Obamacare Repeal Is Crashing and Burning Because of RINO Cowards

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With the Freedom Caucus on board for the MacArthur amendment to the GOP’s lousy Obamacare reform bill, all eyes are on the Republican moderates of the House. At their current rate, they are going to kill the bill because they believe it repeals too much of Obamacare. Cowards.

The Hill’s whip list currently has 21 Republicans voting “no” on the legislation. If the GOP loses one more vote, there will not be enough Republicans to get the bill to 217 (with every Democratic member voting against Obamacare reform).

While some members like Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., and Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., refuse to vote for the bill because it breaks the Republicans’ promise to fully repeal Obamacare, the majority of no votes are centrists who think the repeal legislation goes too far.

With the bill’s failure likely imminent, the vote has been delayed.

Just what do the moderates want, short of keeping Obamacare in its current form? The Freedom Caucus bent over backward to find a compromise that they could vote for. When the original promise was full repeal, conservatives compromised to just repealing the insurance regulations driving up premiums. When that fell through, they settled on the current plan to give some states waivers to make repeal of those regulations optional. How do the moderates want to drag the bill further to the left?

By protecting entitlement programs.

Speaking to the Washington Examiner, Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., said that the moderates could potentially be swayed to vote yes if some changes to Medicaid were undone.

“I think we understand that the MacArthur language is the language,” he said about the amendment made public this week that would allow states to opt out of certain Obamacare requirements. “But there are a couple of other tweaks that could occur on the Medicaid side to help in some extent, without it being such a huge issue that it would lose anybody.”

Centrists opposed to the current version have noted that the bill would cut $880 billion from Medicaid, saying they are concerned about taking coverage away from low-income constituents. Collins said they are worried about provisions in the legislation that would allow states to change their Medicaid funding to a block grant or to a system that would place a per-capita cap on funding, structures that would limit spending but also give states more flexibility about how to use federal dollars.

The sticking point for RINOs is an $880 billion cut to government spending on the Medicaid entitlement program that has repeatedly proved itself to be an abject failure. Seven years of campaign promises from Republicans down the toilet because there are too many members of Congress afraid of touching entitlement programs.

By now it should’ve been clear that the Republican Party had no intention of fully repealing Obamacare. But the concessions demanded by too many Republicans are enlightening.

If Republicans cannot achieve moderate entitlement reform to Obamacare now, what can voters expect from the GOP regarding other pledges — e.g. entitlement reform for the likes of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid writ-large? These are the programs that are driving the mass majority of government spending.

If the Republican Party is the party of smaller government, and its members in power refuse to shrink the size of government, what is the GOP’s raison d’être?

And why should small-government conservatives belong to the Republican Party? (For more from the author of “Obamacare Repeal Is Crashing and Burning Because of RINO Cowards” please click HERE)

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Groups Urge Carson to Spike Gender Identity Rule for HUD Shelters

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Citing safety for women, 40 leaders of groups across the country have signed a letter asking Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to rescind and revise a gender identity rule adopted by the Obama administration for government shelters.

The rule, published in September 2016, allows all individuals to use HUD men’s and women’s shelters based on their gender identity, regardless of whether they were born male or female.

“Dear Mr. Secretary,” the letter to Carson reads, “We write to urge you to … protect the safety and privacy of women in need of shelter due to homelessness or violence.”

The writers add:

We are a diverse group of women and organizations allied in a common cause: mothers, feminists, women of faith, lesbian and bisexual women’s rights activists, and concerned neighbors, convened through the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition, to request your consideration for our sisters without stable housing.

The HUD-run shelters, services, and programs covered by the rule are for men and women who are homeless, or about to be so, and for women fleeing domestic violence.

The letter is the work of the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition, a group of conservative and liberal women who work to fight what they consider anti-woman positions promoted by the transgender movement.

The coalition planned to submit the letter to HUD on Monday.

The rule’s formal title is “Equal Access in Accordance with an Individual’s Gender Identity in Community Planning and Development Programs.”

The signers of the letter ask Carson to rescind and revise the regulation to reflect that “single-sex facilities should not be forced to permit clients of the opposite biological sex, that men who identify as women or nonbinary must be kept safe at men’s facilities, and that women who identify as men or nonbinary should be kept safe at women’s facilities.”

