Ukraine’s Plan to Manufacture US M16 Combat Rifles Hits a Snag Over Ammunition

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Kalashnikov assault rifles are among the most iconic symbols of the Soviet military.

Weapons such as the AK-47, the AKM, the AK-74, and the AK-103 are ubiquitous reminders of the Red Army’s legacy among the modern militaries of former Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet client states.

Also, the contemporary, worldwide use of Kalashnikovs by terrorists and insurgent groups offers grim evidence of the widespread proliferation of Soviet weapons during and after the Cold War.

On Jan. 3, as part of a long-term plan to adopt NATO military standards, Ukraine took a step toward ditching this Soviet military carryover.

Ukroboronprom, Ukraine’s nationalized defense industry conglomerate, announced a partnership agreement between the Ukrainian defense manufacturer Ukroboronservis and the U.S. company Aeroscraft to produce in Ukraine a variant of the U.S. M16 assault rifle.

“The M16 project was conceived some time ago, as the Ukrainian armed forces, border guards, and National Guard will with time switch to NATO standards,” Aeroscraft founder and CEO Igor Pasternak said during a Jan. 3 press conference in Kyiv.

The M16 variant Ukraine will produce is called the WAC47.

The catch: The WAC47 uses Soviet ammunition, not the standard NATO 5.56×45 mm cartridge.

However, the Ukrainian production of Soviet-caliber M16s plan is a first step toward adopting NATO military standards—a goal Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko directed the military to achieve by 2020.

The WAC47 can be modified to use NATO ammunition, and “switching calibers” was one of the reasons Ukroboronprom listed to justify its decision to build its M16 variant.

“For our country and the Ukrainian army, M16 production in Ukraine is a real step towards Euro-Atlantic structures,” Ukroboronprom said in a statement published to its website.

By the time Ukraine fully adopts NATO military standards, its military will have a stockpile of M16s that can be modified to use NATO ammunition.

According to Ukroboronprom, interoperability problems Ukrainian troops have faced while on joint operations with NATO troops spurred the decision to produce the American assault rifle.

“Ukrainian soldiers are already participating in joint maneuvers with NATO,” Ukroboronprom said on its website. “And in each case, one of the problems is logistics.”

Ukrainian troops deployed to support NATO’s mission in Afghanistan, for example, had to borrow German assault rifles from Lithuanian troops due to ammunition incompatibility issues.

There is no standard assault rifle among NATO countries, only an agreement to use the same caliber small arms ammunition. NATO Standardization Agreement No. 4172 sets the standard small arms caliber at 5.56×45 mm.

In theory, troops from NATO countries could swap ammunition in combat, even if they use different weapons.

NATO Standards

The M16 became the standard infantry weapon for the U.S. military in 1967. U.S. versions of the weapon use the standard NATO cartridge.

However, the WAC47 (the M16 version to be produced by Ukraine) is designed for 7.62×39 mm ammunition used by Soviet weapons such as the AK-47 and the AKM assault rifles.

Ukraine plans to adopt NATO military standards by 2020. Consequently, the Ukrainian weapons will have to be retroactively modified to use NATO ammunition.

According to weapons experts consulted by The Daily Signal, the WAC47 can be modified to take the NATO 5.56×45 mm cartridge, but it might be cost prohibitive.

“Rechambering a rifle for a cartridge different than it was originally designed for can be done in some circumstances,” Dakota Wood, senior research fellow for defense programs at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.

“A lot of expense that simply implies it would be cheaper to buy new rifles designed for common NATO ammo,” Wood said.

In order to modify Ukrainian M16s to use NATO ammunition, the bolt and barrel will have to be replaced, Brian Summers, a U.S. Army veteran and weapons expert, told The Daily Signal.

“The only items that would have to be replaced are what I would describe as items that would normally be replaced based on use,” Summers said. “The magazines are ammo specific, and would have to be changed to the specific caliber.”

The M16 rifle has two main components—an upper and a lower receiver. According to Summers, for a Soviet-caliber M16 to use NATO ammunition, only the upper receiver has to be modified by replacing the bolt and barrel.

The M16 weapons system is “one of the most versatile weapon platforms in configuration and caliber,” Summers said. “Your troops essentially can train on one platform and when switching over to a new caliber do not need to be retrained in a new weapons system … Core of the platform, lower receiver, does not change and any optics can be moved.”

In the 1990s, Colt Defense LLC, the original M16 producer, produced a special civilian version of the military assault rifle designed to use Soviet 7.62×39 mm ammunition.

“I own this variant and if I want to fire 5.56 mm [NATO ammunition], I simply switch the upper receiver with 5.56 mm bolt and mags,” Summers said. “Two minutes to change.”

The Ukrainian M16 deal is not the first time a foreign weapon modified to use Soviet ammunition has been mass produced in Ukraine.

Ukrainian weapons manufacturer RPC Fort produces a version of the Israeli Tavor assault rifle, which the Israel Defense Forces chose to replace the M16.

Israeli Tavors use standard NATO 5.56×45 mm ammunition. The Ukrainian variant, however, uses Soviet 5.45×39 mm ammunition, but can be modified to use NATO cartridges.

Soviet Surplus

The Ukrainian military is embroiled in a nearly three-year-old proxy war against pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars in the Donbas, Ukraine’s embattled southeastern territory on the border with Russia.

Since the war began in early 2014, Ukraine has embarked on a crash course to rebuild, resupply, and modernize its military.

According to Ukrainian news reports, pro-Russian separatists captured Ukraine’s only small arms ammunition manufacturer, the Luhansk cartridge plant, in 2014.

Since then, the Ukrainian military has relied on Soviet-era stockpiles to supply its troops in combat.

In June 2016, a group of top Ukrainian military officials announced a plan to develop domestic ammunition manufacturing.

“The ammunition reserves inherited by our country from the Soviet Army … are not unlimited, while their significant part has been thoughtlessly recycled or sold at a time when no one was thinking that we would be engaged in a war,” Oleksandr Turchynov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, said, according to Ukrainian news reports.

“This is a crucial large-scale task, and we have no other option but to implement it as soon as possible, for our country’s security directly depends on it,” Turchynov said.

Ukroboronprom’s 2016-2017 product catalogue does not include 7.62×39 mm or 5.45×39 mm ammunition—the two calibers most widely used by Ukraine’s armed forces.

According to arms experts, Ukraine currently has about 1 million AK-74 assault rifles and RPK-74 light machine guns in service. Both weapons use Soviet 5.45×39 mm ammunition.

NATO Standards

On May 20, 2016, Poroshenko, Ukraine’s president, signed a comprehensive military reform plan called the Strategic Defense Bulletin.

