Garland Gets Grilled
Attorney General Merrick Garland appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee today to answer for his administration of the Department of Justice.
The hearing got off to a rough start when the Democrat chairman of the committee, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, raked Garland over the coals for failing to respond for months to issues he and other senators have raised over the course of the year.
But, as Rep. Jim Jordan noted last week, Garland issued his infamous memo directing the FBI to investigate parents at school board meetings just five days after the National School Boards Association (NSBA) sent its outrageous letter labeling concerned parents as "domestic terrorists."
Members of Congress get ignored, but left-wing special interest groups get special treatment. That tells you everything you need to know about the politicization of Joe Biden's Justice Department.
Kudos to Sen. John Kennedy! He blasted Attorney General Garland for not even investigating the allegations made in the NSBA letter before he issued his memo intended to chill the free speech of parents.
I am pleased to report that House Republicans are demanding Garland withdraw his memo siccing the FBI on parents, especially now that the NSBA has apologized for that obscene letter. The National School Boards Association may be apologizing, but the Biden gang is not.
Conservatives must keep up the pressure on this critical issue at every level! The left is all in on indoctrinating our children with insane Marxist, racist and anti-American ideologies.
Left-wing politicians publicly declare that parents should have no say in what the schools we pay for teach our children. That's outrageous! It should be disqualifying for public office. But they mean it.
So, parents must clean house. They must clear out radical ideologues in their local schools, school boards and their state legislatures.
They should demand that educators accurately teach our history. They should demand that teachers in classrooms know that America was founded in 1776, not 1619. They should demand that they support free markets, free speech and the freedoms this country was founded on.
That's not too much to expect from the "public servants" who are paid with our tax dollars!
Misinformation & Fear
As the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, you're entitled to your own opinion, but not to your own set of facts. And facts are especially important when it comes to matters of public policy.
I raise this issue because the left-wing Washington Post just slapped one of the candidates for governor of Virginia with its worst rating of Four Pinocchios for lying about COVID.
He has repeatedly grossly exaggerated the severity of COVID in order to justify his demands for more big government mandates and to attack his opponent who opposes mandates.
For example, the candidate recently claimed that there were 8,000 new COVID cases in Virginia, when in fact there were 2,000. He said that more than 1,100 children were in intensive care when only 35 children were hospitalized, and not all of them were in ICU beds.
But this is not an isolated incident. Whether it's Virginia, California or Joe Biden in Washington, D.C., the left has been exploiting the pandemic from Day One.
Why is the left so invested in fear? It's a deliberate strategy. If you can instill fear in a society, that's when people give up their liberty, and the left's whole agenda is based on fear.
The left insists that you have to completely change your way of life -- give up your car, your gas stove, that steak you enjoy, and pay higher electricity bills -- because the planet is going to burn up from global warming caused by people like you.
The left insists that America is a racist society. White supremacists are lurking around every corner. You must let them indoctrinate your children and prepare for the new America that will bow to globalism.
The left insists that you must wear a mask and get vaccinated. Dare to disagree with the left's dictates and you can lose your job. (Here and here.) How's that for "tolerance"?
On and on and on it goes.
The left wants a cowering population. That's the true meaning of the mobs in the streets in 2020. What were they trying to do? They were trying to instill fear in the minds of anyone who didn't accept their "social justice" demands. That's what Antifa is all about – disagree with the left and they'll beat you up.
Any political movement based on fear and demanding more power is dangerous and evil. "Vote for us or they'll put y'all back in chains." That's what Mr. "Nice Guy" Joe Biden said about Mitt Romney.
No, Joe Biden is not a nice guy. He's a tool of very serious people who mean to control your life.
Democrat Disarray
Democrats are scrambling to lock down a deal on Joe Biden's signature legislative agenda. Biden wants an agreement before he leaves for a major global climate change summit that starts Sunday because a big part of his agenda is a big down payment on the Green New Deal.
But Democrats can't even agree on what to call it. Sometimes it's the "Build Back Better" plan. Sometimes it's the massive $3.5 trillion "human infrastructure" or "social spending" plan. Sometimes it's the "reconciliation bill."
Whatever they call it, however they package it, it's bad. Not only is it full of socialist spending and extreme environmental policies, it's also packed with quasi-amnesty provisions.
But as I noted recently, the only thing stopping Democrats from getting it done is Democrat disagreements. It seemed Senate Democrats at least had an agreement on how to pay for it – a modified wealth tax on the unrealized capital gains of billionaires.
I'm not suggesting that conservatives should fall on their swords for 700 billionaires. That doesn't make any sense. But as a principle, they should fight the idea that the government can tax a gain you haven't realized yet.
Here's what most Senate Democrats want to do: Suppose someone buys stock for $100 and it doubles to $200. You've made an unrealized gain of $100. You don't actually have that extra $100 cash yet, because you haven't sold it. Thus, the term "unrealized gain."
In no way, shape or form is it income. But Democrats want to tax that $100 gain – even though the stock hasn't been sold yet. This idea would likely force the sale of stocks just to pay the tax on the unrealized gain.
And it's not limited to just stocks. They want to tax business investments, real estate and other assets, maybe even works of art.
Again, I'm not suggesting billionaires can't afford to pay more. But this is a crazy way to go about it, and it's likely unconstitutional.
As it turns out, not all Democrats are on board with this approach. Sen. Joe Manchin said he "didn't like it," adding that it was "targeting different people" and "very convoluted." He's right about that!
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, who is in charge of writing tax bills in the House, doesn't like the idea either.
And the disagreements don't end there. There are renewed skirmishes between the Democrat Party's warring factions over exactly what priorities will be included in the final bill.