The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have just launched an anti-tobacco campaign focused on young adults who are lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender.
The new campaign, “This Free Life,” costs $35.7 million that was collected from the tobacco industry.
According to the FDA, the campaign “uses authentic and credible messages from members of the LGBT community encouraging other members to be tobacco-free.”
“This Free Life will challenge the perception that tobacco use is a necessary part of being LGBT and show that living tobacco-free is an important factor in leading a long and healthy life. This Free Life uses a variety of integrated marketing tactics including paid media, engagement through multiple digital platforms, and outreach at the local level,” the FDA campaign material says. (Read more from “FDA Launches $35.7 Million LGBT Anti-Smoking Campaign” HERE)
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The state of Kansas is likely to permanently prevent Planned Parenthood from receiving federal family planning funds administered within the state.
A bill to prevent the abortion provider from accessing that revenue stream passed both houses of the state legislature: 87-34 in the House and 32-8 in the state Senate.
Although such funds have been cut off by annual budgets dating back to 2011, the new measure would make the prohibition an ongoing state policy not requiring annual reauthorization.
A second bill also approved on Sunday night would make it illegal for midwives “to perform, induce or prescribe drugs for an abortion.” It passed the Senate unanimously, 40-0, and cleared the House by a vote of 115-7.
Some had said the prohibition was unnecessary, since midwives do not usually perform abortions. However, Kansans for Life noted legal language that could be interpreted as giving midwives such ability. Current state law defines a midwife as someone who provides services “associated with a normal, uncomplicated pregnancy.” (Read more from “This State Just Passed a Bill to Permanently Defund Planned Parenthood” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/maxresdefault-115.jpg7201280kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2016-05-03 01:01:502016-05-03 01:01:50This State Just Passed a Bill to Permanently Defund Planned Parenthood
The biotech firm StemExpress is refusing to turn over all documents to Congress related to its purchasing and reselling of body parts from aborted babies sold to it from Planned Parenthood and other abortion businesses.
Chairman Marsha Blackburn has sent a letter to Cate Dyer, CEO of StemExpress, requesting full cooperation with the Select Investigative Panel’s efforts to obtain all business and accounting documents from the fetal tissue procurement organization.
“Over the last several months, we have made numerous attempts to acquire business and accounting documents from StemExpress that are necessary to complete our work at the Select Investigative Panel,” Blackburn wrote in the letter.
It continues: “All of these requests have been met with verbal and written objections from your attorneys. In light of recent public comments you have made and the consensus reached by witnesses at our April 20 hearing on The Pricing of Fetal Tissue that a complete review of StemExpress business and accounting documents was necessary, I am writing to personally request you turn this information over to our investigators.”
The letter says StemExpres is failing to turn over all of the documents the investigating committee has requested. (Read more from “StemExpress Refuses to Turn Over All Documents on Purchase of Aborted Baby Parts” HERE)
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A 1981 New York Times item quotes Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as saying he doesn’t “believe in charities,” an outlook that one expert says is common in socialism and would destroy civil society.
In September 1981, the Times reported on comments then-Burlington Mayor Sanders made at a charity event:
“For the kickoff of the 40th annual Chittenden County United Way fund-raising drive in Burlington, Vt., the sponsors considered themselves fortunate to have as guests Mayor Bernard Sanders of Burlington and Gov. Richard Snelling of Vermont,” reported the Times . . .
“‘I don’t believe in charities,” said Mayor Sanders, bringing a shocked silence to a packed hotel banquet room. The mayor, who is a socialist, went on to question the ”fundamental concepts on which charities are based” and contended that government, rather than charity organizations, should take over responsibility for social programs,’” the article stated.
Joe Loconte fiercely disagrees. Loconte teaches Western civilization and American foreign policy at The King’s College in New York City. He has also held positions with the Heritage Foundation and the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington. From 2001-2003, he was an informal adviser to the George W. Bush administration’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives. (Read more from “Bernie Sanders: ‘I Don’t Believe in Charities'” HERE)
It appears that the pop star Prince may have died without a will, leaving behind a multi-million dollar and growing estate. Although Prince has one full sister and five half-siblings, Prince’s family members will not be his biggest heirs.
