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Silicon Valley investors, including Facebook owner Mark Zuckerberg, are joining the Koch network’s push for a quick amnesty that would also keep the issue of cheap-labor immigration out of the November election.

But the push by Zuckerberg’s FWD.us investor group quickly hit a roadblock Thursday when Majority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy denounced the “discharge petition” amnesty plan, which is fronted by California GOP Rep. Jeff Denham.

“I don’t believe discharge petitions are the way to legislate,” McCarthy said to The Hill. “I don’t believe members in the [GOP] conference believe that, either.”

McCarthy’s opposition — and the growing pressure for a quick exit by retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan — opens up room for GOP legislators to make the November election all about rising wages vs. cheap-labor immigration. Numerous polls show that more than 70 percent of Americans want companies to hire Americans before importing more cheap-labor immigrants, and numerous business groups say they need more imported labor as wages begin to rise.

But a quick Zuckerberg amnesty would prevent President Donald Trump or GOP leaders from running on an immigration reform platform in November — and would also deflate economic pressure that is delivering higher wages before the 2018 election. “It would be the dumbest thing possible for Republicans to do coming election which they already think they may lose — they would for sure lose with this,” said Rosemary Jenks, the director of governmental affairs at NumbersUSA. She continued: 

I don’t think they will [shift to immigration, but] … it would be a surefire way to keep the majority. People in Washington talk about [election-winning] ’70 percent issues’ … [and] this is it, this is the 70 percent issue.

Backed by Zuckerberg’s FWD.us, Denham is collecting GOP signatures for a resolution that would urge a so-called “Queen of the Hill” debate on the House floor. In that very rare form of debate, legislators could debate several alternative immigration bills, and the most popular proposal would be sent to the Senate

Those rules would almost guarantee a big win for Zuckerberg and his allies because nearly all Democrats and many business-first Republicans — including many who are retiring this year — will support a no-strings “Clean Dream Act” amnesty for at least 1.8 million younger ‘DACA’ illegals.

Denham claims to have 50 GOP legislators backing his resolution, but those GOP members have not signed the needed “discharge petition” which allows 218 cooperating legislators to force the debate despite opposition from the Speaker of the House. Many of Denham’s supporters don’t recognize the impact of Denham’s plan, said Jenks, and “when they find out, they are not going to be happy and will certainly not sign the discharge.”’

Denham’s office did not respond to questions from Breitbart News.

McCarthy’s quick opposition to Denham’s push is critical because he is the likely replacement for exiting House Speaker Paul Ryan. Without McCarthy’s support for the immigration push, few of the GOP legislators on Denham’s resolution will sign the needed discharge petition — even though many will use their support for the resolution to ingratiate themselves with their donors and pro-amnesty voters.

Denham’s resolution is getting expensive media support from the various donors who are working under cover of the Koch advocacy network, which has at least 550 business donors. On April 17. Daniel Garza, the president of the Koch-funded LIBRE Initiative, told Business Insider:

The American people deserve a government that is effective and efficient in solving our nation’s problems.

Congress and the White House have spent a lot of time talking about DACA, but today our elected officials have yet to approve a permanent legislative solution. The Dreamers are among our best and brightest. They are students, workers, and men and women risking their lives in the Armed Forces. Washington must come together and approve a bipartisan solution that provides certainty for Dreamers and security improvements along our border.

Zuckerberg’s FWD.us advocacy group is also providing direct support for the Denham push, and it touted Wednesday’s press conference where Denham was flanked by a few other cheap-labor Republicans — Texas Rep. Will Hurd, Colorado Rep. Mike Coffman and California Rep. David Valadao – as well as the Democratic head of the Hispanic ethnic lobby, new Mexico Democrat Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

I can’t stress strongly enough how committed @RepJeffDenham is to fighting for Dreamers. He is a true champion. https://t.co/Ah2ddlb8Tf

— Todd Schulte (@TheToddSchulte) April 18, 2018

Statement on H.Res. 774, “Queen of the Hill” Rule to Force Debate and a Vote on Dreamer and Immigration Legislation https://t.co/Jymg8RCuib pic.twitter.com/RqGxxbDaRW

— FWD.us (@FWD_us) April 18, 2018

NOW and NEW: 50 Republicans join over 180 Republicans for the “Queen of the Hill” Rule to try to force a debate/series of votes for Dreamers. pic.twitter.com/ro7SyEYlwC

— Todd Schulte (@TheToddSchulte) April 18, 2018

Zuckerberg’s FWD.us group was founded a by a slew of information-technology investors who gain from cheap white-collar labor.