Nonbinary refers to a “combination of both male and female, or neither, or in between,” Ryan T. Anderson, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation who writes on gender identity issues, told The Daily Signal in an email.

The Daily Signal’s Kelsey Harkness previously produced a video about the Hands Across the Aisle Coalition:

Kristen Bridgan-Brown, 42, a mother and a victim of rape and abuse from Tacoma, Washington, stayed at a shelter for women during her recovery.

She says this is a personal issue for her.

“A man’s presence would have been a complete deal breaker,” Bridgan-Brown said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal. “I would have left. In my mind, my known abuser would have been better to go back to, than someone who had the potential to hurt me that I didn’t know.”

During her time at the Family Renewal Shelter in Tacoma, Bridgan-Brown said, she shared restroom facilities, a kitchen, a living room, a dining room, and a laundry room with other women and their children. She said it was important that she shared those facilities with her own gender.

“Women from domestic violence relationships need a safe space away from men to regroup and process,” Bridgan-Brown told The Daily Signal. “It takes years to heal, but it’s the necessary start of a long journey.”

Autumn Leva, director of policy and communication for the Family Policy Alliance, an organization that seeks to protect religious freedom and family values, said the Trump administration must change the government rule.

“This rule defies common sense, defeats the very purpose of women-only shelters for victims of abuse, and threatens the safety and dignity of women in need of HUD facilities,” Leva said in a statement provided to The Daily Signal.

Over 1 million people are served each year in HUD’s housing program for the homeless, according to the agency.

CitizenGO, an organization that seeks to “defend and promote life, family, and liberty,” hosts a Hands Across the Aisle Coalition petition asking that Carson change the rule.

“For most of us, this isn’t even a hard issue,” Joseph Backholm, president of the Family Policy Institute of Washington, which promotes traditional family values and opposes the rule, said in an email to The Daily Signal, adding:

Those who find themselves in need of a women and children’s shelter are often escaping dangerous and abusive situations. I don’t have the nerve to tell them they don’t have the right to be concerned about sharing a room with a complete stranger who is a biological male and I don’t think the federal government should either.

The Human Rights Campaign, a major advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, and the Center for American Progress, a think tank that advances LGBT activists’ goals, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s requests for comments on the Obama administration’s gender identity rule for HUD shelters.

Dana Hodges, state director for Concerned Women for America of Texas, a conservative women’s advocacy organization, said the rule is counterproductive.

“The fact that [women] could be faced with sharing these facilities with men who seek to exploit these ‘gender-fluid’ guidelines as an opportunity to prey on these women is unthinkable and wholly unacceptable,” Hodges said.

Matt Sharp, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, told The Daily Signal that under HUD’s rulemaking process, officials could write a rule restoring the original language and ask for public comment before adopting it.

The rule potentially could be rescinded by Congress using the Congressional Review Act, Paul Larkin, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email. (For more from the author of “Groups Urge Carson to Spike Gender Identity Rule for HUD Shelters” please click HERE)

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Trump Opens Doors on Oil Exploration, but Deeper Reforms Still Needed

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In another move to free up domestic energy supplies, President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday aimed at lifting the Obama administration’s offshore drilling restrictions.

For decades, bad policies have blocked access to America’s abundance of domestic resources, yet America has still managed to be a global energy leader. Trump’s executive order, “Implementing an America-First Offshore Energy Strategy,” could unleash further success in the energy sector.

The economic potential sitting just off America’s coasts is enormous. The Outer Continental Shelf is awash with natural resources, containing an estimated 86 billion barrels of oil and 420 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

Realizing that potential could create nearly a million American jobs, and the increased energy supplies that would result would put money back into the bank accounts of American families. It would also generate new prospects for investment and job creation, as cheap energy lowers the cost of business operations across all sectors, not just energy.

The federal government has placed various bans on offshore drilling for decades. Last November, the Obama administration’s Department of Interior finalized some of the most restrictive leasing programs to date.

The Interior Department’s final 2017-2022 Outer Continental Shelf Oil and Gas Leasing Program was best known for the areas it placed off limits, rather than what it made available to lease for energy exploration.

It excluded lease sales in the oil-rich Beaufort or Chukchi seas off the coasts of Alaska, as well as areas off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The Interior Department also restricted opportunities in the Gulf of Mexico and the Cook Inlet off south central Alaska.

