Horowitz: Because of “Our Illegitimate Government,” We Can No Longer Celebrate Our Independence. We Must Fight for It Again

/0 Comments/in , , /by

The day was July 4, 1826. As John Adams lay on his deathbed in the afternoon, he uttered his final words: “Thomas Jefferson survives.” While in the literal sense, Adams was mistaken because Jefferson had died several hours earlier, in one way he was correct. The work that Jefferson completed on that very day exactly 50 years before – the work Adams helped him craft before the two became archenemies and then friends again – survived another two hundred years. Until now.

July 4, 2020, will be an Independence Day celebration like never before. In fact, it won’t be a celebration at all, but merely a commemoration of what we have lost and hopefully a reminder of what we need to fight for all over again after 244 years. It will be marked not by the grand public displays of fireworks, for those are forbidden by restrictions upon the very liberties expressed in the Declaration of Independence, but rather by the sounds of fireworks being thrown by anarchists against police – anarchists who now dictate our way of life as we the people continue to be locked down.

It wasn’t just the statue of Thomas Jefferson that was ripped down in Portland, Oregon. It was the foundational governing document he helped draft – the guiding light of our republic until it died 244 years later – that has been torn to shreds.

Ronald Reagan observed on July 4, 1986, as he related the story of the reuniting of Jefferson and Adams in friendship, that “the things that unite us – America’s past of which we’re so proud, our hopes and aspirations for the future of the world and this much-loved country – these things far outweigh what little divides us.”

Well, indeed, 34 years later, we can now say with certainty that there are very few things that do not divide us, chief among them whether we are even proud of America’s past or whether we seek to uproot every last vestige of its memory.

In order to understand what we have lost and what we need to fight for again, let’s review the precious document that was signed on July 4, 1776. The product of five great men – Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Roger Sherman, Robert Livingston, and Thomas Jefferson – in just the 201 words of its preamble, this founding charter of government established six inviolate principles of the morality of a just governing system – all of which have since been broken:

1. That individuals are born with natural rights that come from God, not from historical precedent, English Common Law, or the democratic whims of the majority in a given society. Those rights are beyond the reach of mob rule or a tyrannical political majority.

2. That chief among those natural rights given by God are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to earn a living and own property. Implicit in this is the natural right to self-defense. As Sam Adams, the Founding Father of the American Revolution, said, “Among the natural rights of the colonists are these: First a right to life, secondly to liberty, and thirdly to property; together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.”

3. That individuals form a government as a social compact, not to infringe upon those rights but to protect those inalienable rights from threats in a way that could not be managed without a governing body.

4. That on issues not affecting inalienable rights, government may exercise other just powers, primarily for the safety and stability of the society, but only by the consent of the people as expressed through some legitimate form of republican representation (consent of the governed). Inherent in this principle is that no outside forces not controlled by the members of that society itself may determine the destiny of the society.

5. That all men were created equal in access to and defense of those inalienable rights, not societal outcomes, privileges, or other human pursuits, an ideal that runs to natural law. Also, implicit in the preamble is that all members of a given society are equal in the right to self-governance in their respective societies on their territories and that no ruling class or individual has the right to invasively govern over someone else’s life.

6. That when a long train of abuses and usurpations of the aforementioned principles continues without any other recourse, the people have the right, indeed a duty, to rebel against the existing system.

The first five principles have been abrogated beyond recognition, which leaves us struggling with how to apply the sixth.

Today, we are suffering from a perfect contortion of these self-evident truths – the worst mix of tyranny and anarchy and the most widespread violations of fundamental rights since our Founding. We have a government that undemocratically locks down our physical movement and right to earn a living based on distorted data and flat-earth “science,” while facilitating unequal treatment for favored classes to riot. They strip us of the right to self-defense, while freely empowering their protected people and movements to maim, loot, block free movement, and even kill.

Everything our governments should be doing, they ignore, and everything they are prohibited from doing based on natural law, they elevate to the highest order of governance.

Mobs are allowed to roam freely and dictate policies through fear and intimidation.

Desires of foreign nationals who are not signatories to the social compact founded in the Declaration are elevated above the rights of the citizens governed by the compact.

Government by the consent of the governed? Our government is allowing people across the border to come here to get treated for the virus, then using those hospitalizations as a pretext to place curfews and other restrictions on the liberty and property of Americans.

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men …” They are now allowing roving mobs to restrict our movement and attack motorists. In the process, they are spreading the virus, which gives this same illegitimate government further excuse to blame we the people and lock us down. We can’t gather in small groups to work or socialize, while they can gather in the thousands to dismantle our republic. How is that for all men created equal?

As I laid out in my indictment of our illegitimate government, rather than a government built on promoting and protecting inalienable rights for all, we have a government that manufactures super-rights and privileges for some at the expense of foundational rights of the whole of the people. Liberty, according to our illegitimate politicians, now means the right to someone else’s property or a public benefit, instead of freedom from restraint by someone else or by government.

Thus, this is not about a few or or even many policy disagreements. It all stems from the government’s contortion of life, liberty, and property to mean the exact opposite of what our Founders knew them to be. There is no bridging the divide.

This government will not fix itself without deeper intervention and divine guidance. The Republican Party is part of the problem, not the solution. As we grope in the darkness and strategize and pray for a long-term or even short-term solution, we ourselves must never forget our liberty and property rights as well as the right to individual and jurisdictional sovereignty. We must never forget that these truths are still self-evident and that we are still willing to fight for them. We must never agree to this grotesque confluence of anarchy and tyranny as “the new normal.” And we must certainly never legitimize this illegitimate usurpation of our social contract.

They might have torn down Jefferson’s statue and perverted the government built on the contract he wrote, but we still have the actual contract. It belongs to us. And in that contract, Jefferson offered not only the moral imperative to break away from England but also the moral imperative to fight back against future government usurpations of that contract in the future. That contract is eternal, because it is built on natural law from God.

As Abraham Lincoln said following the Supreme Court’s dreadful Dred Scott decision in 1858:

The assertion that “all men are created equal” was of no practical use in effecting our separation from Great Britain; and it was placed in the Declaration, not for that, but for future use. Its authors meant it to be, thank God, it is now proving itself, a stumbling block to those who in after times might seek to turn a free people back into the hateful paths of despotism. They knew the proneness of prosperity to breed tyrants, and they meant when such should re-appear in this fair land and commence their vocation they should find left for them at least one hard nut to crack.

Those infallible rights we are endowed with are inherent and don’t come from government. They cannot be covered by a mask. They cannot be taken away.

So, where do we go from here? As we formulate a long-term solution to a problem that is much greater than any of us can deal with alone, we need to build an immediate movement and take steps. The first step is to rise up and fight back. Until now, only the mob’s voices have been heard, because there is nobody else on the playing field. Nobody is representing us. To that end, we need to think beyond just the electoral process and take back our government under the following short-term propositions:

No American should be restricted by arbitrary coronavirus edicts so long as rioters are able to violate them while destroying public and private property.

No American without a criminal record should be barred from carrying a gun to protect himself from the lawlessness of gun felons who are allowed to roam the streets.

No American should be arrested for self-defense as the police stand back and allow rioters to attack them in cars and on their lawns. Patriotic sheriffs should start programs to deputize and train law-abiding owners to help keep the peace.

No American should have to pay local taxes until that governing authority reclaims the streets and the highways from roving bands of anarchists.

