Precedents in SCOTUS nominations

 

Instapundit has the goods (click to embiggen if necessary):

DON’T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HISTORY: But the important thing to Alyssa Milano is that someone is paying attention to Alyssa Milano.

# # #

193

We're being played

Are you wearing a mask and practicing social distancing?  Via Instapundit:

# # #

Aftermath of the “peaceful” riots

Michael P. Ramirez cartoon via Townhall

Many media reporters and anchors turned into Baghdad Bobs, as they reported that the “protests” were/are mostly peaceful -- while buildings burned to the ground behind them.  And yet we all know liberals who buy into this phony narrative that the riots were indeed mostly peaceful and the "protesters" were spontaneous participants, expressing anger over George Floyd’s death. 

The riot in Cleveland was pre-organized.  Rocks were pre-set in various locations.  In other cities, pallets of bricks were pre-staged.  But it’s the rioters’ playbook that gives them away.  Let the local protesters who are there out of genuine outrage and anger start things off with signs and chants. Then the rent-a-mob rioters start doing what rioters do:  they throw objects to injure, deface, or damage; vandalize; loot; set buildings and cars on fire; and so on.  Peaceful? 

Here is a link to Instapundit with a compilation of videos of destruction in Minneapolis, Atlanta, Santa Monica, DC, etc.  Click here.  

And here’s what downtown Cleveland looks like today in the aftermath.  Every door or window that is now boarded-up was deliberately smashed, and in the case of several stores (Geiger’s and Heinen’s among others) looted and trashed.  Clevelanders will recognize downtown restaurants, businesses, theaters, and landmarks.  Click here.

# # #

Gov. DeWine slow-walks re-opening Ohio

WLWT5 reports (h/t Instapundit):

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine unveiled the first phase of his plan to reopen the state’s economy, laying out hard dates when certain businesses may resume.

The state's stay-at-home order, which was slated to expire May 1, will remain in place as the state begins to reopen, the governor said. The extent of the stay-at-home order was not provided.

The state will begin to reopen on May 1 with health care procedures. Manufacturing, distribution, construction and general business environments will follow on May 4, and all retailers can resume business on May 12.

Reopening dates for other businesses – including restaurants, gyms, bars and hair salons – were not provided, as the governor said additional monitoring needs to be done.

The full report is here.  May 1?  May 4?  May 12?  These dates seem arbitrary.  Why not re-open everything today?  And what "additional monitoring" is he thinking of? You can register your support of or displeasure with DeWine’s announcements:

Contact Gov. Mike DeWine: (614) 644-4357 or by email here

https://governor.ohio.gov/wps/portal/gov/governor/contact

# # #

Vote-by-mail and voter fraud

Glenn Reynolds posted this at Instapundit:

“Absentee ballots remain the largest source of potential voter fraud.” That quote isn’t from President Trump, who criticized mail-in voting this week after Wisconsin Democrats tried and failed to change an election at the last minute into an exclusively mail-in affair. It’s the conclusion of the bipartisan 2005 report of the Commission on Federal Election Reform, chaired by former President Jimmy Carter and former Secretary of State James Baker III.

Concerns about vote-buying have a long history in the U.S. They helped drive the move to the secret ballot, which U.S. states adopted between 1888 and 1950. Secret ballots made it harder for vote buyers to monitor which candidates sellers actually voted for. Vote-buying had been pervasive; my research with Larry Kenny at the University of Florida has found that voter turnout fell by about 8% to 12% after states adopted the secret ballot.

You wouldn’t know any of this listening to the media outcry over Mr. Trump’s remarks. “There is a lot of dishonesty going on with mail-in voting,” the president said Tuesday. In response, a CNN “fact check” declares that Mr. Trump “opened a new front in his campaign of lies about voter fraud.” A New York Times headline asserts: “Trump Is Pushing a False Argument on Vote-by-Mail Fraud.” Both claim that voter fraud is essentially nonexistent. The Carter-Baker report found otherwise.

