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tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-317281522017-04-30T05:15:24.072-05:00ARRA News ServiceBill Smithhttp://email@example.com://feeds.feedburner.com/ArkansasRepublicanAssemblies?format=skinhttp://www.arragopwing.com/images/arra-eagle-logo-feed.jpgArkansasRepublicanAssemblieshttps://feedburner.google.comSubscribe with BloglinesSubscribe with NetvibesSubscribe with My AOLSubscribe with PageflakesSubscribe with GoogleSubscribe with NewsGatorARRA News Service (arranewsservice.com) - News for social, fiscal & national security conservatives who believe in God, family & the USA. We seek to uphold the rights granted by God & guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, traditional family values, "republican" principles / ideals, transparent & limited government, free markets, liberty & individual freedom. tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-81497096076462236132017-04-28T18:00:00.000-05:002017-04-28T23:18:13.088-05:00Trump Administration Steps Up to the Plate with Tax Reform Plan

Trump's Tax Proposal is a Strong Starting Point for Reform

by Sean Hackbarth, Contributing Author: The big news on taxes this week was the Trump administration releasing its tax reform proposal.

The U.S. Chamber's tax expert welcomed it, calling it, "the start of the conversation."

Releasing the plan shows the administration is "stepping up to the plate and engaging and working towards pro-growth tax reform," Caroline Harris, chief tax council and vice president for tax policy, told Bloomberg.

Harris brought up three principles of tax reform: Permanence; moving to a territorial system; and appropriate transition rules.

"Businesses want certainty; they want permanence," Harris said. Knowing what to expect will help companies determine how to best deploy investments and hire workers.

"We need to shift to a territorial system, which is something we heard from the Trump White House talk about," Harris explained. "If you have a territorial system you're not subjecting cash to that extra layer of tax when you bring it back to the United States, and it frees that capital up going forward."

"Businesses also need time to change how they operate to respond to changes in the tax code," said Harris. Reform should avoid causing unnecessary business disruptions.

[Here is the U.S. Chamber's list of principles for pro-growth tax reform.]

To keep the momentum going, Harris said President Trump is "going to have to start having conversations with Chairman Brady in the House, Hatch in the Senate, with leadership—with Speaker Ryan—with Leader McConnell and parse out what they want to do and how we can have the most pro-growth tax code."

Also, all sides need to be involved in the conversation. Republicans, Democrats, the White House, Congress, and the business community have to work together. "Everyone has to come to the table. This has to be a group effort," she emphasized.
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Sean Hackbarth is a policy advocate and Senior Editor, Digital Content, at U.S Chamber of Commerce. He twitters at @seanhackbarth and is a contributing author at the ARRA News Service.

Tags: President Trump Administration, Tax Reform Plan, taxes, Sean Hackbarth, Chamber of Commerce To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-8902591553839104462017-04-28T17:15:00.000-05:002017-04-28T20:59:48.269-05:00FBI Court Filing Reveals Grand Jury Targeted Hillary ClintonJudicial Watch: Just when you think we've learned most of what there is to learn about Hillary Clinton's emails a new mole pops up out of the hole.

This week Judicial Watch released State Department documents including a declaration from FBI Special Agent E.W. Priestap, the supervisor of the agency's investigation into Hillary Clinton's email activities, stating that the former secretary of state was the subject of a grand jury investigation related to her BlackBerry email accounts.

The declaration was produced in response to Judicial Watch's lawsuit seeking to force Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to take steps to "recover emails of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton" and other U.S. Department of State employees (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. Rex Tillerson (No. 1:15-cv-00785)). We originally filed the lawsuit against then-Secretary of State John Kerry. The Trump State Department filing includes details of the agency's continuing and shameful refusal to refer the Clinton email issue to the Justice Department, as the law requires.

In the filing, Priestap declares under penalty of perjury that the FBI "obtained Grand Jury subpoenas related to the Blackberry e-mail accounts, which produced no responsive materials, as the requested data was outside the retention time utilized by those providers."

On April 30, 2015, Judicial Watch sued Kerry after the State Department failed to take action on a letter sent to Kerry "notifying him of the unlawful removal of the Clinton emails and requesting that he initiate enforcement action pursuant to the [Federal Records Act]," including working through the Attorney General to recover the emails.

After initially being dismissed by the district court, Judicial Watch's lawsuit was revived on appeal by a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on December 27, 2016.

While at the State Department, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton conducted official government business using an unsecured email server and email accounts. Her top aides and advisors also used non-"state.gov" email accounts to conduct official business. Clinton left office February 1, 2013.

The FBI convened a grand jury to investigate Hillary Clinton in 2016. Why is this information being released only now?

It is disturbing that the State Department, Justice Department, and FBI are still trying to protect Hillary Clinton. President Trump needs to clean house at all these agencies.
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Judicial Watch, Inc., a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law.

Tags: Judicial Watch, FBI, court files, grand Jury, targeted, Hillary Clinton To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-15439051438845906342017-04-28T16:45:00.000-05:002017-04-28T20:39:51.723-05:00Pass Tax Reform Now, Obama Loves Washington, Clinton In Trouble, Standing For Life

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Pass Tax Reform Now - The economy is stalling. According to the Commerce Department's report, first quarter economic growth fell to just 0.7%. It should be noted that economic growth has been slowing since the 3rd quarter of 2016. These numbers make one thing very clear: We need tax reform now!

We've had seven years of sluggish economic activity. As I noted yesterday, Obama never had 3% economic growth in any year during his two terms in office. The economy struggled for the past eight years, so it's not surprising that it continues to struggle now. We need to stimulate the economy and President Trump's Kennedy/Reagan-style tax reform will jumpstart the economy.

More money in the hands of consumers will boost spending. More money in the hands of job creators will boost hiring.

If the left doesn't like President Trump's plan, what is their plan? What is it that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi are suggesting we do to grow the economy? They flooded the markets with cheap money for the past eight years. That hasn't worked. Meanwhile, seniors are getting slammed because they are getting next to nothing on their savings.

Republicans in Congress, who appear to be getting weak knees, need to understand that President Trump's policies are much better than what we had for the past eight years and would have had under President Hillary Clinton. They need to step up and prove to small business owners and struggling families that they can deliver.

Obama Loves George Washington - Barack Obama didn't say much about the Founding Fathers when he was president. He did little to ensure that our children learned what incredible leaders they were, how much they risked and sacrificed to create a nation dedicated to freedom and liberty -- something unique in human history.

But he does seem to have a new-found appreciation for George Washington. In fact, Obama requested 400,000 portraits of our first president in the form of $400,000 for a speech to a Wall Street investment firm. I'm kidding, of course. I'm sure the former president took his fee in the form of a check or wire transfer. But you get the point.

As a reminder, this is the same guy who told CBS News in 2009, "I did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street." This is the same guy who embraced the radicals of Occupy Wall Street.

Elizabeth Warren says she is troubled by Obama's cashing in. This is the same woman who railed against the real estate and banking industries after making big bucks herself flipping houses. Maybe she should scold Bernie Sanders for his three houses.

Speaking of Bernie, he's troubled by Obama's coziness with Wall Street too.

It's amazing how Obama, Warren and Sanders believe in socialism for you, but they love capitalism for themselves!

Speaking Of Troubled. . . The former president is really having a rough time right now. He seems to be upsetting one left-wing special interest group after another.

According to a new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Garrow, Barack Obama allegedly "considered gayness" in his early adult years. But in a letter to his "first intimate girlfriend," Obama eventually decided "that a same-sex relationship would be less challenging and demanding than developing one with the opposite sex."

After being told over and over again that people are "born that way," I suspect some on the left will be offended by Obama's "choice."

Clinton In Trouble Too? The Daily Caller reports that Rep. Lamar Smith, chairman of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, has referred Treve Suazo, CEO of Platte River Networks, to the Justice Department for prosecution. You may recall that Platte River Networks is the company that managed Hillary Clinton's private email server.

According to Rep. Smith, Suazo has refused to comply with two subpoenas from the committee and should be charged with obstruction of justice and making false statements. What exactly is Mr. Suazo trying to hide at this point?

"With a new administration in place, I am hopeful that the Department of Justice will appropriately respond to the referral. We cannot allow companies with valuable information to stonewall us in our oversight efforts," Chairman Smith said.

Standing For Life - Tonight I have the honor of speaking at the 44th annual Celebration of Life Banquet, hosted by my friends at Right to Life of Louisville in my home state of Kentucky.

Restoring the right to life continues to be the premier moral issue confronting the country. It will be hard to make America great again as long as we are destroying nearly one million innocent babies a year. To end abortion on demand, we need a few more Supreme Court appointments, and President Trump may well get that chance!

We also need to make firm decisions regarding taxpayer funding of abortion. This Congress and this president have taken some good first steps, beginning with reinstating Ronald Reagan's policy against funding abortions overseas and overturning Barack Obama's order mandating state funding of Planned Parenthood.

So long as God gives me breath, I will continue speaking out in defense of the most innocent and voiceless victims in our society today -- our unborn children.
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Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

Tags: Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families, Pass Tax Reform Now, Obama Loves Washington, Clinton In Trouble, Standing For Life To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-51336948806408395272017-04-28T16:00:00.000-05:002017-04-28T20:25:11.878-05:00Democrats Turn to Bureaucrats to Stop Trump

by Newt Gingrich: When Neil Gorsuch won long-overdue confirmation this month to serve on the United States Supreme Court, Republicans in turn won control of all three branches of the federal government – at least the three envisioned by our Founding Fathers – for the first time in a decade.

As a consequence, Democrats have pinned their hopes to stifle President Donald Trump's pro-growth agenda on the unprecedented insurrection of an unchecked, de facto branch of government: the bureaucratic state.
Now that Alexander Acosta is confirmed as secretary of labor, President Trump has a better ability to reign in the bureaucracy.

Through executive orders, President Trump immediately began cutting needless red tape draped across the federal government by his predecessor. This led deliberately resistant entrenched civil servants to wage a campaign to subvert the administration's clear intention of deregulation.

Consider this: In February, the president ordered the Department of Labor – previously run by Tom Perez, who is now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee – to review and re-evaluate the implementation of the so-called fiduciary rule, a controversial Obama-era rule that would deny middle-class Americans access to sound investment advice.