Critics of Trump’s decision to free up leasing are making the same arguments they’ve made for years: “Oil prices are too low, so the decision won’t spur more oil exploration. Drilling offshore takes too long, so it’s not going to have any immediate impact.”

But those arguments ignore the biggest drivers of investment. Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis were spot on in writing for The Washington Post, “[L]ocal political considerations and the global energy market are likely to influence future exploration far more than an executive order in Washington.”

While Trump’s executive order will open more doors for exploration, it won’t automatically trigger an energy boom. That’s the way it should be.

Oil prices are long-term and, as history has shown, can increase rather quickly. Industry makes investment decisions looking decades into the future, not simply based on short-term projections.

Although it certainly is possible that low oil prices could prohibit offshore production, that’s a decision for the private sector to consider. Businesses are much better equipped and flexible to deal with changing economic circumstances than shortsighted politicians in Washington.

Another battle cry for of those who oppose offshore drilling is: Do we really want to risk another Deepwater Horizon spill?

The Deepwater Horizon spill of 2010, which caused environmental degradation in the Gulf of Mexico, was a rare and isolated incident, not a result of any systemic problem associated with offshore oil and gas operations.

That’s not to say flaws don’t exist in the current system or that improvements can’t be made.

In fact, after Deepwater Horizon, Congress examined the government-imposed offshore liability cap but never implemented any prudent solution.

Current law states that oil or gas companies do not have to pay more than $75 million in liability costs for accidents they cause—no matter how great the damages.

Additional fees can be paid out of a government-mandated trust fund (the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund), which effectively socializes the risk of offshore oil and gas activities.

Congress should reform the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund and remove the $75 million liability cap, replacing it with a new system that assesses the risks of offshore oil and gas operations and appropriately assigns those risks to industry operators.

A new approach would accurately assign risk to all offshore operations, including exploratory drilling, production, and tanker movements.

Such a system should also hold operators fully liable for their actions and guard against frivolous lawsuits. It should rely on market-based mechanisms and be built around private insurers and professional risk assessors.

Environmental activists aren’t the only ones opposed to Trump’s executive order. Some members of the tourism industry have also voiced concerns about expanded drilling off the Atlantic.

But the energy industry has worked in perfect harmony with other industries. Just look to the Gulf Coast. Every year, residents of the Gulf come to Morgan City, Louisiana, to celebrate the lifeblood of the region’s economy: seafood and oil.

Morgan City’s Shrimp and Petroleum Festival emphasizes “the unique way in which these two seemingly different industries work hand-in-hand culturally and environmentally in this area of the ‘Cajun Coast.’”

While the Deepwater Horizon spill affected all industries in the Gulf Coast, the majority of seafood and tourism companies supported the oil industry throughout the ordeal.

In fact, in many respects, the spill has strengthened the bond between the oil and seafood industry. Shrimpers and fishers were as vocal as anyone in lifting the offshore drilling ban after the spill.

Drilling off the Atlantic coasts could welcome the same symbiotic relationship, which already exists in the Gulf and in the state of Alaska.

Furthermore, states should collect more royalty revenue for offshore production.

Currently, states receive 50 percent of the revenues generated by onshore oil and natural gas production on federal lands, and Congress should apply this allocation offshore as well.

Drilling off states’ coasts and allowing them a larger share of the royalty revenue would encourage more state involvement in drilling decisions.

Offshore drilling would also promote state and local government participation in allocating funds, helping them to close their deficits, enabling coastal restoration and conservation, and shoring up funds for schools.

Trump’s executive order is a welcome step to increasing access to domestic resources, but the back-and-forth of banning resource exploration and then undoing it is a sign that wholesale reform is necessary.

The politicization of the leasing program and the static central planning process that has stifled a dynamic, constantly changing energy market points to the need for legislative action. It is time for a fundamental reconsideration of how the U.S. manages offshore resource development.

Congress should amend the Outer Continental Shelf Leasing Act and get rid of this antiquated, piecemeal leasing approach. (For more from the author of “Trump Opens Doors on Oil Exploration, but Deeper Reforms Still Needed” please click HERE)

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Congress Gives Itself Another Week to Craft Spending Bill

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Hours before the federal government’s spending authority expired Friday at midnight, the Senate advanced a one-week continuing resolution by voice vote, putting spending on autopilot and avoiding a looming government shutdown.

The Senate action followed a 382-30 House vote to pass the one-week extension. Without the measure, the government would have run out of money as Friday turned to Saturday.

The makeshift spending agreement allows lawmakers in the House and Senate to negotiate until next Friday to come to a deal and pass a huge, omnibus spending bill to fund the government through the rest of fiscal year 2017, which ends Sept. 30.

“It really bothers me that we’re so late in getting this thing done,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., said of the 11th-hour spending resolution in an interview with The Daily Signal.

Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., a member of the House Appropriations Committee, told The Daily Signal that the omnibus bill, expected to be introduced Monday, is progressing well.

“My understanding is that the omnibus bill is nearly complete, that … we may actually be able to combine all the separate appropriations bills into that omnibus bill, and that’s good news,” Harris said in an interview.

Votes on the omnibus spending bill are expected on Thursday.

Funding for President Donald Trump’s border wall is not included. Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate have said they prefer to put off a fight with Democrats over beginning to pay for the wall until the fall, rather than as part of funding the government for the rest of the current fiscal year.

“Full border wall funding can’t be there at this point,” Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., a supporter of the wall, said in a recent interview with The Daily Signal. “It’s not designed, prototypes have not been created.”

Biggs said he is preparing an amendment to defund Planned Parenthood for inclusion in the omnibus spending bill. He said it mirrors Vice President Mike Pence’s amendment to defund Planned Parenthood that the House passed in 2011, when Pence was a Republican congressman from Indiana.

National defense must be a priority in the omnibus bill, Harris said.

“I look forward to a very lively discussion for the next year’s appropriations bills on the president’s plan to begin to prioritize funding within the nonmandatory side of the ledger and to re-emphasize defense of the nation and homeland security as a top priority,” Harris said.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., predicted controversy for the omnibus bill currently being discussed.

“There are probably still 70 poison pills in the bill that we can’t live with,” Pelosi said Wednesday on CNN.

“One party now controls the White House and both chambers of Congress,” Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., ranking member of the Appropriations Committee, said in a prepared statement about the one-week extension. “It is incumbent upon them to ensure that the government of the American people stays open and is fully funded.”

Biggs, however, sounded cautiously optimistic about what those crafting the omnibus will produce.

“I hope they produce something in writing soon because I don’t know how they expect people to vote on stuff they don’t have time to read,” the Arizona Republican said. (For more from the author of “Congress Gives Itself Another Week to Craft Spending Bill” please click HERE)

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White House Vows Funding for Border Wall, Just Not Now

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Congress plans to pass a final spending bill to keep the government running beyond the next week, but without funding for a border wall. The White House, however, says it will demand money for President Donald Trump’s signature campaign issue in next year’s budget plan.

“The president is committed to having a physical border wall. That is not to be doubted,” Helen Aguirre Ferré, White House media affairs director, told The Daily Signal in an interview Friday, adding:

The funding didn’t have to be at this particular point in time, when we need a continuing resolution when it comes to the budget, but it’s definitely going to be presented by September, when we have to have the budget going forward. I don’t think anybody should doubt that this is something that is going to be pressed on.

The current fiscal year runs through Sept. 30. Congress has not added any funds for that budget year specifically for a wall along the Mexico-U.S. border.

Trump’s proposal for fiscal year 2018, which begins Oct. 1, includes a $1.5 billion down payment on the wall. Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said in March that another $2.8 billion likely would go into funding the wall the next fiscal year.

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., had threatened a government shutdown if any funding in the spending bill for the current fiscal year goes toward construction of a border wall.

On Friday, the House and Senate passed a measure that keeps the government running for another week while it works on a $1 trillion package to keep the government running through September. Otherwise, the money would have run out at midnight.

The House passed the measure by a vote of 382-30, while the Senate followed with a voice vote. The White House previously had dropped Trump’s demand that some funds for the wall be included in the final spending bill.

“Our biggest concern at this point in time is to do the No. 1 thing that the American public has put on our shoulders—and we signed up for the job, quite frankly—which is to govern. And that means that the government must remain open,” Ferré said.

When asked if the president was willing to risk a government shutdown with Schumer when talks resume in September, Ferré said:

We hope that everybody comes together to the table to really work to resolve our nation’s problems. That includes border security. The president is committed to the border wall. There will be funding for the border wall.