Intimidation and vote buying were key concerns of the commission: “Citizens who vote at home, at nursing homes, at the workplace, or in church are more susceptible to pressure, overt and subtle, or to intimidation. Vote buying schemes are far more difficult to detect when citizens vote by mail.” The report provides examples, such as the 1997 Miami mayoral election that resulted in 36 arrests for absentee-ballot fraud. The election had to be rerun, and the result was reversed.

There are more recent cases, too. In 2017 an investigation of a Dallas City Council election found some 700 fraudulent mail-in ballots signed by the same witness using a fake name. The discovery left two council races in limbo, and the fraud was much larger than the vote differential in one of those races. The case resulted in a criminal conviction. . . .

It is often claimed that impossibly large numbers of people live at the same address. In 2016, 83 registered voters in San Pedro, Calif., received absentee ballots at the same small two-bedroom apartment. Prosecutors rarely pursue this type of case.

Mail-in voting is a throwback to the dark old days of vote-buying and fraud. Because of this, many countries don’t allow absentee ballots for citizens living in their country, including Norway and Mexico. Americans deserve a more trustworthy system.

The above extract is via Instapundit; the original article in the WSJ is behind a paywall.

And here’s an article by a reporter who demonstrated how easy it is to game the system: “Mail-in Ballots Make Voter Fraud Easy. I Know Because I Did It”.

Ohio voters had their Election Day cancelled, and voters had nothing to say about it. The most recent Cleveland Tea Party blog on this is here.

# # #

Time for a Second Opinion

William J. Bennett and Seth Leibsohn at Real Clear Politics have a better prescription (h/t Instapundit):

We are trying to stave off and arrest a pandemic. Given what is being recommended, we think we need some second or third opinions. This pandemic, now that it has reached America, has taken 3,173 lives here.  This, from a tested population of 164,359 cases. That’s a mortality rate of 1.9%.  But immediately, questions must be asked. We record every case of death from the coronavirus, but we have no idea how many people have had the coronavirus. Clearly, there are more than 164,359 cases because not everyone has been tested. That would put the mortality rate at less than 1.9%. That rate could be far, far less. 

. . .

We truly are shutting down America and harming a great many Americans, based on the worst fears that have not been true and are not on the horizon.  We are scaring the hell out of the citizenry.  A few additional statistics help counsel a lowering of our national temperature:  The vast majority of deaths from the virus are of people over the age of 70 with underlying frailties.  The focus on New York where, of course, most of the media is based, is also flooding and distorting the picture for the rest of the country. Of course we need to pay attention to ground zero, which is New York.  But what happens there is not what is happening everywhere. 

Read the rest here.

# # #

Coronavirus and the CDC

Glenn Reynolds (Mr. Instapundit) had this blurb with link:

WELL, THAT’S BECAUSE THE CDC SUCKS. Sick People Across the U.S. Say They Are Being Denied the Coronavirus Test. It sucked with swine flu, it sucked with Ebola, and it’s sucking now.

The link is to a New York Times article, which is behind a paywall. So for a bit of background, you can go instead to Michelle Malkin’s fearless take on the history of the CDC.  A sampling:

I think I’m where most sane people are on the coronavirus outbreak:

—Concerned but not panicked.

—Calm but not apathetic.

—Taking reasonable precautions but remaining skeptical of what all the purportedly “best experts” here in the United States are telling us about every aspect of their belated crisis management and response (especially on their pimping of vaccine development to prevent the disease).

Here are some plain, non-hysterical facts: The U.S. Centers for Disease Control is a bloated federal government agency with a long history of incompetence, fraud, secrecy, mission creep and shady alliances with both social justice causes on the left and private corporations on the big business right. The “deep state” of entrenched bureaucrats embedded in the Beltway bowels is alive and thriving at the CDC. The un-elected elites who’ve occupied top offices at the public health-industrial complex are hostile to public scrutiny while clamoring for ever-ballooning budgets. Their recommendations have often been detrimental to citizens’ well-being and freedom.

Lots more here.

# # #

Yesterday’s Democrat debate on CNN

The line-up looked so yawn-inducing that I didn’t even post the link to Stephen Green’s Drunkblogging at Vodkapundit.  Today, Mr. Green summarized the . . .

