Weak Eight: Empty Seats Abound for Most NFL Teams

It is Week 8 for the NFL’s 100th season, but some teams just can’t seem to get fans onboard for the big centennial year as many stadiums still have too many empty seats.

To start the ball wobbling, the NFL may be excited about expanding the football franchise to the UK, but some commented on how empty London’s Wembley Stadium was when the L.A. Rams and Cincinnati Bengals jetted in to play:

When the Jacksonville Jaguars trounced the New York Jets at the Jaguars’s TIAA Bank Field, many supporters were discouraged by the number of empty seats:

Also, when the team’s mascot performed a zip-lining stunt, it looked like the event only succeeded in showing just how many empty seats there really were:

Meanwhile, the Tennessee Titans may have pulled one over on the visiting Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a 27-23 final at Nissan Stadium, but fans were wondering where everyone went:

The Indianapolis Colts were happy to pull a squeaker of a win 15-13 over the Denver Broncos, but many commented on the number of empty seats at Lucas Oil Stadium:

Finally, for a second weekend in a row, the Atlanta Falcons’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium took a serious beating on social media for empty seats. The Seattle Seahawks pulled a “W” over the home team Falcons 27-20, but fans sure didn’t seem very interested to attend the game in Atlanta:

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @WTHuston.

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Texas Town Growing As It Refuses To Collect Property Taxes

One small town in Texas is growing because it refuses to do one thing: collect property taxes.

In 2014, Von Ormy, Texas, mayor Art Martinez de Vara issued his proposed 2015 city budget, which proposed eliminating property taxes. He told the Von Ormy Star, “In 2009 we established a goal of shifting the tax burden for operating the city from property taxes towards sales taxes.  We did this because over 95% of sales taxes are paid by non-residents and we understood that we could increase sales tax revenue much faster than property tax revenue.  Since that time we have increased sales tax revenue by over 400%.  In order to have achieved the same revenue, we would have had to increase them by 300% from where we were in 2009.” He added, “I believe that government should not spend every penny it collects, rather we should spend what is necessary to deliver high quality core services to our residents.  Excess taxation is unjust taxation.”

Von Ormy was not the first town in Texas to eliminate property taxes; others included Stafford, which eliminated property taxes in 1995 as far back as 1995. The Von Orly Star reported in 2017, “The Von Ormy City Commission unanimously adopted its fiscal year 2018 budget on September 29 and maintained the city’s property tax rate at zero percent.”

Writing in the Houston Courant, Grace Watson, a legislative fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, noted that Von Ormy voted in 2015 to reduce property taxes by 10% a year, adding, The city now gets its revenues from sales taxes, franchise fees collected from utility companies, and miscellaneous permits.” Watson also pointed out that the city retains enough funds “to fully cover maintenance and operations costs for a full year in the event of a sudden emergency” and that Niche ranked Von Ormy as the suburb with the lowest cost of living in the San Antonio area.

As the BBC reported, Jess Fields, a policy analyst for the Texas Public Policy Foundation who has fought for the  “liberty city” movement in Texas, stated in 2015, “The liberty city idea kind of goes back to the basic concept that people have a fundamental right to determine what kind of government they want to live under,”  arguing that the regulations in large Texas cities restrict personal liberties. He stated, “I don’t deny that some of these regulations are well intended to promote public health and safety, but there’s a point at which these good intentions are eclipsed by their clear, negative, unintended consequences. We don’t want the government to tell you how to do every little thing with your property and what to do with your life.”

In 2015, Texas state senator Konni Burton introduced SB710, which would have required any change in property taxes to be approved by at least 60% of constituents in a public vote. De Vara, who was Burton’s chief of staff at the time as well as serving as Von Ormy’s mayor, stated, “It’s a really good experiment in democracy.” He pointed out that Von Ormy had no gun restrictions, no smoking bans and no fireworks ban.He concluded, “We’re not anarchists. We just believe in limited government.”