(For more from the author of “White House Vows Funding for Border Wall, Just Not Now” please click HERE)

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‘Professor’ Rand Paul?

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Senator Rand Paul, R-KY., former presidential candidate, ophthalmologist, and conservatarian firebrand is fulfilling a dream – teaching English to college students.

Jackson Richman of Red Alert Politics reports “Professor Rand Paul” will teach a course titled “Dystopian Visions” during the fall 2017 semester at George Washington University. The course will focus on dystopian literature and what it can teach about the nature of too-powerful government.

Sen. Paul has previously discussed his desire to teach, saying “I think dystopian novels are a discussion of politics, and sort of what happens if you let a government accumulate too much power.”

The class will be an elective held bi-weekly at 8 AM.

“When Senator Paul’s office approached us about coming to campus to teach this course, we agreed that his unique voice as a sitting senator would provide an engaging backdrop for our students,” Ben Vinson, the dean of GWU’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, said. “Because of our connections and location in the heart of the nation’s capital, we will continue to welcome prominent contributors to the global dialogue to come to campus to engage our students.”

Eager students have maxed out the available seats in the class. It’s safe to say this will be one college campus where a conservative speaker is welcome. (For more from the author of “‘Professor’ Rand Paul?” please click HERE)

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Promise Broken? Trump DOJ Continues Suit Against Religious Groups

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The most absurd example of progressive pathology during Obama’s reign was arguably the legal assault on the Little Sisters of the Poor. “Jumping the shark” called, and it thinks making criminals out of chaste women because they won’t pay for other women to have recreational sex is just begging for some karmic justice.

But sadly, it may be the nuns’ turn to get kicked in the teeth once more. Because elections have consequences, or something.

According to LifeSiteNews, the Trump administration has asked the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals for 60 more days to continue the Obama administration’s bullying of religious institutions. This is after several of them, including the Little Sister of the Poor, had found at least temporary relief in multiple courts from fascism masquerading as feminism.

During the campaign, though, Trump assured such groups that to force them into providing abortifacients is “a hostility to religious liberty you will never see in a Trump administration … I will defend your religious liberties and the right to fully and freely practice your religion, as individuals, business owners and academic institutions.”

That’s the exact moral clarity the oath of office calls for, but it was lacking in federal court this week. Trump could simply have declined to enforce the illegitimate and unethical penalties leveled against acts of Christian conscience, even if it turns out he doesn’t have the energy or conviction to engage in a crusade on behalf of religious liberty. But he didn’t.

And what was the excuse, err, reason given?

Wait for it … Wait for it …

We need more bureaucracy!

Yes, this “returning the government to the people” thing from Trump’s inaugural has taken a very weird turn indeed. The Department of Justice actually said the Trump White House, which is nearing its first 100 days in office, still hasn’t had enough to time to assemble the staff necessary to determine whether or not it’s cool to force nuns to defy God.

Good grief. How many more lawyers do you need to have sufficient confidence that the Founding Fathers weren’t just spitballing when they came up with that whole First Amendment thing? Might I suggest that when the ACLU is currently suing a hospital on behalf of a man who thinks he’s a woman and is upset the hospital won’t perform a hysterectomy on him, the answer might be “zero”?

In response to this, I know some of you will find comfort in telling yourself that all this is better than Hillary, or that Trump has done some good things. Those are two things that are true, but also irrelevant to this discussion.

There are also a lot of parents who do obvious and undeniably good things for their children, like feed, clothe, and shelter them. Yet they are so derelict at providing for their spiritual needs that as soon as they go off to college, subsidized pagan brainwashing is all but assured. Proportionally speaking, providing for your children’s material needs is a necessity. But doing so at the expense of their eternal souls is an existential failure.

That’s what we are dealing with here. Trump has deregulated some things. He has had some foreign policy successes. All of which I appreciate and have noted and complimented. But he hasn’t come close to indicating that he can be, or really even wants to be, transformational in the way that Obama was. And this is what is needed to truly undo the damage Obama did. Anything short of that will be a failure for a culture on the brink, as ours is.

Perhaps no group is more responsible for Trump’s election than the devout. He owes them, well, bigly. Payback shouldn’t take 100 days, let alone another 60. That assumes Planned Parenthood apologist Ivanka, who is all but acting as First Lady, hasn’t been persuading Daddy on this issue. That could be the real reason for the delay.

How much bureaucracy does it take to stop suing nuns? If your workload is too overbearing for an under-staffed Justice Department, why not kick some feckless litigation like this to the curb and lighten the workload? How much more work does it require to file a withdrawal than to file a delay? (For more from the author of “Promise Broken? Trump DOJ Continues Suit Against Religious Groups” please click HERE)

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‘We Were Lied To’: Levin Torches Obama’s Climate BS Artists

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Thursday evening on the radio, Conservative Review Editor-in-Chief Mark Levin discussed a report from The Daily Caller illustrating how the Obama administration lied to promote its environmental agenda.

The administration allegedly manipulated climate stats and reports to influence public opinion. From the article:

Former Energy Department Undersecretary Steven Koonin told The Wall Street Journal Monday that bureaucrats within former President Barack Obama’s administration spun scientific data to manipulate public opinion.

“What you saw coming out of the press releases about climate data, climate analysis, was, I’d say, misleading, sometimes just wrong,” Koonin said, referring to elements within the Obama administration he said were responsible for manipulating climate data.

“We were lied to,” Levin said. “We were lied to in order to advance an ideology.”

And why? Why else — Big Government insatiable greed and lust for power.

Listen:

“It’s an attack on capitalism,” Levin explained. “This is just the latest effort by the Left — the socialist Left, the Marxist Left — to nationalize economic decision making.”

Climate change is a greater national security threat than terrorism, many on the Left tell us. And some on the Right buy into their “myth,” Levin points out.

At the end of the day, this is utopian statism. (For more from the author of “‘We Were Lied To’: Levin Torches Obama’s Climate BS Artists” please click HERE)

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Green Freaks and Government Abandoned THESE Native Americans

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Starting late last year, environmentalists gathered in the state of North Dakota to protest and block the construction of the Dakota Access pipeline.

Thousands of people from all over descended on the Peace Garden State and set up makeshift camps that would eventually become highly publicized symbols of opposition against the pipeline. The alleged grievance: that the pipeline infringed on Standing Rock Sioux land rights – even though the construction area in question wasn’t on Sioux land – and might hypothetically contaminate the tribe’s water supply.

The display would soon become a dividing point between those who cheered the camped-out protesters, and those who saw the effort as little more than a farce garnering national news coverage.

Eventually, the camps were cleared out, with even the tribe asking the demonstrators to pack up and get out.

Late last month, oil began to flow through the pipeline, but the debate over its impact still lingers, with opponents’ latest setback coming in the form of a federal court ruling that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers could withhold the results of environmental impact reports out of public safety concerns.

Whether or not the campers’ concerns of impending calamity from the project will come to fruition remains a mystery. One thing is certain, however: The impact from the protesters themselves had a far greater apparent impact on the local environment than the construction of the pipeline itself.

But, once the dust settled and the encampments on the Standing Rock Sioux reservation cleared out, the cleanup crews took over. All in all, according to government reports in March, the cost of restoring the local camps clocked in at over $1 million, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had to haul away over 800 dumpsters full of refuse left behind by so-called “environmentalists.”

In addition to garbage, reports revealed that a number of pets were also left behind, forcing local animal rescue groups to scramble last minute.

But one wonders: with all this drama over an environmental disaster that hasn’t even happened yet, and all the concerns for the wellbeing of the local Native American population all over the mere possibility of pollution, where were the eco-campers when a massive environmental disaster actually happened just under two years ago out west?

In a recent episode of “Michelle Malkin Investigates,” CRTV delves into the impact of the Gold King Mine spill, the results of which were disastrous for the Navajo Nation.

The August 2015 disaster in Silverton, Colorado, which was caused by a combination of outdated environmental laws and EPA-overseen malpractice, sent millions of gallons of an orange, heavy-metal cocktail into the watershed of multiple western states. And oh … it also had a devastating impact on the Navajo Nation – which is now suing the federal government for damages.

In “EPA Run A-Muck,” Conservative Review Senior Editor Michelle Malkin takes a hard, investigative look at the details of the spill, the victims, and why it never received the attention it deserves.