SNOOZEFEST: In Iowa Debate, Mild Feuding and No Fireworks. “Defying expectations, however, the gloves largely stayed on as the contenders appeared reluctant to take forceful shots and risk alienating some of their opponents’ supporters — voters they will need in the long run to have a shot of defeating President Trump.”

Or as I put it in last night’s drunkblog:

Here’s the big close, where each candidate promises that they’re the one who can take on Donald Trump on a debate stage.

But they can’t even take on each other. They can’t even get their energy up when thrown softballs by Wolf Blitzer. These folks couldn’t get it up with a hot tub, a platter of chilled raw oysters, some Barry White on Spotify, and a handful of little blue pills.

Limp debate, limp candidates, limp chances.

And:

I don’t know what my Democrat friends would say, if they were unguarded long enough to give an honest assessment. But I can’t imagine they would express much excitement.

Because how can you get excited about a bunch of contenders seemingly content with nothing more than a participation trophy?

The still-standing (D) candidates are in good company. When Cory Booker dropped out of the race the other day, he also got a trophy, as Babylon Bee reported :

Cory Booker Moved To Tears 

During Participation Trophy Acceptance Speech

# # #

Ukraine and Washington corruption: re-broadcast schedule on OAN

image credit: the DefuniakHerald

Yesterday, I posted a report about One America News Network’s (OAN) special investigative reports. Reporter Chanel Rion interviewed Rudy Giuliani and several witnesses from Ukraine, all of whose testimony undermines the framework for the “impeachment” process. The report did not break through today to the MSM, but OAN will be re-broadcasting parts 1 & 2 as well as premiering part 3 this weekend.   Mark your calendars or set your recording devices.  The programming is not showing up yet on the TV schedule for this weekend on ATT-TV, but the OAN website has this:

Catch All 3 Parts of One America News Investigates with Chanel Rion THIS SATURDAY Starting at 9am ET/6am PT

# # #

Ukraine and Washington corruption exposed

image credit: the DefuniakHerald

Most of the blogging here concentrates on local and state level developments as well as national news that affects core Tea Party values.  But this is so newsworthy that I decided to post anyway.  It was Sundance at Conservative Treehouse that tipped us off to the program.  Our household watched OAN’s 2-part investigative report this evening, with reporter Chanel Rion interviewing Rudy Giuliani and several witnesses from Ukraine. It was an eye-popper, and I hope it is picked up by headlines all over the place tomorrow.  Mark Tapscott at Instapundit was on it this evening:

ONE AMERICA NEWS (OAN) GOES WHERE MSM WON’T: Former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko tells OAN all about former U.S. Ambassador Marie Yovanovich’s “untouchables” list. If OAN can go to Ukraine and interview principals in the impeachment scandal, why can’t ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the Washington Post, New York Times, etc. etc.?

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): Answer: Because they’re not interested in knowing what actually happened.

ANOTHER UPDATE (FROM GLENN): I’m bumping this up because it’s very important, undercutting the thesis of the whole impeachment endeavor. And this is the evidence that the House prosecutors will be confronted with if there’s a trial in the Senate.

I did not see that OAN was re-running the two-hour broadcast this coming week, so I have emailed them to see if it will re-run the two programs or make them accessible at their website. If you’ve been frustrated by the “impeachment” testimony and all the scandals that never lead to indictments, you’ll be glued to this. Meantime, I will be on the lookout for excerpts and footage. And you can read Sundance's report here.

# # #

Propaganda vs expanded sources of news

image credit: vectorstock.com

Cherie Zaslawsky’s article, “Trump Derangement Syndrome: A Misdiagnosis” starts off:

Listen to Fox News, and you'll hear phrases such as “Trump derangement syndrome” and “liberal heads are exploding” on a daily basis. 

Conservative newscasts are peppered with comments like these: “They're delusional!”  “The Democrats just can't seem to accept that they lost the 2016 election.”  “They've gone crazy!”

Crazy like a fox.

. . .

