Saturday, March 25, 2017

Today we salute the Medal of Honor recipients, whose valor and sacrifice ensure our country's freedom. Thank you for your service.























The Real Calexit: Californians leaving for lower-cost locales



Activists agitating for California to separate from the United States better start considering the border wall they’ll need to build if successful — to keep their residents in.

An analysis of Census Bureau data by the Sacramento Bee shows that between 2005 and 2015 800,000 working-class Californians on net left for other states. Twenty percent of this net working-class outflow — 156,000 — went to one state in particular: Texas. Meanwhile, new data from the Census Bureau show that six of the 10 fastest-growing counties in the United States are in Texas or Utah; none are in California.

What’s driving this exodus? For decades California has championed policies that supposedly make it a working-class Mecca. For instance, its forthcoming $15 minimum wage — or $30,000 a year full-time — will put even starting employees roughly at the U.S. median personal income level. Texas, on the other hand, does not have the supposedly helpful social programs of California, and its minimum wage is less than half California’s coming standard.

And yet employees are happily leaving for Texas — not to mention Utah and Nevada — because they’d rather have the economic opportunity and affordable cost of living they can’t find in California. The reality is that California’s dramatic minimum wage increase to $15 as well as other workplace regulations are forcing some small businesses and their employees to states like Texas. In these states, their business model is encouraged and their employment is welcomed.

For example, Competitive Edge, a communications firm in San Diego, moved its entire call center operations consisting of 75 jobs to El Paso Texas last year as a result of California’s minimum wage costs. “My employees who will move over there will get a 50 percent pay raise in a sense, because cost of living is lower there,” said Chief Executive John Nienstedt.

Friday, March 24, 2017

Trump announces the official approval of the presidential permit for the #KeystonePipeline



"We’re going to get a better bill because of this”













Health care bill pulled

























“Come down from Trump Tower” not likely to inspire approval for emergency and infrastructure funding.



California Governor Jerry Brown has adopted an interesting approach to requesting fiscal assistance from President Donald Trump.

Legal Insurrection readers will recall that our governor formally requested emergency funding for the storm damage that occurred in the state, which included deterioration of the Oroville Dam that led to a public evacuation of the surrounding area. Brown is also struggling to find monies for his legacy project, the California high speed train, after the Trump administration halted a grant slated for its construction.

Brown traveled to Washington, D.C.to a address these matters directly with various members of the Trump administration. A sensible approach to take in this sitation might have been to politely focus on areas of agreement with the President.


However, since this is Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown, nonsense was the order of the day...

Previously:



Thursday, March 23, 2017

Should California teachers have to pay state income tax? Legislators in California introduce bill to exempt teachers from state income tax





...Senate Bill 807, introduced by Democratic Sens. Henry Stern of Los Angeles and Cathleen Galgiani of Stockton, offers an incentive for teachers to remain in the classroom. After teaching for five years, California educators would be exempt from paying a state income tax. The bill would also provide a tax deduction for the cost of attaining a teaching credential. The Legislature has not yet calculated the estimated loss in tax revenue to the state if the measure is approved....

Here’s how 51 senators can reduce premiums: The secret to repealing ObamaCare’s regulations through reconciliation is buried in the Ryan bill.



As this week’s jousting between Speaker Paul Ryan and the Freedom Caucus makes clear, the Republican Party’s conservative and pragmatic wings don’t always agree. But there’s consensus on this: The American Health Care Act, the GOP’s bill to repeal and replace ObamaCare, doesn’t do enough to make insurance more affordable.

Here’s how Sen. Ted Cruz and Rep. Mark Meadows put it last week in this newspaper’s online edition: “First, we must lower insurance premiums. Nothing matters more. The current House bill would not achieve this, because it doesn’t repeal all of ObamaCare’s insurance mandates.”

The trouble is the Senate’s rules. Republican leaders are counting on passing the AHCA through the budget reconciliation process, which requires only 51 votes, bypassing a filibuster. But for a bill to go through reconciliation, every provision must be budget-related, with clear relevance to either taxing or spending. GOP leaders expect the Senate parliamentarian to rule that repealing ObamaCare’s regulations through the AHCA would have only incidental fiscal consequences.

No Vote Tonight





"This is our long awaited chance to finally get rid of Obamacare," Trump said Monday night at a rally in Kentucky. "I happen to like — a lot —Sen. Rand Paul. I look forward to working with him so we can get this bill passed — in some form," so that Republicans can move on to overhauling the tax system.

Thursday's vote is a key first step, Trump said, but then, "We're going to negotiate, and it is going to go to the Senate, and back and forth."















CNN Breaking News: Unknown people suggest that something that might be bad, or not, may have happened, or may not have happened.

Hirsi Ali: Islamic Terrorists 'Don't Go to Liberals and Say Thank You' for Being PC

Columnist: It Should Be Illegal to Be a Stay-at-Home-Mom with School-age Kids. Yes — she is seriously suggesting this.



A columnist for the Daily Telegraph wrote a piece actually suggesting that Australia make it illegal to be a stay-at-home parent once your kids are old enough to go to school.

