The 2016 GOP Convention in Cleveland

Photo credit: cleveland.com

Links of the Day: 

More on the 2016 GOP Convention in Cleveland at The Q

From Five Thirty Eight: Republicans' Choice to Hold 2016 Convention in Cleveland Probably Won't Help Them in Ohio.

FTA: “the mere fact that the Republicans chose Cleveland probably doesn’t say very much about how the Buckeye State is going vote in 2016.”

From Cleveland.com: Congrats on the convention. Here's what you're in for, Cleveland. [Security. Housing. Blocked traffic. And Clevelanders as ambassadors.]

From Cleveland.com: Suburban Cleveland leaders applaud Republican National Convention, hope it spills into surrounding towns

FTA: Suburban Cleveland leaders are welcoming the chance to show off the region during the Republican National Convention in 2016 – and maybe reap some tourism dollars, too.

Said Bay Village Mayor Debbie Sutherland, one of few Republican leaders in Democratic-heavy Cuyahoga County: "All the action is not going to be downtown in Cleveland. This is going to be good for everyone."

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Do we have any borders anymore?

Real Clear Politics reports that 

President Obama on Tuesday requested an additional $3.7 billion for the fiscal year that ends in September, arguing that additional resources are necessary to discourage the recent surge of adults and children seeking illegal and often unsafe pathways into the United States.

This surge of illegal immigrants was planned by the administration. From Free Republic, which reproduces the document calling for bids to escort illegal “alien children”:

On January 29, 2014, the Federal Government posted an ad on their BizOpps website seeking escorts for unaccompanied illegal alien children. If this doesn't prove that the entire mess with all the illegals flooding our country was planned by this administration, nothing ever will. Here is the entire document that lays out the "requirements" to become such an escort: . . .

Procurement Type: Request for Information (RFI)/Sources Sought

Title: Escort Services for Unaccompanied Alien Children 

Classification Code: V- Transportation/Travel/Relocation

You can read the entire document here.

NumbersUSA has an interactive map of the US, showing relocations, relocations blocked, and relocation areas under consideration. They also provide phone numbers for each state’s officials who would oversee such relocations, so citizens can let the state know their support of, or opposition to relocation in their backyard. Here are the three for Ohio:

·         State Refugee Coordinator: Jennifer R. Johnson 614.644.1174

·         State Refugee Health Coordinator: Sandra Hollingsworth 614.752.2953

·         ORR State Analyst: Goran Debelnogich 202.260.7143

If you are opposed to providing emergency funds to the administration – which will inevitably extend the crisis – or if you are opposed to providing more funding to an administration that deliberately caused the crisis in the first place, or if you are alarmed about the health crisis involved in the flood of immigrants not properly screened and carrying infection to who-knows-where, let Speaker Boehner and your US Representative hear from you.

The Directory for House Representatives is here. Just click on “O” to see all the Ohio reps.

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Cleveland Gets 2016 Republican National Convention

Art credit: roadtripforfamilies.com

Cleveland.com and Townhall report :

Cleveland Gets 2016 

Republican National Convention

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Education vs Indoctrination: Advanced Placement U.S. History Tests

Art credit:  ethicsalarms.com

Power Line updates via NRO on the latest battle in Education vs Indoctrination:

The teaching of American history is, of course, ground zero in left’s battle to indoctrinate students. And the left is unleashing the ultimate weapon in this battle.

Stanley Kurtz reports:

Although it has barely registered yet in our public debates, the teaching of American history in our high schools has just been seized in what a few sharp-eyed critics rightly call a “curricular coup.” The College Board, the private company that creates the SAT test and the various Advance Placement tests, has issued a new set of guidelines that is about to turn the teaching of American history into exactly the sort of grievance-based pedagogy that [Dinesh] D’Souza decries in his film [America: Imagine the World Without Her].