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Kamala Harris throws a hissy fit, withdraws from South Carolina forum

On Friday, the campaign of presidential candidate Kamala Harris announced the senator will skip a forum on criminal justice reform in South Carolina this weekend. Her reason for that decision was the equivalent of an adult woman throwing a toddler-style temper tantrum. She is angry that the organization holding the]]>

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Dem Megadonor Using Clean Energy PAC as Front to Turn Virginia Blue

Hedge fund manager Michael Bills and his wife Sonjia Smith, the largest sources of individual political donations this cycle in Virginia, used a green energy PAC to push money to Democratic candidates.

Bills—a former Goldman Sachs VP who now runs the Bluestem Asset Management LLC hedge fund—and Smith have spent over $2 million on the Virginia elections. The donations came through direct contributions to Democratic candidates as well as large investments in the Clean Virginia Fund, a PAC purportedly focused on fighting energy monopolies that has given predominately to Democrats.

The couple has made more political donations in the past two years than in the previous decade.

From 2008 to 2017, Bills gave just over $1 million to Virginia candidates and causes while Smith gave about $1.5 million. In 2018 and 2019, Bills cut checks for slightly more than $2 million while Smith donated roughly $1 million, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, a website that tracks political spending in the state. Bills’s direct contributions to Democratic campaigns range from $2,000 to $90,000.

In addition to writing five-figure checks to Democratic candidates, Bills founded the nonprofit Clean Virginia, which operates in tandem with a political action committee, Clean Virginia Fund. Both organizations are focused on targeting the state’s largest energy provider, Dominion Energy.

Bills provided 90 percent of all donations to the PAC, while 25 other donors provided the remaining 10 percent.

"In 2018, I founded Clean Virginia in an attempt to offset the undue and harmful influence that Dominion Energy and other utility monopolies have over Virginia politics," a statement from Bills on the Clean Virginia website says.

"We are very transparent about our funding and Michael Bills’ involvement," Clean Virginia spokeswoman Cassady Craighill told the Washington Free Beacon by email. "Michael Bills launched Clean Virginia and an associated PAC to protect the environment and Virginians from utility monopolies abusing their power."

"We do not fundraise, but actively invite a list of more than 40,000 supporters to take action for clean government and clean energy including signing petitions and contacting their state representatives," she added later.

Clean Virginia, Bills, and Smith gave money to 88 Democratic candidates, all of whom pledged not to take donations from utility companies, the Virginia Mercury reported last week.

In mid-September, the Democratic Party of Virginia voted to swear off political donations from Dominion Energy. Less than three weeks later, Bills donated $200,000 to the party.

The Mercury reported that the group announced a single donation to a Republican, state senator Amanda Chase, but refused to endorse her. Clean Virginia listed Chase and three other Republican legislators among the officials who refuse to take donations from Dominion Energy. At time of writing, the Virginia Public Access Project does not list a donation from Bills’s PAC to any of the four Republicans.

Some Republican candidates say the electricity provider is something of a straw man, and that Bills is only concerned about flipping the balance of power to Democrats.

Republican state senator David Suetterlein, who has a history of challenging Dominion Energy during his legislative career, said a Clean Virginia donation to his Democratic challenger is telling.

"There’s no way they didn’t know about my record," he told the Mercury. "I think their only goal is to have a Democratic majority." Suetterlein is on Clean Virginia’s list of anti-Dominion officials.

Bills and Smith join a number of major Democratic donors and organizations pouring money into Virginia, including Tom Steyer, George Soros, and Michael Bloomberg’s gun control PAC. Democrats look to win majorities in both legislative chambers in the November election, in addition to having a Democratic governor. Democrats haven’t held all three levers of the state’s government for 25 years.

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AG Barr rules that illegal aliens with multiple DUIs lack ‘good moral character’ needed to stay here

A recent immigration ruling from Attorney General William Barr takes aim at illegal alien drunk driving and how it is handled under federal immigration law.

According to the ruling, issued on Friday, multiple drunk driving convictions indicate that a removable alien lacks the “good moral character” needed get special permission to stay in the United States.