The order's intention was clear-as-day. It aimed to indefinitely delay or outright kill this bad rule before it could hurt middle class American investors. Instead, Perez's faithful holdovers at the Department of Labor effectively expedited the rule with minimal changes. This was exactly the opposite of President Trump's instructions.

Now, the department will make the rule effective on June 9, before completing the president's review, and argued that "the Fiduciary rule and Impartial Conduct Standards … are among the least controversial aspects of the rulemaking process."

Nothing about this rule is uncontroversial. It would be the single largest government expansion over individual savings in four decades and the second-most expensive regulatory regime crafted in the last 12 years that doesn't deal with environmental issues.

The rule changes the law to give the Department of Labor direct authority over individual retirement accounts, which are already regulated by the Securities and Exchange Committee, the federal agency responsible for protecting investors. For the first time, IRAs would be pulled into a complex Labor Department system created 43 years ago to regulate employee pension and health plans. Seizing control over IRAs by the Labor Department leads to bigger government, less competition, fewer jobs, and diminished savings for the American worker.

Disingenuously marketed as a way to raise the standards of advice provided to retirement investors, the rule would result in the "orphaning" of most ordinary American savers, left to seek advice on saving for their golden years from an online computer program using algorithms no investor would know about or understand.

The rule has received extensive criticism from those who've historically regulated the securities market. Acting SEC Chair Michal Piwowar called the rule a "terrible, horrible, no good, very bad rule," adding that it was a "highly political" move that was "never about investor protection." President Trump and the Congress want the rule gone. Business wants the rule gone. Ordinary Americans want the rule gone.

But none of that matters to the bureaucratic state. They've lost the battle over the Supreme Court and the president's cabinet. More than anything, the swamp wants to win this battle. That's why it's so important that President Trump and Secretary Acosta implement the president's instructions in a timely way.

President Trump's first order wasn't enough to reign in Tom Perez's faithful deputies, and only now did Senate Democrats stop obstructing Acosta's confirmation. So, the president and the secretary must work quickly to delay indefinitely or completely rescind the fiduciary rule under the secretary's statutory authority. More than that, the president needs to fully drain the swamp – especially by getting rid of the mutineers at the Department of Labor.
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Newt Gingrich is a former Georgia Congressman and Speaker of the U.S. House. He co-authored and was the chief architect of the "Contract with America" and a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional elections. He is noted speaker and writer. The above commentary was shared via Gingrich Productions.

Tags: Newt Gingrich, commentary, Democrats, Turn to Bureaucrats, to Stop Trump To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-70193915952860941562017-04-28T15:20:00.000-05:002017-04-28T20:07:26.795-05:00U.S. Oil Rig Count Increases For 15th Straight Week

by Julianne Geiger: The number of active oil and gas rigs in the United States rose by 13 on Friday, according to oilfield services provider Baker Hughes. The total oil and gas rig count in the US now stands at 870 rigs, or 450 above the count a year ago.

Oil rigs increased by 9, while gas rigs bumped up 4.

This week marks the fifteenth straight build for oil rigs (+175 or +33.5% since January 13). While gas rigs haven't enjoyed the same persistently ascending trajectory week to week, they have climbed 10 of the last fifteen weeks, for a total gain of 35 (+25.7%).

Rig Factoid: The largest three-week gain in the number of active oil rigs in the US over the last decade was April 1, 2011. The rig count spiked 26 that week, for a total of 76 rigs gained over a three consecutive-week period. WTI spot price that day was $107.55. Total number of active oil rigs that week: 877.

So far this year, traders have watched, mostly likely in horror, at the tug of war between OPEC's efforts to "rebalance" the market, and U.S. shale's efforts to take full advantage of that rebalancing effort. For every depressing API or EIA report about the lackluster results of the global inventory drawdown efforts, and for every rig count report that shows U.S. Shale keeps picking up steam, OPEC's obedient compliance to the cuts and talks of an extension appeases at least enough of the masses to generally keep oil above $50.

Rig Factoid: The largest three-week loss to the number of active oil rigs in the US over the last decade was for the three-week period ending February 13, 2015. The rig count dipped 84 that week alone, bringing the total three-week loss to 310. WTI spot price that day was $52.66. Total number of active oil rigs that week: 1,056.

Many have cautioned U.S. Shale drillers that bringing too much on too quickly could keep prices depressed, or depress them to a greater degree. The chart below, looking at the weekly price (Fridays) of WTI and the rig count over the last decade does show a pretty tight correlation to price (lower correlation is seen when price swings are sharp and dramatic), but also shows that the price of WTI pulls along the rig count, and not the other way around—at least not long term.

What's more, the response time for rigs in reaction to WTI appears to be about six months (some would suggest a lag of a quarter), which is shown here, when we kick out the price of WTI six months.

And for whatever forecasting is worth, carrying out the line for the last six months of price data, for which it is logical to assume that on a broad scale rigs will follow, the number of rigs are likely to hold fairly steady over the next six months. While OPEC's efforts to undertake an extension is sure to have an effect, it may be on a significantly delayed time table.

As for individual basin activity, the Permian added two rigs this week, and has enjoyed gains every week in 2017 save a single week where it lost one in mid-March. In 2017 alone, the Permian has put into play 75 additional rigs, for a gain of 28%. This trend is largely expected to hold, the Texas Railroad Commission issuing 1,310 new oil and gas drilling permits to shale producers in the month of March—up from 511 in March 2016. This is in contrast to well completions, which declined 60% in March over the year. The data suggests that while March completed fewer wells, a staggering number of permits have been issued, signaling an increase in drilling activity is on the horizon.

The next largest play in the U.S., Eagle Ford, has 36 more active oil rigs since the beginning of the year. While the actual number of rigs is fewer, the percentage-wise increase of 90% this year is more significant than the beloved Permian.

At 1:00pm before data release, WTI was trading at $49.19 +.45% with Brent trading at $52.03, up .41%. Both benchmarks started to dip within 15 minutes of the data release.
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Julianne Geiger authored this article contributed by James Stafford the editor of OilPrice.com, the leading online energy news site, to the ARRA News Service.

Tags: Julianne Geiger, James Stafford, Oilprice.com, U.S. Oil, Rig Count Increases, 15th Straight Week To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-12959670512624473672017-04-28T14:40:00.000-05:002017-04-28T20:12:29.908-05:00Protecting Miners & Their Families … A Top Priority
Funding Bill Will 'Ensure That Thousands Of Retired Coal Miners And Their Families … Will Not Lose Their Health Care Benefits'
SEN. MITCH McCONNELL (R-KY): "…this one-week extension will also ensure that thousands of retired coal miners and their families — including many in my home state of Kentucky — will not lose their health care benefits. Protecting these miners and their families from losing their health care has been a top priority of mine. Last year, I fought for a long-term extension of health benefits, and earlier this year, I introduced my own bill to provide a permanent fix for miner's health care. I will continue to fight on their behalf to secure a permanent solution on this issue in the larger funding bill." (Sen. McConnell, Floor Remarks, 4/28/17)

'Sen. Mitch McConnell… Backs A Permanent Health Care Fix For Miners'
"Lawmakers are working on an agreement to extend the [health] benefits [for retired coal miners] in the spending bill that's currently being debated in Congress … Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is one of them. 'It's my hope that that will be included in the final package,' McConnell told reporters Tuesday." (CNN, 4/27/2017)

"Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican who serves as majority leader, backs a permanent health care fix for miners in the funding bill." ("Virginia Lawmakers Join Chorus On Benefits For Retired Virginia Coal Miners," Richmond Times-Dispatch, 4/25/2017)

"Coal miners and supporters in Congress rallied in front of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday morning to help nudge legislation to save retired miners' health care over the finish line. Rep. David McKinley, who arranged the press conference sponsored by the United Mine Workers of America…. McKinley said he spoke with President Trump on Tuesday, and Trump is on board, as is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who sponsored a bill paralleling McKinley's to save the healthcare benefits." ("Miners Rally For Benefits Breakthrough," The [Morgantown, WV] Dominion Post, 4/27/2017)

FLASHBACK In January, Sen. McConnell Introduced A 'Long-Term Health Care Solution For These Retired Miners,' Asked President Trump To Work With LawmakersSEN. MITCH McCONNELL (R-KY): "Last year, I was proud to be able to secure an extension of these benefits past their year-end expiration date. ... I made a commitment at that time to work with my colleagues on a long-term health care solution for these retired miners. Today, I plan to introduce legislation to protect and permanently extend those benefits for thousands of coal miner retirees and dependents." Sen. McConnell, Press Release, 1/17/2017)

S.176 – HELP for Coal Miners Health Care Act of 2017 to provide a permanent fix for miners' health benefits was introduced in January.

"McConnell asked Trump to work with lawmakers to ensure long-term health benefits for retired coal miners, including at least 16,500 who face a loss of benefits at the end of April." ("McConnell Outlines Environmental Wish-List For Trump Action," AP, 1/10/2017)

Last December, Sen. McConnell Insisted On Extending Coal Miners' Health BenefitsSEN. MITCH McCONNELL (R-KY): "I've spoken with the Speaker [of the House] on a number of occasions about an issue facing coal miner retirees like those I represent in Kentucky, and have insisted that the CR include a provision to address that issue so these retirees don't lose their health benefits at the end of the year." (Sen. McConnell, Floor Remarks, 12/6/16)

McCONNELL: "With this legislation, miner-health benefits extend to the end of April, and I'm going to work with my colleagues to ensure they continue after that." (Sen. McConnell, Op-Ed, "Protecting Kentucky Miners' Health Care Benefits," Herald Leader, 12/12/2016)

"McConnell insists on extending coal miners' health benefits in funding bill." ("McConnell Insists On Extending Coal Miners' Health Benefits In Funding Bill," Morning Consult, 12/6/16) "McConnell said Tuesday morning he would make sure that the government funding bill set to pass the House and Senate this week will include healthcare benefits for retired coal miners." ("McConnell Promises To Take Care Of Coal Miners In CR, Washington Examiner, 12/6/16)

CECIL ROBERTS, International President Of The United Mine Workers Of America: "In December, Congress voted to extend life-saving health-care benefits for some 16,300 retired coal miners, their dependents and widows until the end of April. That includes some 3,000 in Kentucky. These senior citizens were facing a Dec. 31 cutoff of the benefits they had been promised and have earned. The four-month reprieve they received was welcome news to them and their families. I want to thank those who were responsible for this, including Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. I noted his comments at the time in support of these retirees and I commend him for wanting to do more than just this four-month extension." (Cecil Roberts, Op-Ed, "Keep The Promise To Retired Miners, Widows," Herald Leader, 12/20/2016)

Tags: Obama's War on Coal. Over, Protecting Miners & Families, top priority,  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-32708654832834625842017-04-28T14:00:00.000-05:002017-04-28T15:48:32.266-05:00UN Interference With Efforts To Repeal & Replace Obamacare. . . UN Special Rapporteur outrageously cites possible violation of international law if Obamacare is changed.

by Joseph Klein: The United Nations is once again sticking its nose into the domestic affairs of the United States in violation of its own charter (Article 2, para. 7). The Washington Post has uncovered a transmittal letter dated February 2, 2017 from the UN Office of High Commissioner of Human Rights, forwarding to the then acting U.S. Secretary of State, Thomas Shannon, Jr., a complaint from one of the UN's Special Rapporteurs about plans to repeal and replace Obamacare. This Special Rapporteur "on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health," Dainius Puras, believes it is within his mandate to intervene in the internal debate going on within the U.S. Congress and the executive branch as to what to do about Obamacare.