The document calls for a total revamp of Ukraine’s military doctrine, training, and operations to ultimately achieve the “full membership in NATO.”

“We have finally abandoned the system of the Soviet army and started to build truly efficient armed forces,” Poroshenko said. “It is very important for me, because it is evidence that Ukraine and NATO speak the same language and understand each other well.”

The Strategic Defense Bulletin directs the Ukrainian military to adopt NATO standards by 2020. It also singles out Russia as the No. 1 national security threat.

Ukrainian M16 production is a step—albeit a largely symbolic one—toward divorcing Ukraine from its Soviet military past by ditching Soviet weapons systems, thereby inching the country toward NATO interoperability.

“Every country that has teared itself away from Russia’s orbit, went or is going through this difficult stage, taking many years and demanding great effort,” Ukroboronprom, the Ukrainian defense industry conglomerate, said in a statement published to its website.

Resale Value

Ukraine will produce M16s for use by its armed forces, as well as for export. The deal, therefore, is a piece of a larger plan to reform and expand Ukraine’s defense industry.

Joint ventures with foreign partners is a key part of reforming Ukraine’s defense industry.

“Weapon manufacture in accordance with NATO standards is an important part of the development and reform of the Ukrainian defense industry,” said Serhiy Mykytyuk, head of Ukroboronservis, according to a statement posted to the Ukroboronprom website.

Aeroscraft, the American firm partnering with Ukroboronservis to produce M16s, is a California-based aviation company specializing in lighter-than-air aircraft—including airships intended for U.S. military use.

Pasternak, Aeroscraft’s founder and CEO, was born in Soviet Kazakhstan and founded his first company, Aeros Ltd., in Ukraine. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1994, according to a biography published on Aeroscraft’s website.

Ukrainian officials also want to make Ukraine one of the world’s top arms exporters.

“Ukraine is rapidly increasing its military capacities,” Poroshenko wrote in the introduction to the 2016-2017 Ukroboronprom product catalogue. “To become among the world’s top-five arms exporters is our strategic objective.”

In 2014, Ukraine was among the world’s top ten arms exporting nations, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. (For more from the author of “Ukraine’s Plan to Manufacture US M16 Combat Rifles Hits a Snag Over Ammunition” please click HERE)

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Russia Derangement Syndrome. Let’s Focus on REAL Threats to American Security

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The current Russia “debate” is counter-productive. Yes, Russia meddled in our elections, but Russia did not determine the result. Hillary Clinton’s loss is on her, not Putin. This level of concern from the world’s sole superpower only inflates Putin’s power, and — as the citizens of Aleppo can attest — that power will not be a force for good.

Let’s get a few things straight about Russia. First, it is a mafia basket case in precipitous decline economically, culturally, and demographically. Most of it resembles the Third World. After the Cold War, American military personnel returning from Russia were typically incredulous that such a backward place had caused such fear in the West. It has only gone downhill since.

In 1985, the Soviet Union had 275 million people, a $2.2 trillion economy, and 13 treaty allies. Today, the Russian Federation has 144 million citizens. Even though it is one of the world’s largest producers of oil, it’s economy has shrunk to just $1.3 trillion, putting it on par with Spain (a country with 46 million people and no oil). Last year, Russian poverty reached 15.7 percent. And most of its former allies are now part of NATO, and Russia makes its bed with powerhouses Belarus and Armenia.

But Putin wants you to imagine Russia in the big, bad boy of 1980s Cold War USSR. Think “Red Dawn” or “The Hunt for Red October.” In reality, putting today’s Russia in those movies would be like Jack Ryan hunting rogue Uruguayan submarines — Russia’s nearest rival on the U.N.’s Human Development Index.

Sure, Russia is an existential threat to Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine, not us. But Russia has nuclear weapons, you say? Two words: North Korea.

Second, put into perspective the meme that Trump is pro-Russian. I am sure Russians cheered his election, not because they succeeded in installing a Manchurian Candidate in the White House, but because they think they have Trump’s number. That’s on Trump to disprove.

Clinton would have had difficulty making that case after cashing all those Clinton Foundation checks from Russia.

President Obama proudly conjured the “reset button.” And who can forget President Bush peering into Putin’s soul? Both look like fools because of it.

As an aside, Vice President-elect Pence might want to take notes if he wants to succeed Trump. Putin always prefers the party out of power. Always. He offers the illusion of good relations after the White House changes parties. If the Trump administration foolishly makes the same Faustian Bargain as Obama and Bush, Putin’s shenanigans will target him. Ask Clinton.

Third, be honest about what Russia did. Yes, Russia hacked the DNC and the personal emails of Clinton, Inc. cronies. Russia released it through their agent Julian Assange. But the idea that John Podesta’s leaked emails trumped the will of 300+ million people is ludicrous.

The irony of the situation is that Putin was reacting to polls just like everyone else. He likely saw Clinton as inevitable. As such, the leaks were about damaging her before she entered office, not electing Trump. They were to ensure U.S. policy toward Russia remained feather-pillow soft in the event Russia investments in the Clinton Foundation did not pan out.

In the near term, the most practical thing is to be honest about Russia. Putin spent hundreds of millions of dollars to discredit a losing presidential candidate — all while Russian babushkas must save pennies to buy food.

Insufficient though Putin’s effort may have been, he still messed with America. That comes with a price, but determining that price should not distract us from the important stuff.

Virtually the entire Democratic Party seems obsessed with Russia, forgetting its pride in Obama’s Seinfeldian snark to Mitt Romney about Russia in 2012. “The 1980s are calling to ask for their foreign policy back.” Indeed.

The medium-term solution is to support regional allies like Estonia, Georgia, and Ukraine, so they can handle Russia for us. They’re more than capable if we back them properly. Look at alliances through the prism of leverage. You will find them quite useful, especially if we want to clear our docket of nettlesome bullies like Putin and deal with the threats that matter.

The long-term solution is to atomize and reorganize our dysfunctional national security structure, but that is another discussion.

The new administration needs to focus on advancing a conservative foreign policy agenda that tackles the threats facing this country, chief among them radical Islam. An administration consumed with Russia will not have the time.

By all means, point out that Russia meddled. Punish them. Better yet, help our allies do it. But be honest about it, and quit obsessing about Russia. It just encourages Putin’s sad grasp for unearned relevance. We have more important things to be doing. (For more from the author of “Russia Derangement Syndrome. Let’s Focus on REAL Threats to American Security” please click HERE)

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While America Was Watching Football, the FBI Dropped These 300 Clinton-Related Docs

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While the rest of America was preoccupied with the NFL Wildcard Playoffs and the Golden Globes ceremony Sunday evening, the FBI released another batch of Hillary Clinton documents, completely unannounced. The 300 items contained information regarding the federal investigation into the form Democratic presidential candidate’s private email server and her questionable handling of classified material.

