May 13, 2020
Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.
Sen. Tim Scott is right, it’s time to stop moving the goalposts and reopen America now
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) is right. On Tuesday, he noted that “we didn’t
set out to keep quarantines in place until we found a safe and effective
vaccine. That would take too long… We are too often presented with a false
dichotomy — either saving our economy or saving lives… We’ve seen the goalposts
around flattening the curve move, and I think that’s unfortunate, because…
businesses have collapsed, mental and physical health have declined, depths of
despair escalate, educational outcomes nosedive, as we wait in our living rooms
praying for some good news around therapies and around vaccines.” Of course,
Scott is not the only one who has noted the damage caused by the shutdown;
small business owners across the country have been warning of the impacts of
the shutdown for weeks and urging policymakers to reopen the economy, with more
than 30 million jobs lost and counting. Every day that the economy is shut down,
more damage is done to mental health, to personal finances, and to small
businesses barely hanging on — not to mention the fiscal situation of all
levels of government. Given the precarious finances of many governments, they
cannot afford to allow their citizens to be ground down into poverty, which
would make it impossible for them to pay their taxes.
Video: Former Apex, N.C. bartender supports idea of getting back to work
Jarrett Twigg says it was actually too crowded at his bar prior to
COVID-19. Now it's all gone. He knows it will be tough to get back into
business, but he wants to make it happen.
Judge’s decision to allow amicus filings in closing Flynn case breaks judicial system
Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning: “The U.S.
District Judge overseeing the Michael Flynn case has just broken the judicial
system with his decision to consider arguments presented by nonparties before
he acts on the U.S. Justice Department’s motion to dismiss with prejudice the
charges against Lt. Gen. Flynn.
Permitting amicus briefs in this context would be tantamount to allowing
any U.S. citizen to contest in federal court the decision of the Obama Justice
Department to not prosecute Hillary Clinton for her proven mishandling of
classified materials. The Attorney General of the United States should contest
this decision to the Supreme Court if necessary. Sullivan’s decision would turn
our federal court system into a battle of busybodies with little concern for
justice for the accused, and it is antithetical to the most basic legal
principles of our nation.”
Michael Goodwin: Get ready for ‘Obamagate’ to become ‘ObamaBidengate’
“One of Joe Biden’s strengths among Democrats is his eight-year stint as
Barack Obama’s vice president. It was, the former veep often says proudly, the
Obama-Biden administration. Suddenly, Republicans are happy to agree as they
probe the previous administration’s role in the false Russia-collusion charges
and the phony Michael Flynn prosecution. Already, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley has
included Biden in his version of the infamous question, asking: ‘What did Obama
and Biden know and when did they know it?’ President Trump calls it ‘Obamagate.’
Any day now, I expect to see that changed to ‘ObamaBidengate.’ The 2020 race
doesn’t lack for the sharp contrasts that usually decide elections. Trump’s
personality and policies are one set, his response to the pandemic and the
economic fallout another. But the world’s greatest counterpuncher won’t play
defense only and the entry of the Russia-Flynn scandal into the mix gives the
president a big new hammer. Count on him to use it. Biden got his first taste
of the ¬potential problems in an ABC interview Tuesday. Let’s just say his -answer
needs work. Lots of work.”
Sen. Tim Scott is right, it’s time to stop moving the goalposts and reopen America now
By Richard McCarty
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) is right. On Tuesday, he noted that “we didn’t set out to keep quarantines in place until we found a safe and effective vaccine. That would take too long… We are too often presented with a false dichotomy — either saving our economy or saving lives… We’ve seen the goalposts around flattening the curve move, and I think that’s unfortunate, because… businesses have collapsed, mental and physical health have declined, depths of despair escalate, educational outcomes nosedive, as we wait in our living rooms praying for some good news around therapies and around vaccines.”
Of course, Scott is not the only one who has noted the damage caused by the shutdown; small business owners across the country have been warning of the impacts of the shutdown for weeks and urging policymakers to reopen the economy, with more than 30 million jobs lost and counting.
Here is what just a few of these business owners had to say about their own situations and the shutdown.
Phil Green is the owner of Rapid Repair Pro, a home repair contractor, in Maryville, Illinois, and stated: “The shutdown… is beginning to have an impact on my business. My pipeline of work is dwindling. I expect within a few weeks, I’ll be pretty much totally out of work. If this continues through May, I really stand a chance of losing everything I’ve worked for for the past 25 years, and it’s just not gonna go well. So I realize this is bad for everyone, not just me, but we really need to get back to work.”