No federal tax funds should go to jurisdictions promoting lawless sanctuaries for the BLM mobs and criminal aliens. Patriots must demand that Trump veto any budget bill in September that does not defund anarchy.

Finally, it’s time we organize citizen defense groups the way our Founders envisioned. No, we are not going to attack and harm innocent people as the governing mob is doing, but we will reclaim our right to defend our lives and property. We all respect law enforcement, but local police departments can’t have it both ways. They can’t abdicate their duties and throw us to the wolves but then swoop in when we try to fill the vacuum for our own protection or punish us for not wearing diapers on our faces even outside.

Just like the Minutemen of the 1770s, we need to form at the local level citizen defense groups to defend life, liberty, and property. After all, what made this great document we commemorate this week more than musings on paper was the signers’ resolve to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” That pledge must be renewed at the local level in parts of the country where patriots are most common. Block by block, city by city, state by state, we must take our country back from the violent modern French revolutionaries and create another great American revolution that will make our Founders proud.

Eleven years after the signing of the Declaration, many of the same patriots assembled in the same hall in Philadelphia to codify the system of government based on the blueprint of this social compact. During the final day of triumph on September 17, 1787, Benjamin Franklin rose to speak. In his notes on the convention, James Madison captured his words as follows:

Whilst the last members were signing it [i.e., the Constitution] Doct FRANKLIN looking towards the Presidents Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that Painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.

Over two centuries later, we have come full-circle, just as the Earth rotates on its axis, and we no longer have a rising sun. We have a sun that has already set. But the good news is that through darkness comes light, and from storm clouds come the growth and sustenance of rain. The same God who birthed us with these inherent rights constantly accords us numerous opportunities in life to defend and renew those rights, just as yesterday’s sunset gives birth to a new sunrise. All we have to do is show up and fight for it.

It won’t be easy, but it wasn’t easy the first time around, when the patriots were in the minority and most were loyalists or indifferent. As John Adams wrote to his wife, Abigail, the day before he signed the great contract of American sentiment, “I am well aware of the toil, and blood, and treasure, that it will cost us to maintain this declaration, and support and defend these states. Yet, through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory; I can see that the end is more than worth all the means, and that posterity will triumph.”

“The path of the righteous is like the morning sun, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.” ~Proverbs 4:18

(For more from the author of “We Can No Longer Celebrate Our Independence. We Must Fight for It Again” please click HERE)

Here’s another view on why there will no Second American Revolution and why armed revolt if futile.

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

3 Reasons America Is Great

/0 Comments/in , /by

Independence Day in 2020 will have great meaning to many Americans.

As we’ve seen many symbols of America’s past get literally smashed by mobs, it’s important for those who still love their country to reflect on why it is exceptional and worth fighting for.

America has always been great and can be greater still.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list of why America is great, of which there are almost countless examples big and small.

But these examples are more unique to America, unique to why America rose from nothing to become the world’s preeminent superpower in such a short amount of time.

1. A Culture of Self-Government

Americans, even before the birth of the United States in 1776, have always been a self-governing people. One of the first orders of business for the Pilgrim settlers when they arrived on the shores of Massachusetts was to create the Mayflower Compact, a basic statement of self-government and loyalty to the British crown.

The Jamestown colony in Virginia set up the House of Burgesses in 1619, the first legislative assembly in the New World.

Following their heritage, the British colonies in America almost immediately established institutions of self-government where community participation in the creation and upholding of laws was extensive.

But in the almost two centuries between the arrival of British colonists in America and the American Revolution, the colonists’ attachment to self-government deepened in comparison to their cousins back in England, where representation was often more symbolic rather than actual.

Amid Parliament’s ultimately foolish attempts to ham-handedly rein in the colonies at the end of the French and Indian War, it was the Crown that triggered the separation, the drive for total independence.

The thought of losing their grip on self-government made the colonists believe that they would soon end up in the vice of absolute tyranny. After years of discontent and pleading with British authorities to loosen their grip of control, the colonies rebelled.

The Declaration of Independence, a remarkable and timeless document, did not just lay out the essential God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness in its most famous lines.

It also lays out the blow by blow steps of the British government and the colonies to establish that it was not just the rights of the colonists that had been violated, but that the very tools of self-government that could have rectified the situation had been arbitrarily stripped from them.

Americans were a people fitted for liberty and would tolerate no less.

2. The Constitution and the Rule of Law

When the Founding Fathers set about creating our own system of government, they codified the principles of self-government to serve countless generations unborn.

After the false start, so to speak, of the Articles of Confederation, the Framers wrote, and the American people ratified, the Constitution of the United States.

This remarkable document created a framework of America’s federal system that lasts still today despite the countless societal changes that have occurred in the last two centuries.

And while, in many ways, that constitutional and federal system has been eroded over time, Americans have remained committed to the idea of the Constitution as the glue that defines our government and binds Americans under a single system with many parts.

This is the cornerstone of liberty and order that defines our republic, ensures that we have an energetic but ultimately limited government.

Certainly, other nations have codified their laws and created founding documents of many stripes, but none matches the enduring legacy of the Constitution of the United States.

The American civilization may be young, but our system of government is quite old, and has excelled through the test of time.

3. The American Dream

Self-government and the Constitution have made America strong and adaptable to changing circumstances. Just as importantly, they’ve created a system whereby the average person can thrive and prosper.

The country’s strength lies in the millions of free-born, self-governing, and self-sufficient people who have taken the protections our unique government provides and created the most wealthy and prosperous nation in human history.

Americans are, and have always been, an enterprising people. But more than just create wealth, we have used our wealth and prosperity.

America’s attachment to the rule of law and defense of private property has allowed the growth of an expansive middle-class.

Yes, America has produced many titans of industry, but the real source of our strength is the fact that the average American has had opportunities to generate wealth and prosperity and create a vibrant civil society.

Many homesteaders went West to get rich, but many more went West to build families and ensure that their children would have a better life than they had.

That’s the spirit of America.

We have used our tremendous resources not only to improve our own lives but the lives of others.

And because of our enormous prosperity Americans remain, by far, the most generous people on Earth.

This Fourth of July, as with every Independence Day, we should be thankful and grateful to be Americans, we should be proud of what our country—though imperfect as all of mankind is imperfect—has accomplished.

It is important and essential that at this time we remember, defend, and pass on what has made this country great. (For more from the author of “3 Reasons America Is Great” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

A Deeper Look at Black Lives Matter and Its Impact

/0 Comments/in , /by

Standing behind vandals who attempted to pull down the bronze statue of Andrew Jackson near the White House last week is a loosely configured, increasingly well-funded network of Black Lives Matter activists bent on constraining and defunding law enforcement.

An area called Black Lives Matter Plaza became the staging ground for more than 100 demonstrators, many of them egging on the vandalism before police intervened.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, gave the official name to the two-block section of 16th Street NW two weeks earlier. Bowser had city workers neatly paint “Black Lives Matter” on the pavement in yellow, using large capital letters, and put up new street signs identifying Black Lives Matter Plaza.

Groups across the country say they identify with the movement. A centralized organization called Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, however, has more than a dozen official chapters in the U.S. and Canada—including the District of Columbia—with shared goals and objectives.

In an interview with The Daily Signal, a leader of the Black Lives Matter chapter in Denver said the chapters operate independently and pursue agendas that are particular to their location.

“There are other groups that don’t follow guiding principles, and we don’t endorse those as part of the global network,” spokesperson Apryl Alexander said in the interview. “Those chapters listed on the website are following guiding principles, but they each operate independently, and in Denver we have our own organizational structure.”

