VIDEO – TARGETING THE SUBURBS – LOSING LOCAL CONTROL TO THE FEDERAL GOVRNMENT
Monday, July 27th, 2020
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If you’re a political junkie, you may remember former Virginia House of Delegates member Bob Marshall. In 2017, his 28-year career in the state legislature was ended by a transgender Democrat backed by $1.2 million in out-of-state money and an army of out-of-state left-wing activists.
Marshall had been in a safe GOP seat. His $300,000 campaign treasury was typically enough to get him into the victory circle on election night. Not THIS time, though.
The leftist slander machine came after Marshall full-force. In his book, he recalls seeing 20 activists from the Human Rights Campaign and SIX Planned Parenthood activists on one day in one precinct of his district campaigning for his opponent.
He was a diehard conservative who had dared to poke the leftist hordes. They were going to swamp him with a tidal wave and make him pay.
Marshall is a renowned social conservative who also happens to be an alum of North Carolina’s Belmont Abbey College. In addition to his time in the Virginia legislature, he spent years as an advisor to conservative warrior and former US Rep. Bob Dornan (R-CA). Yes, believe it or not, California used to actually send conservatives to Washington.
The data was obtained from the county Department of Public Social Services — which is responsible for doling out the benefits — and gives a snapshot of the financial costs associated with sanctuary and related policies.
The sanctuary county of Los Angeles is an illegal immigration epicenter, with the largest concentration of any county in the nation, according to a study from the Migration Policy Institute. The county also allows illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.
Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow who has written extensive studies on poverty and illegal immigration, said the costs represent “the tip of the iceberg.”
FORBESNorth Carolina Is Still Open For Business
by Patrick Gleason April 27, 2016
Patrick Gleason is director of state affairs at Americans for Tax Reform and a senior fellow at the Beacon Center of Tennessee, a free market think tank based in Nashville. Follow Patrick on Twitter: @PatrickMGleason
North Carolina has been generating national headlines over passage of House Bill 2, the new state law blocking a local ordinance passed by Charlotte earlier this year that allows people to use public restrooms assigned to the gender with which they identify. Opponents have criticized the new state law as discriminatory, while proponents assert that it was necessary for public safety. A number of corporate leaders have spoken out against the law, and critics point to business community opposition to HB 2 as proof that the law will hurt the state economically.
Regardless of one’s opinion on HB 2, it cannot overshadow or remotely counteract what North Carolina has done legislatively over the last five years to become one of the most attractive places in the country to do business, invest, live, raise a family, and retire. Since Republicans took control of the state legislature for the first time in over a century in 2010, North Carolina legislators and Gov. Pat McCrory (R), who was elected in 2012, have enacted a collection of policy reforms that is more impressive from a free market and limited government standpoint than what any other state accomplished during that time, with the arguable exception of Wisconsin.
Wealthy donors on left launch new plan to wrest back control in the states
Washington Post Matea Gold April 12 at 9:00 PM
SAN FRANCISCO — A cadre of wealthy liberal donors aims to pour tens of millions of dollars into rebuilding the left’s political might in the states, racing to catch up with a decades-old conservative effort that has reshaped statehouses across the country.
The plan embraced by the Democracy Alliance, an organization that advises some of the Democrats’ top contributors, puts an urgent new focus on financing groups that can help the party regain influence in time for the next congressional redistricting process, after the 2020 elections. The blueprint approved by the alliance board calls on donors to help expand state-level organizing and lobbying for measures addressing climate change, voting rights and economic inequality.
“People have gotten a wake-up call,” Gara LaMarche, the alliance’s president, said in an interview. “The right is focused on the state level, and even down-ballot, and has made enormous gains. We can’t have the kind of long-term progressive future we want if we don’t take power in the states.”
The five-year initiative, called 2020 Vision, will be discussed this week at a private conference being held at a San Francisco hotel for donors who participate in the Democracy Alliance. Leading California Democrats are scheduled to make appearances, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Attorney General Kamala Harris. The alliance, which does not disclose its members, plans to make some of the events available to reporters via a webcast.
The gathering coincides with the long-awaited launch of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential bid, infusing the event with buzz about the 2016 race. Clinton, who was invited to attend, will instead be on her debut campaign swing. But her campaign chairman, John Podesta, who has worked closely with the alliance, is set to participate in events celebrating its decade-long history. (more…)
Mr. Skoning is a labor and employment lawyer in Chicago
Like millions of other Americans, I have spent cautiously, paid bills on time and maintained a strict budget. That doesn’t make us heroes. But it does mean we have exercised common sense, which has been sorely lacking among the politicians in my home state of Illinois.