Wikileaks was the first to announce the news via Twitter:

According to Wikileaks, the documents were released at 22:37 p.m. UTC on the Bureau’s Vault website, where it publishes information regarding Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Sunday marked the fifth of such Clinton document dumps on behalf of the FBI.

The Daily Caller’s Chuck Ross conducted a preliminary perusal of the 300 documents, many of which appear to be emails between State Department officials and federal law enforcement disputing whether certain emails sent over Clinton’s private server contained “classified” information.

From the Daily Caller:

In one April 27, 2015 email, an FBI official wrote to other officials that they were “about to get drug into an issue on classification” of Clinton’s emails. The official, whose name is redacted, said that the State Department was “forum shopping,” or seeking a favorable opinion on the classification issue by asking different officials to rate emails as unclassified.

The emails also appear to show that State Department officials made multiple special requests for the FBI to reduce its classification of certain emails found on Clinton’s.

More from the Daily Caller:

The FBI release also includes an email from the attorney of Bryan Pagliano, the Hillary Clinton State Department aide who set up and managed her secret email server. In the email, Mark MacDougall, Pagliano’s lawyer, informed the FBI that Pagliano would decline the bureau’s request for an investigation. Pagliano would eventually meet with the FBI in December, but only after receiving limited immunity from the Department of Justice.

Sunday’s low-profile email dump proves that the Hillary Clinton email saga is far from over, and that the FBI has some explaining to do. (For more from the author of “While America Was Watching Football, the FBI Dropped These 300 Clinton-Related Docs” please click HERE)

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The Sickening Nature of Anti-Israel Hatred

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When is a cold-blooded murderer hailed as an international hero? When he’s a radical Islamic terrorist who slaughters Jews.

It is gut-wrenching to watch the video footage of a truck ramming into a crowd of Israelis in East Jerusalem, killing four of them and injuring at least 15 more. Three of the victims were female soldiers, aged 20, 20 and 22. The fourth victim was an Israeli man, also just 20-years-old. All of them had dreams of a bright future, a future none of them will live to see.

Israel is again in mourning.

But there is celebration in the Jew-hating, Israel-despising world. It doesn’t get any better than slaughtering Israelis — especially Israeli soldiers — in cold blood.

As for the truck driver, a religious Palestinian Muslim who was shot dead by police, his sister said “the family was ‘thankful’ for the attack and called her brother’s death ‘the most beautiful martyrdom.’”

Other Palestinian Muslims reacted similarly, as reported by Michael Qazini on the Daily Wire, noting, “These weren’t spontaneous celebrations by a few bad actors. Praise for the terrorist came from the top of the Palestinian leadership chain, placing a rubber stamp on a Jew-hating culture of death.” (See the article for details.)

Accordingly, Hamas, representing the most extreme side of Palestinian leadership, lauded the truck attack as “heroic.” (Yes, it takes a real hero to back up a truck and run over your victims. What courage.)

Similarly, Al Quds [Jerusalem] News posted a report, “Live from where the heroic incident took place in Occupied Jerusalem.” (See the link for more examples of Palestinian celebration, including passing out sweets in the streets.)

But this shouldn’t surprise us at all, since this is same leadership that names children’s schools after Palestinian terrorists who died in the course of their murderous acts, hailing them as martyrs. (Last October, the Palestinian Authority “dedicated a new school to the mastermind of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre …”)

This is the same leadership that pays salaries to imprisoned Palestinian terrorists at a rate up to four-times the average Palestinian salary. This is the same leadership that sponsors summer camps for children where they learn the requisite skills for slaughtering Jews, also naming the camps after famous terrorists.

Over on the Iranian-run Press TV Facebook page, the hatred flowed freely, with a good number of commenters justifying the slaughter because these Israelis were in East Jerusalem, which they consider to be an illegal occupation. (Wait a minute. Didn’t the Obama administration just affirm that in the UN Security Resolution it allegedly helped craft?)

Comments on the Press TV page included:

“Sow the wind, reap the storm. Occupiers have no rights, only the obligation to go back to where they came from. The Israeli regime is responsible for the deaths of its citizens in this instance. There will never be peace on stolen land.”
“Palestinians have every right to self-defense. If they find IOF on their roads they must repeat this and should be encouraged.”
“I wish and pray there will be repetition of this incident at much much bigger scale which will wipe out brutal israel from world map, Insha Allah [God willing].”
“Good job … because its Israel problem killing innocent Palestinians every day no one criticise why…”
“Tonight I’m very happy after watching video, and I especially order for mutton biryani.”
“Hahaha look at the IDF soldiers. Muppets. I don’t support terrorism but at least this one did not kill any innocent woman or child and went straight for their killers!”
“Killing an oppressor is not being an extremist. These were occupation soldiers and were in the process of going to commit atrocities in Palestine. When the French resisted German occupation it was not called terrorism.”
“It is so good to hear this News.”
“Good work ever done by a true Muslim.”
“BWAHAHAHA!”
“Kill them all.”
“Deserved.”
“The Zionists been ramming tents and makeshift shelters of innocent Palestinians for the past 70 years no problem, now that some Zionist soldiers rammed by Palestinian is good thing to happen.”
“One sure remedy — ‘Get out of Palestine’ — back to your Ghettos.”

I have no doubt that there are Palestinians who have been mistreated by Israeli soldiers and for that reason, harbor intense hatred against the people of Israel. As a friend of Israel, I say: Let the injustices be exposed and rectified. And certainly, many Palestinians are shocked and grieved over the death of these young people.

I also recognize that there are right-wing extremists in Israel who have engaged in terrorist acts against Palestinians (like the infamous Baruch Goldstein), and I know that some of these extremists consider Palestinians (and even all non-Jews) to be less human, even saying that the only good Arab is a dead Arab.

But this represents the extreme fringe of the extreme fringe, and if an Israeli rammed a truck into a crowd of young Palestinians, there would be national outrage in Israel (and the worldwide Jewish community), the government would immediately and unconditionally condemn the killer and look to arrest any accomplices, and there would be a sense of shame rather than glee through the country.

But when Jewish blood is shed by a radical Islamic terrorist — in particular Israeli blood, especially the blood of an Israeli soldier — then celebration erupts among Jew-haters worldwide.

Time to pass out the candy and rejoice.