As previously reported by The Daily Signal, the declared principles of the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation include advancing the LGBT political agenda and abolishing the nuclear family.

Alexander readily acknowledged that the Denver chapter is “looking at nontraditional or kinship families.”

Such goals may or may not be why demonstrators across America carry signs and wear accessories declaring that “Black Lives Matter” and spray-paint the initials BLM on defaced or toppled statues.

For such a young movement, its impact appears to be everywhere. Corporations and foundations are shoveling money its way, perhaps without understanding the movement’s broader stated goals.

Here’s a closer look at the history, structure, and financing of Black Lives Matter.

Chapters in 12 States Plus D.C.

What devolved into an attack on the 167-year-old statue of Jackson, the war hero who became the nation’s seventh president, began as another protest in Lafayette Square of the May 25 death of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of a white police officer during his arrest in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Although Black Lives Matter is back in the media eye since Floyd’s death, the movement’s organization, structure, and finances remain somewhat nebulous.

The main website identifies 12 state chapters in the U.S., one in the nation’s capital, and three in Canada. Besides the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, variations of the name include Black Lives Matter Foundation and the Movement for Black Lives.

The regional chapters provide insight into how the self-described “collective group of liberators” working to “eradicate white supremacy” connects with a larger organization.

The chapter in Washington, D.C., for instance, identifies Aaron Goggans as a co-creator who has posted online articles under the banner of “personal reflections,” “lessons learned,” and an “emerging analysis of the movement.” Various media outlets have identified Goggans as a Black Lives Matter organizer.

Goggans has worked with the Latino Economic Development Center, the Coalition for Nonprofit Housing and Economic Development, and the Employment Justice Center, according to Influence Watch. In media interviews, he described the problem of black-on-black crime as a “myth.”

The D.C. chapter’s website includes a lengthy appeal for money that attacks President Donald Trump as a “white nationalist” and Attorney General William Barr as a “white supremacist”:

Now that an explicit white nationalist is in office and a known white supremacist is running the Department of Justice, our work and our growing ecosystem must continue to expand in its scope and depth. We must continue to actively and publicly resist along with taking the long view. We must be prepared spiritually, emotionally, physically, and intellectually.

The Daily Signal emailed the D.C. chapter asking about its relationship with the larger Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, how many members it has, and whether online donations go directly to the chapter or are sent to another entity. The chapter had not responded as of publication of this report.

A Short History

Black Lives Matter, which has taken center stage in media coverage of protests against police tactics and “systemic racism,” first gained notoriety after the 2012 fatal shooting in Sanford, Florida, of Trayvon Martin, a black high school student.

George Zimmerman, then a 28-year-old neighborhood watch coordinator for his gated community, argued that he acted in self-defense in shooting Martin, 17. A jury acquitted Zimmerman of all charges in 2013.

Three activists who opposed the Zimmerman verdict popularized the phrase “Black Lives Matter” by using the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media.

The group resurfaced in 2014 following the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown, 18, in Ferguson, Missouri. After reviewing the evidence, a grand jury decided not to indict the white police officer who shot Brown, who was black, shortly after Brown tried to grab the officer’s revolver in his police cruiser.

President Barack Obama’s Justice Department cleared the officer of any civil rights violations and found that he acted in self-defense, but the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag reemerged as a popular social media tool, as USA Today reported.

In cities across the nation, demonstrators carrying Black Lives Matter signs called for the killing of police officers—and a surge of deadly ambushes against officers followed the Ferguson officer’s acquittal.

Today, Black Lives Matter Detroit is sponsored by Allied Media Projects, and Black Lives Matter 5280 in Denver by the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center.

Donations made to the two chapters are routed through and reported as donations to these fiscal sponsors, writes Robert Stilson of Capital Research Center, a Washington-based nonprofit that examines how foundations and charities spend money.

Allied Media Projects is a left-leaning nonprofit media strategy group based in Detroit. The nonprofit Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center says it is dedicated to “radically progressive personal and social change.”

The Daily Signal sought comment from both organizations on their financial relationships with Black Lives Matter. Neither had responded by publication time.

Stilson, who runs specialized projects for Capital Research Center, explains in a recent report why it is important to flush out such financial relationships.

“Fiscal sponsorship is an arrangement through which an organization that does not have its own IRS tax-exempt status can operate as a “project of an organization that does,” Stilson writes. “In the case of 501(c)(3) fiscally sponsored projects, this allows for tax-deductible donations.”

Capital Research Center’s team has published several recent reports analyzing how Black Lives Matter is structured.

Activism in Denver

The Daily Signal sent a message via Facebook to the Denver chapter and an email to the Detroit chapter asking about their affiliations with the larger Black Lives Matter network and how many members the chapters have.

The Detroit chapter did not respond, but the Denver chapter put The Daily Signal in touch with Alexander as its spokesperson.

Alexander, a clinical and forensic psychologist who is a professor at the University of Denver, discussed the chapter’s objectives and organizational structure in a phone interview.

Black Lives Matter 5280, she said, has about a dozen members and derives its name from Denver’s elevation of 5,280 feet above sea level.

The Denver chapter scored a significant victory June 19 when Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, signed into law a “police accountability bill” ending “qualified immunity,” a concept used to protect police officers from litigation.

“That’s a discussion that’s been happening nationwide,” Alexander told The Daily Signal. “We’ve been assisting in this effort in the past few weeks and with the bill signed into law, one of our demands has been answered.”

She said the Denver chapter of Black Lives Matter has three divisions: community wellness, economic justice, and education.

The “education squad,” Alexander said, works to dismantle what she calls the school-to-prison pipeline. It examines how education policies and procedures funnel “students of color” into the criminal justice system.

Alexander points to another Colorado measure, signed by Polis in March, that prohibits discrimination based on a person’s hairstyle.

“The bill recognizes that people, especially in black communities, are being fired from their jobs or displaced from schools for wearing their hair naturally,” Alexander said, adding:

This has been happening all over our country. Kids are being kicked out of school because policies were created to discriminate against their hair and displace them from school. When we displace kids from school, then what do they do? They might gravitate toward gangs or be placed in alternative schools with kids with more severe behavioral problems.

In Denver, Black Lives Matter 5280 updated a list of demands on its Facebook page that includes “no more violent attacks against protesters,” “immediate abolishment of ICE,” and the “closing of all privately owned detention facilities.”

Alexander also is a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed June 25 by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado against Denver and Denver County. The ACLU filed the suit on behalf of Alexander, eight others, and Black Lives Matter 5280, following demonstrations in late May and early June.

The ACLU “challenges the use of tear gas and ‘less-lethal’ weapons that police unleashed against nonviolent protesters who were demonstrating over the killings of Black men and women at the hands of law enforcement,” the legal group’s Colorado affiliate says on its website:

Dr. Alexander witnessed police officers launching tear gas into protesters without warning. A few hours later, she found herself trapped between two clouds of gas, coughing, eyes and throat burning and disoriented. A day and a half later her face continued to burn. The police attack forced her to leave the demonstration, cutting short her ability to exercise her First Amendment rights.

‘Saddened and Angered’ in Detroit

Most of the U.S. and Canadian chapters have not updated or refreshed their websites to comment on events such as the spread of Floyd-related protests, calls to defund police, and vandalism of statues and monuments, with some exceptions.

Black Lives Matter Detroit, for example, announced a new “Virtual Event Schedule” and noted:

We are saddened, angered, but unfortunately unsurprised by recent police actions against Black Americans. While we did not organize last weekend’s protest actions, we fully support the Detroiters who came to speak truth to power.