Brett Denton is the owner of Kvell Fitness and Nutriition, a fitness facility in Boise, Idaho and said: “We have seen a significant drop in our membership rate. Obviously, people aren’t coming into the facility… Our clients could have done virtual [training] long before this… COVID-19 shutdown… happened, and they come to us because we are an in-person facility. We offer coaching; we offer community; we offer accountability. We offer things that you can’t get virtually… On top of that, we’re having people terminate [their memberships] because they’re scared… First of all, a lot of them are unemployed. Second, they don’t know how long they’re gonna be unemployed. They’re holding on to everything because of fear.”
Denton added, “And so if this happens for too much longer, we’re going to really be struggling -- to the point of probably needing to shut the doors and find something else to do. And if we shut the doors, that is six people plus some contractors who are gonna be out of work and trying to find work elsewhere. And then, of course, all of the other businesses that we pay to support us: marketing companies, software companies, etc. And so we really need to get the economy back moving again in one way or the other. I care about people deeply, and so I understand that this is a hard decision to make for everybody. But I know that the economy is going to cause major issues for me personally, and for our business, and for our clients, and for our employees, if we don’t figure out some way to get back into business even if it’s a modified approach.”
Jason Kothenbeutel is the owner of Alloy Wheel Repair Specialists in St. Paul, Minnesota, and said: “[The] government shutdown has affected us a great deal… Fortunately we are [an] essential business so we can stay operational, to some degree, but we are [a] business that serves mostly commercial accounts. Their business is down significantly; and because their business is down, my business is down… Our business is roughly down by about 60 percent right now. I’m afraid it’ll go a little lower than that as we move forward…. It is, in my opinion, imperative that we get moving on opening the economy back up as soon as possible. I’m afraid if we go much longer in this, business is only going to slide more, and it’s going to be extremely difficult to keep people employed. It’s going to be extremely difficult to pay our expenses.”
Americans for Limited Government has launched ReopenAmericaNow.org to allow citizens to contact their state governors and legislatures and urge them to reopen the economy before it’s too late.
Every day that the economy is shut down, more damage is done to mental health, to personal finances, and to small businesses barely hanging on — not to mention the fiscal situation of all levels of government. Given the precarious finances of many governments, they cannot afford to allow their citizens to be ground down into poverty, which would make it impossible for them to pay their taxes. For these and other reasons, policymakers must heed the calls of small business owners and reopen the economy as soon as possible.
Richard McCarty is the Director of Research at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
To view online: http://dailytorch.com/2020/05/sen-tim-scott-is-right-its-time-to-stop-moving-the-goalposts-and-reopen-america-now/
Video: Former Apex, N.C. bartender supports idea of getting back to work!
To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1J5WD_o5c8
Judge’s decision to allow amicus filings in closing Flynn case breaks judicial system
May 12, 2020, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement blasting Judge Emmet Sullivan’s decision to consider amicus filings in deciding whether to allow the Michael Flynn case to be dismissed:
“The U.S. District Judge overseeing the Michael Flynn case has just broken the judicial system with his decision to consider arguments presented by nonparties before he acts on the U.S. Justice Department’s motion to dismiss with prejudice the charges against Lt. Gen. Flynn. Permitting amicus briefs in this context would be tantamount to allowing any U.S. citizen to contest in federal court the decision of the Obama Justice Department to not prosecute Hillary Clinton for her proven mishandling of classified materials.
“The Attorney General of the United States should contest this decision to the Supreme Court if necessary. Sullivan’s decision would turn our federal court system into a battle of busybodies with little concern for justice for the accused, and it is antithetical to the most basic legal principles of our nation.”
To view online: https://getliberty.org/2020/05/judges-decision-to-allow-amicus-filings-in-closing-flynn-case-breaks-judicial-system/
ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured column from Michael Goodwin, the spygate fiasco wherein the Justice Department and intelligence agencies falsely accused President Donald Trump and his campaign of being Russian agents could go all the way to the Obama White House:
Get ready for ‘Obamagate’ to become ‘ObamaBidengate’: Goodwin
By Michael Goodwin
One of Joe Biden’s strengths among Democrats is his eight-year stint as Barack Obama’s vice president. It was, the former veep often says proudly, the Obama-Biden administration.
Suddenly, Republicans are happy to agree as they probe the previous administration’s role in the false Russia-collusion charges and the phony Michael Flynn prosecution. Already, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley has included Biden in his version of the infamous question, asking: “What did Obama and Biden know and when did they know it?”