This is beyond sick. (For more from the author of “The Sickening Nature of Anti-Israel Hatred” please click HERE)

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Retired IRS Special Agent: Here’s How to Get Mexico to Pay for the Wall

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The Washington Post published an article Friday reporting that American taxpayers will have to pay for the promised wall between Mexico and the southern U.S. border, despite President-elect Donald Trump’s earlier claims that Mexico would be forced to fund the project.

There is still a way that Mexico could pay for the wall, however.

How Illegal Immigrants Receive Hefty Tax Returns

Congress, through the Internal Revenue Code (IRC), allows illegal immigrants working in the United States to claim their relatives living in Mexico and Canada, or illegally in the Unitesd States, as dependents on their tax return, thus reducing their tax liability. Amending the IRC to allow only U.S. Citizens (USC’s) or legal residents to be claimed as dependents would likely generate billions of dollars in additional tax revenue which could then be earmarked for a border fence between Mexico and the United States.

Here’s how the system current works. An illegal immigrant living in the United States can file a Form W-7 through an “Accepting Agent” (usually a return preparer) with the IRS to get an Individual Tax Identification Number (ITIN). He then can get ITIN’s for his relatives living in Mexico or illegally in the United States.

When he files his Form 1040, he slaps his ITIN on the front of the return and attaches his Form W-2 showing his wages. The Form W-2 usually shows the social security number that he has purchased, stolen, or borrowed because he was ineligible to work in the Unites States. He then loads up his return with the ITIN’s of his dependents either living illegally in the United States or residing in Mexico. These dependents don’t have to be the taxpayer’s children. They can be his parents, uncles, and distant relatives such as nieces and nephews. The taxpayer’s 2016 taxable income is reduced by $4,050 for each dependent.

Crazy True Story

Here’s a true example. IRS special agents raided a one-person tax preparation business in a small Wisconsin town in 2014. Over the course of seven years, the owner filed 10,437 applications for ITIN’s on behalf of her clients. From the 2011 through 2014 filing season, her clients racked up over $34 million in refunds from the 9,489 returns she filed with the IRS. Her clients received an average refund of $3,509 even though 69 percent of the listed an ITIN holder as the primary taxpayer and about 75 percent of the claimed dependents had ITIN’s.

Translated into English, this means that 69 percent of her taxpayers were illegal immigrants working in the United States who got an annual check for about $3,600 from Uncle Sam after claiming other illegals (or relatives in either Mexico or Canada) as dependents. During an undercover operation, this return preparer counseled her client (the conversation was conducted in Spanish) to find children in Mexico to claim so he could get a tax refund instead of owing money to the IRS.

IRS Mismanagement

Now, matters are getting worse. Illegal immigrants who want to claim bogus dependents operate on the honor system because Congress decimated the IRS’s enforcement budget. This move was made in response, I believe, to former IRS director Lois Lerner’s pleading of the 5th, lost IRS emails, crashed IRS hard drives, a few million dollars spent on a Disney Land boondoggle for IRS management, and videos showing high ranking IRS executives practicing a line dance or parodying a Star Trek episode. (Note that they mix the bridge of the original Star Trek with the Next Generation uniforms. Atrocious.)

The IRS does not publish statistics on the tax revenue lost by allowing illegal immigrants to claim other illegal immigrants, or people residing in Mexico, as dependents. However, the example provided above shows that just one return preparer can cost the Treasury $34 million in a few short years. What we do know is that the IRS estimates that the Tax Gap (the amount of tax revenue that should be collected but isn’t) stands at $468 billion per year.

If President-Elect Trump wants Mexico to pay for the wall, I suggest he sign a revision of the Tax Code which eliminates the dependency exemption for persons residing in Mexico and illegal immigrants from Mexico residing in the Unites States. Doing so would both fulfill a campaign promise and reduce the Tax Gap.

By the way, the return preparer in my example was never indicted, though hope springs eternal. (For more from the author of “Retired IRS Special Agent: Here’s How to Get Mexico to Pay for the Wall” please click HERE)

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Meryl Streep Slams Trump’s Deplorables: ‘Let Them Eat Wrestling’

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Last night at the Golden Globes in her speech denouncing Donald Trump and his voters, Meryl Streep reminded millions of Americans why we rejected Hillary Clinton, her party, and the media elites that tried to stuff Clinton down our throat. It’s also why Hollywood keeps making expensive politicized failures that choke at the box office, like the sordid anti-gun potboiler Miss Sloane.

We’ve suffered through eight long years of Obama’s preening, class-president speeches and empty, “virtuous” gestures. We have seen him and his designated successor fawned on by tame (debate-question-leaking) Ivy-schooled reporters and gorgeous, empty-headed celebrities. We know perfectly well that America’s media and political elites consider us the great unwashed, which is why they’ve been fire-hosing us for decades with toxic solvents like anti-male feminism, anti-Western multiculturalism, and anti-family hedonism.

And we’ve learned a thing or two. We’ve learned that pretty people who are talented at acting are pretty good at saying things which they know aren’t true — and doing so convincingly. After all, that’s their chosen craft. We’ve also learned how to recognize and dismantle the Elitist Lie 2.0.

That’s a whirring little time-bomb that lefties like to plant in every “narrative” they get their hands on, from Islamic terror attacks (they blame the truck, the bomb, or the gun — whose motives it is “too soon to determine”) to the kidnapping and torture of a handicapped Trump supporter (just kids being kids, where are their parents?).

Streep reached into her goodie bag and produced her own Elitist Lie 2.0, which she tossed out to America like a trinket we should treasure. This device has three active components:

1. A Phony Claim of Victimhood to Seize the Moral High Ground

In Streep’s speech she managed to cast as persecuted victims a roomful of fantastically overpaid actors, and the coddled film critics of Hollywood’s foreign press, who today are still picking through the goodie-bags they got from billion-dollar movie studios. She took up for these hapless victims as “the most vilified segments in American society right now…. Hollywood, foreigners, and the press.” From Streep’s account, you would think that cross-burning Klansmen were attacking movie theaters for showing films where interracial couples kiss, while Inquisitors burned piles of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker in public squares across America. What really happened? The Democrats lost an election. But that’s not supposed to happen.

Did Donald Trump threaten to end all immigration? No, he promised to enforce our democratically enacted laws that regulate the process. Did he campaign against “foreigners”? No, he warned of those criminal aliens who’ve evaded our laws, with the help of “sanctuary” cities and others who help aliens to flout the law. Has he threatened to infringe on the First Amendment, to silence the media which he considers biased? No, he has gone on Twitter to dispute things he disagrees with. Has Trump spoken of jailing those who criticize his position on immigration? Never — unlike Germany’s Angela Merkel, whose government has jailed those who oppose her influx of Islamists.