The Detroit chapter also offers a definition of what is meant by “Black Lives Matter”:

We mean that the current societal intersection of governance and commerce was built upon a legacy of implicit bias; one that values the lives of Black bodies as inherently less than our white counterparts.

Or, said a different way: Our Society was built to be intentionally racist!

Our society was built this way—not our systems of government, commerce, or policing independently—but our entire way of being (and, if you think we’re wrong, take a moment to re-read the Constitution).

The Detroit chapter’s website lists Curtis Renee and John Sloan III as co-lead organizers, describing Renee as “a legal observer” and Sloan as an actor, musician, and director. It notes allied organizations such as Detroit Justice Center, which posts bail for those in need.

Central Organization

Capital Research Center’s Stilson concluded that the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is “probably the central Black Lives Matter organization,” since it operates the main website and identifies itself with the three main co-founders of the movement.

He also determined that Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s fiscal sponsor is Thousand Currents, a left-of-center grantmaking nonprofit based in Berkeley, California.

This relationship is what ultimately opened the door for the various Black Lives Matter chapters to begin receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from other left-leaning foundations.

In 2016, the global network “approached” Thousand Currents about fiscal sponsorship, according to the latter’s website.

“BLM Global Network Foundation stands out as the closest thing to an organizational standard-bearer for the very decentralized Black Lives Matter movement that exists,” Stilson told The Daily Signal in an email. “It operates the BlackLivesMatter.com website, claims the movement’s co-founders as its own co-founders, and functions as the center of officially affiliated Black Lives Matter chapters.”

Alexander, spokesperson for the Denver chapter, confirmed that the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation is the central organization.

“We follow guiding principles,” she said, “but we also have our own agenda that we abide by in this current climate with our own demands.”

Alexander said the shared principles include collective value, loving engagement, empathy, restorative practices, black families and villages, queer and transgender affirming, and globalism.

The Daily Signal sought comment from Thousand Currents by phone and email about its financial relationship with Black Lives Matter, but the foundation did not respond by publication.

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation, based in Battle Creek, Michigan, used Thousand Currents as a conduit to provide Black Lives Matters chapters with a three-year grant totaling $900,000, according to Influence Watch, a project of Capital Research Center.

Thousand Currents also served as a vehicle for the NoVo Foundation and Borealis Philanthropy to funnel donations to Black Lives Matter. Tax records show NoVo Foundation donated more than $1.5 million from 2015 to 2019 and Borealis donated $343,000 from 2016 to 2018.

No Response

Influence Watch identifies the Ford Foundation as one of the largest donors to Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation—although the donation was made indirectly.

In 2016, it says, Ford gave about $100 million to something called the Black-Led Movement Fund, administered through Borealis Philanthropy, and the fund provided the global network with “general operating funding” on several occasions since.

The Daily Signal sought comment from the Kellogg Foundation, the NoVo Foundation, Borealis Philanthropy, and the Ford Foundation on their financial support for Black Lives Matter. At publication time, only the Ford Foundation had responded.

Ford Foundation spokeswoman Amanda Simon said Thursday in a two-sentence email: “To clarify, the Ford Foundation does not currently fund the Black-Led Movement Fund (BLMF). In 2015, we gave a one-year grant of $1.3 million to BLMF.”

Looking ahead, Black Lives Matter appears to be well positioned to bring in substantial sums. On June 11, the global network announced a $6.5 million fund to support “grassroots organizing work.” Some of the money is available to all of the chapters, which it said could apply for grants of up to $500,000 beginning July 1.

By email, The Daily Signal asked the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation to clarify how it differs from other organizations that make use of the “Black Lives Matter” moniker.

The Daily Signal also asked whether donations made to identified chapters went to the global network or stayed with the local chapters. The network had not responded at publication time.

In recent posts, the Black Lives Matter chapter in Los Angeles commits itself to defunding police, and the Toronto chapter offers a list of demands.

In addition to defunding police agencies and reducing the “scope of the police,” the Toronto chapter says it favors decriminalization of “poverty, drugs, HIV, and sex work.”

In the nation’s capital, the local chapter continues to agitate against law enforcement. The topic of a new Call to Action: “Protect Black Youth in D.C.”

The chapter claims that on June 22, Metro Transit Police “detained unarmed and harmless Black youth at the U street Metro stop.” It says it remains committed to “dismantling White Supremacy, Patriarchy, Capitalism, Imperialism and the role the state plays in supporting them.”

Pledging Cash

Whatever activism Black Lives Matter and various chapters pursue going forward, ample money apparently will be on hand, including donations from big corporations.

Amazon announced in an online post updated June 9 that it would donate $10 million to a slew of left-leaning groups, including Black Lives Matter. Intel announced May 31 that it is making a $1 million donation to “address social justice and racism” that includes Black Lives Matter.

And Microsoft pledged to donate $250,000 to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation and to other groups the tech giant views as advancing “social justice.”

In terms of finances, Stilson finds that Thousand Currents played a key role in getting Black Lives Matter off the ground as a viable organization.

“BLM Global Network Foundation’s sponsorship by Thousand Currents lets us see some of the numbers behind their operations, including some of the nonprofits and foundations that have contributed to it,” Stilson said in an email to The Daily Signal. “With fiscally sponsored projects you rarely get the complete financial picture, but you can piece together parts of it.”

Although it remains difficult to assemble a complete picture of Black Lives Matter finances and structure, the organization’s ideological underpinnings and historical antecedents are becoming more clear.

Scott Walter, president of Capital Research Center, just published a report highlighting the radical history of Susan Rosenberg, vice chairwoman of Thousand Currents’ board of directors. Walter writes:

If there were any question whether Black Lives Matter has ideological ties to the Communist terrorists of the 1960s, the story of Susan Rosenberg should put that issue to bed. Rosenberg, who started out as a member of the 1960s revolutionary group Weather Underground, graduated into even more violent, and arguably successful, forms of terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s—including bombings at an FBI field office in Staten Island, the Navy Yard Officers’ Club in Washington, D.C., and even the U.S. Capitol building, where she damaged a representation of the greatest of the Democrat defenders of slavery, John C. Calhoun.

Related Organizations

Walter says in his report that Thousand Currents scrubbed its website shortly after Capital Research Center published its expose on Rosenberg, but the details remain archived here.

The Daily Signal sought comment from Thousand Currents, including on Capital Research Center’s report, but it did not respond.

Other organizations also claim the mantle of Black Lives Matter without any official connection to the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation. These include the Movement for Black Lives and the Black Lives Matter Foundation in California.

The Movement for Black Lives has a policy platform that may be found here. Although the Denver chapter of Black Lives Matter isn’t officially affiliated with the Movement for Black Lives, Alexander said, it used that group’s “Week of Action” as a model for its own “Week of Action” from June 1-7.

“The Movement for Black Lives appears to function more as an organizing coalition for independent organizations that share a common objective and agenda within the broader Black Lives Matter movement,” Stilson told The Daily Signal in an email. “It accepts donations directly through its fiscal sponsor, the Alliance for Global Justice, but so do its constituent members via their own tax-exempt status or that of their respective fiscal sponsors.”

He continued:

The BLM Global Network Foundation has insisted it has no relation to the Black Lives Matter Foundation based in Santa Clarita, California. But this is confusing in light of the fact that BLM Global Network Foundation’s fiscal sponsor, Thousand Currents, reported over $90,000 in grants to the Black Lives Matter Foundation in its 2017 and 2018 tax filings.