In his letter, Puras expressed his "serious concern" over how proposed legislative changes to Medicaid, tax subsidies, and the Obamacare individual and employer mandates could deprive the American people of the rights contained in his long title. And then he waved the banner of international law. He cited broad clauses on health care in a number of treaties to which the U.S. is a party and the opinions of unaccountable members of the "UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights" interpreting the treaty clauses. The Committee noted, he said, that "there is a strong presumption that retrogressive measures taken in relation to the right to health are not permissible and if any deliberately retrogressive measures are taken, the State party has the burden of providing that they have been introduced after the most care consideration of all alternatives…"

Finally, as some sort of grand inquisitor, Puras set forth a number of requests for information, including "details on the health policy, programmatic and financial measures that will be put in place to substitute the Affordable Care Act" if repealed, and steps "to ensure the realization of everyone's right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health in a non-discriminatory, accessible and affordable manner."

If investigations prove that revisions to Obamacare violate international law, as he and the UN Committee define it, Puras said there needs to be measures in place "to guarantee the accountability of any person responsible of (sic) the alleged violations."

How about asking first for accountability of the persons in UN Peacekeeping responsible for the spread of cholera in Haiti, resulting in thousands of deaths, before lecturing the United States about what to do with its health care system?

The U.S. Constitution vests no authority whatsoever in a UN Special Rapporteur with a mouthful of a title. Nor does it vest any legitimacy on the pronouncements of unaccountable UN committee members putting their own gloss on vaguely worded treaty language that they say the member states must follow in order to be in compliance with their notion of "international law." These dunderheads apparently think they can tell Congress what laws it should and should not pass in order to meet their progressive standard for defining "universal" human rights — completely interfering with the cardinal principle of national sovereignty and the United States' constitutional processes of self-government.

Perhaps sensing the sensitivity of the UN being perceived as interfering with U.S. domestic matters, the Spokesperson for the UN Secretary General tried to distance the UN organization from the Special Rapporteur's letter. He described the Special Rapporteur as an independent person expressing his own views, not necessarily those of the UN itself. The problem with this answer is two-fold. First, the Special Rapporteur receives his mandate from an official body of the UN, the Human Rights Council, and submits his report to that body, which he intends to do in this case. Second, the Special Rapporteur's letter went out under a cover letter from the chief of the Special Procedures branch of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, with the subject line in all caps: "URGENT APPEAL FROM SPECIAL PROCEDURES." The chief made a special point of asking the U.S. Deputy Permanent representative in the Geneva office to send the Special Rapporteur's letter directly to the acting Secretary of State "at your earliest convenience." Clearly, the UN was placing its institutional imprimatur on the letter.

This whole exercise provides yet another reason for the Trump administration to pull out of the dysfunctional, misnamed Human Rights Council and to withdraw funding.
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Joseph Klein is a Harvard-trained lawyer and the author of Global Deception: The UN's Stealth Assault on America's Freedom and Lethal Engagement: Barack Hussein Obama, the United Nations & Radical Islam. His article was in FrontPage.Mag, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Tags: Joseph Klein, FrontPage Mag, UN, United nations, interference, efforts, repeal & replace. Obamacare, UN Special Rapporteur, cites, violation of international law  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-64547148805086453752017-04-28T13:00:00.000-05:002017-04-28T23:34:53.121-05:00Biggest Threat To American Families Is Government

by Printus LeBlanc: The biggest problems facing American families is the omnipotent presence of government in every facet of life. Federal, state, and local governments are ruling citizens and not governing. In modern life, it is impossible for a family to live without interacting with a level of government.

The average American commits three felonies a day per the 2009 book by Harvey Silverglate. That doesn't include the state and local laws being broken. Recently a woman freed a bald eagle from a trap while on a nature hike in Juneau, Alaska. The woman was proud of what she did, and she had every right to be. It is illegal to harm bald eagles. Upon learning about what the woman did, Alaska Wildlife Troopers arrested her in 2014. Law enforcement, said the woman tampered with someone else's traps, despite the fact the trap illegally trapped a bald eagle. The case was eventually dismissed, but the woman had to go through an ordeal to get it dismissed. If the government cannot even tell the American people how many laws are on the books, there are too many laws.

American families see the government getting away with crimes against citizens while the families are penalized and harassed for too many leaves in the yard. The Department of Veterans Affairs is a perfect example of double standards in government. Veterans were put on secret waiting list for care for VA employees collecting bonuses. VA employees lied on federal documents to collect bonus money. If you include the multiple people in a VA hospital that knew of the fraud, but became complicit for the purpose of collecting a bonus themselves, you now have a conspiracy to commit fraud. Yet, as of this writing, no charges have been filed against any VA employees. Perhaps it is because the DOJ and VA are both run by government unions.

Hypothetically, let's say a young American family wishes to start a business. What the family did not realize, was the amount of paperwork, mandated training, fees, and government interference required to start a business. The first idea was to start a gun shop with a range. They quickly find out banks do not want to do business with them. The government threatens banks that do business with businesses it disagrees with. The business is doing nothing illegal, the government just doesn't like it. The family then tries to start a barbershop and salon. Once again, more regulations, fees, and training. Some state governments, even require up to 300 hours of training on hair washing. By that standard the hundreds of millions of Americans that wash their hair everyday are not doing it correctly.

When members of a family have a job, they must hope the government doesn't shut them down. This was the sad reality facing thousands of workers in the energy industry. No administration was as anti-energy as the Obama administration. Coal miners were having their livelihood ripped away from them. Government officials harassed oil field workers daily. The government forced these families out of work, then forced them to take government assistance to live. They want nothing from the government, but to be left alone.

These are but a few examples of government interfering with American family lives, and getting away with crimes the public would never get away with. The greatest impediment facing the American family is government. Congress has an opportunity to relieve pressure the federal government is applying to American families. Congress must roll back regulations and laws that interfere with American families.
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Printus LeBlanc is a contributing reporter at Americans for Limited Government.

Tags: Biggest Threat, To American Families, Is Government, regulations, politics, Americans for Limited Government, Printus LeBlanc To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-42779191628654588142017-04-28T12:00:00.000-05:002017-04-28T15:36:08.254-05:00The New/Old Politics of Capital vs. Countryside

Michael Barone

by Michael Barone: Capital vs. countryside -- that's the new political divide, visible in multiple surprise election results over the past 11 months. It cuts across old partisan lines and replaces traditional divisions -- labor vs. management, north vs. south, Catholic vs. Protestant -- among voters.

This was apparent last June in Britain's referendum on whether to leave the European Union. London voted 60 percent to remain, while the rest of England, whether Labour or Conservative, voted 57 percent to leave. It was plain in Colombia's October referendum on a peace settlement with the FARC guerrillas. Bogota voted 56 percent "si," the heartland cordillera provinces 58 percent "no."

In both countries, the ethnic and geographic fringe -- Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Caribbean provinces -- voted with the capital. But in each case, the historic heartland, with the majority of voters, produced a surprise defeat for the capital establishment.

It was a similar story here in November. Coastal America -- the Northeast minus Pennsylvania, the Pacific states minus Alaska -- favored Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a 58-35 percent margin. But the geographic heartland, casting 69 percent of the nation's votes, favored Trump by a 51-43 percent margin.

The contrast is even starker if you separate out the establishment metro areas -- New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco -- that produce most Democratic big-dollar funding. They voted 65-29 percent for Clinton; the rest of the country they feel entitled to rule voted 49-45 percent for Trump.

And on April 23, France voted in a presidential race that scrambled the usual party divisions. Marine Le Pen, shunned by the Paris establishment as a neofascist, finished fourth, with 11 percent of the vote, in metro Paris and third, with 15 percent, in 13 other prosperous cities. But she ran first in la France profonde, with 24 percent. She'll almost certainly lose the May 7 runoff, but she has already topped her National Front's previous high of 17 percent.

Is there any precedent for this? The Economist's Bagehot columnist, Adrian Wooldridge, spots one in the 17th century. He quotes historian Hugh Trevor-Roper's description of the "general crisis" of 1620-60 -- a "revolt of the provinces not only against the growing, parasitic Stuart Court, but also against the growing 'dropsical' City of London; against the centralised Church ... and against the expensive monopoly of higher education by the two great universities."

The capital vs. the countryside, in other words, much like today. The countryside party, Trevor-Roper writes, vied to "pare down the parasitic fringe" of central government and sought to "protect industry," "rationalize finance" and "reduce the hatcheries which turned out the superfluous bureaucrats."

Similar impulses are apparent in Britain, France and America today. In different ways, Brexit, Le Pen and Trump seek to counter the university-trained bureaucratic, financial and cultural elites in London, Paris and NY/DC/LA/SF. They resent overlarge and undercompetent bureaucracies and public employee unions, the paymasters of the Labour and Democratic parties. With blunt, often ill-advised rhetoric, they challenge the pieties of the universities as 17th-century countryside parliamentarians challenged the established church and universities.