One thing you won’t see in the episode (or any of the news reports surrounding the plight of the Navajo) is anything like the environmentalist shantytowns or mass media coverage of Standing Rock. (For more from the author of “Green Freaks and Government Abandoned THESE Native Americans” please click HERE)

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How Trump’s Tax Plan Would Affect High-Tax States Like California, New York

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High-income earners in high-tax states would see a federal tax rate cut. But they still may pay more in the end if they’re unable to deduct state and local taxes under President Donald Trump’s tax reform proposal announced Wednesday.

The White House released the contours of his tax reform proposal that would lower tax rates and reduce the number of tax brackets. However, the plan would also reduce the number of tax deductions.

When a reporter asked if deducting taxes on state and local income taxes would also be eliminated, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin answered, “Yes.”

“We are going to eliminate on the personal side all tax deductions other than mortgage interests and charitable deductions,” Mnuchin said at a White House press conference Wednesday.

House Republicans were already reportedly considering eliminating the deduction on state and local taxes, which could disproportionately affect wealthy people in high-tax blue states such as New York and California.

This federal deduction basically encouraged states to hike taxes, said Jonathan Williams, the chief economist for the American Legislative Exchange Commission, a state-centric public policy organization.

“The current policy subsidizes high-tax states,” Williams told The Daily Signal in a phone interview. “Using that revenue to pay for cutting rates across the board is a step in the right direction.”

The Trump tax plan would reduce the number of tax brackets from seven to three brackets of 10 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent. The plan would not tax the first $24,000 in income for a couple, which is double the current standard deduction.

The Trump plan would repeal the alternative minimum tax, phaseout the death tax, and repeal the 3.8 percent surtax on investment income used to fund Obamacare.

On the business side, the corporate tax rate will be cut to 15 percent, from 35 percent. Also, the government would only tax a business’s income from inside the United States, not income from abroad. This is common in other countries and is known as a “territorial tax system.”

Gary Cohn, director of the National Economic Council and Trump’s chief economic adviser, told reporters tax reform is a “once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something really big.”

The last sweeping reform came in 1986.

“This isn’t going to be easy. Doing big things never is. We’ll be attacked from the left. We’ll be attacked from the right,” Cohn said. “But one thing is certain. I would never, ever bet against this president.”

Cohn added:

In 2017, we are still stuck with a 1988 corporate tax system. That’s why we are one of the least competitive countries in the developed world when it comes to taxes. So tax reform is long overdue.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said the plan is the “same trickle-down economics that undermined the middle class,” and said the president should work on a fiscally responsible bipartisan plan with Democrats.

“Instead of focusing on hardworking families as he promised, President Trump’s tax outline is a wish list for billionaires,” Pelosi said in a public statement. “What few details are here overwhelmingly cut taxes for the richest and do little for middle-class Americans and those trying to get there. Besides which, nowhere does President Trump indicate how his deficit-exploding tax plan will actually be paid for.”

Adam Michel, a tax policy analyst with The Heritage Foundation, said he believes the proposal shows Trump is serious about reform:

For too long, America’s out-of-date and overbearing tax system has put a damper on economic growth while punishing savings and investment. The president’s plan is a great starting point. Now, the president and Congress must work together to finally update our broken tax system. True reform should apply the most efficient and least economically destructive forms of taxation, have low rates on a broad base, and be as transparent, predictable, and simple as possible.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, praised Trump’s proposal.

“President Trump has re-energized the drive for fundamental tax reform that creates growth and jobs,” Norquist said in a public statement. “The plan cuts taxes for businesses and individuals and simplifies the code so Americans can file on a postcard. Reducing taxes on all businesses down to 15 percent will turbocharge the economy.”

Mnuchin called the current 35 percent corporate rate “perhaps the most complicated and uncompetitive business rate in the world.”

He said he anticipates the proposal would return the U.S. to greater than 3 percent growth without an adverse impact on the debt or revenue. Throughout most of the Obama administration, economic growth didn’t surpass 3 percent in a single year.

“This plan will lower the ratio of debt to [gross domestic product]. The economic plan under Trump would grow the economy, will create massive amounts of revenues,” Mnuchin said.

The plan is a net tax reduction, Williams said, and fundamental reform takes cronyism out of the tax code, which could help Trump keep another promise.

“Draining the tax code swamp is a good way to go about getting rid of all those special interest loopholes,” Williams said. (For more from the author of “How Trump’s Tax Plan Would Affect High-Tax States Like California, New York” please click HERE)

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