From the beginning of its “long march through the institutions,” the Left has been playing the long game.  That hasn't changed.  Leftists are playing it today.

Why did they take over the media?  The universities?  Hollywood?  To get their hands on the key levers of propaganda.  Add to this the leftward tilt of Google, Facebook, and Twitter, and we're looking at a virtual lockdown on the primary sources of information and public influence.

. . .

What can be done?

I suggest that, rather than only responding to each of the Left's baseless attacks on our president, those on our side change the debate by exposing the radical leftists' use of propaganda — by shining a light into the dark recesses of their strategy.  This may wake up some of their followers and maybe even begin to free America from the dark power of the Left.

I have had limited success pointing the media’s corruption to people I know who still rely on The New York Times or NPR or CNN for their news. One suggestion that has worked a few times is to propose that a person expand their sources of news. Tuning in to conservative talk radio can be traumatic, but browsing through aggregators and at least comparing headlines has made a difference with some friends and relatives. These days my go-to sites are Politipage, Instapundit, Lucianne, and a few others (but not Drudge any more). Full American Thinker article is here.

# # #

Twitter: a virus of the mind?

Glenn Reynolds, a/k/a Mr. Instapundit, has a think-piece on the Spectator; his subject is about one of the Big Tech giants, in this case Twitter. Here’s a sample:

Twitter . . . is tightly coupled. The ‘retweet’, ‘comment’, and ‘like’ buttons are immediate. A retweet sends a posting, no matter how angry or misinformed, to all the retweeter’s followers, who can then do the same to their followers, and so on, in a runaway chain reaction. Unlike blogs, little to no thought is required, and in practice very few people even follow the link (if there is one) to ‘read the whole thing’. According to a study by computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute, 59 percent of people who share a link on social media don’t read the underlying story. . . .

. . .

You can reject Twitter’s toxicity by leaving the platform, as I did in the fall of 2018. But . . . this doesn’t really solve the problem: ‘Absent large-scale collective action by the political/media class to reject the platform, simply logging off Twitter is merely a personal defensive mechanism — a sometimes necessary mental-health break that all too often correlates with diminished influence in the national political debate.’ With Twitter, you can participate and be driven crazy – or you can stay sane, and lose influence. That’s a bad trade-off.

. . .

Rather than focusing on the content of what individuals post on social media, regulators might better focus on breaking up these behemoths, policing anticompetitive collusion among them, and in general ensuring that their powers are not abused. This approach, rooted in antitrust law, would raise no First Amendment or free speech problems, and would address many of the most significant complaints about social media.

As Mr. Instapundit is wont to say, read the whole thing – here.

# # #

Cleveland makes the list

image credit: imgbin.com

Issues and Insights is the editorial blog for Investor’s Business Daily. Here’s part of John Merline’s column (h/t Instapundit):

On Friday, Trump attacked Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, who had been complaining about conditions at the border, by saying “his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous.” Trump called it “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess.”

He’s right about the rats. Last year, the pest-control service Orkin rated Baltimore as one of the “rattiest cities,“ behind Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Cleveland.

. . .

Indeed, if you want to see what liberal Democratic policies tend to produce, go to any one of those cities, or other Democratic strongholds. Democrats promise to help the poor and downtrodden, grow the middle class, make life more fair. But their policies consistently produce the opposite.

. . .

Washington, San Francisco, New York, Detroit, and Cleveland are also among the 10 worst-run cities, according to WalletHub. Three other Democratic strongholds — Oakland, Flint, Hartford — make WalletHub’s worst-run list. 

Yet, whenever the desperate conditions of these cities get discussed, they’re treated either as if these problems simply fell out of the sky, that somehow Republicans are to blame, or that more taxpayer money will solve everything. The connection to liberal policies never gets made.

. . .

Read the rest here.

# # #

One Small Step For A Couple Of Privileged White Males

photo credit: Popular Mechanics 

On the 50^th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, everyone has seen photographs, cartoons, Buzz Aldrin’s thoughtful piece at the 25^th anniversary mark, online at Popular Mechanics here (h/t Instapundit), and other commemorative articles. I thought I would link to a PC satire at Issues and Insights. It starts off:

This is the golden anniversary of possibly the greatest physical and scientific achievement in the history of mankind, when two Americans walked the surface of a heavenly body and returned to Earth safely with specimens from its landscape. Those moon rocks were then shared by America with the other nations of the world.