Both the federal government and Minnesota’s state government will assess so-called “death taxes” or estate taxes on Prince’s assets, taking away more than half his estate. Between his physical assets—cash, investments, home, etc.—and his future royalties, Prince’s estate has been estimated to be between $300 and $500 million.
If Prince were married, he could have passed on the entirety of his estate to his spouse tax free. However, without a spouse, only $1.6 million of Prince’s estate will be free from Minnesota’s death tax and only $5.45 million will escape the federal death tax.
The combination of Minnesota’s top death tax rate of 16 percent, plus the federal government’s 40 percent rate, means that over 50 percent of Prince’s estate will go to the government.
Had Prince known ahead of time that he would die at such a young age, he may have been able to reduce the government’s reach into his estate through tax planning, but with a fortune as large as his, the government’s claim to his estate was inevitable.
While Prince was probably not all that concerned with the death tax—particularly since his early death was unexpected—he probably didn’t change his behavior all that much in response to the death tax. But most people who pay the death tax are not like Prince—they don’t have hundreds of millions of dollars, and some don’t even have a hundred thousand dollars in cash if their assets are all tied up in the value of their family business.
When the owner of a family business dies without leaving behind a large pile of cash or other liquid assets, the family often has to sell the business to pay the death tax. That can have devastating employment consequences. A 2014 analysis of the death tax by The Heritage Foundation found that its harmful effects on savings, investment, and capital reduces employment by 18,000 jobs each year.
While it’s tempting to think that the government’s reach into Prince’s massive estate isn’t all that harmful to the pop star or his heirs, the death tax has been devastating to many small businesses and the communities in which they operate. (For more from the author of “Why Over Half of Prince’s Estate Will Go to the Government” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/maxresdefault-111.jpg7681366kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2016-04-30 02:22:002016-04-30 02:22:00Why Over Half of Prince’s Estate Will Go to the Government
A Tennessee high school teacher was suspended Thursday after students reported to school officials last week that they were shown an “inappropriate film” in class.
Jackson-Madison Consolidated School District Superintendent Verna Ruffin told The Jackson Sun Wednesday that the film shown in class was “Human Centipede 2 (Full Sequence)” . . .
The 2011 film was temporarily banned in the United Kingdom and had also been banned for a short time in Australia. It is banned in New Zealand. The film has also been referred to by some as “torture porn,” according to The Sun.
“Upon learning of an alleged movie viewing, the district immediately launched an internal investigation regarding the alleged viewing of an inappropriate film at Jackson Central-Merry High School,” the press release said. “This investigation is ongoing. At the time the incident was reported, the teacher was immediately suspended and remains suspended pending the outcome of the investigation.” (Read more from “Tennessee High School Teacher Suspended for Showing This Movie in Class” HERE)
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There is more than one kind of terrorism. The most obvious variety covers acts of violence that target civilians, which Muslim jihadists commit hundreds of times a year throughout the West. The primary goal of such acts is not so much the murder of those particular concertgoers, co-workers or minority Christians. No, what the terrorist wants is to break down the sense of public order, to show how fragile the status quo really is, and make people doubt how trustworthy are their basic institutions.
As they pick through the rubble and piece together the bodies, solid citizens cannot help but ask themselves a series of radical questions: Can the police even keep us safe? Is our government really in charge? Are we spiraling down into chaos? Must we give in to these extremists’ demands, or else face even more destructive attacks? When ordinary people have to ask those kinds of questions, your society is in very deep trouble indeed. For a deeper understanding of the methods of violent terrorism, see Michael Burleigh’s definitive history, Blood and Rage.
There is another kind of terrorism, which aims at the same outcome via less gory means. It is “verbal” or “cultural” terrorism, which likewise uses fear and outrage to shatter the civic order and make room for a power-grab by radical activists, but without all the maiming and mess. It’s a bloodless method of terrorism, but it’s often much more effective. And it’s exactly what we are seeing in a long list of current political battles, from the “bathroom wars” to campus “safe spaces,” from attacks on suburban home-owners to attempts to target and ruin vocal, public Christians.