Consider the debate over what has become, for many, the religion of global warming. Those with doubts that predicted harm will occur are labeled "deniers," heretics who must be punished. The science is settled, the elites insist. That's exactly what the church told Galileo.

Or consider the "speech codes" promulgated by most colleges and universities. We see violent disruption of speakers on campus go unpunished, excused and even praised. We see The New York Times publish an article by a New York University dean arguing for restricting free speech.

We see the deadweight cost of public employee union pensions and unpoliced murders destroying one of the great creations of civilization, Chicago. No wonder the countryside resists; this is how these arrogant bullies govern the precincts of society they control.

In this struggle, the capital has certain advantages -- huge supermajorities in its strongholds, inhabited largely by elites and ethnic, racial and religious minorities. It monopolizes most established media. Its claims that opponents are bigots are taken as gospel.

The countryside has serious grievances and majority numbers but doesn't always find steady leadership. Le Pen's insalubrious pedigree suggests she'll lose May 7, though Theresa May's icy steeliness has British Conservatives headed to a landslide win June 8. Donald Trump instinctively (calculatedly?) reckoned that the countryside was the key to victory; now he has to deliver. The battles of capital vs. countryside will go on.
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Michael Barone is a Senior Political Analyst for the Washington Examiner and a Resident Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Fox News Channel and Townhall contributor and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

Tags: Michael Barone, New/Old Politics, Capital vs. Countryside, capital, countryside To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-45720477548243730712017-04-28T11:15:00.000-05:002017-04-28T14:58:44.557-05:00The Rise of the Generals

by Patrick Buchanan: Has President Donald Trump outsourced foreign policy to the generals?

So it would seem. Candidate Trump held out his hand to Vladimir Putin. He rejected further U.S. intervention in Syria other than to smash ISIS.

He spoke of getting out and staying out of the misbegotten Middle East wars into which Presidents Bush II and Obama had plunged the country.

President Trump's seeming renunciation of an anti-interventionist foreign policy is the great surprise of the first 100 days, and the most ominous. For any new war could vitiate the Trump mandate and consume his presidency.

Trump no longer calls NATO "obsolete," but moves U.S. troops toward Russia in the Baltic and eastern Balkans. Rex Tillerson, holder of Russia's Order of Friendship, now warns that the U.S. will not lift sanctions on Russia until she gets out of Ukraine.

If Tillerson is not bluffing, that would rule out any rapprochement in the Trump presidency. For neither Putin, nor any successor, could surrender Crimea and survive.

What happened to the Trump of 2016?

When did Kiev's claim to Crimea become more crucial to us than a cooperative relationship with a nuclear-armed Russia? In 1991, Bush I and Secretary of State James Baker thought the very idea of Ukraine's independence was the product of a "suicidal nationalism."

Where do we think this demonization of Putin and ostracism of Russia is going to lead?

To get Xi Jinping to help with our Pyongyang problem, Trump has dropped all talk of befriending Taiwan, backed off Tillerson's warning to Beijing to vacate its fortified reefs in the South China Sea, and held out promises of major concessions to Beijing in future trade deals.

"I like (Xi Jinping) and I believe he likes me a lot," Trump said this week. One recalls FDR admonishing Churchill, "I think I can personally handle Stalin better than … your Foreign Office … Stalin hates the guts of all your people. He thinks he likes me better."

FDR did not live to see what a fool Stalin had made of him.

Among the achievements celebrated in Trump's first 100 days are the 59 cruise missiles launched at the Syrian airfield from which the gas attack on civilians allegedly came, and the dropping of the 22,000-pound MOAB bomb in Afghanistan.

But what did these bombings accomplish?

The War Party seems again ascendant. John McCain and Lindsey Graham are happy campers. In Afghanistan, the U.S. commander is calling for thousands more U.S. troops to assist the 8,500 still there, to stabilize an Afghan regime and army that is steadily losing ground to the Taliban.

Iran is back on the front burner. While Tillerson concedes that Tehran is in compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, Trump says it is violating "the spirit of the agreement."

How so? Says Tillerson, Iran is "destabilizing" the region, and threatening U.S. interests in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon.

But Iran is an ally of Syria and was invited in to help the U.N.-recognized government put down an insurrection that contains elements of al-Qaida and ISIS. It is we, the Turks, Saudis and Gulf Arabs who have been backing the rebels seeking to overthrow the regime.

In Yemen, Houthi rebels overthrew and expelled a Saudi satrap. The bombing, blockading and intervention with troops is being done by Saudi and Sunni Arabs, assisted by the U.S. Navy and Air Force.

It is we and the Saudis who are talking of closing the Yemeni port of Hodeida, which could bring on widespread starvation.

It was not Iran, but the U.S. that invaded Iraq, overthrew the Baghdad regime and occupied the country. It was not Iran that overthrew Col. Gadhafi and created the current disaster in Libya.

Monday, the USS Mahan fired a flare to warn off an Iranian patrol boat, 1,000 meters away. Supposedly, this was a provocation. But Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif had a point when he tweeted:

"Breaking: Our Navy operates in — yes, correct — the Persian Gulf, not the Gulf of Mexico. Question is what US Navy doing 7,500 miles from home."

Who is behind the seeming conversion of Trump to hawk?

The generals, Bibi Netanyahu and the neocons, Congressional hawks with Cold War mindsets, the Saudi royal family and the Gulf Arabs — they are winning the battle for the president's mind.

And their agenda for America?

We are to recognize that our true enemy in the Mideast is not al-Qaida or ISIS, but Shiite Iran and Hezbollah, Assad's Syria and his patron, Putin. And until Hezbollah is eviscerated, Assad is gone, and Iran is smashed the way we did Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen, the flowering of Middle East democracy that we all seek cannot truly begin.

But before President Trump proceeds along the path laid out for him by his generals, brave and patriotic men that they are, he should discover if any of them opposed any of the idiotic wars of the last 15 years, beginning with that greatest of strategic blunders — George Bush's invasion of Iraq.
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Patrick Buchanan is currently a conservative columnist, political analyst, chairman of The American Cause foundation and an editor of The American Conservative. He has been a senior advisor to three Presidents, a two-time candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, and was the presidential nominee of the Reform Party in 2000. He blogs at the Patrick J. Buchanan.

Tags: Patrick Buchanan, conservative, commentary, Rise of the Generals To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-22249845092834900182017-04-28T10:30:00.000-05:002017-04-28T14:51:07.426-05:00Ameriphobia . . .Anti-Americans like Antifa leftist sure hate the flag and what it represents but don't mind the benefits: EPT Card, Foos Stamps, etc.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

Tags: Editorial Cartoon, AF Branco, Ameriphobia, Anti-Americans, Antifa leftist, hate the flag, don't mind the benefits, EPT Card, Foos Stamps, etc. To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-50504966888151106292017-04-28T10:00:00.000-05:002017-04-28T14:44:55.747-05:00Death and . . .

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: It's a sure thing — that most folks will like President Trump's tax cuts. Though we don't yet know all the details.

When it comes to taxes, less is more.

That is, if you're paying taxes. It is no great mystery that people like it when their own taxes are reduced.

But what about reducing other people's taxes?

"The core economic case for tax cuts is that they reduce the obstacles to creative and productive activities," economist Don Boudreaux explained yesterday at the Café Hayek blog.

Cutting the corporate tax rate — which even former President Bill Clinton supported during last year's campaign — won't immediately appear in people's paychecks, but can stimulate economic growth helping everyone. Recent experiences in both Britain and Canada bear this out.

Cutting taxes, of which "the rich" pay more, can also spur growth.

Yet, these ideas do not dominate popular discussions of tax cuts. Boudreaux lamented media reporting that treats any tax reduction as simply a "'gift' to high-income earners," dubbing the coverage: "Biased. Benighted. Blind."

"Suppose that freedom of the press were reported in the same way as . . . a 'giveaway to the press'?" he asked. "Most people, of course, do not own newspapers or other media outlets."

Boudreaux concluded, "When the press is free, the chief beneficiaries are the general public."

Freedom — of both the press and to keep more of the fruits of our labors — helps the common man. As well as the uncommon man. A tax cut for me helps me directly, and you indirectly. And vice versa. Just as a free press is great for those in journalism as well as those of us not in journalism.

That is not blind, but eyes open; not benighted, but enlightened; not biased, but . . .

. . . Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.
------------------
Paul Jacobs is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacobs is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.

Tags: Paul Jacob, Common Sense, death, yaxes  To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-59276510258516638712017-04-28T09:30:00.000-05:002017-04-28T14:37:39.057-05:00Giving It All Away

by Kerby Anderson, Contributing Author: The new book by David Green has the arresting title, Giving It All Away. He is the founder of Hobby Lobby and tells the story of his success and calls for Christians to give generously to churches and other ministries. He was on my radio program last week, and we talked about Hobby Lobby, the Museum of the Bible, and their court case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. The Green family has been at the center of all of this and much more.

Most people know that Hobby Lobby is closed on Sunday. They may not also realize that their stores close earlier (8 PM) than other stores. That means that they are only open 66 hours a week and compete with stores open many more hours. David Green did this so that his employees can spend more time with their families.

Hobby Lobby also pays its full-time employees well. Back in 2009, they raised the base pay to $10/hour. The next year they tacked on another dollar. They next year they did it again and then again. This is another way that the Green family values their employees.

I asked David Green if he ever imagined that he would have to sue the federal government. The thought never crossed his mind, but they did so when the HHS mandate would have required them to provide abortifacients for their employees. The fines alone would have cost him $1.3 million per day.

Much of his book focuses on giving and challenges Christians to engage in the adventure of tithing. He has three principles they use and encourages all of us to implement them as well. First, set your criteria. What are you going to fund? What are your priorities? Second, set your giving amount. Give the first fruits, not what is left over. And finally, set fire for the future. He also has written about how to make generosity generational.