But had Apollo 11 happened today, 50 years after it actually did, it would be viewed by our political, media and academic elites as a bigoted outrage.

“One small step” for whom, exactly? A man? What about women? What about non-white men? What right did some white U.S. naval officer from western Ohio such as Neil Armstrong have to speak for all of humanity?

For that matter, what about non-humanity? Has the space program ever atoned for all the sufferings of the various species of animals non-consensually sent into orbit to make sure space was safe for the white men? Were any of our feathered co-inhabitants in this world of ours consulted when the decision was made to name the lunar lander “Eagle”?

Good satire, or, as Instapundit would say, is it? Full editorial is here.

# # #

Big Tech: alternatives to Google

image credit: https://www.naijaloaded.com.ng

Techspot (h/t Instapundit) has a “Complete List of Alternatives to all Google products.” Here’s the principal search engine section

With growing concerns over online privacy and securing personal data, more people than ever are considering alternatives to Google products. After all, Google’s business model essentially revolves around data collection and advertisements, both of which infringe on your privacy. More data means better (targeted) ads and more revenue. The company pulled in over $116 billion in ad revenue last year alone – and that number continues to grow.

But the word is getting out. A growing number of people are seeking alternatives to Google products that respect their privacy and data. This guide aims to be the most exhaustive resource available for documenting alternatives to Google product. So let’s get started (in no particular order or preference)...

Google search alternatives

When it comes to privacy, using Google search is not a good idea. When you use their search engine, Google is recording your IP address, search terms, user agent, and often a unique identifier, which is stored in cookies.

Here are ten alternatives to Google search:

StartPage – StartPage gives you Google search results, but without the tracking (based in the Netherlands).

Searx – A privacy-friendly and versatile metasearch engine that’s also open source.

MetaGer – An open source metasearch engine with good features, based in Germany.

SwissCows – A zero-tracking private search engine based in Switzerland, hosted on secure Swiss infrastructure.

Qwant – A private search engine based in France.

DuckDuckGo – A private search engine based in the US.

Mojeek – The only true search engine (rather than metasearch engine) that has its own crawler and index (based in the UK).

YaCy – A decentralized, open source, peer-to-peer search engine.

Givero – Based in Denmark, Givero offers more privacy than Google and combines search with charitable donations.

Ecosia – Ecosia is based in Germany and donates a part of revenues to planting trees.

Note: With the exception of Mojeek, all of the private search engines above are technically metasearch engines, since they source their results from other search engines, such as Bing and Google.

Our household is trying out Mojeek; we’ve already started using StartPage and occasionally DuckDuckGo with good results. Techspot’s entire list of alternatives is here.

# # #

Andrew Sullivan on the Democrats’ Immigration Bubble

 photo credit: washingtontimes.com

I run hot and cold on Andrew Sullivan, but his analysis of U.S. immigration, refugee status, and asylum is worth the read. The full article is here. This extract is via Instapundit:

Take the tragic tale of Oscar Ramirez and his young daughter Valeria, the father and daughter captured in death in that heartbreaking photograph. Ramirez’s widow explained to the Washington Post why her husband wanted to move to America: He wanted “a better future for their girl.” This is an admirable goal, but it is classic economic immigration, and it would appear, based on what we know, that it has absolutely nothing to do with asylum. Here again is the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services definition: “Refugee status or asylum may be granted to people who have been persecuted or fear they will be persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, and/or membership in a particular social group or political opinion.”

But somehow the courts have decided that you qualify for asylum if there is simply widespread crime or violence where you live, and Ramirez was also going to use that argument as well. A government need not persecute you; you just have to experience an unsafe environment that your government is failing to suppress. This so expands the idea of asylum, in my view, as to render it meaningless.