“Rather than wail about the supposed liberation in a woman’s right to choose to shun paid employment, we should make it a legal requirement that all parents of children of school-age or older are gainfully employed,” Sarrah Le Marquand writes in a column titled “It should be illegal to be a stay-at-home mum.”...

“Only when the tiresome and completely unfounded claim that ‘feminism is about choice’ is dead and buried (it’s not about choice, it’s about equality) will we consign restrictive gender stereotypes to history,” she writes.... what exactly would Marquand like to see done to the women who tried to defy this policy? Fine them? Imprison them? If they won’t be away from their families by going to work, then they will just have to be away from their families by going to prison! ...

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

BIG BREAKING: Obama Admin Loyalists, Government Actively Sabotaging Trump White House. "Landmines Everywhere"




Great news → The House just passed #HR1101 to make it easier for #smallbiz to offer affordable health care coverage to their employees.





Nunes confirms Obama Administration spied on #TRUMP!

















Trump administration not considering a carbon tax:

Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Nevertheless, #HePersisted









The World Is Not A Nice Place, Horrifying. Every single girl suffered Female Genital Mutilation...

Monday, March 20, 2017

FBI won't commit to investigating Obama officials over FELONY leaks...













Dems are pushing against Judge Gorsuch. We can’t let them stand in the way. Call your Senators Monday.



Senator Dianne Feinstein
Call | 202-224-3841
Tweet | @SenFeinstein
Write | 331 Hart Senate Office Building Washington DC 20510

Senator Kamala Harris
Call | 202-224-3553
Tweet | @KamalaHarris
Write | 112 Hart Senate Office Building Washington DC 20510
___________________

National Federation of Republican Women Urges Senate to 'Get on Board' with Gorsuch, Pass Resolution of Support at Board Meeting

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - More than 150 Republican women leaders from across the nation gathered at the National Federation of Republican Women's (NFRW) spring board meeting in Memphis on March 17-18, where they pledged support for President Donald Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.

The NFRW board unanimously adopted a resolution calling on the U.S. Senate to confirm Gorsuch immediately. Gorsuch, who currently serves on the Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, is known as a champion of religious liberty and is considered to be an originalist in his interpretation of the U.S. Constitution. The Senate Judiciary Committee is set to begin hearings on his nomination next week.

"Neil Gorsuch is eminently qualified to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court as Justice Antonin Scalia's successor," NFRW President Carrie Almond said. "President Trump is setting a course for a renewed, greater America, and the historic selection of Gorsuch to the Supreme Court will help ensure that our constitutional liberties are protected and preserved for generations to come. Republican women are 100 percent behind this nomination, and we urge the U.S. Senate to confirm Judge Gorsuch without delay."

Read the resolution at www.nfrw.org/board-spring2017.

Founded in 1938, the National Federation of Republican Women is the largest and most influential Republican women's group in the nation, proudly representing the party that first made it possible for women to vote in the U.S. The NFRW works to increase the effectiveness and relevance of women in the cause of good government. Our mission remains to recruit and elect Republican candidates, promote the principles of the Republican Party, educate the public, and inform the media.

NEW ANTI-TRUMP GROUPS BOW BEFORE SOROS...



...Any decision by the alliance to recommend financial backing for anti-Trump groups likely will spark conservative outcry.

In a recent Fox News interview, for instance, White House spokesman Sean Spicer called the liberal activism at sometimes rowdy congressional town halls a “very paid, Astroturf-type movement.” Trump himself tweeted that many of the “so-called angry crowds” confronting Republicans were “planned out by liberal activists.”...

California recently approved billions in tax increases meant for education, but investigators have now discovered millions meant for underprivileged kids is actually being spent on other purposes, including staff pay hikes.



Californians pay the top marginal income tax rate in the nation, 13.3 percent. So as we prepare for Tax Day, it is worth considering where all that state tax money is supposed to go and whether or not it actually reaches the students it is intended for.

California’s single largest budget item is education funding. In fact, the state’s budget for K-12 schools and two-year community colleges has increased from $47 billion in 2011 to a projected $73 billion in the 2017-2018 school year.

Last November, voters extended the state’s income tax on high-income earners, which provides billions of dollars for K-12 education and funds the state’s Local Control Funding Formula. The LCFF was designed to give school districts flexibility, more local control and guarantee that the districts with substantial numbers of disadvantaged students receive more state money for those kids....

...it appears that many school districts may be spending money intended for disadvantaged students on district-wide expenses. A new February 2017 report by the Center for Public Integrity notes that as “the LCFF unfolds, complaints are surfacing about dubious expenditures — on school policing or across-the-board staff pay raises that state officials warn should be ‘targeted’ to benefit disadvantaged kids.”...

Tim Allen on being a conservative in Hollywood: "This is like 30s Germany"



..."You gotta be real careful around here, you know. You'll get beat up if you don't believe what everybody believes," Allen replied.
"This is like '30s Germany. I don't know what happened. If you're not part of the group: 'You know what we believe is right,' I go 'Well, I might have a problem with that.’"...

Sunday, March 19, 2017

This is a promising initiative

Top UN diplomat quits after refusing to withdraw report on Israel "apartheid"

Sunday funnies