Leftist academics have finally figured out a way to circumvent state and local control over America’s schools and effectively impose progressive political indoctrination on the entire country. Once the AP U.S. History test demands blame-America-first answers, public and private schools alike will be forced to construct an American history curriculum that “teaches to the test.”

What is the evidence that the “curricular coup” imposes the left’s version of American history? Kurtz reports:

George Washington, a key figure in D’Souza’s film, barely makes an appearance in the new AP U.S. History Guidelines. Figures like Benjamin Franklin and James Madison are completely omitted. The Declaration of Independence is presented chiefly as an illustration of the colonists’ belief in their own superiority.

Slavery and the treatment of Native Americans are at center stage. At times, the presentation of the New Deal and the Reagan era seems to come straight out of a Democratic Party press office.

If you want your child to be admitted to a top quality college, you may soon feel pressure to parrot this line.

In short, as Kurtz says, “The College Board is pushing U.S. history as far to the left as it can get away with at the high school level.” It is thereby “creating a kind of feeder system that perfectly primes students for the more openly ideological training they’ll be getting at college.”

. . .

What is to be done? Kurtz offers this prescription:

Vocal protest at the state and local levels is needed. State legislatures may have to step in to prevent the effective seizure of their curricula by the College Board. Efforts to break the College Board’s monopoly on AP tests may also be in order. Is a market opening up for an alternative set of AP tests?…

Over and above electoral politics, here is something you can do. Join or create a movement to protest and combat the effort of the College Board to impose an ideologically one-sided American history curriculum on our country’s schools.

[Power Line] would add this: fight against the Common Core.

The rest of the article is here.

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Thoughts on Independence Day

Art credit: www.imanly.com

Here’s Bruce Thornton at FrontPage Magazine: 

Independence Day is a good time to revisit the foundations of our political order, especially given the long record of Barack Obama and the Democrats’ disregard for the Constitution. The members of the Continental Congress who met in Philadelphia in July 1776 sought their independence from England in order to recover their rights that had been violated by a tyrant, and to establish political freedom and autonomy so that those rights could be protected from further erosion. For a century now the Progressive ideology has insidiously undermined that legacy of autonomy in a slow-motion revolution that aims to “fundamentally transform America.”

. . . 

Needless to say, all these Progressive assaults on the spirit of the Declaration and the structure of the Constitution have accelerated and worsened under Obama, and once again recall the Declaration’s condemnation of George III for “taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our government,” and for declaring himself “invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.” In short, the Obama administration has created a regime undermining the foundational principles of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The founders had a word for such an assault on freedom––tyranny.

The rest of the article is here. 

Happy Independence Day!

America: Imagine the World Without Her

Dinesh D’Souza’s new documentary, America: Imagine the World Without Her, opened this week. You can see the trailer at the official website here.   

Some patriots may want to watch the film over the Independence Day weekend. There are a few greater Cleveland venues showing the film. Check here for the theater nearest you (and be sure to call in advance to confirm the showtimes). Whether you plan to go or not, here is Andrew Klavan’s preview/review on PJ Media:

Dinesh D’Souza’s anti-Obama 2012 documentary 2016: Obama’s America was a surprise smash hit, earning 33 million dollars to make it one of the most successful American documentaries ever. The film put forward D’Souza’s thesis that Obama’s need to feel himself worthy of an absent radical father caused him to view America as a guilty colonialist power that had to be taken down a peg. It predicted that America’s enemies would grow stronger and its friends weaker as Obama progressed toward the end of his term. Much of what it predicted has come true.

You could tell D’Souza had hit a nerve when Obama toadies like Maureen Dowd went on the attack, accusing the Indian immigrant of racism! (What an original way for a leftist to counter an argument she doesn’t like. Funny no leftist has ever thought of it before.) But if we needed any further proof that D’Souza had in fact tapped into a rich mine of truth, it came when the federal government, now an oppressive arm of a corrupt Chicago-style Democrat machine, caught the author and filmmaker in a minor transgression of campaign finance laws and threatened to throw him in prison for over a decade. (This, after all, is the way this administration deals with inconvenient filmmakers, as we know. It’s quicker than the whole illegally-misuse-the-IRS-then-lose-the-evidence thing.)