The case in question is that of a Mexican national who had been in the United States “without admission or parole since 1997″ and has three kids who are U.S. citizens. “He also has a criminal record,” the decision explains, noting two arrests for assaulting his wife, a public drunkenness charge, and a negligent driving conviction. He was also convicted of drunk driving in 2010 and 2012. He later participated in an alcohol safety program and start attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.

DHS began removal efforts against him in 2010, the document explains. He conceded that he was removable and asked to have his deportation canceled under federal law, which, among other things, requires that an immigrant show “good moral character” during the minimum 10-year period in the United States. The ruling explains that cancellation is “a coveted and scarce form of relief” which the attorney general can only issue to 4,000 aliens annually.

In 2016, an immigration judge granted the cancellation. According to the ruling, the judge said that though he was “troubled by [the illegal alien’s] alcohol-related convictions,” they were outweighed by multiple factors including his “rehabilitation efforts.”

The Board of Immigration Appeals, however, disagreed with the ruling and found that the immigrant failed to meet the requirement of good moral character as well as that demonstrating “exceptional and extremely unusual hardship” to a relative stipulated in the statute. The case was then referred for further review by acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker last year.

Upon his review, Attorney General Barr sided with the immigration review board and concluded in a ruling issued Friday that “when assessing an alien’s good moral character under [immigration law], evidence of two or more DUI convictions during the relevant period establishes a rebuttable presumption that the alien lacked good moral character during that time.”

The ruling adds, “An alien’s efforts to reform or rehabilitate himself after multiple DUI convictions are commendable, but they do not themselves demonstrate good moral character during the period that includes the convictions. Absent substantial relevant and credible contrary evidence, multiple DUI convictions require that the immigration judge deny cancellation of removal.”

Barr made the ruling in his role as chief immigration judge, as both the Board of Immigration Appeals and U.S. immigration courts are under the authority of the Department of Justice, rather than the judicial branch. A regulation put forward earlier this year cemented the attorney general’s ability to make binding, precedent-setting rulings on immigration cases like this one.

Drunk driving incidents involving illegal aliens are one of the high-profile public safety issues stemming from America’s illegal immigration crisis. In a single year of apprehensions in 2018, despite the agency’ very limited resources, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested 80,730 aliens with DUI charges and convictions.



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Exclusive: Donald Trump Campaign Launches ‘Hocus Pocus’ Parody Merchandise Mocking Democrat ‘Witch Hunt’

President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign launched new merchandise mocking the Democrat “witch hunt” on Monday.

The new graphic poster, provided exclusively to Breitbart News ahead of its public release, features a parody of the movie “Hocus Pocus” featuring the Democrats trying to attack President Donald Trump.

The graphic comes available in a t-shirt and a poster and is made in the USA, according to the campaign.

New campaign merchandise released by Trump 2020

The parody poster features Democrat Reps. Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, Jerry Nadler as the witches and President Donald Trump as the hero.

Disney’s Hocus Pocus poster

“Congressional Democrats continue their bogus Witch Hunt of President Trump because they still can’t accept the results of the 2016 election,” said Trump 2020 campaign manager Brad Parscale said in an exclusive statement to Breitbart News. “The President will continue delivering for the American people as he promised them in 2016, and there is no stopping him. The American people stand with their President and we will Keep America Great!”

The Trump campaign launched its Halloween themed attack as House Democrats continue to pursue their case to impeach the president.

Pelosi moved forward on the impeachment process but has so far refused to hold a House vote to authorize the impeachment inquiry for fear of political risk for centrist House Democrats.

Nadler, despite describing the impeachment effort against former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s as a lynch mob, has pushed for impeaching the president since winning the House majority in the 2018 midterms.

Schiff has conducted his impeachment hearing entirely in a secret room in the basement of Capitol Hill, leaking select details bolstering the case for impeachment to the establishment media.

The president on Monday described Schiff as the “biggest leaker in Washington.”

“I think Adam Schiff is the biggest leaker in Washington,” he told reporters. “You know that. I know that. We all know that. I’ve watched Adam Schiff leak. He’s a corrupt politician. He’s a leaker like nobody has ever seen before.”

 

 

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