President Trump calls it “Obamagate.” Any day now, I expect to see that changed to “ObamaBidengate.”
The 2020 race doesn’t lack for the sharp contrasts that usually decide elections. Trump’s personality and policies are one set, his response to the pandemic and the economic fallout another.
But the world’s greatest counterpuncher won’t play defense only and the entry of the Russia-Flynn scandal into the mix gives the president a big new hammer. Count on him to use it.
Biden got his first taste of the potential problems in an ABC interview Tuesday. Let’s just say his answer needs work. Lots of work.
George Stephanopoulos, who generally gives Dems the kid-glove treatment, cited Grassley’s question and asked Biden what he knew about the Flynn probe.
“I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn,” Biden quickly answered before saying the issue was a Trump diversion from the pandemic.
Uncharacteristically, Stephanopoulos pressed him, noting that Biden attended the Oval Office meeting on Jan. 5, 2017, where the FBI’s plan to question Flynn was discussed.
Biden appeared confused, saying he thought the initial question was about Flynn’s prosecution, before giving a new, tangled answer. “I was aware that there was — that they asked for an investigation, but that’s all I know about it, and I don’t think anything else,” he said before again complaining it was all a diversion.
Hmmm. So he was at the meeting but doesn’t know anything about the shocking and most important thing discussed.
That’s not gonna fly.
Biden can’t have it both ways. Either he was a fully involved vice president, or he was mere standby equipment. And if he was the former, as both he and Obama have repeatedly insisted, then he must answer for one of the dirtiest scandals in American history.
The corruption of the Justice Department, the FBI, the CIA and the State Department for partisan purposes in 2016 and 2017 is unprecedented. All the more so because law-enforcement officials gave misleading information to the FISA court to get warrants to spy on Trump associates.
Watergate, by comparison, really was a third-rate burglary with a clumsy coverup. It almost seems benign next to the Obama administration’s effort to tip the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton, then sabotage Trump with leaks of classified information.
Even in that context, the prosecution of Flynn stands out as an extraordinary breach of law and public trust. Special counsel Robert Mueller charged Flynn with lying to agents despite fundamental flaws in the interview, especially in the deceptive approach. And documents released when Attorney General William Barr pulled the plug on the case show the FBI withheld exculpatory evidence from Flynn’s first lawyers.
As Barr noted, Flynn committed no crime and, additionally, no jury would ever have convicted him given the government’s repeated misconduct.
Far from closing the matter, Barr’s decision and comments open both Obama and Biden to new suspicions.
One key area that Grassley and others in the Senate are focused on involves a Susan Rice memo to herself dated Jan. 20, 2017, that references the Jan. 5 Oval Office meeting. After some CYA language about Obama insisting everything be done “by the book,” Rice takes a curious turn, writing: “From a national security perspective, however, President Obama said he wants to be sure that, as we engage with the incoming team, we are mindful to ascertain if there is any reason that we cannot share information fully as it relates to Russia.”
Think about that. She writes this on the day Trump is being inaugurated and is talking about information the new president cannot know.
Given what we have learned since, that sentence certainly looks like an acknowledgement that there already was a deep-state crew that would not be answerable to the new president. And, in fact, would be working against Trump.
Certainly, FBI Director Jim Comey, who was staying in the job, was part of this crooked crew, but who else was?
The next section of Rice’s memo remains classified. Then she wrote, “The President asked Comey to inform him if anything changes in the next few weeks that should affect how we share classified information with the incoming team. Comey said he would.”
There is no way to read those words other than as part of a plot to upend Trump’s presidency. And it involves the top players in the Obama administration.
It’s worth noting that Rice’s bizarre memo, which she e-mailed to herself, has been in the public record since at least early 2018, yet we don’t know much more about it now than we did when Grassley first released it. In those days, the Mueller probe was grabbing the media spotlight and each day, there were breathless reports that evidence of smoking-gun collusion between Trump and Russia was just around the corner.
Even some Republicans were reluctant to back Trump, lest the Russia charge prove to be true. It wasn’t, of course, but the Democrat-media complex successfully flogged it for nearly three years and used it to take the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms.
In fact, it’s now fair to say that Russia, Russia, Russia was a diversion and the Obama-Biden plot against the president was the real transgression.
So Grassley’s question finally must be answered: What did Obama and Biden know and when did they know it?
To view online: https://nypost.com/2020/05/12/get-ready-for-obamagate-to-become-obamabidengate-goodwin/