The term “verbal terrorism” was coined by my old friend, the intellectual historian Thomas Molnar (1921-2010), who lived through terror of several distinct varieties. He was jailed in a Nazi concentration camp for joining a Catholic Resistance group. Released at the end of the war, he was driven out of his native Hungary by its Soviet-imposed totalitarian regime. He taught at American colleges during the 1960s, and watched as Marxist-sponsored student groups used violence to take control of campuses and silence dissent from their agenda.
In his classic book The Counter-Revolution, Molnar exposes how leftists employ cultural terrorism to attack the three great enemies of progressive ideology, which Karl Marx identified as private property, religion, and the bourgeois family. Also targeted are less fundamental institutions on which these three rely for stability and protection, such as national sovereignty, citizenship, the military, and academic standards.
Leftists identify some vulnerability, a chink in the armor, of one of these institutions — let’s say, the perceived “unfairness” of asking some sincerely deluded “trans” person to use the bathroom that fits his biological sex. They express deep concern about this “cruel” abuse. This attracts the sympathy of kind-hearted sloppy thinkers everywhere, who won’t let themselves see the radical implications of “rectifying” this injustice. Poor Caitlyn, why can’t we just let “her” be happy?
Once the sentimental “moderates” are on board and public opinion is shifting, the radicals launch a campaign of activism designed to outrage the sensibilities of conservative citizens, and goad them into violent reaction. The leftists ratchet up their demands, and when they meet resistance, stigmatize any opponents as hard-hearted bigots infected with “hate” for helpless, marginalized victims.
If this step succeeds, then the witch-hunt begins. The left targets any dissenters as nasty, inhuman extremists and tries to publicly destroy them, through boycotts, pressure campaigns and, where possible, government action. If this step succeeds — and it worked like a charm in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act wars in Indiana, Georgia, and other states — then the battle is all but won: Conservatives are terrified to defend a position that just a few months before was taken for granted as mainstream. We are helpless, frightened, and paralyzed by a futile sense of rage, as we pick through the rubble of one more vital institution of our culture.
Now that we’ve established the pattern, let me pick just the five most recent examples of leftist cultural terrorism, and briefly note how they work. I could do the same next week, and the week after that, and never run short of material — since the left’s campaign is unremitting and tireless, a World War I-style war of attrition whose aim is destruction for its own sake. All leftists need not agree on the shape of a future Utopia that will accommodate all their impossible and incompatible fantasies. It’s enough that they want to smash what now exists. Once it’s flattened, they can hash out how to restack all the rubble.
This Week’s Top Five Terror Attacks, Listed by Target
1) The Family: Bite the Heads Off the Fetuses
Matt Walsh reports on the latest pro-choice outrage, one intended to render the pro-life movement ridiculous and encourage the brazen contempt for unborn human life: Fetus-shaped cookies, which students were invited to consume, while they wrote little pro-choice slogans. As Walsh writes, the display was
put together by the campus atheist club last week at the University of North Georgia. Yes, those are cookies in the shape of babies. … [T]he pro-abortion folks were eating the baby cookies or breaking the heads off and laughing. Another picture … shows a cookie lying next to its severed head over top a sign reading “Abortion should remain legal because it’s constitutionally protected.”
2) Religion: Put Jesus On a Dartboard.
According to Campus Reform:
An alleged “art display” at Rutgers University featuring a figure of Jesus Christ on a dartboard, with darts inserted where He was wounded on the Cross, is being held up as a contradiction of the school’s professed commitment to diversity.
Natalie Caruso, who describes herself as a former Rutgers student, posted a photo to a Facebook group for the Class of 2016 showing the display, which she claimed is currently hanging in the Art Library on College Ave. “It is surprising that a state university would allow this,” she wrote in the post. “I asked them to take it down because I found it disrespectful and they refused. How is this acceptable!?”
Campus Reform is currently awaiting comment from Rutgedartsrs on the matter. This story will be updated to include their reply if and when it is received.