The key point to remember is that ‘Black Lives Matter’ as a movement can encompass a wide range of organizations with varying purposes and objectives, but at the same time there are also groups that operate exclusively within that movement’s framework.

(For more from the author of “A Deeper Look at Black Lives Matter and Its Impact” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

The Likely Reason Trump Wasn’t Briefed on Russia’s Taliban Plot

/0 Comments/in , /by

The New York Times correctly reported on Friday that U.S. intelligence officials believe Russia’s GRU intelligence service paid the Taliban to attack coalition forces in Afghanistan. But even as he hasn’t refuted the reporting, the director of national intelligence has confirmed the White House’s statement that President Trump did not receive intelligence briefings on the matter. . .

That said, the New York Times’s reporting is broadly accurate. I have moderate-high confidence that illuminating the GRU operation has been best enabled by very closely guarded CIA reporting. However, the other keystone Russia-collection agency, the NSA, appears to have been unable to corroborate the CIA’s reporting with their own signal collection efforts. This means that the United States currently lacks a direct operational link from the plot to the Kremlin (which would figure because communicating with Moscow would trigger attention from various U.S. intelligence capabilities) having been established. Whether the Taliban have actually carried out any attacks at the GRU’s specific behest is also unclear.

This context would explain why the Office of the Director of National Intelligence didn’t add the GRU cash-for-killing plot into its briefings for Trump. To make it into the presidential daily brief, the daily intelligence product produced by the DNI for the president and other top officials, intelligence reporting must address an imminent concern or be assessed as very reliable (“high confidence”). The DNI doesn’t want to report things to Trump that it’s not very confident about already.

Moreover, Trump’s presidential daily briefs will have previously included reporting on GRU operations targeting American interests in Afghanistan. This Russian effort, directed by Vladimir Putin, centers on GRU and the SVR efforts to see the Taliban and other groups escalate their hostile activities.

The Kremlin’s strategic objective is to bleed the U.S. of life, prestige, and treasure, and ultimately pressure us out of Afghanistan. Putin also wishes to detach the Afghan government from Western interests. In turn, it’s important to note that the GRU cash-for-killings concern is just one slice of a big Russian intelligence cake in Afghanistan. Alongside its apparent engaging of the Taliban to kill American and coalition soldiers, the GRU has supported the group with arms, money, and intelligence material to enable its attacks and improve its operational security. (Read more from “The Likely Reason Trump Wasn’t Briefed on Russia’s Taliban Plot” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

De Blasio Is Making NYC Unlivable

/0 Comments/in , /by

. . .The New York that survived 9/11 and bounced back stronger than ever is now being brought to its knees. The coronavirus, the economic shutdowns and the frequent street protests, mixed with pillaging and vandalism, are no ordinary hurdles, but they are surmountable — with courageous leadership.

Tragically, that’s exactly what New York doesn’t have. The crises pile up like dead leaves, but leadership is nowhere to be found.

Without it, the city is fast becoming unlivable. The slow exodus of recent years has quickened in recent months, with natives, long-timers and recent arrivals clogging the exits. They’re going to the suburbs, to Florida — anywhere but here.

Always before, the departed were replaced by new seekers. It is impossible to believe that swap will continue.

The problems are many, but the linchpin is Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose performance grows worse by the day. There is nothing endearing about his act, only a long list of examples of how little he cares. (Read more from “De Blasio Is Making NYC Unlivable” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

BEWARE: The Woke Mob Is Targeting You Next, Small-Town America

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Woke mobs are coming for you if you are an elected official with conservative values. In cities and towns all across America, organized and well-funded protest groups have begun attacking city councilors, mayors, county commissioners, and members of school boards. It’s not just the big cities. Increasingly, small towns have faced similar harassment. The woke mob has targeted local elected officials for the sin of not being sufficiently woke. Its goal appears to be to intimidate conservatives from getting involved at any level of government. It also appears that the mob efforts are expanding faster than anyone realizes.

Here in Oregon, the small, rural, conservative-leaning towns of Estacada and Mollala have recently seen elected officials threatened with recall. In Oregon City, a medium-sized city south of Portland, a protest group has organized a recall against the mayor. The suburb of Gresham saw resignations from its mayor, city manager, and chief of police. And in Salem, the state’s capital, several school board members have been targeted for destruction. . .

Disagreeing with the Marxist goals of BLM and opposing looting and violence will get you in trouble no matter how small your town is. . .

The level of coordination in these attacks by the woke mob at the local level, up to and including a national smear campaign, indicates an escalation of the witch trial tactics. These activists don’t want dialogue. They wish only to shame and intimidate people out of office if they don’t toe the woke mob line and support all aspects of the social justice movement. These mobs have been common in large cities. Now, conservative small-town America, they’re coming for you, too. (Read more from “BEWARE: The Woke Mob Is Targeting You Next, Small-Town America” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

10 Ways Trump Can Push Law and Order – and Make It Stick

/0 Comments/in , , /by

Tweeting out “Law and Order!” every few days with an exclamation mark is OK, but it’s little solace to this country when we are actually suffering from the most widespread and protracted period of anarchy and violence in the modern era. It’s time for Trump to act on law and order, push a winning legislative and budgetary agenda with safety and security as its cornerstone, and communicate those ideas every day to the silent majority looking to the president to fight back.

There is no need for federal action on the George Floyd case. It is getting swift justice. There is however, a need for federal action against the nationwide insurrection in nearly every state, blocking of roads and highways, dismantling and violent occupation of public and even private property, and rising crime from five years of weak-on-crime policies and neutralized police. Rather than promoting federal legislation to further incentivize weak policing and validate the false narrative of the mob, it’s time for Trump to champion a bold contrast addressing the needs of the silent majority of all races and creeds who want law and order, safety and security.

Every day Republicans spend validating the lies of BLM is another day when anarchy and Marxism will consume this country. Aside from the insurrection itself, the war on the police has caused massive increases in crime in major cities. There were 1,600 reports of gunfire in Minneapolis over the past 30 days, up 300 percent relative to the same period in 2019. Every weekend, Chicago, which has tough gun laws, becomes a lawless shootout, with black victims, including children, as casualties. Even New York, which became the safest major city over the past two decades, is now seeing rapid increases in shootings after the NYPD has been neutralized.

This is the true systemic crisis that requires a federal response. To that end, Trump should push the following provisions in stand-alone legislation and in the fiscal year 2021 budget at the end of September:

1. Funding for states that prosecute violent criminals: Rather than threatening states with a carrot and stick through federal grants to make police more like social workers, how about dangling funding to states that work on prosecuting violent criminals? There is an epidemic of repeat violent offenders who continuously violate probation and are out to murder and harm people. Congress needs to condition grant funds to states meeting benchmarks in prosecuting repeat offenders and probation violators. While there has been swift justice for George Floyd, there is no justice for people like 3-year-old Mekhi James, who was killed in a drive-by shooting in Chicago this past weekend in one of over 100 shootings. Chicago has gone beyond soft on gun felons and probation violators, and now the police are standing back and taking a hands-off approach to violent criminals. Do Republicans want their federal legislation focused on incentivizing more of these shootings or disincentivizing them?