2. An Unearned Claim of Moral or Intellectual Superiority

Streep listed a number of actors from working class origins or foreign countries, and presented them as moral exemplars because of their “compassionate” performances which taught Americans how to “enter the lives of those who are different from us.”

Let’s try to unpack that. Apart from those who play themselves in cameos, every actor is paid to portray someone “different” from himself. And every movie we watch (apart from home movies) is about people “different” from us. That’s why it’s entertaining. All that Streep has done here is to describe what happens in drama — while trying to spin it as a form of heroic altruism. So the actors in 50 Shades of Grey were improving America’s moral tone by teaching millions of theater-goers about sexual activities that are “different” from what they’re used to — and those who made that movie should not just be highly paid, but considered part of a virtuous elite that is improving America’s ethics. Got it? We actors, by our very profession, are better than the rest of you helots.

Then she went on to peddle the false claim that President-Elect Trump mocked a reporter’s disability. That media myth is debunked in detail here. So Streep uses a false account of what a real politician said in his own defense while fighting for his political life in response to a reporter at America’s top newspaper, to cast Trump as a bully and moral monster, compared to those heroes of empathy (actors) who read the lines they’ve been given in the dozens of crass, trashy, manipulative movies that Hollywood dumps on the public every year.

3. An Implicit or Explicit Threat of Punishment

Standing atop the papier-mâché moral high ground which she claimed, Streep included a nasty, elitist little warning to the rest of America: “Hollywood is crawling with outsiders and foreigners and if we kick ‘em all out, you’ll have nothing to watch but football and mixed martial arts, which are not the arts.” Now, of course this is a jibe at the ignorant rubes which Streep imagines lowing and grazing in vast, lumbering herds between the Hudson River and Hollywood, staring slack-jawed at wrestling matches.

It’s also a threat: You common people need us, and if you keep voting the wrong way, we might just go on strike. We will turn up our noses at the million-dollar paychecks we collect for reading back the words that writers put there for us, and starve America of “the arts.” So watch your step, or we will walk. Seriously, that red carpet leads all the way to Canada. We mean it this time. …

These are people who voted, campaigned, and fund-raised for Hillary Clinton, confident that she could pack the Supreme Court with justices who would pluck every critical issue out of the grubby hands of voters. Meanwhile, our Meryl Streeps would offer cinematic carrots, and our Byerleys wield the stick, until every American learned to be worthy of his masters, or starved in rural obscurity.

Gotta love those Golden Globes! (For more from the author of “Meryl Streep Slams Trump’s Deplorables: ‘Let Them Eat Wrestling'” please click HERE)

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What We Ought to Talk About in 2017

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On the subject of language and speech, I offered an initial list (by no means comprehensive!) of some things I hope we stop saying in 2017 because these words and their meanings have been twisted and malformed so as to make madness seem normal and sanity seem cruel.

It’s good to start by naming the madness and refusing to speak the perverted language, but it’s only a place to start — not a place to live. We have to do more than opt-out of the insanity. We have to intentionally inject sanity into the culture again. We have to purposely re-infuse our society with truth again, and just as corrupting the language reaps destruction, restoring the truth of our words and recovering some lost wisdom will reap healing.

So here’s another list to get us started.

The Language of Virtue

Let’s begin speaking the language of virtue. The cardinal virtues of fortitude, temperance, prudence and justice, as well as the virtues of chastity, fidelity and courage.

1. Chastity is a word we must learn to speak without embarrassment or hesitation, since it is a virtue everyone is called to regardless of their state in life. Chastity is lived differently for a single person than a married person, but the virtue is the same. It is the “integrity of the powers of life and love” in the person, and involves an “apprenticeship of self-mastery which is a training in human freedom.” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2338 and 2339)

Simply put, chastity is happiness. Have a look out there — people, relationships, and families are more broken and miserable than ever. That’s because the person dominated by passions is neither free nor happy. Everything most people do nowadays is centered on their feelings, so people are constantly tossed about on the wind of emotions and changing desires. “The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy.” (CCC 2339)

The culture out there is not making people happy. That’s our cue to talk about the means of being happy. Along with chastity, let’s talk about the virtues of fidelity and temperance.

2. Fidelity? What’s that? For the hook-up generation, everything is permanently temporary. When I was a child, only a few kids in my class had divorced parents. Today, it’s exactly the reverse. So few children have an intact home with both their parents. Fidelity must make a strong comeback.

The younger generations need to know that people can keep their vows; people can say no to promiscuous sex; men and women can respect one another and not use one another for animalistic gratification. People can learn to love and be faithful — yes, even til death.

3. Temperance is that virtue that helps us moderate even good and pleasurable things, keeping balance in our lives, being directed by our will and not our instincts or desires. (CCC 1809) It’s learning a measure of self-denial for a higher good. It’s one cookie rather than five. It is discretion and restraint. It’s a healthy level of detachment from “stuff.” It sets us free to love God and love other people.

4. When’s the last time you heard someone extol the virtue of prudence? (Never mind the SNL skits of President Bush the elder.) Let’s dig up this pearl and keep it in our pockets once again. Prudence is “right reason in action” says St. Thomas Aquinas. Prudence helps us discern the true good and choose what is right. (CCC 1806) In this dangerously confused age, we need men and women of virtue who will think and act with prudence.

5. Justice is a virtue most people today will eagerly get behind, even though they likely misunderstand it and apply it unevenly and, ironically, unjustly. The “social justice warriors” are a new class of citizen-activists who are determined to enforce behavioral standards that satisfy their vision of justice, no matter how unjust those standards actually are.

True justice, first of all, requires giving God what God is due. Justice is then found in “habitual right thinking” and uprightness of conduct toward our neighbor. (CCC 1807) Justice promotes the true common good. (How can we determine the true common good? Ask prudence, temperance, chastity, and fidelity.)

Justice demands that we recognize the humanity of the child in the womb and protect the child from being killed. Justice requires that we provide for our children what we are obligated to give them, and not deprive them for the sake of our own wants and preferences. Justice insists that we protect the elderly, the disabled, the sick, the poor, the marginalized, those whom we are tempted to consider “less than.”

6. Fortitude is the virtue that strengthens us to choose what is right when it seems easier to compromise. It’s the inner steel that bolsters our resolve, and pushes us on “in the pursuit of good.” Along with courage, it enables us to “conquer fear, even fear of death, and to face trials and persecutions.” (CCC 1808) Fortitude turns sinners into saints.

When our neighbors talk about the necessity of contraception, we should be talking about the freedom of chastity. When they talk about the “rights” of women and “reproductive justice,” we must answer them with true justice and defend the child in the womb.