Assuming it’s not a social media hoax, the point of such a stunt is to demonstrate the power-relationships in place at schools like Rutgers. It’s a trial balloon, sent up to see how much Christian-bashing the administration will tolerate. If the school takes action against the display, “free speech advocates” will howl in protest — though they’d stay silent if the school took action against an anti-Muslim display, as it surely would within minutes. If the school does nothing, Christians on campus will get the message: You’re marginal, and our “diversity” protections do not apply to you.
3) Religion and the Family: Publicly Fire a Sportscaster for Expressing Conservative Views.
You probably already know that Curt Schilling, former Boston Red Sox pitcher, has been fired by ESPN for a single social media post that supported North Carolina’s “bathroom law.” The Stream’s Tom Gilson has documented that this is not Schilling’s first “offense” against the unspoken political litmus test in place at ESPN and many other large corporations. In fact, as Gilson noted, Schilling has made a number of conservative statements over the years, which clearly were being compiled in a dossier in some back office at ESPN:
USA Today described him as expressing pattern of opinions that were “appalling, insensitive and nasty, over and over again,” adding, “there was more to this firing than the hatred contained in his words.”
His first error, apparently, was suggesting (“blurting out,” said the AP in a story today) in a TV interview several years ago that people vote for George Bush. Nasty.
Later he compared the firing of General George Petraeus for lax security with confidential information with Hillary Clinton’s email carelessness. … Schilling was a member of the mainstream media who supports conservative views. That was his real crime. So as of this week ESPN, a self-described “inclusive company,” has excluded him.
4) Citizenship: Make Violent Lawbreakers’ Votes Count as Much as Anyone’s.
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe evaded existing law and used his executive authority to restore the vote to more than 200,000 convicted felons — boosting likely Democratic vote totals in that vital swing state, and undermining one of the last few shreds of respect for civic virtue: the idea that in order to help make the laws in a community, you not be convicted of flagrantly breaking them. This move was presented, of course, as a blow against racism — since many of the felons happen to be black. Opponents who try to repeal this unilateral act can expect to be compared to Jim Crow politicians who denied the vote to law-abiding black U.S. Army veterans in the 1940s and 50s.
5) Private Property: Force Home-owners to Build New Federal Slums in Their Neighborhoods.
As The Federalist reports, President Obama’s Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is using “de-segregation” as a pretext to force suburban neighborhoods to divert their tax money to nearby, failing Democrat-run cities, or else build massive low-income housing projects with public money. When one local elected official, Rob Astorino, the County Executive of Westchester, N.Y. criticized the federal attack on the taxpayers who elected him, the “federal monitor” in charge of redistributing the wealth asked a judge for a “gag order” to silence Astorino. As The Federalist notes:
We’re not just talking about crippling the ability of local governments to design zoning rules (God forbid you be free from the meddling of a far-off bureaucracy seeking to redistribute people as ethnic units), but the ability of local officials to even criticize the federal government’s intrusion into their local affairs. This is outright censorship.
As next week’s chain of outrages unfolds, understanding the consistent pattern of leftist attacks on sanity, order, and decency might help to steel you in the need to resist. You might as well, since you cannot escape. (For more from the author of “Fetus Cookies Are Just Part of the Left’s Campaign of Terror” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Human_Embryo_-_Approximately_8_weeks_estimated_gestational_age.jpg25923872kathleenhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngkathleen2016-04-29 02:06:052016-04-29 02:06:05Fetus Cookies Are Just Part of the Left’s Campaign of Terror
In a stunning reversal, the U.S. Army decided late Thursday to retain a decorated Green Beret it had planned to kick out after he physically confronted a local Afghan commander accused of raping a boy over the course of many days.
Sgt 1st Class Charles Martland, confirmed the Army’s decision to retain him when reached by Fox News, who has been covering the story in depth for the past eight months and first broke the story of the Army’s decision in August to kick out Martland over the incident, which occurred in northern Afghanistan in 2011.
“I am real thankful for being able to continue to serve,” said Martland when reached on the telephone by Fox News. “I appreciate everything Congressman Duncan Hunter and his Chief of Staff, Joe Kasper did for me.”
As first reported by Fox News, while deployed to Kunduz Province, Afghanistan, Martland and his team leader confronted a local police commander in 2011 accused of raping an Afghan boy and beating his mother. When the man laughed off the incident, they shoved him to the ground.