His book is certain to spark your interest and encourage you in giving.
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Kerby Anderson is a radio talk show host heard on numerous stations via the Point of View Network endorsed by Dr. Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service

Tags: Giving It All Away, Kerby Anderson, Viewpoints, Point of View, David Green To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-32320517346179873802017-04-28T09:00:00.000-05:002017-04-28T23:13:48.075-05:00Trump's Tax Proposal is a Strong Starting Point for Reform

President Donald Trump's tax reform proposal, introduced by
Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, would dramatically cut
 the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 15 percent.
 (Photo: Shawn Thew/Epa/Newscom via The Daily Signal)

by Adam Michel: President Donald Trump's tax plan announced on Wednesday shows that he is serious about his campaign promise to cut America's taxes.

For too long, the American economy has been held back by an outdated tax system. Trump's promise to lower tax rates and update the tax code will benefit all Americans.

Chief among the proposed reforms is lowering tax rates for businesses and individuals. Lowering the business income tax rate to 15 percent has rightly received the most attention.

Currently, Americans pay a federal corporate income tax rate of 35 percent—one of the highest in the world. Because businesses are made up of people, it is those Americans who work for and invest in American companies who actually pay the tax.

In fact, most of the recent economic research shows that workers actually bear a majority of the tax in the form of lower wages.

High business taxes make it harder for businesses to invest in new equipment, factories, and research and development. Slower investment caused by high and distortionary taxes has limited job creation and wage growth.

A 15 percent business tax rate would reverse some of these negative effects, helping to re-energize economic growth. The U.S. would be a more attractive place to do business. At 15 percent, the U.S. could have a tax rate well below the average of our major trading partners.

Lowering tax rates is necessary if America wants to compete for global business. Allowing for the immediate deduction of the full cost of capital purchases would make the United States one of the most attractive places in the world to do business.

Full expensing, currently not included in the president's proposal as presented to the public, would simplify the currently complex and economically harmful system of depreciation and would encourage additional investment, job creation, and economic growth by treating all business costs equally.

The president has also proposed reducing tax rates and consolidating brackets for individual wage income. These reforms, along with repealing the death and the alternative minimum taxes, will rightly allow Americans to spend more of their own money and send less of it to Washington.

The lower rates for businesses and individuals should be applied consistently by eliminating targeted deductions, exclusions, and credits.

Tax reform should not expand or create new tax subsidies. While many special tax breaks are on the chopping block, the proposal adds a new tax subsidy for child and dependent care.

This addition should be reconsidered as it will provide benefits to some taxpayers at the expense of others, while introducing additional and unnecessary complexity.

Responsibly updating the tax code could, however, present a challenge for the federal government's budget. Absent cuts to Washington's profligate spending, large tax cuts could balloon the national debt.

But the impact on the deficit may not be as significant as some critics will likely assert.

Indeed, reforms to business taxes could over time make up for a large share of the lost revenue. That's because tax reform will allow for economic growth, which will in turn generate additional tax revenue.

Further, a low rate and the proposed territorial system will reverse the tide of businesses leaving the U.S., which ensures a more stable tax base and translates into additional revenue.

If the plan includes full expensing, America could become a leader in global business tax environments—allowing businesses to shift income, production, and the resulting tax revenue back into the U.S. Eliminating targeted tax breaks will also help pay for lower rates.

Nonetheless, the changes proposed by the president will have significant negative effects on the U.S. deficit unless they are coupled with near-term spending reforms.

The fact is that budget deficits are the result of uncontrolled spending, not insufficient taxation. The IRS actually took in almost $3.3 trillion last year, more than the historical average, yet the government still ran a deficit well over $500 billion.

The largest drivers of the U.S. debt—health entitlements and Social Security—ultimately constrain long-term sustainable tax reform.

Holistic tax reform should be done by taking into account both revenue and spending.

Opponents of tax reform will criticize reform as not "revenue neutral." This constructs a false choice between otherwise pro-growth tax reform tied to additional revenue raisers, and no reform at all.

Entitlement and discretionary spending reforms are the only way to make tax reform sustainable in the long run. Even absent tax reform, without spending-based reforms deficits will continue to grow, requiring still higher taxes in the future.

True reform should apply the most efficient and least economically destructive forms of taxation, have low rates on a broad base that eliminates the double taxation of investment, and be transparent, predictable, and simple.

If Congress and the president take hold of this significant opportunity, their efforts could result in one of the greatest tax reductions in American history—allowing American families to keep more of the money they earn, instead of sending it to Washington, and creating far-reaching benefits for all Americans by growing the economy.
-------------------
Adam Michel (@adamnmichel) focuses on tax policy and the federal budget as a policy analyst in the Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.

Tags: President Trump, Tax Proposal, Strong Starting Point, Reform, Adam Michel, The Heritage Foundation, The Daily Signal To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-25995633220632657172017-04-27T17:00:00.000-05:002017-04-27T22:28:54.675-05:00Not Building the Wall IS a Government Shutdown

by Ann Coulter: Fake News' question of the week: Will Trump risk a government shutdown over the wall?

The media flip back and forth on who's to blame for a government shutdown depending on which branch is controlled by Republicans. But the "shutdown" hypothetical in this case is a trick question.

A failure to build the wall IS a government shutdown.

Of course it would be unfortunate if schoolchildren couldn't visit national parks and welfare checks didn't get mailed on time. But arranging White House tours isn't the primary function of the government.

The government's No. 1 job is to protect the nation.

This has always been true, but it's especially important at this moment in history, when we have drugs, gang members, diseases and terrorists pouring across our border. The failure of the government to close our border is the definition of a government shutdown.

This isn't like other shutdowns. Democrats can't wail about Republicans cutting Social Security or school lunches. They are willing to shut the government down because they don't want borders.

Take that to the country!

As commander in chief, Trump doesn't need Congress to build a wall. The Constitution charges him with defending the nation. Contrary to what you may have heard from various warmongers on TV and in Trump's Cabinet, that means defending our borders -- not Ukraine's borders.

Building a wall is not only Trump's constitutional duty, but it's also massively popular.

Although Trump doesn't need congressional approval for a wall, it was smart for him to demand a vote. Let the Democrats run for re-election on opposing the wall.

Let Sen. Claire McCaskill explain to the parents of kids killed by illegals that she thought a wall was inhumane.

Let Sen. Angus King say to the people of Maine that instead of a wall that would block heroin from pouring into our country, he thought a better plan was to sponsor a bunch of treatment centers for after your kid is already addicted.

Let Sen. Chuck Schumer tell us why it's OK for Israel to have a wall, but not us.

Let open borders Republicans like Sen. Marco Rubio tell African-Americans that it's more important to help illegal aliens than to help black American teenagers, currently suffering a crippling unemployment rate.

Republicans are both corrupt and stupid, so it's hard to tell which one animates their opposition to the wall. But the Democrats are bluffing. They're trying to get the GOP to fold before they show us their pair of threes.

Now that Trump has capitulated on even asking for funding for a wall, the Democrats are on their knees saying, "Thank you, God! Thank you, God!"

No politician wants to have to explain a vote against the wall. What the Democrats want is for Trump to be stuck explaining why he didn't build the wall.

Then it will be a bloodbath. Not only Trump, but also the entire GOP, is dead if he doesn't build a wall. Republicans will be wiped out in the midterms, Democrats will have a 300-seat House majority, and Trump will have to come up with an excuse for why he's not running for re-election.

The New York Times and MSNBC are not going to say, "We are so impressed with his growth in office, we're going to drop all that nonsense about Russia and endorse the Republican ticket!"

No, at that point, Trump will be the worst of everything.

No one voted for Trump because of the "Access Hollywood" tape. They voted for him because of his issues; most prominently, his promise to build "a big beautiful wall." And who's going to pay for it? MEXICO!

You can't say that at every campaign rally for 18 months and then not build a wall.

Do not imagine that a Trump double-cross on the wall will not destroy the Republican Party. Oh, we'll get them back. No, you won't. Trump wasn't a distraction: He was the last chance to save the GOP.

Millions of Americans who hadn't voted in 30 years came out in 2016 to vote for Trump. If he betrays them, they'll say, "You see? I told you. They're all crooks."

No excuses will work. No fiery denunciations of the courts, the Democrats or La Raza will win them back, even if Trump comes up with demeaning Twitter names for them.

It would be an epic betrayal -- worse than Bush betraying voters on "no new taxes." Worse than LBJ escalating the Vietnam War. There would be nothing like it in the history of politics.

He's the commander in chief! He said he'd build a wall. If he can't do that, Trump is finished, the Republican Party is finished, and the country is finished.
-----------------
Ann Coulter is a conservative author of ten New York Times bestsellers, writes numerous columns and is a frequent guest on numerous radio and TV shows. Her web site is AnnCoulter.com. She is the author of Adios America which she signed and gave to the ARRA News Service editor at the 2015 Eagle Council.

Tags: Ann Coulter, Not Building the Wall, Government Shutdown To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-41555291626662274512017-04-27T16:05:00.000-05:002017-04-27T22:27:53.376-05:00Democrats Worried Now, Israel Victory Caucus, Fascism In Portland

Gary Bauer

by Gary Bauer, Contributing Author: Democrats Worried Now? It was very difficult watching the evening news last night. Left-wing reporters and big spending politicians were having nervous breakdowns over the impact of President Trump's tax reform plan on the budget deficit.

It's one thing coming from deficit hawks in the GOP. At least they are consistent in fighting against excessive spending. But to hear those like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren expressing shock over growing deficits was too much.

Progressive politicians spent the past eight years helping Barack Obama pile up more debt than any president in history. They have no credibility to complain about the deficit now.

And what about those on the right concerned about the deficit? While I am far more sympathetic to their arguments, the deficit hawks in the GOP should wake up to the fact that big media and the big spenders are simply trying to blowup tax reform. Period. That is their sole objective and they will use any argument they can.

If they succeed, the deficit hawks in the GOP will likely find themselves in the minority in the next Congress with the big spenders in control. If the Republican Congress fails to enact tax reform or pass significant tax cuts AFTER floundering on Obamacare, conservative voters may take a pass on the 2018 elections.

The huge deficits that were run up in the Obama years happened at the same time we were gutting national defense. They were deficits that pushed the progressive agenda -- transferring wealth from people who create it to people who vote for the left. Not surprisingly, Obama earned the dubious distinction of being the first two-term president without a single year of 3% economic growth.