Courts have also expanded asylum to include domestic violence, determining that women in abusive relationships are a “particular social group” and thereby qualify. In other words, every woman on the planet who has experienced domestic abuse can now come to America and claim asylum. Also everyone on the planet who doesn’t live in a stable, orderly, low-crime society. Literally billions of human beings now have the right to asylum in America. . . .

This is in a new century when the U.S. is trying to absorb the largest wave of new immigrants in our entire history, and when the percentage of the population that is foreign-born is also near a historic peak. It is also a time when mass immigration from the developing world has destabilized liberal democracies across the West, is bringing illiberal, anti-immigration regimes to power across Europe, and was the single biggest reason why Donald Trump is president.

I’m told that, as a legal immigrant, I’m shutting the door behind me now that I’ve finally made it to citizenship. I’m not. I favor solid continuing legal immigration, but also a reduction in numbers and a new focus on skills in an economy where unskilled labor is increasingly a path to nowhere. It is not strange that legal immigrants — who have often spent years and thousands of dollars to play by the rules — might be opposed to others’ jumping the line. It is not strange that a hefty proportion of Latino legal immigrants oppose illegal immigration — they are often the most directly affected by new, illegal competition, which drives down their wages. . . .

When I’m told only white racists favor restrictionism, I note how the Mexican people are more opposed to illegal immigration than Americans: In a new poll, 61.5 percent of Mexicans oppose the entry of undocumented migrants, period; 44 percent believe that Mexico should remove any undocumented alien immediately. Are Mexicans now white supremacists too? That hostility to illegal immigration may even explain why Trump’s threat to put tariffs on Mexico if it didn’t crack down may well have worked. Since Trump’s bluster, the numbers have measurably declined — and the crackdown is popular in Mexico. I can also note that most countries outside Western Europe have strict immigration control and feel no need to apologize for it. Are the Japanese and Chinese “white supremacists”? Please. Do they want to sustain their own culture and national identity? Sure. Is that now the equivalent of the KKK?

# # #

Do you donate to conservative PACs?

Some years ago, our household stopped contributing to conservative PACs that supported various conservative candidates in a particular election cycle. One reason was that we did not always agree on their choice of candidates. So now we contribute directly to candidates we like, whether at local, state, or federal level.

Today I read about even more reasons to pause before writing out your check or filling out your credit card details. Here’s part of a sobering report at National Review by Jim Geraghty (via Instapundit):

Back in 2013, Conservative StrikeForce PAC raised $2.2 million in funds vowing to support Ken Cuccinelli’s campaign for governor in Virginia. Court filings and FEC records showed that the PAC only contributed $10,000 to Cuccinelli’s effort.

Back in 2014, Politico researched 33 political action committees that claimed to be affiliated with the Tea Party and courted small donors with email and direct-mail appeals and found that they “raised $43 million — 74 percent of which came from small donors. The PACs spent only $3 million on ads and contributions to boost the long-shot candidates often touted in the appeals, compared to $39.5 million on operating expenses, including $6 million to firms owned or managed by the operatives who run the PACs.”

. . .

In the 2018 cycle, Tea Party Majority Fund raised $1.67 million and donated $35,000 to federal candidates. That cycle, Conservative Majority Fund raised just over $1 million and donated $7,500 to federal candidates. Conservative Strikeforce raised $258,376 and donated nothing to federal candidates.

Full report (“The Right’s Grifter Problem”) is here. Let the buyer contributor beware.

# # #

Re: the media’s double standards

image credit:catholicleague.org

Here's Howie Carr on the media’s double standards (h/t Instapundit):

Have you ever noticed how differently Republicans are treated in the media than Democrats?

Every newsroom in the country used to have what was called the “AP Stylebook” to use in writing news stories.

Now you need two AP stylebooks, one for Democrats, about whom seldom is heard a discouraging word, and a second for the GOP, with a hundred different pejoratives.

Two parties, two vocabularies. One positive, one negative — very bad, evil in fact.

Consider the testimony by Michael Cohen last week in front of various Congressional committees.

For example, since he worked for Donald Trump, Cohen was described about a million times as a “fixer.” Democrats, on the other hand, have lawyers.