2. Defund states that are sanctuaries for criminal aliens and anarchists: Defund sanctuary cities and states. These are the same jurisdictions that are allowing rioters and anarchists to take over city streets. Ignoring federal law was the first step toward today’s breakdown of order. It’s time to condition any law enforcement grants, including existing programs, on cooperation with federal law. Also, Congress should focus on the forgotten victims of illegal aliens by allowing citizens to sue sanctuary officials who release criminal aliens. Congress should also create a fund for victims of illegal aliens out of the money saved from denying grant programs to sanctuaries.

3. Increase funding for court systems to expedite cases: The governing elites have made it clear that they will not spend another penny on enforcement and convictions. As the population grows and they throw endless funding at public education or other poplar services to keep up with the growth, a decision has been made in most states to stop building more prisons and jails and not to add funding to the court system. Doing so conveniently provides them with the talking point that prisons are overcrowded and that trials are backlogged for too long, so it’s unfair to hold people in jail either. As such, there is an epidemic of career criminals out on bond (or with no bond) who await their trial for years and commit heinous crimes intermittently and are often still not locked up. Congress should grant more funding for state court systems to expedite court cases so that the guilty will be taken off the streets.

4. Toughen mandatory minimums for gun felons: Felons possessing firearms is a federal crime. The courts gutted the mandatory minimums in the 2005 Booker decision. They need to be reinstated and strengthened. This will box the Left in on the issue of gun control.

5. A real anti-lynching bill: Republicans included in their bill an anti-lynching provision that would set the mandatory maximum sentence (not minimum) for lynching at 10 years. First, the crime must be premediated. Also, it actually lowballs the punishment for any murder, much less a horrific murder. A 10-year maximum is nothing. We have all seen horrific attacks posted on the internet in recent weeks, with entire mobs beating individuals severely. We need mandatory minimums against any serious bodily injury that results from one of these pack attacks on individuals, regardless of their race or whether it was premediated.

6. Anti–gang bill: Gang violence is the elephant in the room when it comes to violent crime and is responsible for thousands of black homicides in inner cities every year. According to the FBI, “Criminal gangs commit as much as 80 percent of crimes in many communities.” We need a backstop of a federal anti-gang statute that provides federal prosecutors with a tool to prosecute someone who commits a violent crime in furtherance of gang activity. This will open an avenue for the feds to take all of the most dangerous career criminals off the streets when states let them off with a slap on the wrist.

7. Close court loopholes letting off violent criminals: The Armed Career Criminal Act was one of Reagan’s great legacies, which led to a generation-long decline in crime. Four years ago, in Johnson v. U.S, the Supreme Court ruled that the “crime of violence” provision in the ACCA is unconstitutionally vague. That has allowed thousands of the worst career gun felons and other violent individuals to get out of jail early or escape reasonable sentencing to begin with. Just this year, in v. Davis, Justice Gorsuch joined with the four liberals in expanding the assault on the ACCA, this time by saying that 924(c)(3), the statute that prohibits using or carrying a firearm during a federal “crime of violence,” is unconstitutional and therefore vetoed out of existence. It is simply astounding that the GOP-controlled Senate has not tried to fix this law, especially in light of Democrats supporting gun control. Now, armed robbers pointing short-barreled shotguns at store clerks avoid tougher sentencing at the same time liberals claim they want to “do something!” about gun violence.

8. Federalize the National Guard to protect interstates and property: When states fail to protect citizens, public monuments, and roadways, it is the responsibility of the federal government to step in. Trump should call the National Guard into federal service under Title 10 to protect people on interstates being blocked, monuments from being destroyed, and entire swaths of public areas from being violently occupied. Trump promised, “There will never be an ‘Autonomous Zone’ in Washington, D.C., as long as I’m your President.” But he is not the mayor of D.C.; he is the president of the United States. He must use 10 U.S.C.  253 to put down any occupied insurrection anywhere, including in places like Seattle.

9. Prosecute ANTIFA/BLM violent organizers and financers under anti-terrorism statutes: 18 U.S. Code  2339A provides for federal prosecution of those who provide material support to terrorists — foreign or domestic. Subsection C provides for prosecution against those who finance terrorists. 18 U.S. Code § 2384 makes it a crime under seditious conspiracy to “prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof.” This applies to many of the rioters, especially on federal lands. It’s time to ratchet up those prosecutions and direct all intelligence agencies to work on identifying those behind the violent insurrection.

10. Reimburse business owners for property damage: The media is not reporting on the extent of the damage done by the rioting. Black business owners have been disproportionately harmed. Republicans should focus on law-abiding citizens rather than the looters by offering to reimburse those businesses damaged by the riots, with the exception of any businesses that donated to the organizers of these riots.

Yes, this will cost some federal money and require some federal involvement in the states. But that ship has sailed. If both parties can get together and push weak-on-crime funding and laws, then we can just as easily promote tough-on-crime laws and use federal funding as a tool to influence criminal justice in America. Why is it only the criminals and terrorists who get their voices heard in Washington? Trump promised to be the voice of the forgotten American and the silent majority. It’s time for him to educate a confused generation of youths that crime indeed does not pay and that violence is not the answer. (For more from the author of “10 Ways Trump Can Push Law and Order – and Make It Stick” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

Here’s How Trump and Conservatives Can Crush Judicial Supremacy

/1 Comment/in , /by

Do you think the American people would ever have ratified the Constitution if they had been told “the meaning of this document shall be whatever a majority of the Supreme Court says it is?”

—Justice Antonin Scalia, in one of his final public speeches before his death

When addressing the concerns of the Anti-Federalists that the proposed office of president would function like a monarch, Alexander Hamilton detailed a list of stark distinctions between the two powers in Federalist #69. He used the power over immigration as the quintessential example of what distinguishes the power of a president from that of a king. Whereas “the one [a president] can confer no privileges whatever,” wrote Hamilton, “the other [a king] can make denizens of aliens.”

Well, Hamilton never accounted for a post-constitutional era where the federal courts would also be able to make citizens of aliens.

It’s not even worth delving into the details of today’s 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court that President Trump cannot rescind an illegal executive amnesty of his predecessor in the same way it was initially promulgated. The same way it’s not worth trying to parse a decision redefining marriage or sexuality in law. These are powers a court simply does not possess.

The question for Trump and conservatives headed forward is where to go from here, now that so many have realized what I’ve been warning about for years: namely, that the minute you agree to the premise of judicial supremacism – that the courts stand above the other branches in deciding fundamentally political questions – no amount of “appointing better judges” will rectify a judicial North Korea. The solution is to uproot the concept of judicial supremacism altogether.

“So Trump should defy the court, right?” I’ve been asked.

No. The courts are defying the law, the Constitution, and 130 years of their own settled case law that illegal aliens have no standing to sue for a right to remain in the country against the will of the political branches of government. It is they who are defying the law. Moreover, as Hamilton noted in Federalist #78, the courts “must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm for the efficacy of its judgments.” Thus, Trump declining to actively use his powers to violate immigration laws duly passed by Congress is not defying the courts; it’s following the law being defied by the judiciary.

You see, this case is different from almost every case that comes before the courts. Typically, the courts will invent a contrived right and demand that the other branches take an action they need not take. In this case, the court is jumping two steps by demanding Trump not only refrain from deporting illegal aliens, but affirmatively use the tools of government to grant resident documents to people whom our law explicitly prohibits from having them.

If separation of powers means anything at all and we are to preserve a country of checks and balances, Trump must not issue these visas.