The fact is you can't cut or tax your way out of these deficits. Certainly there are things that can be cut and our system could be more efficient. But the best way to solve the deficit problem is to get our economy growing again. President Trump's proposal has a decent chance of making that happen.

Absurd Criticism - An immediate and oft-repeated criticism of Trump's tax reform plan was that it lacked details. That is absurd.

Several times during his briefing yesterday, Treasury Secretary Mnuchin stressed that they were outlining "core principles." The White House is not responsible for writing legislation. Congress writes legislation and that's where the details will be hammered out.

Some have suggested that Trump's plan to lower corporate taxes to 15% tax is a non-starter, so why bother? They should understand that the president sets the tone of the debate. He is telling his party in Congress and the American people what it is he wants to sign. What he is ultimately able to get passed may well be different.

It's the art of the deal. Yesterday's presentation of core principles was the opening bid in the negotiating process. And if the left really doesn't like it, let's see their plan.

Israel Victory Caucus- I had the pleasure this morning of speaking on Capitol Hill to the inaugural meeting of the Congressional Israel Victory Caucus (CIVC). The meeting was sponsored by Dr. Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, who played a significant role in encouraging the formation of the caucus.

CIVC was started by Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) and it is based on a simple concept: Decades of diplomacy based on moral equivalency have failed. As Rep. DeSantis put it, "American policy must ensure that Israel emerges victorious against those who deny or threaten her existence."

The reality is that one side of this dispute is never going to be satisfied with any concession because it refuses to concede that the other side has a right to exist. Rep. DeSantis and Rep. Johnson understand that building activity in East Jerusalem or so-called "settlements" in Judea and Samaria can't possibly be the impediment to peace because the Palestinians see all of Israel as an illegitimate settlement. That is the impediment to peace.

CIVC is built on the truism that if you see a conflict between barbarism and civilization, you should do everything you can to ensure that civilization wins. That means you should support Israel and hope for its victory instead of lecturing Israel on what it must give up.

Alas, the progressive ladies of Code Pink showed up today taking the side of the barbarians. Thankfully, they were quickly removed by the professional officers of the Capitol Hill Police Department.

Fascism Prevails In Portland - An annual parade in Portland, Oregon, has been cancelled after progressives threatened to physically attack some of the marchers, specifically members of the Multnomah County Republican Party.

After receiving an email which read, "You have seen how much power we have downtown and that the police cannot stop us. . . so please consider your decision wisely," parade organizers felt they had no choice but to cancel the parade.

Once again the progressive fascists have prevailed in denying innocent Americans their First Amendment rights.

THIS MUST STOP!

I hope Portland police and the FBI are investigating this threat. Those responsible should be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible. It is time the government brought the RICO statutes to bear against this violent left-wing mob.

Isn't it striking just how much today's progressives are like the racist Democrats of the past? They wear masks like the KKK.

They are the descendants of Orval Faubus, who stood in the schoolhouse door blocking young black children. Today's progressives stand in the university door blocking conservative speakers.

They use threats of violence and intimidation. Just like Bull Connor.

The old segregationists wouldn't let a preacher like Martin Luther King, Jr., go into schools. Today's progressives don't want preachers in the schools or the public square.

It's no wonder the left is so obsessed with fundamentally transforming America. It has no clue what America is.
-------------------
Gary Bauer is a conservative family values advocate and serves as president of American Values and chairman of the Campaign for Working Families

Tags: Democrats Worried Now, Israel Victory Caucus, Fascism In Portland, Patriotism Gap, Gary Bauer, Campaign for Working Families To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-26857001957948038352017-04-27T15:45:00.000-05:002017-04-27T22:38:47.051-05:00Wild Boars: Our New Allies Against ISIS

by Tom Knighton: Every now and then, something happens that lets you know the universe doesn't actively hate you. A break in a rainstorm just as you have to go to work, a snow day when you're sick but out of paid sick days, or wild boars mauling ISIS fighters:

<dir>Wild boars mauled three Islamic State (Isil) fighters to death near the Iraqi city of Kirkuk, according to Kurdish fighters.

The jihadists' bodies were found badly mangled by refugees fleeing through farmland as they tried to get away from Isil territory in al-Rashad, southwest of the city.

Isil fighters responded to the deaths by going on a killing spree of wild boars in the area, said Brigadier Azad Jelal, the deputy head of the Kurdish intelligence service in Kikurk.

"Three fighters from Isil were near the Peshmerga checkpoint in al-Rashad. They met some feral boars and the boars killed the three fighters," he told The Telegraph.

"Some refugees saw the bodies on the edge of a farm when they were fleeing and they told us. A few days later Isil started to kill pigs around the area."

Brigadier Jelal said the three men may have been trying to defect from Isil and were trying to get near a Kurdish checkpoint to surrender. He said the refugees did not see any weapons with the bodies, suggesting they had come unarmed.</dir>Of course, them defecting is mere speculation.

What we do know -- ISIS has a very strong anti-pig stance. Islam in general codifies animal abuse. It's particularly amusing that ISIS responded to the deaths by going on a "killing spree of wild boars in the area," as if a message needed to be sent to the local boar community.

It's time to have a ham sandwich, a cold beer, and to thank God that his creatures seem to dislike ISIS as much as we do. God Bless America.
-------------------
Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, a blogger and PJ Media contributor.

Tags: Wild Boars, allies against ISIS, Tom Knighton, PJ Media To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-19311118230526447822017-04-27T15:04:00.000-05:002017-04-27T21:25:07.707-05:00Conscience of Great Causes: Mercy Otis Warren

by Lawrence Reed: Two centuries before "women's lib," in the run-up to America's Revolutionary War, Mercy Otis Warren was already a liberated woman by the standards of her day. And she did the liberating herself.

In the latter half of the eighteenth century, Warren was an accomplished poet, playwright, pamphleteer, and historian—though much of what she wrote was anonymous, in part to get a hearing where a woman might not otherwise be listened to. She also risked reprisal from King George III and the British troops with her subversive rhetoric in favor of American liberty and independence.

She was a close friend and confidante to almost all the major figures of the revolution: the Adamses (Samuel as well as John and Abigail), the Washingtons (both George and Martha), Thomas Jefferson, John Hancock, and Patrick Henry, among others. Many of the plans and activities of the Sons of Liberty and, later, the Committees of Correspondence were hatched in her Massachusetts home.

For decades, she advocated for women's rights at a time when progress on that front must have seemed glacial at best. When the Constitution was debated, she was an outspoken anti-Federalist who insisted on the adoption of a Bill of Rights. She was the first person, man or woman, to pen a history of the conflict with Britain.

It's for eminently good reason that Mercy Otis Warren is regarded in history as the "conscience of the revolution."

"We Will Be Free"
Born in 1728 in West Barnstable, Massachusetts, Warren was homeschooled by parents who encouraged every sign of interest in her studies in general and literature in particular. Her mother was a descendant of a passenger aboard the Mayflower, the ship that brought the Pilgrims to New England in 1620. Her father was a vocal opponent of British rule in the colonial legislature. Both her father and her brother led the fight against the king's writs of assistance (searches without warrants), and her brother is credited with the first usage of the phrase "No taxation without representation." Husband James affectionately labeled her "the scribbler."

As tensions rose between the mother country and the colonies, Warren was drawn into the fray. "Every domestic enjoyment depends on the unimpaired possession of civil and religious liberty," she wrote.

Encroachments on that liberty, particularly when they came under orders from the unpopular British governor of Massachusetts, Thomas Hutchinson, earned Warren's opprobrium. Hutchinson was the model for (and intended target of) her famous play The Adulateur, which appeared in 1772. It foretold the coming of the revolution through the words of a disagreeable and imperious official named Rapatio. Published anonymously, it enjoyed an enthusiastic reception. "With the publication of The Adulateur," writes biographer Nancy Rubin Stuart, "Mercy made her debut as the patriots' secret pen, whose barbed lampoons provoked laughter and longing for liberation from British rule."

With war clouds gathering in 1775, Warren saw the contending sides in stark terms: "America stands armed with resolution and virtue; but she still recoils at the idea of drawing the sword against the nation from whom she derived her origin. Yet Britain, like an unnatural parent, is ready to plunge her dagger into the bosom of her affectionate off spring."

During the war, Warren not only wrote plays and pamphlets that championed the American cause; she also dared to promote women's rights. Her tragedy The Ladies of Castile, set in Spain during the reign of Emperor Charles V, is regarded as the most feminist of her patriotic works. The play's heroine warns the audience:<dir>Though weak compassion sinks the female mind
And our frail sex dissolve in pity's tears;
Yet justice' sword can never be resheath'd
'Till Charles is taught to know we will be free;
And learns the duty that a monarch owes,
To heaven—the people—and the rights of man.</dir>After the United States secured independence, Warren turned her attention to ensuring that the government did not stray from the principles of republicanism. In February 1788, during debates over the ratification of the Constitution, she published a nineteen-page pamphlet called "Observations on the New Constitution, and on the Federal and State Conventions." In it she argued that the Constitution as it stood threatened to violate individuals' and states' rights.

"All writers on government agree . . .that man is born free and possessed of certain unalienable rights—that government is instituted for the protection, safety, and happiness of the people," she wrote. But the Constitution would "betray the people of the United States into an acceptance of a most complicated system of government, marked on the one side with the dark, secret and profound intrigues of the statesman. . . and on the other, with the ideal project of young ambition. . .to intoxicate the inexperienced votary."

She concluded that without provisions to ensure explicitly freedoms of speech and press, limits on the judiciary, guarantees of trial by jury, and other protections, the Constitution would undermine what Americans had fought for. She demanded the addition of, in her words, "a bill of rights to guard against the dangerous encroachments of power."

Ultimately, in large measure because the arguments of Warren and her anti-Federalist compatriots finally swayed James Madison, the Bill of Rights became the first ten amendments to the Constitution.

Setting a High Standard
Warren was deeply offended when President John Adams signed into law the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798. They led to the closure of newspapers critical of the administration, which Warren saw as the grossest violation of American liberty—and she said so without reservation. Her fierce objections strained her relationship with the president but did not injure her long-standing friendship with his wife, Abigail. Warren's warnings against a postwar lapse in revolutionary principles helped bring about the ouster of John Adams and the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800.