The group has endorsed multiple bills and amnesties which would raise the supply of white-collar labor and also block Donald Trump’s populist “Buy American, Hire American” policies, all of which will tend to raise Americans’ blue-collar wages and white-collar salaries. In February, FWD.us joined with many other business groups to help the Senate block Trump’s popular immigration reforms.

Since Trump’s election, the FWD.us group has used the relatively few college-grad ‘DACA’ illegals to shift the political focus from Trump’s very popular wages-for-Americans pitch. That diversionary tactic has worked, partly because most establishment reporters prefer to focus on the concerns of foreign migrants rather than the concerns of fellow Americans.

However, Republicans are facing a tough 2018 election and may decide to pick up the issue up the popular issue of immigration and wages, especially if McCarthy replaces House Speaker Paul Ryan before the election.

That shift to wages and immigration is made likelier by the spreading benefits of Trump’s anti-amnesty policies which is delivering higher wages and overtime to many employees, including black bakers in Chicago, Latino restaurant workers in Monterey, Calif., disabled people in Missouri, high-schoolers, the construction industry, Superbowl workers, the garment industry, and workers employed at small businesses.

Higher wages are strongly resisted by business groups, partly because they threaten to lower investors’ returns and stock values on Wall Street, including the founders of FWD.us.

Zuckerberg’s group has funded polls which tout the supposed popularity of immigration. These “Nation of Immigrants” polls pressure Americans to say they welcome migrants.

In contrast, polls which ask people to pick a priority, or to decide which options are fair, show that voters in the polling booth put a high priority on helping their families and fellow nationals get decent jobs in a high-tech, high-immigration, low-wage economy.

Also, a series of 2018 polls and surveys show that GOP voters believe the immigration issue is far more important than celebrating tax cuts.

 

John Stuart Mill, the 19th century political philosopher, said that “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

Ayn Rand, the enigmatic 20th century quasi-libertarian theorist, once noted that “The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”

The average millennial student activist, otherwise known as a snowflake, has a different reaction to that conundrum: “Your rights end where my feelings begin. And when you hurt my feelings with your speech, I’m going to find far more corporeal ways to punish you.”

It’s interesting to see just how political discourse on the individual has developed over three separate centuries. And by developed, read: completely gone to pot.

Take, for instance, the case of Burgess Owens. Owens, a 10-year veteran of the NFL who retired in 1982, played for the Oakland Raiders and New York Jets. According to TheBlaze, the former safety is also an outspoken conservative who’s spent his post-playing days talking faith and politics.

Given that Owens, 66, is an African-American entrepreneur, he seems like the ideal speaker to bring to a college campus to discuss the challenges that black business owners might face. In fact, his appearance at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in March seems, on face, to be one of the most profoundly uncontroversial college speeches one could give.

“I grew up in the Deep South during Jim Crow segregation laws,” Owens told the crowd.

“I can tell you how racism looks, how it feels, and what it means. You guys today can go anyplace you want to — any restaurant, any college. We just had a (black) president for eight years guys, elected by Americans. There is nothing you cannot do today based on your tenacity. Can we guarantee success? No. We shouldn’t. What we guarantee is the opportunity to work for it.”

“If I can tell you as someone who came through the days of segregation, we have never had it as good as we do right now,” he added. “If all you’re hearing is how bad things are, day in and day out … you’re going to believe bad things.”

Alas, I had forgotten Owens is African-American and conservative. That admixture produced the usual assortment tolerant campus activists convinced that a successful black man simply isn’t diverse enough to speak on their campus — and he shouldn’t be telling them that hard work is the key to success. Thus, the Q&A portion of the speech went… well, predictably.

“What was your name again?” one student asked.

After Owens repeated his name, she responded, “Thought it was Tom.” Ah yes, the good ol’ racist standby, Uncle Tom. It was used early, and one assumes it would have been used often had the Q&A not eventually been shut down. As the woman stormed out, Owens managed to get in the last word.

“There goes our biggest problem,” he said. “The minute you start calling names, you’ve already stopped the debate. You’re not looking for answers. You’re looking for ways of insulting, and that’s not how Americans do it.”

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The next questioner was even more aggressive, trying to grab the microphone away from the moderator that was holding it. “I had the mic. You took the mic away from me. I’m talking. I’m asking a question,” he said.

When the student went on a lengthy rant about “xenophobic” speakers being brought to campus, the moderator decided to cut it short, as typically happens during these Q&A sessions. That’s when audience members began yelling “let him finish!”