D’Souza pled guilty; says he made a mistake; admits he’s not above the law. What he hasn’t done is fall silent in fear. Instead, he’s courageously produced a follow-up to the movie that got beneath this corrupt president’s thin skin and I’m delighted to report it’s a very good one.

America: Imagine The World Without Her begins by letting leftists tell why they hate this country, as they so obviously do. D’Souza doesn’t argue with them or try to make them look stupid. He lets them say exactly what they have to say: we stole the country from the Washington Redskins, we enslaved blacks, we murdered all those nice Vietnamese people, capitalism is greed, we suck.

D’Souza examines the way these arguments have become gospel to the left through the insidious work of “historian” Howard Zinn and the genuinely sinister activism of Saul Alinsky, spiritual mentor to both Obama and Hillary Clinton. And then D’Souza takes the left’s narrative apart by the simple technique of putting our “crimes” in the context of the rest of history and the actions of other countries throughout the world. Turns out — as rock star Bono says in the most moving scene in the picture — America is a terrific nation that has transformed the world for the good and continues to do so today.

Throughout the movie, D’Souza’s love for his adopted country comes shining through. His argument is poignant, powerful and convincing. Hey, you don’t even have to see it to know I’m right. You just have to read the nuanced, subtle, considered views of leftists who are already calling the film “nuts,” and a “total piece of junk,” and “the worst political documentary of all time.” Which is Leftese for “a good movie that tells the truth.”

It isn’t often I get to recommend a conservative work so wholeheartedly, but I’m just about positive you’ll like this, especially if you’re a patriot or simply an honest person ready to hear a different take than the one you’ve been getting at the movies for the last 50 years.

D’Souza’s a tough guy for not backing down, and a talented guy for delivering a strong sophomore effort. We need about 20 more like him.

Happy Independence Day! 

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Cuyahoga County Council considers eight charter amendments

Cleveland.com reports

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Cuyahoga County's non-judicial elected offices, currently dominated by Democrats, would become nonpartisan, under a proposed charter amendment that county council will consider in the coming days.

Republican Councilman Jack Schron, who is running for county executive in the November election, has proposed removing party affiliation from elections for county executive, county prosecutor and county council. 

His proposal would set up a nonpartisan primary election. The top two vote-getters would move on to the general election.

Currently, eight of council's 11 members are Democrats, as is County Executive Ed FitzGerald and Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty.

To make the case for his proposal, Schron in an interview Tuesday pointed out that nearly all mayoral elections in the county are nonpartisan. He also cited registered voter statistics from the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections, which show about half of the county's 887,800 voters have not voted in a partisan primary.

Schron said this shows half of the county's voters are independents.  "There's a lot of folks out there who are talking about disenfranchised voters," Schron said. "There's not a bigger bloc of disenfranchised voters than the independents."

However, it's worth noting that actual voter activity in Cuyahoga County consistently heavily favors Democrats – for example, about 116,000 voters pulled Democratic ballots in last May's primary, compared to 48,300 Republican and 20,900 nonpartisan ballots, records show.  

Also, of Cuyahoga County's 57 mayors, 39 are registered Democrats, 14 are Republicans and four are independents. Finally, a Democratic presidential candidate has received at least 60 percent of the vote in all general elections since 1996 -- including a highpoint of about 69 percent for Barack Obama in 2012.

Pressed on whether his proposed amendment would benefit Republicans like himself who are seeking countywide office, Schron asked rhetorically: "Aren't we to the point where we want to elect a person rather than a party? Isn't that a good place to be?"