To prevent the release of embarrassing information, Democrats’ lawyers negotiate NDA’s — nondisclosure agreements. Republican fixers’ NDAs are “hush money,” or “bribes.”

Hillary Clinton paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Democrat operatives who then bought or made up false Russian dirt on Trump — that was opposition research. Republicans, on the other hand, “collude!”

Republicans lie, Democrats misspeak.

Democrats plan, Republicans scheme.

Republicans hire lobbyists, Democrats use advocates. Republicans employ operatives or hired guns, Democrats prefer community activists.

If a Democrat changes his or her position on an issue, they have evolved … grown. Republicans “flip-flop.”

Whenever an unfamiliar politician is ensnared in some scandal, you naturally wonder which party he or she is a member of. If the “embattled” pol is a Republican, affiliation is usually noted in the headline, or at the very latest in the first paragraph.

If, however, you reach the third paragraph of the story without his party being identified, you can be absolutely certain you are reading about a Democrat miscreant.

. . .

The rest is here at the Boston Herald.

# # #

Voter ID Laws Don’t Stop People Voting

image credit: texastribune.org

In favor of Voter ID laws:

No difference across race, gender, or party, analysis finds

Getty Images

Charles Fain Lehman at Washington Free Beacon (h/t Instapundit) reports:

Strict voter ID laws do not suppress turnout, a new paper finds, regardless of sex, race, Hispanic identity, or party affiliation.

Requiring photo ID to vote is a hotly contested subject in American political discourse. Proponents argue that it is necessary to insure against fraud and preserve the integrity of the American electoral system. Opponents argue that it will disenfranchise otherwise eligible voters—many of whom would be poor and of color—who are unable to easily obtain ID.

In total, 10 states, ranging from Georgia to Wisconsin [and including Ohio], require voters to show ID in order to vote. Seven of those states require a photo ID, and three do not. An additional 25 states "request" that voters display ID, but may still permit them to vote on a provision ballot if they cannot. The remaining states "use other methods to verify the identity of voters," according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The new research, from an economics professor at the University of Bologna and another at Harvard Business School, indicates that "strict" voting laws of the type implemented in those ten states do not have a statistically significant effect on voter turnout.

Full report is here. Ohio’s Voter ID laws are considered “strict.”  See here.  

# # #

Solyndra on steroids: how to stifle competition

Lots of us are laughing at AOC’s idiotic Green New Deal “plan.” Tea Party people want smaller, not bigger government. Mr. Instapundit linked to a timely analysis by Chelsea Follett at Human Progress:

“The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.” Senator Bernie Sanders first said those words in 1974 and has been repeating them ever since. Senator Sanders is not alone in his belief. Three out of four Americans agree with the statement, “Today it’s really true that the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer.” 

Senator Sanders is half right: the rich are getting richer. However, his assertion that the poor are becoming poorer is incorrect. The poor are becoming richer as well. 

Economist Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution showed that between 1979 and 2010, the real (inflation-adjusted) after-tax income of the top 1 percent of U.S. income-earners grew by an impressive 202 percent. He also showed that the real after-tax income of the bottom fifth of income-earners grew by 49 percent. All groups made real income gains. While the rich are making gains at a faster pace, both the rich and the poor are in fact becoming richer. 

In addition to these measurable real income gains, decreases in prices have given the poor increased purchasing power, helping to raise living standards for the worst off in society. As a result of falling prices such as for groceries and material goods, along with gains in real income, Americans have more income left after basic expenses.

Technology has also become cheaper, improving our lives in unexpected ways. For example, consider the spread of cell phones. There was a time when only the wealthiest Americans could afford one. Today, over 98 percent of Americans have a cellular subscription, and the rise of smart phones has made these devices more useful than ever.

Unfortunately, progress has been uneven. In those areas of the economy where competition is hobbled, such as education, housing, and healthcare, prices continue to increase. 

. . .

“Competition is hobbled” whenever the government intrudes. Ms. Follett's full article is here. (And Solyndra is now defunct.)

# # #