And campus activists weren’t done yet. One white male, who ended up shouting about “structural racism,” asked, “Why is it OK to bring people to talk against their own people?”

Nothing Owens said had anything to do with “talking against his own people,” but never mind! He incited enough outrage among the perpetually outraged that the Q&A session eventually had to be shut down.

For those interested, here’s the entirety of the speech and aftermath in five easy parts:

Just this February, The Washington Post wrote an article about George Washington’s rules of civility under the pretense that President Trump was trampling them. Among those rules of civility: “Let your Conversation be without Malice or Envy,” “Wherein you reprove Another be unblameable yourself,” “Detract not from others,” “Be not apt to relate News if you know not the truth thereof” and “Always Submit your Judgment to others with Modesty.”

For whatever reason, Post writer Fred Barbash couldn’t find the time to work his way on up to the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York to visit the William and Hobart Colleges to report on  a distinguished black entrepreneur getting called an “Uncle Tom” and shouted down by a retinue of fanatics who — without knowing the truth thereof — derided him as a racist and a race traitor. But at least they submitted their judgement to him with modesty, albeit at a solid 80 decibels.

Diversity of opinion is the one kind of diversity that nobody on the left seems to countenance, particularly in the orbit of academia. Nothing in Owens’ remarks represented hate speech or bigotry. What’s worse is that this lack of intellectual diversity seems to be narrowing on so many vital issues where the freedom to express oneself — without fear of the heckler’s veto — is of paramount importance.

If this trend continues, the most threatened and smallest minority — the individual — is in grave danger of losing their right to speak openly about their beliefs, their faith and their experiences.

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Barack Obama may be under the illusion that his eight years in office were scandal-free, but reality is rearing its ugly head once again. Over a year after the 44th president left office, yet another accusation of bias is shaking the Obama administration’s not-so-perfect legacy.

At the center of the latest scandal is a scathing report from the Office of Inspector General, which has come out as part of the investigation into disgraced former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

“On Friday, April 13, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Justice issued a report on McCabe, detailing how he had ‘lacked candor,’” even under oath, on four occassions that dealt with a leak to the Wall Street Journal,” CNS News summarized.

“For this misconduct the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility recommended that McCabe be fired,” that outlet continued. This by itself isn’t new information, but additional details that are part of the report are now raising questions about the entire Obama administration.

There is strong evidence that during the run-up to the 2016 election, Obama’s team improperly pressured McCabe and other FBI officials to drop their inquiry into the Clinton Foundation, the Bill and Hillary-backed organization which has been accused of making shady pay-to-play deals.

“McCabe told the OIG that on August 12, 2016, he received a telephone call from PADAG [Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General] regarding the FBI’s handling of the CF Investigation,” stated the government report.

Remember, this is not mere speculation from a random news outlet, but the official report from the inspector general within the Department of Justice.

Andrew McCabe, who has since been fired by Jeff Sessions and is certainly no ally of the Trump administration, told the DOJ panel that he was deeply bothered by the Obama team’s efforts to push him away from the Clinton Foundation investigation, which came at the height of the presidential election.

“McCabe said that PADAG expressed concerns about FBI agents taking overt steps in the CF [Clinton Foundation] Investigation during the presidential campaign,” declared the inspector general report.

“According to McCabe, he pushed back, asking ‘are you telling me that I need to shut down a validly predicated investigation?’ McCabe told us that the conversation was ‘very dramatic’ and he never had a similar confrontation like the PADAG call with a high level Department official in his entire FBI career,” the DOJ document explained.

It’s difficult to come to any other conclusion than this: People within the Obama administration, perhaps even the attorney general, ordered McCabe to drop his investigation into the Clinton Foundation because it would hurt Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton.

That’s exactly the conclusion reached by J. Christian Adams, an attorney with experience within the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.

“This is a top-level DOJ official who called the FBI and said shut down the Hillary (Clinton) Foundation investigation,” he told CNS News.

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“What kind of Justice Department do we have, that a couple weeks before the election, that presidential political appointees are calling the No. 2 guy at the FBI, essentially saying, give Hillary a pass?” Adams continued. “That’s in the OIG report! That’s the real bombshell!”

For all the left’s rabble-rousing about “collusion” and “obstruction of justice” directed at President Trump, there is growing pile of evidence that it was Barack Obama who was using these very tactics.

If the Office of Inspector General report is accurate, then the Obama administration’s actions were at least unethical, and very likely criminal. One thing is clear: The American people deserve answers.

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