The amendment would not affect this November's election. While council has never formally considered the idea of making county elections nonpartisan, two members of a citizen-led charter review committee last year issued a minority report proposing such a move.

Council has scheduled a pair of committee hearings – one for Wednesday at 9 a.m. and another for Monday at 1:30 p.m. – to debate Schron's amendment and seven others.

In August, Council will hold final votes on which amendments to send to the November ballot. Each proposed amendment would need 'yes' votes from eight of council's 11 members -- three of whom are Republicans, eight of whom are Democrats -- in order to be presented to voters in the November election. Last year, voters overwhelmingly approved all four charter amendments that appeared on the ballot.

Here are the other amendments, a mix of old and new, council will consider:

1. Making it more difficult to fire the county sheriff

Under the proposal, removing the sheriff would require a nomination from the county executive and approval from eight council members. Once nominated, the sheriff would serve a four-year term, which would be staggered two years from the county executive.

Currently, the sheriff is subject to confirmation from council, but serves at the pleasure of the county executive. For instance, FitzGerald fired former Sheriff Bob Reid in January 2013 with little public explanation.

Council considered a similar amendment last year, but ultimately opted not to move it forward.

This proposal is sponsored by Republican Councilman Dave Greenspan.

2. Making the county inspector general's office a permanent part of the county charter

. . .

Like with the sheriff, removing the inspector general would require eight votes from county council. The position would serve a four-year term, staggered two years from the county executive. Council considered a similar proposal last year, and to the concern of good government advocates, opted not to move it forward.

Council would control the inspector general's annual budget, under the proposed amendment. Greenspan said he would prefer for the funding for the inspector general's office to be guaranteed in the charter, but he said he doesn't think his colleagues would support that.

3. Making the protection of the right to vote and promotion of ballot access a part of the county's charter

The so-called 'Voter Rights Amendment' was proposed in May by FitzGerald and co-sponsored by Democratic Councilwoman Sunny Simon.

The amendment authorizes the county to take action, including legal action, to protect and promote the right to vote among county residents.

FitzGerald proposed the amendment alongside legislation, which council approved along party lines, that defied a new law passed by Republicans prohibiting county governments from sending out unsolicited absentee ballot applications.

4. Requiring county executive candidates to live in the county for at least two years before being able to file for candidacy

Currently, a county executive candidate is simply required to be a resident of the county when filing to run. The proposed change would make the residency requirement for the county executive similar to the requirement applied to council members.

Under the proposed change, which council has not previously considered, Republican Matt Dolan would not have been eligible to run for county executive in 2010. Dolan, a former state legislator, moved from Geauga County to Cuyahoga County shortly before declaring his candidacy in a bid that proved to be unsuccessful.

This proposal is sponsored by Democratic council members Yvvone Conwell, Chuck Germana and Dale Miller, and by Republican Councilman Mike Gallagher.

5. Making the county investment advisory committee part of the county charter

Currently, the committee, which votes on the county's investment policies, is made up of the treasurer, the county executive and a member of county council.

This proposal, which council has not considered before, would replace the county executive with the county prosecutor, who unlike the treasurer, is an independently elected official. 

Greenspan also sponsored this proposed amendment.

6. Changing the composition of some county boards to eliminate instances in which the county executive serves alongside a subordinate employee

This change, also proposed by Greenspan, would affect the composition of the county budget commission, board of revision and audit committee and audit committee.

On the board of revision and the audit committee, the proposal would swap out officials who work for FitzGerald that currently sit on the boards in favor of citizens who are approved by council.

On the budget commission -- which is currently made up of the county executive, the fiscal officer, and the county prosecutor -- the proposal would replace the fiscal officer, who works for FitzGerald, with a member of county council.

7. Extending the timeline for forming a future charter review commission

The proposal is sponsored by Miller, Conwell, Germana and Council President C. Ellen Connally, a Democrat.

The change would give the next charter review commission, which is scheduled to meet next in 2017, more time to complete its work.

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