators or other staff sponsoring guest speakers at District events must ask them not to use their position or influence on students to forward their own religious, political, economic or social views and shall take active steps to neutralize whatever bias has been presented.”
- “Guest speakers from religious organizations are not permitted to present to students on religious topics.”
“This is a tremendous victory, because CAIR intended this plan to be a pilot program for a nationwide rollout,” said Daniel J. Piedra, executive director of the Freedom of Conscience Defense Fund. “I thank the Forum for its support of this critical case.”
Thank you, Michelle Malkin, a fearless warrior and contributor to the Middle East Forum helping to stop ‘Creeping Sharia’ in the United States and beyond.
Parents sued San Diego school district that tried to force CAIR propaganda on their kids. They won – with big help from @meforum !
Moms & dads, be on guard. More of this on the way. Forewarned is forearmed.
Protect your children. Protect your country.https://t.co/s0RyXJ726T— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) March 20, 2019
The post VICTORY! Parents Sue San Diego School District For Trying to Force Pro-Islam CAIR Propaganda On Their Kids – AND WIN! appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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Guest post by Bright Start News
“Idiot” Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wants to place solar panels on the roof of Laguardia Airport.
Meanwhile as folks wring their hands over a nonbinding #GreenNewDeal, I spent this AM touring LaGuardia airport + discussing:
– Securing solar panels on every roof
– Living wage jobs
– Electric shuttle fleets
– Building for rising sea levels coming in
– Centering community issues pic.twitter.com/GriEO7ew9U— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 20, 2019
AOC might want to hop on the internet and do a little research about the amount of sunlight LaGuardia gets in an average year. It ain’t much.
Partly Sunny Days have cloud covering from 40% to 70% of the sky during the daytime.
There are only 96 days a year that have clear skies. The rest of the time, the cloud cover is anywhere from 40-100%.
That means Cortez scores about a 26% on this effort. An F-
FLASHBACK: AOC’s Green New Deal to eliminate air travel in favor of trains.
Maybe she can order all those solar panels from Amazon? Oh. Wait. Never mind.
The post Dunce Rep. AOC Want’s To Install Solar Panels On LaGuardia Airport As Part of Green Plan – Before She Eliminates All Air Travel appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
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