March 22, 2022

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

Still important for GOP Senators to fully vet Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson

By Rick Manning

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s nominee for the Supreme Court, is the most radical nominee to ever be presented for confirmation.

The President has the constitutional right to nominate anyone he wants, but one of the few breaks on the power of the Supreme Court provided in the Constitution is the Senate confirmation process.  Once affirmed, the nominee can sit on the highest Court in the land until death unless they break laws that warrant impeachment.

For this reason, Senators from both sides of the aisle must completely and thoroughly review Judge Brown Jackson’s suitability to serve on the Supreme Court.  And on a bi-partisan basis should support the release of records from her service as vice-chair of the U.S. Sentencing Commission. These records are directly applicable to her beliefs related to the federal criminal justice system which is overseen by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  There really is no reason to begin any examination of her record prior to these documents being made available to the Senate.

Any questioning of Brown Jackson must be tough but honest, unlike the shrill, dishonest spectacle created by the left during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings.

Judge Brown Jackson can be confirmed by Democrats alone with a tie broken by the Vice President, but it remains an important duty for GOP Senators to get to the bottom of some troubling statements related to her statement that she drew heavily from Janet Dewart Bell, a prominent advocate of critical race theory.

Given her embrace of the discredited 1619 Project which argues that America is a fundamentally racist country, does she believe that the Constitution is a racist document?

If so, how can she raise her hand and swear to defend it, if confirmed. 

While we know how she would likely answer, the question is really posed with certain Democrat Senators who represent red states in mind, because any ruling that she might make in the future will be part of the political legacy of anyone who votes to put her on the Court.

Ketanji Brown Jackson deserves a fair and honest hearing, but Senators need to do their jobs and make a determination if her views are consistent with performing the duties of a Supreme Court Justice in a manner consistent with the law that is one thing, but if her views are outside any reasonable boundaries of the mainstream, she must not be affirmed.

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2022/03/still-important-for-gop-senators-to-fully-vet-judge-ketanji-brown-jackson/

Video: Undisclosed records from US Sentencing Commission has Republicans questioning Judge Jackson's Past

 

To view online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHVwy3Vb1rw

 

 

ALG launches WheresWasden.com to urge Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden to fight for Idaho

March 21, 2022, Fairfax, Va.—Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement announcing the WheresWasden.com advocacy campaign for Idahoans to urge Idaho Attorney General Lawrence to fight for Idaho against federal government encroachment:

"When Idaho needed Attorney General Lawrence Wasden to defend Idaho’s values, he was nowhere to be found. Every Monday, I appear on the Zeb Bell at the Ranch radio show in southern Idaho, and a continuing theme for Idahoans is to strongly urge their ostensibly conservative elected representatives to step up their game. Towards that end, Americans for Limited Government has launched an issue advocacy campaign at WheresWasden.com urging Idahoans to contact Idaho Attorney General Wasden and urge him to get into the legal fight for America. State attorneys general from across the nation have led the effort to push back against federal government overreach time and time again, yet Attorney General Wasden has been missing in action and it is important that the people of Idaho ask him why."

To view online: https://getliberty.org/2022/03/alg-launches-whereswasden-com-to-urge-idadho-attorney-general-lawrence-wasden-to-fight-for-idaho/

 

ALG Editor’s Note: In the following featured oped from the Washington Examiner, Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) makes the case against President Joe Biden Federal Reserve nominees who appear more concerned with energy policy than monetary policy:

Sen. Jerry Moran: The Federal Reserve does not get to decide energy policy

By Sen. Jerry Moran

Under the Biden administration, climate policy has been injected into the regulation of our financial system. As a result, the credibility and apolitical nature of our financial regulators is being steadily eroded.

Consider some of the statements of President Biden’s nominees to two of the most powerful financial regulator posts; they demonstrate a clear bias toward an energy sector responsible for employing thousands of Americans. Biden’s former nominee to be the Comptroller of the Currency, Professor Saule Omarova, said of smaller fossil-fuel producers: “we want them to go bankrupt if we want to tackle climate change.”

President Biden’s former nominee for the Federal Reserve’s Vice Chair for Supervision, Sarah Bloom Raskin, has written that “[t]he Fed is ignoring clear warning signs about the economic repercussions of the impending climate crisis by taking action that will lead to increases in greenhouse gas emissions at a time when even in the short term, fossil fuels are a terrible investment.”

In a separate writing, Ms. Raskin stated that “we must rebuild with an economy where the values of sustainability are explicitly embedded in market valuation” and require “our financial regulatory bodies to do all they can — which turns out to be a lot — to bring about the adoption of practices and policies that will allocate capital and align portfolios toward sustainable investments that do not depend on carbon and fossil fuels.”

These statements resemble climate activists rather than the individuals who were nominated to lead the supervision of our financial institutions. They call into question whether these individuals could have been trusted to do what is best for our financial system, and therefore the public, over pushing an agenda guided by climate action.

The Senate’s bipartisan opposition to both nominees resulted in them withdrawing their nominations. This sends a clear signal to the Biden administration that it is inappropriate for unelected bureaucrats to use the power of an apolitical institution to advocate or achieve political ends.

As this administration promotes climate policy regulation in the financial system, it cites two sources of so-called “climate-related risk” to justify intervention: physical and transition risks.

Despite climate alarmists’ claim that physical risks from extreme weather events are a threat to financial stability, numerous studies over the past few decades, including those by FDIC and Federal Reserve staff, have found that extreme weather events do not have a significant negative impact on bank performance. A November 2021 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on the subject demonstrated, unsurprisingly, that lenders have the local knowledge to appropriately manage risks from extreme weather events.

Meanwhile, transition risk, the risk of future harm from policymakers not implementing a climate agenda to curb greenhouse gas emissions significantly, is nothing more than a political prediction. And it’s not the role of the Fed to be engaged in trying to figure out the societal shifts of o—r nation.

Put simply, these are manufactured risks with the goal of starving politically disfavored energy producers of financing. I continue to hear more anecdotes of traditional energy companies being turned away by financial institutions, which is unsurprising given the sensitive regulatory relationship and the vast power regulators wield over financial institutions.

Even if such climate supervision never becomes explicit, the climate hysteria rhetoric from this administration’s financial regulators has had, and will continue to have, an immense chilling effect on access to credit for a vast swath of our energy industry.

President Biden should nominate an individual who will respect the independence of the Federal Reserve and work to fulfill the Fed’s congressionally authorized mission — setting U.S. monetary policy to promote maximum employment and stable prices in the U.S. economy.

The Fed should not be used to diminish the role of the energy sector or any other private sector. We need a Federal Reserve focused on its statutory mandate: maximum employment and price stability. Not a political body, unaccountable to voters, indirectly increasing costs at the pump.

Jerry Moran is Kansas's senior U.S. senator and a member of the Senate Banking Committee.

To view online: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/faith-freedom-self-reliance/the-federal-reserve-does-not-get-to-decide-energy-policy