Her last major work was History of the Rise, Progress, and Termination of the American Revolution. Appearing it 1805, it was the first important history of the period from 1765 to 1789. President Jefferson ordered copies for himself and for every member of his cabinet and no doubt took note of her concern for the country's future. She wrote:<dir>The people of the United States are bound together in sacred compact and a union of interests which ought never to be separated. But the confederation is recent, and their experience immatured; they are, however, generally sensible . . .[understanding that history demonstrates that] deception as well as violence have operated to the subversion of the freedom of the people.</dir>Warren knew full well that the imperfect Constitution, even improved with a Bill of Rights, was still a scrap of paper. Whether or not it lived to protect Americans' hard-won freedom depended on the wisdom and spirit of the people. She had already witnessed a dismaying retreat from constitutional principles in the Adams administration.

She worried that with the passing of the revolutionary generation, future Americans might embrace diminutions of their liberties through moral corruption, false promises, lies, and unprincipled compromise. "The characters of nations," she observed, "have been disgraced by their weak partialities, until their freedom has been irretrievably lost in that vortex of folly which throws a lethargy over the mind, till awakened by the fatal consequences which result from arbitrary power, disguised by specious pretexts amidst a general relaxation of manners [i.e., personal character]."

When Warren died in 1814 at age eighty-six, she was celebrated as a principled defender of the revolution, an eloquent advocate of liberty and limited government, and the epitome of what it meant to be a true "conscience" of great causes. In the two centuries since, how faithfully have Americans lived up to her standards of conscience for those same causes?
----------------------
Lawrence W. Reed is the president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) and the author or editor of several books, including Excuse Me, Professor: Challenging the Myths of Progressivism. This article is taken from his new book Real Heroes. Intercollegiate Review (IR) who shared this article with the editor. IR is published by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) and is dedicated to advancing the principles that make America free, virtuous, and prosperous.

Tags: Lawrence Reed, Conscience of Great Causes, Mercy Otis Warren, Intercollegiate Review, Intercollegiate, Studies Institute To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-82364349710505068702017-04-27T14:15:00.000-05:002017-04-27T20:55:14.493-05:0042% Less Likely to Travel to Europe After Recent Terror Attacks

Rasmussen Reports: Americans doubt that Europe can ever completely defeat the scourge of terrorism, and many have changed their travel plans accordingly.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 42% of American Adults say they are less likely to travel to Europe in the next six months following the recent terrorist attacks there. Slightly more (45%) say the attacks will have no impact on their travel plans, but only seven percent (7%) are more likely to travel to Europe now. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Tags: travel, Europe, Rassmussen Reports To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-13778460296903858172017-04-27T13:50:00.000-05:002017-04-27T20:26:28.780-05:00At A Campus Near You . . .. . . Ann Coulter will not speak at UC Berkeley. AntiFa (The Left) has again been successful in silencing the conservative voice.

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

Tags: Campus, Near You, Ann Coulter, UC Berkeley, AntiFa, The Left, silencing, conservative voice, Editorial Cartoon,y AF Branco To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-52332199216542935892017-04-27T13:16:00.000-05:002017-04-27T20:18:21.044-05:00Save Us From The Government 'Helping' Us: Texas Wind 'Energy' Edition

The Towering Inferno

That Always Is Government 'Help'

by Seton Motley, Contributing Author: When the government insists on "helping" the private sector – this sort of stupidity is what you get.

The very famous Ronald Reagan line is: "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, 'I'm from the government and I'm here to help.'" He wasn't even a little incorrect.

The lather-rinse-repeat cycle is always the same. Government champions itself as the answer to a private sector "problem." But wait, before we go any further: Nigh always the "problem" government "identifies" – isn't actually a problem. Government identifies problems – the way Bernie Madoff's victims identified good investment guidance.

Now that government has made the determination that it is going to "help" – it bull-in-a-china-shop's its way into the middle of the private sector. Creating massive disruption – and crowding out private participants. The entire market warps and distorts – as it is forced to accommodate this massive interloper.

The results are as awful – as they are predictable. The examples are limitless. See: Obamacare. Or Dodd-Frank. Or Sarbanes-Oxley. Or….

Then government – the entity that just demonstrably worsened the situation – declares itself the "solution" to the problems it itself just caused. And further involves itself in the private sector. Which further warps the private sector. Which leads the government to declare itself the "solution"…. Lather, rinse, repeat…ad nauseam.

A prime example of this government inanity – is the energy sector. Private energy providers have done a magnificent job over the last century-plus maximizing fabulous, low-cost…you know, actual energy – oil, natural gas, coal, nuclear, etc.

Then the government decided to "help." They started regulating the daylight out of these actual energy sources. And taxing the daylight out of them (and the rest of us) to fund fake energy sources – the non-energy-producing, uber-expensive likes of wind, solar, ethanol, etc.

This isn't government picking winners and losers – it's government picking losers at the expense of winners. And again reminds us of one of life's empirical truths: If it's a good idea – no government money is necessary. No one needs to subsidize ice cream.

And this is federal government inanity – so it screws up things all across the country. And individual states have to deal with the fallout from the federal foolishness. Texas is currently in the midst of this expensive, utterly unnecessary nonsense.

The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) provides power in the Lone Star State. In 2009, it in San Patricio County cut a 20-year deal with Papalote Creek II (a subsidiary of E.ON and Sumitomo Matsui Banking Corporation) – to purchase 200 megawatts of wind-generated power.

Enter the original sin: Again, the federal government subsidizes wind "energy" out the wazoo. Which gets people who would otherwise never try to provide wind power – because it makes zero free market economic sense – trying to provide wind power. The sector – has begun its government-induced warping.

LCRA understood all this – and built into the contract an out should wind energy prices drop below a certain level. So they could renegotiate at the new, lower rate. (Conversely, Papalote Creek II had a similar out should the price rise – and they could renegotiate at the higher rate.)

Thanks to fracking and other private sector innovations in the actual energy sector, all energy prices fell – wind included. So low, it reached the magic number in the contract – and LCRA exercised their option.

Papalote Creek II refused to enter into resolution arbitration – as the contract they signed required. A federal judge mandated arbitration – which LCRA won.

Then comes further ridiculousness. When you're a hammer – everything looks like a nail. When you count on government for your very survival – you always run to government when things go awry. Government-funded Papalone Creek II – looks at the entire world and everything in it through a government-only prism.

Having failed in the Real World private energy sector, government-centric Papalone Creek II went running to government – the courts – to bail them out. And in an example of the belt-and-suspenders approach – they also went to the Texas legislature looking for another bailout.

Another empirical truth: The answer to too much government – isn't even more government.

But sadly, bizarrely, a Texas REPUBLICAN state representative is ignoring this empirical truth – and attempting to throw Papalone Creek II that government lifeline. Behold J.M. Lozano – and his House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) 117.

Actually, it isn't totally bizarre (though it remains inordinately sad) – Papalone Creek II is in Lozano's district. That said, nothing justifies what his bill is attempting to do.

First, it is a terrible idea for any legislature to parachute into the middle of courts – in the middle of cases – and disrupt and distort them. We have separate government branches for a reason. Let the judicial branch do – what the judicial branch does. Unfettered by legislative branch manipulation.

Second, this is legislation attempting an after-the-fact rewrite of the LCRA-Papalone Creek II contract – all to the one-sided benefit of Lozano-district-residing Papalone Creek II. Which just isn't cricket – in fact, it's dirty pool.

HCR 117 isn't a bill – so much as it is a really bad joke. Representative Lozano isn't at all amusing here.

Lozano's legislative colleagues should give his bill no thought, no time – and no quarter.
----------------
Seton Motley is the President of Less Government and he contributes to ARRA News Service. Please feel free to follow him him on Twitter / Facebook.

Tags: Seton Motley, Less Government, Save Us From, The Government, 'Helping' Us, Texas, Wind Energy To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-32878094393966965952017-04-27T12:10:00.000-05:002017-04-27T17:46:32.121-05:00Sharia, Arkansas Style . . .. . . A low block by the Razorbacks.

by Bruce Bawer: On April 13-15, the King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Arkansas held a symposium on so-called "honor violence," as exemplified by honor killings, forced marriage, and other such delightful acts. I'll get back to this – but first of all, am I the only person who still finds it jarring to see words like "King Fahd Center for Middle East Studies" in the same sentence as words like "University of Arkansas"?

The Center, as its website informs us, "was founded with a $20 million endowment from the Saudi government in the mid-1990s. An initial endowment of $2 million, dedicated toward language, literary translation and publication was followed by a much larger $18 million gift designed to spark the foundation of a comprehensive Middle East Studies program at the undergraduate and graduate levels."

Of course, this isn't the only so-called "Middle East Studies" shebang based at a Western university, named for a Saudi royal, and funded by Saudi cash. Georgetown University famously boasts the Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding – which, when you stop to think about it, is a strange name for a unit of a university, where you'd imagine that the idea would be not "understanding" in the touchy-feely sense suggested by the phrase "Muslim-Christian Understanding" but, rather, "understanding" in the sense of becoming informed about a subject. But anyway.

Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the regal moneybags behind Georgetown's lavish propaganda operation (as of last year he was the 41st richest person in the world) is also responsible for the Alwaleed Centre at the University of Edinburgh, the Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard, and the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Islamic Studies at Cambridge, plus centers for American Studies bearing his name in Beirut and Cairo. In addition, according to Wikipedia, he's "Citigroup's largest individual shareholder, the second-largest voting shareholder in 21st Century Fox, and owns Paris' Four Seasons Hotel George V and part of the Plaza Hotel," presumably the one in New York.

A quick look at the prince: he's tweeted that he wouldn't "visit Jerusalem...until its liberation from the Zionist enemy." He's the guy who, after fifteen of his fellow Saudis laid down their lives for their God on September 11, 2001, gave then New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani a $10 million check and a lecture about the terrorist attack's supposed roots in U.S. policies. (Giuliani, to his everlasting credit, turned down the check, in response to which the prince suggested that he'd done so out of fear of "Jewish pressures.")