The difference between judicial review and judicial supremacism

There’s a difference between a scenario where the executive branch is trying to imprison or execute a citizen and the court grants reprieve, vs. when the court is demanding that the executive branch take action to grant that individual a privilege not accorded to him by law. In the former case, even if the court got it wrong, being the final authority on a criminal conviction is emphatically the province of a court. In the latter case, the court has no power to demand the executive branch take action contrary to law and certainly no way to enforce it. The same way a court can set aside a policy or law it feels it is unconstitutional for its purposes of a ruling in a single case, the executive branch has the same obligation to set aside capricious court rulings when they violate the Constitution and intersect with its more robust powers.

As Jefferson said toward the end of his life, “Each of the three departments has equally the right to decide for itself what is its duty under the Constitution without regard to what the others may have decided for themselves under a similar question.”

In Federalist #81, Hamilton dismisses concerns from Anti-Federalists that somehow because the courts interact with the people under the law at the end of the policymaking process, they will laugh last and laugh best, having the final say on the implementation of a law or a policy. He called the concern, which today has become a reality, “a phantom.” Why could he easily dismiss the concern of judicial usurpations? Because of the Supreme Court’s “comparative weakness” compared to the other branches in “its total incapacity to support its usurpations by force.”

The Constitution simply never gave the courts a veto power such as it gave to the president. An injunction is merely a form of relief granted in an individualized case or controversy. But if a judge is going to use that case to somehow illegally adjudicate a policy issue with no standing and issue a broad policy directive, even if he is correct on the merits, it has as much effect as a declaration from me or you or any private citizen absent the affirmative “aid” of the executive branch.

Implicit in Hamilton’s design is obviously the premise that the presidents and governors have the power not to grant aid to court rulings and, under the right circumstances, will use that power. Denying the judiciary the power of enforcement is not a bug in the system; it is a feature.

This is the core difference between judicial supremacy and judicial review. As President Lincoln observed during the sixth debate with Stephen Douglas during the 1858 race for Senate in Illinois, courts can adjudicate individual cases, but if they seek to use those rulings as a way of setting political policy across the nation, it should never be regarded as a “political rule” to be “binding on the members of Congress or the President to favor no measure that does not actually concur with the principles of that decision.”

Lincoln practiced this as president. As his attorney general, Edward Bates, explained at the time: “That is the sum of its [judicial] powers, ample and efficient for all the purposes of distributive justice among individual parties, but powerless to impose rules of action and of judgment upon the other departments.”

Where does the president go from here?

It’s not like the courts created a fundamental right for illegal aliens to obtain Obama’s amnesty. At least not yet. They created a convoluted argument that Trump has to issue a more robust decision-making process with justification for the policy that passes muster with the courts. Trump should go back and issue the ruling again, but this time publicly draw a line in the sand and call his shot. He should have Attorney General Barr cite chapter and verse of statute and the Constitution and pledge to uphold the law no matter what and state that he will not even send down DOJ lawyers to court to indulge this nonsense. Presidents of both parties regularly assert separation of powers when ignoring congressional subpoenas. The courts are certainly not more powerful than Congress.

The same tactic should have been used with the census. A census is not written by the judiciary; it’s written by the Department of Commerce. The administration has every right to place a citizenship question on the form, and even Roberts in his insane opinion from last year agreed that it would be following the law. If individuals don’t want to fill it out and are subject to federal prosecution, then the courts could always decline to convict them. That is how separation of powers and decompartmentalism work.

The president has no choice. This is not just about amnesty. This is about everything he has done during his presidency. Whether it’s numerous other immigration policies, the census, or environmental and energy regulations, the courts are mandating a continuation of Obama’s presidency. They are saying that Trump cannot get rid of anything Obama did unilaterally.

Thus, unless Trump and Republicans promise to do as Lincoln did and push back against judicial supremacism, there is no purpose to running for re-election. And no, don’t tell me the purpose is to “appoint better judges.” Sorry, Mr. President, but this just won’t cut it.

It’s not Trump’s fault that on his watch the judicial civil disobedience to our laws, Constitution, sovereignty, and natural rights reached a fever pitch and a breaking point. But it will be his fault if, on his watch, he did not rise to the challenge and respond appropriately. We have no other choice. (For more from the author of “Here’s How Trump and Conservatives Can Crush Judicial Supremacy” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

What Policymakers Need to Know About ‘Misclassifications’ in Recent Unemployment Reports

/0 Comments/in , /by

The unemployment figures for May have surprised economists, who were expecting a significant increase in the unemployment rate and 7.5 million job losses. Instead, the unemployment rate declined from 14.7% to 13.3%, and 2.5 million new jobs were added.

This is particularly important, as policymakers are now considering making changes to or extending unemployment benefits. That is why policymakers need accurate, understandable unemployment information more than ever.

However, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has recently changed the way it reports on unemployment rates due to the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in “misclassifications.” These misclassifications have significantly affected the reported unemployment rate, creating an added layer of confusion for policymakers.

In each of the past three months’ employment reports, the bureau has included a coronavirus impact statement at the end of the report. This month, the statement included a note that unemployment rate would have been about 3 percentage points higher—16.3% instead of the reported 13.3%—were it not for a “misclassification error.”

Similar errors and warnings were included in the March and April reports.

According to the past employment releases, March’s unemployment rate would have been almost 1 percentage point higher—5.4% as opposed to the reported 4.4%. And April’s unemployment rate would have been almost 5 percentage points higher—19.7% as opposed to the reported 14.7%.

While the direction of change is clear in both cases (with a steep increase in unemployment in April and a noticeable decline in May), it is important that policymakers understand what these different figure actually represent before they consider changes to unemployment benefits.

To untangle the confusion between the different measures, a little background on how the Bureau of Labor Statistics collects data is necessary.

The bureau’s measure of the unemployment rate is based on a survey of about 60,000 households. The surveyors classify individuals as either “employed,” “unemployed,” or “not in the labor force,” depending on their answers to a series of questions.

Normally, individuals who are employed but absent from work—such as workers who are on paid or unpaid leave, on vacation, or are subject to a scheduled plant closure, along with certain seasonal but salaried workers—are counted as employed.

Beginning in March, however, the bureau instructed surveyors to instead count individuals who are employed but absent from work as unemployed. Conjecturally, the reasoning may have been that workers who are not performing work (for reasons other than planned absences) are more like the unemployed than the employed.

On the other hand, employed but absent workers are most likely receiving regular paychecks, characteristic of employed but not unemployed workers.

Yet, the bureau reports that despite its instruction to change this classification, many employed but absent from work individuals are still being reported as employed despite the changed instructions given to surveyors. Thus, the official unemployment rate has appeared lower than it would under the new, intended classification.

It’s likely that many of the individuals who reported being “employed but absent from work” were recipients of federal governmental supports aimed at keeping workers formally employed (even if they aren’t actually working). The support may have been from newly available government-mandated, paid family and sick leave benefits, or the Paycheck Protection Program.

As of June 4, the Paycheck Protection Program has disbursed $510 billion in funds to about 4.5 million small businesses and self-employed individuals.

While we don’t know how many workers are using the newly available paid family and sick leave benefits, the figures could be significant as they are available to many parents of young children whose schools and child care programs have been closed.

The fact that the alternative classification of unemployment fell more than the traditional unemployment classification in May (3.1 percentage points compared to 1.4 percentage points) suggests that people have started to wean off of federal employment supports. This is a good sign.

To the extent that policymakers consider changes or extensions in unemployment benefits, or extensions in the number of weeks individuals can collect them, they should focus on the number of individuals who are unemployed in the traditional sense of being without paychecks, which is closer to the 13.3% figure reported for May.