When excess and self-indulgence is celebrated, we need to encourage temperance. When the prevailing opinion says we must go along with madness, we must call on prudence instead, and have courage!

When they say, “I won’t impose my personal beliefs on others…” we need to instruct them in fortitude. When they announce their impending divorce, someone must be brave enough to counsel them to choose fidelity instead.

Obviously, just talking about virtue isn’t going to get the job done. We have to walk this talk. We will not get very far without the grace of God. It is divine grace that gives us mere mortals the power to live a virtuous life. God will help us begin, and begin again, and again, for as long as we ask.

So let’s begin! People want to be free. They want to be happy. Let’s show them the truth — real happiness will never be found apart from virtue. (For more from the author of “What We Ought to Talk About in 2017” please click HERE)

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The Senate’s Role in Confirming Trump’s Cabinet, Explained

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Donald Trump won’t be inaugurated as president until Jan. 20, but his Cabinet choices begin to face confirmation hearings in the Senate this week.

First up for a committee hearing Tuesday is Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., Trump’s choice for attorney general.

Those scheduled to follow in rapid succession include retired Marine Gen. John Kelly for secretary of homeland security, philanthropist Betsy DeVos for secretary of education, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao to head the Transportation Department, retired Marine Gen. James Mattis for defense secretary, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson for secretary of housing and urban development, and businessman-investor Wilbur Ross for commerce secretary.

The process for Senate confirmation of top presidential appointees is outlined briefly in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which guides lawmakers’ examination and approval or rejection of a president’s nominees.

This section of the Constitution famously requires that a president obtain “the Advice and Consent of the Senate” in making top government appointments. U.S. law and Senate rules also apply to the process.

Here are some general questions and answers about the process, based largely on multiple detailed reports (especially in 2012 and 2015) by the Congressional Research Service, which provides exclusive policy and legal analysis to Congress.

Who begins the confirmation process?

The president—or in this case, the president-elect—chooses individuals to fill Cabinet positions and other top posts in the executive branch.

Besides the vice president, an elected official who requires no confirmation, the White House identifies Cabinet members as the attorney general, who heads the Justice Department, and the heads of 14 other executive departments: Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, State, Transportation, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs.

The heads of other agencies also enjoy Cabinet rank and must be confirmed by the Senate along with hundreds of other top executive branch officials (detailed here). They include the ambassador to the United Nations and the U.S. trade representative, as well as the heads of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Office of Management and Budget, the Council of Economic Advisers, and the Small Business Administration.

Members of the House and Senate may suggest possible candidates for the president or president-elect’s consideration, but such recommendations generally have no official weight.

Who screens candidates for these top positions?

In preliminary screening of potential nominees, a sitting president benefits from White House offices such as Presidential Personnel and Counsel to the President.

However, an executive branch agency, the Office of Government Ethics, offers an array of services and publications to assist a presidential transition team such as Trump’s—as well as individual nominees.

The FBI and the Internal Revenue Service also review a potential or formal candidate’s personal, political, and financial backgrounds.

The FBI typically does a background investigation and submits a report. The Office of Government Ethics, along with an ethics official from the relevant agency, reviews financial disclosures. If they find conflicts of interest, they may work with the candidate to “mitigate” the conflicts.

What happens in the Senate?

The Senate’s executive clerk refers the president or president-elect’s formal choice to the appropriate committee (sometimes committees) overseeing the executive branch department in question, such as State or Defense.

In the Congressional Research Service’s 2012 report, author Maeve Carey characterizes this as a crucial step:

The decision by a committee to report a nomination is critical: To be considered on the Senate floor, the nomination must have been reported from the committee of jurisdiction or all senators must agree to its consideration.

Committee members and staff review the various forms sent along with the candidate’s name and gather more in-depth information as they choose.

Opponents and supporters of the nominee often submit letters summarizing their views to the committee. The committee chairman schedules a hearing, during which each member of the panel may ask questions or make points.

For a committee to vote on reporting the nominee to the full Senate for a confirmation vote, a majority of members must be “physically present.”

A committee may decline to act on a nomination at several points—after receiving it, after investigating the nominee, or after holding one or more hearings.

The committee has three options in voting to send a nomination to the full Senate: Report it favorably, unfavorably, or without recommendation.

Once a nominee clears a committee, with or without a recommendation, the Senate majority leader may schedule a confirmation vote on the chamber’s executive calendar.

If a committee declines to report a nomination, it is still possible in certain cases for the Senate to bring the nomination to the floor for a vote.

How many votes does it take to confirm?

“Most presidential appointees are confirmed routinely by the Senate, without public debate,” Carey and Henry Hogue write in the 2015 report from the Congressional Research Service, adding:

Other appointees receive more attention from Congress and the media through hearings, investigations, and floor debate. Historically, the Senate has shown particular interest in the nominee’s views and how they are likely to affect public policy.

Opposition from one or more senators may prevent a floor vote on a nomination that has come out of committee, because the rules require “unanimous consent” to consider and confirm a nomination.

If a nominee faces substantial opposition, the Senate majority leader may wish to end debate through a procedure called cloture. Under it, a simple majority of senators voting—normally 51—is able to limit debate to 30 hours and advance the nominee to a floor vote.

After the Nov. 8 elections, when they lost two seats, Republicans now have 52 seats in the Senate to the Democrats’ 46 (two Independents caucus with the Democrats).

It used to require 60 votes, not 51, to proceed to a floor vote until Senate Democrats changed the rules in 2013, except in cases of nominations to the Supreme Court.

A simple majority vote also is required to confirm, or approve, the nomination.

The confirmation process is fluid and open to adjustments, the Congressional Research Service notes. For a change to be adopted, however, a senator must propose it and the chamber must unanimously agree. (For more from the author of “The Senate’s Role in Confirming Trump’s Cabinet, Explained” please click HERE)

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Despite Controversies, Holder Had Easier Road to Confirmation Than Sessions

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President Barack Obama’s first attorney general pick skated through Senate confirmation hearings, but top Democrats have indicated that President-elect Donald Trump’s selection may have a tougher time getting through.

Ahead of the confirmation hearing Tuesday for Trump’s attorney general designee, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Democrat, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, brought up issues that prevented Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., from becoming a federal judge three decades ago.

“Now that he is nominated to be attorney general, we will see if the same person is still too extreme for Republicans,” Leahy said in a Boston Globe op-ed Sunday, later adding, “Sen. Sessions has repeatedly stood in the way of efforts to promote and protect Americans’ civil rights.”

It’s a departure from what Leahy said of Sessions in 2009, when both men voted to confirm Obama’s controversial nominee, Eric Holder, to be attorney general.

“Sen. Sessions is also a former U.S. attorney and knows what one goes through in that regard, and we’ve relied on him for that experience,” Leahy said to his colleague during the Holder confirmation hearing in January 2009, according to the Washington Examiner.

In June 2010, Leahy called Sessions “wonderful to work with,” the Examiner reported.

The Sessions confirmation hearing could shape up differently from the Holder hearing of eight years earlier. Despite a controversial legal career in the public and private sector, Holder had a smooth ride to office, gaining the support of most Republicans.

By contrast, the confirmation process for Sessions has been rocky even before the first day of hearings.

Much Democratic opposition to Sessions is based on his conservative record in the Senate. However, it also extends to comments or jokes regarding race Sessions allegedly made while serving as a U.S. attorney in the Southern District of Alabama in the early 1980s, even as he was known for helping to prosecute multiple civil rights cases. These were the allegations that sunk his 1986 nomination to be a federal judge.

Two former Justice Department lawyers, one who continues to be a Sessions critic today, recanted a 1986 allegation used to stop the judicial nomination.

Witnesses opposing Sessions are scheduled to include David Cole, the legal director of American Civil Liberties Union; NAACP President Cornell Brooks; and Amita Swadhin, founder of the Los Angeles-based Mirror Memoirs, an LGBT group.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said that Sessions is one of the eight nominees that Democrats will seek to delay confirmation votes on into March. The Senate confirmed Holder in early February 2009.

In all likelihood, the Senate will confirm Sessions as attorney general given the Republican Senate majority. He’s also known for having strong relationships with Senate Democratic colleagues, and will get at least some crossover support. But it appears he is not as likely as Holder to gain overwhelmingly bipartisan support.

After his election, Obama announced he would nominate Holder to run the Justice Department. Holder was a former deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration under Attorney General Janet Reno. Republicans and conservative groups highlighted Holder’s record in the No. 2 spot.

Holder played a role in President Bill Clinton’s pardon of fugitive financier Marc Rich, which the outgoing president granted on his final day in office. Before becoming a Democrat later that year, ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania raised issues about Holder’s role in the controversial 1993 federal siege of the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas.

Republicans also raised questions about Holder’s role in Clinton granting clemency to 16 members of a Puerto Rican militant nationalist group in 1999. Specter further criticized Holder for ignoring the advice of career Justice Department prosecutors to appoint an independent counsel in 1997 to investigate alleged Democratic violations of campaign finance laws.

Issues also surfaced about Holder’s time in private practice at the prestigious Washington law firm of Covington & Burling, which represented terrorism suspects detained at Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba. Holder has said the government should close Guantanamo.

Holder also vocally opposed the Bush administration’s enhanced interrogation tactics, such as waterboarding.

While at the firm, Holder wrote a brief in favor of the District of Columbia, arguing that granting the individual right to bear arms, “opens the door to more people having more access to guns, and putting guns on the streets.”

Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court held in the 2008 case of District of Columbia v. Heller that the Constitution guarantees the individual right to own a firearm.

Leahy, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2009, asserted the Holder nomination should move quickly. Leahy said on Jan. 15, 2009:

I would hope that we would have a prompt confirmation so he can restore morale and purpose throughout the Justice Department, it is important that the Justice Department have its senior leadership in place without delay. The attorney general is the top law enforcement officer in the country; he is a key member of the national security team.

The Senate largely heeded Leahy’s advice. The Judiciary Committee voted 17-2 on Jan. 28 to confirm Holder. Only Republicans Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and then-Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma voted “no.” The full Senate confirmed Holder with a bipartisan 75-21 on Feb. 2, with Sessions and Specter voting for him both times. (For more from the author of “Despite Controversies, Holder Had Easier Road to Confirmation Than Sessions” please click HERE)

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Kentucky’s Right-To-Work Earthquake Reverberates Across State Lines

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Kentucky’s Gov. Matt Bevin, a Republican, has now officially signed right-to-work legislation–along with other jobs legislation–into law.

Yet the impact of Kentucky’s right-to-work legislation could move beyond the state’s borders.

Right-to-work laws prohibit employers from entering into agreements that make union membership and the payment of union dues a condition of employment.

Additionally, Bevin signed the Paycheck Protection Act, which calls on workers to “opt in” if they want union dues withheld from their paychecks instead of requiring workers to “opt out” if they don’t want their union dues withheld.

The other big-ticket item eliminates the “prevailing wage” employers must now pay on work funded with public money. This involves construction work on schools and government buildings.

These laws could have a significant impact on the national debate over worker freedom. Kentucky is poised to become the 27th right-to-work state.

A Republican Wave

“Promises made, Promises kept.”

That’s how Kentucky state Rep. Jason Nemes, R-Louisville, describes the successful push for right-to-work legislation that went down during Saturday’s special session of his state’s General Assembly.

Nemes was elected in November along with a Republican wave that delivered the Kentucky House of Representatives to his party for the first time since 1921.

“I’m calling it promises made, promises kept because we ran on worker freedom, we ran on right-to-work, and we ran on paycheck protection and on repealing the prevailing wage law. We delivered in just the first week of the new General Assembly,” Nemes told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.

“These votes for right-to-work were about economic development and about making our state more competitive,” Nemes said. “But it isn’t just about economic development. Right-to-work is also about liberty and freedom of association. Someone shouldn’t be forced to join an organization just to put food on the table.”

Kentucky labor unions, which held loud and boisterous protests in and around the statehouse in Frankfort, Kentucky, throughout the week and into Saturday, remain ardently opposed to the legislation the governor is set to sign into law.

UAW Local 2164, United Food and Commercial Workers Local 227, and the Kentucky State AFL-CIO are among the unions that expressed strong opposition to the right-to-work bill and other labor-related bills that passed Saturday.

“They don’t want to work for the working man and it’s sad but true but they want to fight unions every way they can fight us,” Monica Williams, president of UAW Local 2164, told The Daily Signal. “Unions are good for all people, not just for unions.”

That’s unfortunate, Williams added, because unions deliver social and economic benefits that Republican critics overlook.

From Local to National Debate

What happened in Kentucky is not necessarily going to stay in Kentucky. That’s because the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers districts in Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee, and Ohio, issued a ruling in November that upheld the right of localities to pass right-to-work ordinances in the absence of state-level legislation.

The action began in Warren County, Kentucky, in the fall of 2014 with 11 other counties following suit.

The Kentucky counties argued that because the federal government has already authorized states to pass right-to-work laws, it follows that the counties are also permitted to pass right to work since they are creations of the state. Therefore, the counties argued, local right-to-work ordinances are permissible unless a state legislative body explicitly forbids them.