But back to Arkansas's King Fahd Center, named for the ruler of Saudi Arabia from 1982 to 2005 and son of that nation's glorious founder. Some fun facts on Fahd: when he was still just a princeling, he was named Minister of Education, even though he is believed to have been functionally illiterate at the time. His contributions to Saudi history, following his ascent to the throne, include (and again I'm quoting Wikipedia, which, let's remember, notoriously whitewashes and euphemizes anything untoward about Islam) his strengthening of the "separation of the sexes and power of the religious police" and his endorsement of the idea that young Saudis should "avoid the path of evil by not travelling to Europe and the United States."

When it comes to avoiding the path of Western evil, some might consider Fahd a wee bit of a hypocrite, given his love of Monte Carlo, where he frequently gambled, drank, smoked, and could be seen in public consorting with more than one hot babe at a time. In 1991, when he feared that Saddam Hussein might follow up his conquest of Kuwait with an invasion of Saudi Arabia, Fahd, abandoning his deep concerns about the Western moral pollution of his holy kingdom, allowed infidel U.S. forces to sully it by their presence in order to defend it from Iraq.

Who better to name an American center of education after?

Anyway, I bring up the King Fahd Center – which, by the way, is within shouting distance of the Sam M. Walton School of Business and the Frank Broyles Athletic Center (sorry, I just can't get over the outrageous cultural incongruity) – because of this recent "honor violence" symposium, which would seem to mark some kind of advance. After all, if they're willing to acknowledge and discuss this appalling aspect of Islam, there must be something other than pure Islamic propaganda going on there, right?

The most impressive sign of all was that one of the individuals invited to participate in the symposium was Phyllis Chesler, who has researched honor violence extensively and may well be the world's foremost expert on the topic. Chesler, a psychotherapist and bestselling author whose name will be familiar to readers of this site, is a remarkable figure in many ways – one of the marquee names of second-wave feminism, a co-founder of such groups as the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women's Health Network, and a founding mother of Women's Studies.

In recent years, however, Chelser has been all but read out of the very movement she help found. Her 1979 book With Child recounted her own experience of pregnancy and new motherhood with a sensitivity and seriousness that unnerved some feminists, for whom the topic uncomfortably recalled old-fashioned conceptions of sex roles. In Women's Inhumanity to Women (2002), Chesler committed the crime of admitting that the feminist concept of perfect sisterhood is a ridiculous utopian fantasy.

But Chesler's principal offense has been her recognition – and her readiness to say out loud, notably in The Death of Feminism (2005) – that the systematic misogyny she has spent her career decrying reaches its apex in Islamic cultures, and that all too many of her former feminist allies, motivated by a misguided multiculturalism, refuse to address this fact. Indeed, while today's feminist establishment is quick to skewer Chesler for her criticism of Islam, it has no trouble welcoming into its ranks pro-sharia Muslims such as Linda Sarsour, a leader of the recent Women's March in Washington.

It was, therefore, refreshing – shocking, actually – to learn that a Center for Middle Eastern Studies named for King Fahd of Saudi Arabia had invited Chesler to take part in a symposium on honor violence. Had the world suddenly gone sane?

Alas, no. In an anonymously leaked e-mail sent to Thomas Paradise (yes, Paradise), head of the Fahd Center, three Center faculty members – Joel Gordon, Ted Swedenburg, and Mohja Kahf – slammed Chesler as "a prominent Islamophobe" who expresses anti-Muslim "bigotry," commits "hate speech," and has been published by "the ultra-right Breitbart forum" and other "right-wing platforms." (It's true that, since her fall from feminist grace, Chesler has written less often for leftist than conservative outlets, this one included: she's done so because the latter tend to be far more open to a diversity of views than the former.) Chesler's views, the three Arkansas professors wrote, were so far out that they simply could not be "tacitly accepted as part of the discourse." But then, what else can you expect from lackeys of an authoritarian foreign government that exerts severe and (when necessary) violent control over "the discourse" – in addition to denying religious freedom, imprisoning dissidents, and executing gays and apostates?

There ensued an e-mail exchange between Paradise and the Center's Lisa Avalos in which Paradise was palpably panicking ("It is getting ugly and they are rallying"), worrying that "campus Muslim organizations" would make noise over Chesler's presence, and insisting that despite his "disagree[ment] with issues of stifling free speech" (yeah, right) there was no choice but to disinvite Chesler. And so – voilà! – Chesler was given the heave-ho.

The result: an academic symposium at which not a single one of the participants was a published scholar on the subject. (They were all either activists or law-enforcement officers.) "Being dis-invited," Chesler e-mailed me the other day when I asked her for a comment, "confirms that the Western academy is ruled by Brown-Shirts; that the professoriate are willing dhimmis; and that even the good people are too terrified to stand against those who wish to close their minds to truth and to shut honest inquiry down and replace it with Orwellian propaganda." That just about says it. In short: yet another disgraceful episode in the ever-lengthening chronicle of campus compromise and cowardice on the topic of Islam.
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Bruce Bawer is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center and the author of "While Europe Slept" and "Surrender." His book "The Victims' Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind" is just out from Broadside / Harper Collins. His article was in FrontPage.Mag, a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Tags: Bruce Bawer, FrontPage Mag, Sharia, Arkansas Style, low block by the Razorbacks To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-14831716859148344302017-04-27T11:20:00.000-05:002017-04-27T17:24:21.919-05:00Rep. Steny Hoyer - April 2017 Porker of the Month

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD)
 April 2017 Porker of the Month

(Washington, D.C.) - Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) named House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) its April 2017 Porker of the Month for his ridiculous attack on the most pro-taxpayer budget proposal in decades.

On March 16, 2017, President Donald Trump released his first budget proposal, which recommends the elimination of dozens of wasteful, duplicative, and failing federal programs that CAGW has long felt should be jettisoned.

The same day, Rep. Steny Hoyer appeared on CNBC and uncorked a hefty load of hyperbole and a number of questionable claims about the budget. He called it "the most irresponsible budget that I've seen and the most unrealistic budget that I've seen." He labeled the budget a "hatchet job" with "irrational" cuts.

By rejecting the budget in such a reckless and melodramatic manner, Rep. Hoyer takes ownership of the wasteful spending he defends, including billions of dollars' worth of federal programs that have been identified by CAGW in Prime Cuts, the Congressional Pig Book, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the Congressional Budget Office, and many other sources as not worthy of taxpayer funding. The following programs are a tiny fraction of those that the Trump budget consolidates or eliminates, and Rep. Hoyer harbors:

$3 billion for Community Development Block Grants, where "outcomes [are] difficult to measure and evaluate," according to the Obama White House.

$293 million for the Economic Development Administration, which the GAO found has no effect on employment.

$150 million for the Essential Air Service, which subsidizes often empty flights from remote airports.

$16.7 million for the East-West Center, which the State Department has tried to eliminate for decades.

$10 million for the Denali Commission, which even former President Obama wanted to terminate.

CAGW President Tom Schatz said, "When it comes to spending the taxpayers' money, Rep. Hoyer has never seen a government program that he wanted to terminate, even if it means squandering billions of dollars. Defenders of wasteful spending like Rep. Hoyer will exaggerate and muddy the waters, but he cannot obscure the hard truth that hundreds of federal programs simply do not deserve to be funded by taxpayers."

For his baseless attack on the most pro-taxpayer budget in decades, CAGW names House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer its April 2017 Porker of the Month.
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Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement in government. Porker of the Month is a dubious honor given to lawmakers, government officials, and political candidates who have shown a blatant disregard for the interests of taxpayers.

Tags: Citizens Against Government Waste, CAGW, Representative, Steny Hoyer, Maryland, Democrat, 2017, Porker of the Year, ridiculous attack, pro-taxpayer budget proposal To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://email@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-29802737154054471262017-04-27T10:45:00.000-05:002017-04-27T17:00:00.190-05:00Mr Trump, Tear Down This Wall!The Current tax code is a "Yhuge" obstacle to economic growth and prosperity. Trumps tax plan would "tear down this wall"

Editorial Cartoon by AF "Tony" Branco

Tags: Mr Trump, Tear Down This Wall, current tax code, obstacle, economic growth, Editorial Cartoon,y AF Branco To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service and "Like" Facebook Page - Thanks!Bill Smithhttp://firstname.lastname@example.com:blogger.com,1999:blog-31728152.post-78711303295037606742017-04-27T10:15:00.000-05:002017-04-27T16:53:50.443-05:00UN-appealing

by Paul Jacob, Contributing Author: Like E.F. Hutton, when the United Nations' Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights "Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health" talks, people listen.

In disbelief, perhaps. Or amusement. But they listen. Well, at least Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank does, anyway.

Unfortunately, Milbank couldn't get Dainius Puras — the Lithuanian doctor serving as the U.N.'s Special Rapporteur on the right of everyone to blah, blah, blah — to talk. Milbank did, however, uncover an "urgent appeal" sent by Puras to the U.S. State Department, with instructions to pass it along to congressional leaders.

Puras won't discuss his confidential February letter until June, when "it becomes public at the next session of the Human Rights Council." But the "leaked" letter announces the U.N. has launched an investigation to determine whether repealing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) violates international law.*

"The letter urges that 'all necessary interim measures be taken to prevent the alleged violations'" Milbank further explains, "and asks that, if the 'allegations' proved correct, there be 'adequate measure . . . to guarantee the accountability of any person responsible.'"

Should Congress repeal Obamacare, will U.N. troops occupy Washington, arresting congressmen for voting against its mandate?

The international body has no way "to impose its will," Milbank acknowledges, seeming to wish it did and complaining that folks just "scoff at lectures from U.N. bureaucrats."**

Taking solace, Milbank declares: "[T]he U.N. letter is at least a bit of moral support for those defending Obamacare."

Moral support? From the U.N.? Now, you're pulling my leg.

This is Common Sense. I'm Paul Jacob.

* Along with other U.N. gobbledygook, the letter cites Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which proclaims, "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family" etc. etc. Standard U.N. speak: flowery, vague and unenforceable.

** People throughout the world and across the political spectrum — from the UK's Daniel Hannan to Chelsea Clinton — scoff at the U.N. for being incompetent and corrupt. Not to mention thoroughly socialist.
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Paul Jacobs is author of Common Sense which provides daily commentary about the issues impacting America and about the citizens who are doing something about them. He is also President of the Liberty Initiative Fund (LIFe) as well as Citizens in Charge Foundation. Jacobs is a contributing author on the ARRA News Service.

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