Martland and his team leader were later removed from the base, and eventually sent home from Afghanistan. The U.S. Army has not confirmed the specifics of Martland’s separation from service citing privacy reasons, but a “memorandum of reprimand” from October 2011 obtained by Fox News makes clear that Martland was criticized by the brass for his intervention after the alleged rape. Asked for comment in September 2015, an Army spokesman reiterated, “the U.S. Army is unable to confirm the specifics of his separation due to the Privacy Act.” (Read more from “Army Retains Decorated Green Beret It Planned to Kick out Over Confronting Afghan Child Rapist” HERE)
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England’s Queen Elizabeth II turned 90 this week and dignitaries from all over the world came to celebrate, including President Obama. However, this time, the birthday girl put her foot down and refused to allow the Obama entourage to have their way with how they arrived and comported.
In 2011, when the U.S. commander in chief came to town, he left a trail of destruction in his wake at Windsor Castle, the queen’s home and favorite of all residences. His helicopters, all six of them, scorched the earth at the castle and left landing-gear divots in the manicured lawn.
Queen Banned Half Of Obama’s Choppers From Landing On Windsor Lawns… https://t.co/6OgztLztDl
The Express reported the queen was not amused and required the president to use three helicopters during this year’s visit, to minimize the damage to the castle’s grounds. The Express’ Alix Culbertson wrote, “She said only three helicopters, including the president’s personal aircraft Marine One, could land on the lawn when Mr. Obama, 54, and his wife, Michelle, 52, came for dinner with the Queen and Prince Philip to celebrate her 90th birthday.” Also reported as a requirement was for the president’s security detail to remain outside the Windsor dining hall during the dining hour.
Apparently, it took some time for the Secret Service to come around to the matriarch’s way of thinking but eventually the queen’s demands were met. An inside source reportedly told the Express, “She rarely imposes her will but when she does people listen – it just took the US Secret Service agents a little time to realise that.” The president’s men complied and the event went over without any incidents reported save the complete shutdown of air traffic over London when the president’s choppers arrived. The choppers were also reportedly escorted by F-22 Raptors poised to shoot down any airborne threats against the president and first lady. (Read more from “Queen to Obama: Don’t Burn My Lawn This Time” HERE)
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By Natasha Korecki. Former House Speaker Dennis Hastert was sentenced to 15 months in prison on Wednesday after a dramatic hearing in which a judge deemed him a “serial child molester” and victims tearfully testified that he forever altered their lives.
“Some conduct is unforgivable no matter how old it is,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin told Hastert in a lengthy statement at the hearing.
Durkin called it “deplorable” that Hastert lied to the FBI during an initial investigation that ultimately led to a felony charge that Hastert broke federal law on reporting cash transactions while paying hush money to a former student at a school where he was a coach. Durkin also said it was “unconscionable” that Hastert initially accused the former student — known in the case as Individual A — of extortion, leading the FBI to begin investigating the victim.
“You set him up,” Durkin told Hastert, who has admitted to sexually abusing teenage boys when he was a high school teacher and wrestling coach more than three decades ago.
Durkin upbraided Hastert for trying to say the conduct against Individual A was “ambiguous.” (Read more from “Former House Speaker Sentenced to 15 Months in Prison” HERE)
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A Look at the Men Accusing Hastert of Sexual Abuse
By Michael Tarm. Individual A was 14 when Hastert abused him, according to court documents filed by the government earlier this month. Hastert would have been in his 20s or 30s . . .
Individual B was also 14 when he says Hastert abused him. It happened when he was alone in the locker room with Hastert after a workout. He told prosecutors Hastert offered him a massage, telling him it would help “loosen him up.” Hastert then “performed a sexual act” on him, the court documents said . . .
Individual C had just stepped out of a locker room shower when Hastert offered him a massage. He didn’t think it strange at first. But when his towel came off, Hastert brushed his hand against the boy’s genitals. “Individual C recalls that it was ‘very weird’ and made him uncomfortable,” according to the court papers. But Individual C wasn’t sure the touching was intentional. (Read more from “A Look at the Men Accusing Hastert of Sexual Abuse” HERE)