The Land of Lincoln has accrued a $111 billion unfunded liability for government workers’ pensions—up 75% from five years ago. There is an additional $56 billion of unfunded debt to cover health benefits for the state’s retirees. Illinois today is already spending more of its general fund on pensions than on K-12 education. One in four tax dollars pays for its retired workers’ benefits. Last year the state had to defer paying $7 billion owed to contractors. All this after Democrats in 2011 raised income taxes and corporate taxes by 67% and 30%, respectively.
It’s getting embarrassing to admit that I’m a citizen of such a deadbeat state.
It is no wonder that 850,000 people have left Illinois for other states in the past 15 years, according to the Illinois Policy Institute. Or that Illinois has become one of the most business unfriendly states in the country (40th in a recent Forbes survey). (more…)
The Democrats who were caught standing on the beach last week when the GOP’s 40-foot wave washed over them are now explaining why it wasn’t their fault.
No. 1: It’s not us; it’s what’s his name, the unpopular president. (And that awful Valerie Jarrett. )
No. 2: It was a midterm election with a bad map; we’ll be back in 2016. Hillary to the rescue.
Official Obama Explanation : My ideas and policies are fine; I just have a messaging problem.
USS Democrat Captain Nancy Pelosi : “There was an ebbing, an ebb tide, for us.”
This all reminds me of the classic film satire, “I’m All Right, Jack,” about the dying days of the British trade-union movement. When an idealistic young factory worker shows the efficiency gains possible from actually using a forklift, the union steward calls a strike. Three guesses which Democrats in the U.S. version would play the roles of Peter Sellers, Terry-Thomas and Margaret Rutherford.
A few Democratic voices, mostly party professionals whose job is winning elections, have said the donkey herd that just ran off the cliff needs to rethink its sense of direction. No one is listening to them. Most Democrats, especially the left that took control of the party in 2008, deny any problem. And well they might. There is no Plan B.
The Democrats’ standard political model is generally attributed to FDR confidante Harry Hopkins : “We will spend and spend, and tax and tax, and elect and elect.” Hopkins denied ever using these words, but the formula lived on.
Tax, spend and elect just slammed into the mountain. (more…)
The first article of Bill Ayers ( Weather Underground) praising the New York Democratic mayoral candidate, Bill DeBlasio leads into the second article of how DeBlasio supported Nicaragua’s Sandinista military government in the 1980’s. The third article regards DeBlasio’s position on New York City’s charter schools. If you have friends who will be voting in this New York mayoral race, please share this information to them. Nancy
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Notable & Quotable
Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers praises New York Democratic mayoral candidate Bill DeBlasio.
Oct. 17, 2013Weather Underground co-founder Bill Ayers talks to New York magazine about New York Democratic mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio, Oct. 15:
Q: What should NYC voters make of de Blasio’s time in Nicaragua [with the Sandanistas]?
A: They should say that he stood up for humanity. He stood up for human rights against the blind imperial monster. That was the right thing to do then and it’s the right thing to do now. . . .
Q: What about education reform? Are de Blasio’s ideas about universal pre-kindergarten viable?
A: In a decent and humane society, universal preschool education would be a given and so would family leave for all parents, not just mothers. The fact that he at least leans away from the billionaire agenda of privatizing the public space is a terrific thing.
THE WALL STREET JOURNALBill de Blasio, From Managua to ManhattanOctober 7, 2013Nicaragua’s Marxist regime was an inspiration to New York’s leading mayoral candidateThe recent revelation that New York City mayoral candidate Bill de Blasio supported Nicaragua’s Sandinista military government in the 1980s is a reminder of the high cost Latin America pays for being the playground of the American left. It should also further enlighten New Yorkers as to the politics of the man who is the front runner in the race.The ideas of the hard left don’t sell very well in the U.S., so collectivists take them south of the Rio Grande where they believe the ground is more fertile. Their arrogant paternalism ignores the rights of the people they pretend to redeem. By 1988, when Mr. de Blasio went to Nicaragua to do social work in support of the Marxist revolutionary cause, the Sandinistas had been running the country for almost a decade. Their brutality was well-documented. Mr. de Blasio, who also did fundraising for supporters of the military government, either didn’t know about Sandinista repression or he didn’t care. (more…)