Jim Waters, president of the Bluegrass Institute, a libertarian, free-market think tank in Kentucky, said in a phone interview with The Daily Signal that Warren County’s decision to press ahead with its own ordinance certainly had an impact on what happened statewide.

“What this means is that we will no longer watch jobs and opportunities fly over or go around our state,” he said.

Waters pointed out that Kentucky’s largest border is with Tennessee, which is a right-to-work state, and four of Kentucky’s seven neighboring states are right to work: Indiana, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.

“$1 billion in capital investment has gone into Warren County since it passed right to work in December 2014. Yes, that’s B as in billion,” Waters said. “These are not prospects; these are commitments. When legislators in other parts of the state saw what was happening in Warren County, they certainly took notice. I’m not saying it was the factor in determining what happened statewide, but it was certainly a factor.”

Waters also said that there are 55,000 new job openings in a 50-mile radius of where Warren County passed its right-to-work ordinance.

“That’s not a coincidence,” he said.

“I do believe our county government initiative advanced the Kentucky legislative effort, as it created a public awareness, and helped to educate citizens about right to work throughout the state,” Mike Buchanon, the Warren County judge-executive, said in an email. “The entire state was amazed at the remarkable increase in new prospects that contacted Warren County immediately after we passed right to work.”

Buchanon added:

Kentucky is a great place for business. But the fact that we were the only state in the southeast U.S. that was not right to work kept us from being considered for a site for new locations by growing industries. Site selectors have told us that as many as 75 percent of their clients instructed them to eliminate any state that wasn’t right to work. That left Kentucky off the list of consideration, right from the beginning.

But now that right to work has passed, Buchanon said, the state Legislature can “post a sign over the commonwealth’s front door” that says “Kentucky is open for business.”

Kentucky’s Example Could Inspire Localities to Act

Kentucky’s local clashes over right-to-work laws may now have an impact beyond even the state level.

The drive for local right-to-work laws experienced a temporary setback in February when a federal district court ruled against a right-to-work ordinance in Hardin County, Kentucky. But the 6th Circuit ruling reversed that lower court ruling.

Nemes, the Kentucky state representative, sees the 6th Circuit ruling giving impetus to localities outside of Kentucky.

“One difficulty we had with the local ordinances is that it was a novel approach and people were cautious because they knew the unions were going to sue,” he said. “But the 6th Circuit ruling in very powerful language upholding these local ordinances, will give courage to other localities to pass their own right-to-work ordinances.”

Before being elected to the Kentucky House, Nemes served as an attorney coordinating the legal defense for the counties passing their own ordinances. He anticipates that Ohio counties will now be motivated to take up right to work. With the exception of Pennsylvania, Ohio is now surrounded by right-to-work states following the passage of the law in Kentucky.

James Sherk, a labor policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation, sees a potential for legal disputes over local right to work to move up to the U.S. Supreme Court, depending on how the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals rules in a case out of Lincolnshire, Illinois, where a federal district judge ruled against a local right-to-work ordinance.

“If all the federal appeals courts rule the same way, the U.S. Supreme Court typically does not step in,” Sherk said. “But if the 7th Circuit were to rule against the local right to work, then you would have a conflict between the two circuits and typically the Supreme Court steps in to create consistency in the law when you have two circuits reading it differently. The litigation out of Illinois could go up to the Supreme Court potentially.”

Spreading to Other States

Now that Bevin has put his signature to the Kentucky bills, the primary legislative battleground over right-to-work laws will have already shifted over to Missouri, where that state’s House of Representatives is set to hold hearings Tuesday on its own legislation. The Missouri Senate is expected to follow up with hearings on its own version of the right-to-work bill later this week.

Eric Greitens, Missouri’s newly-elected Republican governor, campaigned for right-to-work laws and it is widely expected that he will sign off on any new legislation that reaches his desk. Missouri fell just short of passing right to work in September 2015 when Republican lawmakers could not produce enough support to override then-Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon’s veto.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, and Matt Patterson, executive director of the Center for Worker Freedom, have come out in support of a Missouri right-to-work law. The Center for Worker Freedom is a special project of Americans for Tax Reform, a nonprofit taxpayer advocacy group based in the District of Columbia.

Norquist and Patterson signed a letter last week addressed to the Missouri General Assembly urging lawmakers to vote in favor of “right to work.”

“The towns and communities in Ohio that border right-to-work states are going to start feeling the pressure just as they did in Kentucky,” Patterson, the Center for Worker Freedom executive director, told The Daily Signal. “We are also going to see Missouri start to move very quickly on right to work with the hearings that come this week.”

Norquist and Patterson highlight key statistics in their letter as they make the case for ending forced unionization. They wrote:

Right-to-work states have seen an average of 68 percent greater job growth than the average of forced-unionization states, according to government labor statistics. In 2012, Indiana has seen its unemployment cut nearly in half since it passed its right-to-work law in 2012, from 9.1 percent in 2011 to 5.4 percent today. Currently, six of the eight states bordering Missouri are right to work, putting the Show Me State at a tremendous disadvantage. In order to boost its competitiveness and give Missouri businesses every advantage to grow and create jobs, lawmakers must do their part and allow them this valuable tool.

Sherk said he expects to see Missouri become right to work in another few weeks. He also said the 6th Circuit ruling makes Ohio a clear candidate for local right-to-work laws since several of those localities will now be bordering right-to-work states.

The example of Warren County, Kentucky, will not be lost in Ohio, he said. Within a few weeks of passing its ordinance, Warren County had 47 different development projects come its way, Sherk said.

“Warren County didn’t know it was missing out on these opportunities until it passed right to work,” Sherk said. “They didn’t know how many doors were being closed. A lot of Ohio townships and cities will look at this and will want to be part of it.”

If local ordinances do take root in Ohio, which is a strong possibility, Sherk expects that other localities will start to pass ordinances in those areas of the country where a statewide option is out of reach for the moment.

Since Maine has a “long and strong tradition of powers given to localities,” it’s possible that it might also act, Sherk said.

Looking ahead to 2018, he anticipates that Minnesota and Pennsylvania could consider new legislation if right-to-work candidates win the governor’s races in those states. Sherk also sees a potential for New Hampshire and Montana in the not-too-distant future.

But even if Republicans take governor’s seats in key states where the GOP is gaining ground, right to work will remain a tough fight, Sherk warned.

“In Pennsylvania, the Legislature is more conservative than it was but the caveat there is that the left has taken control of the [state] Supreme Court,” he said. “So, you could see some judicial high-jinx.” (For more from the author of “Kentucky’s Right-To-Work Earthquake Reverberates Across State Lines” please click HERE)

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