While more work is still ahead and the labor market will not rebound as quickly as it declined, the May job figures—including both measures of unemployment—represent significant improvement due to loosening economic restrictions and the willingness of Americans to reengage in their communities and employment.

Instead of pushing for policies that incentivize unemployment, lawmakers should look to solutions that will foster employment opportunities, such as reducing licensing and regulations that limit work options, creating a safe harbor of liability protection for businesses and workers who follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance in good faith, and eliminating barriers to entrepreneurship and investment. (For more from the author of “What Policymakers Need to Know About ‘Misclassifications’ in Recent Unemployment Reports” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE

SCOTUS Decision Redefining Sexuality Will Wreak Havoc on Society

/0 Comments/in , /by

When Anthony Kennedy discovered a right to force states to redefine marriage in the 2015 Obergefell case, he promised that religious liberty would remain untouched. “The First Amendment ensures that religious organizations and persons are given proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and so central to their lives and faiths, and to their own deep aspirations to continue the family structure they have long revered,” wrote the former justice for the majority at the time.

Yeah, right.

Thanks to Justice Gorsuch’s contorted reading of the word “sex” in anti-discrimination law, you now have a right to sue for protection for biological traits you do not possess. This means that legitimate rights of others will now have to yield. Anyone who can’t see the devastating real-world effects of this decision – well beyond firing someone simply because you hate their private behavior – is clearly not paying attention.

Codifying into anti-discrimination law the concept that a man who says he is a woman must be treated according to his mental illness is not something we can live with as a society. Gorsuch might want to dismiss the earth-shattering ramifications of his opinion, but he knows well that there are already pending lawsuits to demand that men be treated as women, in very dangerous or disruptive ways that go well beyond trying to use the boot of government to stamp out mean or discriminatory behavior.

Here is an outline of some of the most immediate threats from this decision. These are not hypothetical societal and legal problems; these issues are in contention as we speak and have now been decided by this court.

Forcing states and doctors to perform castrations

Forcing employers to retain gay employees and not fire them simply because of their private behavior sounds very innocuous and even laudatory. But what about forcing doctors to perform “sex change” operations and forcing states to fund them? Codifying the desires of someone afflicted with gender dysphoria into sex-based anti-discrimination law will force states and hospitals to treat anyone who believes they are really the opposite gender as that preferred gender.

In fact, the Supreme Court has already tacitly mandated this. In May, justices declined to take Idaho’s appeal from the Ninth Circuit, where the lower court ordered the state to pay for a castration surgery for a male serving time in Idaho prison for sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy.

Similarly, a federal judge in Wisconsin mandated that the Badger State use its Medicaid funding to pay for “gender confirmation” mutilations, which can include castration, mastectomies, hysterectomies, genital reconstruction, and breast augmentation.

Those radical decisions will now be backed up in all circuits. There are already numerous lawsuits suing employers to provide castration and hormone procedures under the employer health insurance mandate of Obamacare. Obamacare uses civil rights laws to bar discrimination in offering health care coverage. It would be easy for the courts to now apply Gorsuch’s interpretation of Title VII to other areas of discrimination in the ACA statute.

Will Gorsuch be there for us to overturn those decisions?

Women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, and all-female sports

Barring a male who says he is a female from an all-girls sports team, bathroom, or locker room now constitutes sex-based discrimination. Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 reads as follows:

No person in the United States shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.

It’s not even a jump to apply this ruling to that law; it’s a logical outgrowth. All separate gender school activities and private dressing rooms are out the window because the 1972 law, which liberals already felt included transgenderism, will now be so interpreted.

College dorms

As Justice Alito warns, similar lawsuits may be brought under the Fair Housing Act against colleges that have separate dorms for males and females. Also, female prisoners will be subjected to males living with them. Again, once sex is redefined, it is no longer limited to employment or animus-based discrimination. As Alito warned, “The Court … argues, not merely that the terms of Title VII can be interpreted that way but that they cannot reasonably be interpreted any other way. According to the Court, the text is unambiguous.” This wasn’t even a close call for the majority, and it will therefore reverberate across all areas of law, politics, and society.

Religious schools must become pagan

We were told not to worry about Obergefell creating a right to gay marriage because it was merely an issue of a marriage certificate and would never affect private religious institutions. Well, what happens now if a cross-dresser or a prominent homosexual activist wants to teach in a Catholic, Orthodox Jewish, or Muslim school? The majority opinion blithely denied these concerns and noted how title VII protects religious liberty by offering some long-standing exceptions. However, those exceptions have been interpreted more and more narrowly as time goes on. The same way Gorsuch has evolved on the definition of a sex, the courts are evolving on religious protections, and the former will now accelerate the latter.

What about pedophilia, nudity, and the next frontier in our “evolving” society?

Justice Gorsuch dismissed (p. 30-32) the dissent’s charge that he was backfilling into the statute ideas that its crafters would regard as absurd and immoral as “naked policy appeals” and as complaints about “undesirable policy consequences.”

What happens when the next letters of the alphabet get codified into the sacrilege of the sexual behavior legal protections, such as “N” for nudity and “P” for pedophilia?

“My sexual orientation is to be with children.”

“My sexual orientation is to express myself freely and be proud of my body, not to hide it.”

You might laugh, but at the speed with which transgenderism became in vogue, there is nothing stopping more sexual fetishes from joining the quasi “legal” distinction with a fancy acronym. The mainstreaming of pedophilia is already under way. Could employers still not fire those individuals for being disruptive to the decorum of the office the same way they can’t fire a man who walks in one day dressed like a woman, even if he has to deal with clients? Those ideals can be read into the word “sex” of a 1964 statute just as much as transgenderism can. After all, gay expanded to LGB and T, and then an undefined “Q” got added in. Others add on IAPK to include “intersex, asexual, pansexual, and kink.” It has broadly become known in those circles as “LGBTQ+.”

So, Justice Gorsuch, now that man and woman no longer mean what they mean, can you tell us what is and is not included in “sex” and why there should be protection for some fetishes or mental disorders over others? Can we lay down that marker now so that it doesn’t grow?

Freedom of speech

As Justice Alito warned in his dissent, the New York City government has already made it a criminal offense not to address someone by his or her preferred pronoun.

“After today’s decision, plaintiffs may claim that the failure to use their preferred pronoun violates one of the federal laws prohibiting sex discrimination,” wrote Alito.

Supporters of this decision claim that because the court did not create a constitutional right, merely a retroactive reinterpretation of statue, Congress is still free to legislate. But who are we kidding here? The Civil Rights Act is as politically untouchable as the Fourteenth Amendment, and there is no way Congress will have the guts to deal with this fallout. State legislatures will be cut out from the process entirely.

Also, as Alito warns, the jump from codifying transgenderism into statute to into the Constitution is nothing more than a hiccup for its supporters to overcome, and the court has consistently done that in the past. There are already numerous cases percolating in the lower courts to do just that. Once the lower courts codify a new right, we have seen the Supreme Court first ignore the lower court radicalization and then downright legitimize it.

Yesterday, Mitch McConnell didn’t even mention this travesty in his press briefing. Trump bizarrely commented, “they ruled and we live with their decision” and called it a “very powerful decision.”

Very powerful, indeed. Now who will stand up for the forgotten Americans and use separation of powers to push back against this travesty? (For more from the author of “SCOTUS Decision Redefining Sexuality Will Wreak Havoc on Society” please click HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE