http://www.nationalreview.com/article/444415/epa-meltdown-reform-junk-science-agency-causes-freakout?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Trending%20Email%20Reoccurring-%20Monday%20to%20Thursday%202017-01-31&utm_term=NR5PM%20Actives

Meltdown at the EPA

January 31, 2017 4:00 AM  

In his recently released and timely book, Scare Pollution: Why and How to Fix the EPA, author Steve Milloy says this about the Environmental Protection Agency:

The EPA has over the course of the last 20 years marshaled its vast and virtually unchallenged power into an echo chamber of deceptive science, runaway regulations and fatally flawed research derived from unethical human experiments. The EPA’s conduct runs the gamut from subtle statistical shenanigans to withholding key scientific data, from seeking to rubberstamp baseless research data to illegally spraying diesel exhaust up the noses of unsuspecting children and other vulnerable populations.

Milloy, who runs the website JunkScience.com, has chronicled the scientific and bureaucratic abuse at the EPA for two decades, and he is thrilled by President Trump’s plans to finally reform the EPA. “I can think of no agency that has done more pointless harm to the U.S. economy than the EPA — all based on junk science, if not out-and-out science fraud,” Milloy told me. “I am looking forward to President Trump’s dramatically shrinking the EPA by entirely overhauling how the remaining federal EPA uses science.”

It looks like the EPA will be the agency hardest hit by the Trump sledgehammer. For eight years, President Obama used the agency as his de facto enforcer of environmental policies he couldn’t pass in Congress even when it was controlled by his own party. If Obama was the climate-change bully, then the EPA was his toady, issuing one regulation after another aimed at imaginary polluters who were allegedly causing global warming. Jobs were lost, companies were bankrupted, and an untold amount of economic growth was stymied out of fear of reprisals from this rogue agency. The courts halted many of the EPAs most overreaching and unlawful policies initiated by Obama — such as the Clean Water Rule and Clean Power Rule, two regulations aimed at farmers and coal producers. Unsurprisingly, people in these sectors voted heavily for Trump.

Trump officials and Congress are ready to make major changes in the EPA. A leaked memo written by Trump’s EPA transition team details how the new administration wants to tackle shoddy science at the agency. The memo asserts that the EPA should not be funding scientific research, and it must make any data publicly available for independent scientists to review. It also said that the agency must eliminate conflicts of interest and bias from the science advisory process.

The administration also put a freeze on most contracts and grants, pending further review by incoming staff. A good chunk of the EPA’s $8.3 billion budget is spent on grants to universities and units of government; its 2017 budget for state- and tribal-assistant grants was nearly $3.3 billion. The agency also has nearly $6.4 billion in outstanding contractual obligations to dozens of companies across the country, dating back to 2001. These will get much-needed scrutiny over the next several months, and Milloy insists it’s a necessary step:

The EPA uses tax dollars to fund its friends and allies, who tend to be political activists and “political” scientists. There has been no effective oversight of the EPA because Republicans have lacked the numbers and often the will to challenge the all-powerful EPA.

Now you’d think scientists would welcome a hard look at a politicized government agency accused of promoting dubious science, right? But instead, the scientific community has lost its collective mind, again. (It’s hard to tell who’s more easily triggered these days, the media, college students, or scientists.) The Union of Concerned Scientists called the Trump administration’s move “an attack on scientific integrity,” and the group’s president sent a letter to U.S. senators claiming that “freezing grants and contracts would almost certainly increase health risks for children and other vulnerable people in our country.” The group has also set up a hotline so federal scientists can anonymously tattle on their new bosses.

You’d think scientists would welcome a hard look at a politicized government agency accused of promoting dubious science, right?

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who opposes Scott Pruitt as Trump’s nominee to head the EPA, and who wants to prosecute climate-change “deniers,” said he will use all the powers of his office to stop “a disturbing opening act by an administration that seems determined to dismantle essential federal environmental protections, regardless of the impact on the health and safety of ordinary Americans.”

Scientists feel so threatened by the Trump administration that some are planning a protest this spring modeled after the Women’s March on January 21. (Can’t wait to see their hats!) Organizers insist that the event will be nonpartisan and will promote its core principle, namely:

There are certain things that we accept as facts with no alternatives. The Earth is becoming warmer due to human action.  The diversity of life arose by evolution. An American government that ignores science to pursue ideological agendas endangers the world.

And in the ultimate dramatic move, just a few days into Trump’s presidency, the keepers of the hokey Doomsday Clock moved it 30 seconds closer to midnight. The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ executive director, Rachel Bronson, explained why the group made the unprecedented move:

This year’s Clock deliberations felt more urgent than usual . . . as trusted sources of information came under attack, fake news was on the rise, and words were used by a president-elect of the United States in cavalier and often reckless ways to address the twin threats of nuclear weapons and climate change.

These are scientists, keep in mind.

Milloy isn’t surprised by the scientific community’s apoplexy; his book details how the EPA funded nearly $600 million in bogus research to buttress the agency’s regulatory overreach:

It’s all about the money. EPA pays university scientists massive amounts of money to support its agenda and their institutions are more than happy to oblige by doing what the EPA wants regardless of merit.

Looks like the EPA may need its own doomsday clock, because its time of promoting dubious science to back up a political agenda is running out.

— Julie Kelly is a writer from Orland Park, Ill.

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http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/illinoisreview/2017/01/the-vetting-process-from-legitimate-tool-to-impossible-dream.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+typepad%2FbYHz+%28Illinois+Review%29

Di Leo: The Vetting Process, from Legitimate Tool to Impossible Dream

By John F. Di Leo - 

In recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk about “vetting” people coming in from the Middle East.  In fact, however, it’s a much broader issue than that: it’s a need to vet people who come into the USA from anywhere.  

While any risk can theoretically originate anywhere, statistically, each region has different primary risks.

From some countries, it’s a human trafficking and prostitution risk; from others, it’s a drug trade and organized crime risk.  But of course the one most in the news is the terrorism risk, which originates primarily in muslim-majority countries (like the middle east) and in muslim pass-through points like Europe.

This is not to say that all people from Syria – for example – are evildoers, or that all muslims – for example – are evildoers.  But when you look at statistics, it is undeniable that a higher percentage of travelers from Syria will be evildoers than, say, travelers from Lichtenstein, Ireland, or Greenland… and that a higher percentage of a muslim population will pose a threat than, say, a similar population of Amish or Bahai’is.

Contrary to the alarmists and the professional racebaiters of the MainStream Media and the Democratic Party, there is nothing racist or un-American about stating the above facts.  They are just facts.

Who Wants to Enter?

The USA allows people into the United States for numerous reasons – as students, as business travelers, as diplomats, as tourists, as refugees, as immigrants.  We are one of the world’s primary destinations for all of these purposes, so our government must have processes – somewhat different for each – to handle such matters.

This keeps the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security very busy… hopefully doing it well enough that it does not keep the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services busy afterward.

This process must take into account – at minimum – the following three key issues:

• The safety of the population of the United States,
• The economic and cultural effect of their visit or immigration on the United States,
• Fairness to other applicants.

In short, we must not allow people in who are likely to endanger people already here; we must not further water down the unique and wonderful cultural heritage with which our Founding Fathers endowed us; we must resist importing workers to compete with our own jobless, or indigents who will place a further burden on the US taxpayer… and we must not reward gate-crashers over foreign applicants who have been patiently waiting for a spot for years, while obeying the immigration rules.

These are all complex matters.  Each one deserves its own thoughtful discussion and analysis in the public square. 

For example, we should clearly not allow a US factory to import a thousand workers from the third world to displace American employees, but we clearly should allow that factory to transfer an engineering manager from here to its China factory and to bring back a production manager from the China factory to this one in a swap.  How do we draw the line that properly stops the unfair displacement while fairly allowing the latter transfer?

Our retail and tourism industry – from restaurants and hotels to shopping malls and theater districts – depends on visitors from far-off lands.  Our state colleges depend on wealthy foreign students who pay full tuition to offset the discounts for in-state attendees.  How do we welcome in the beneficial tourists and students, while keeping out the invaders, the terrorists, and other hostiles?

None of this is as easy as we would like it to be, but one thing is certain: during the past eight years, the wrong calls were made, again and again, at both the micro and macro level, leaving our country with far more dangers from coast to coast than there were when Mr. Obama took office (and these situations were far from ideal even then; some of these problems have been festering for generations).

The Vetting Process

So the news of the day is on the vetting process.  We need to tackle the above questions eventually, and that will take time… but first, the new administration began, as it had to, an executive order to start the process… a process that will take a national debate, and both Departmental and Congressional action, to complete. 

In the meantime, let’s vet who’s already on the way, who’s already applied, who’s already hoping to come in, whether for any of the above reasons or for others.

So let’s talk about this “vetting.”

We use the term a lot, but we don’t go into it in detail:   Gentle reader, do we really know how to "vet" people? Have we thought about it?

When we "vet" a presidential appointee, such as for a cabinet post or judgeship, what do we evaluate?  

We look at his published writings, his academic background, his dating and marital history, his employment history, his social media footprint, and his legislative record if he’s held elective office before.  If he’s been a judge already, we look at his past opinions.  And (if there is one!) we check out his criminal record.  That’s proper vetting.  That’s what the term means.

When we "vet" a potential immigrant, we should do the exact same thing. That's just what "vetting" is. 

We should look at his academic and work background, his published writings, his criminal record, his social media footprint.

And if we're vetting a potential immigrant from the developed world - an engineer from Japan, an entrepreneur from Switzerland, a scientist from South Korea, a singer from France – then we can do exactly that. In the developed world, such records are all available for review.    You may still miss something, of course, but at least there’s a good chance that you can get a full picture of a person, in the developed world.

Now, this is a lot of work for our State Department to manage; it’s not the sort of thing that’s easily or inexpensively done for the millions of people applying for travel visas, work visas, refugee status and immigration… but if we want to be able to say that we are vetting people, there are no two ways about it: either they’re vetted as described above, or they’re not vetted.

So now let’s talk about the challenges of trying to vet a destitute refugee or other potential immigrant from the third world - particularly from a dangerous war zone or enemy territory such as the Middle East.  Frankly, all this is usually impossible.

You simply can't collect academic records, criminal records, employment records, and social media records from people who don't have any.

You think we have a lot of common names in the United States, like John Smith and James Jones?  That’s nothing, compared to the Middle East, where there are tens of thousands of men named Mohamed Mahmoud and Mahmoud Mohamed, all of whom went to the various madrassahs of Iraq and Jordan and Syria and Egypt and Lebanon. Some of them are good, decent people, hoping to make a new and better life in the United States.  Some of them are not.  

What were many of these refugees taught in most of those “schools?”  How to read the koran, how to hate Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, and Bahai’is.  How sharia law is applied and implemented. Sometimes even how to make bombs.

Not all of them, of course… but some.  Maybe even many.  From some regions, most.

And if you think you can tell one from another in a refugee line comprised of 100,000 people, 90,000 of whom are young men of military age, you're sadly mistaken.

You just can't vet the vast majority of these so-called refugees with any hope for certainty. It's not possible.

In the big cities, sometimes, it can be done.  There are educated, accomplished people with western degrees and credit scores and home ownership records, in Dubai and Jeddah and Cairo and Tripoli… and our embassies can study their records and perhaps determine whether such applicants are desirable or not, perhaps not with absolute certainty, but at least, with some degree of confidence.

If someone went to college, worked for a multinational firm, owns a computer and goes on Facebook … and never posts anything dangerous, he will get a clean bill of health in the vetting process. And that clean bill of health might be deserved.

On the other hand… if someone lived in a remote village, never had a job other than working on his family farm, and never had a computer so he never posted anything on social media… then it should be obvious that he cannot be vetted at all, nor can any of the thousands of other denizens of his village or clan.

He may deserve our compassion and prayers.  He may be well-intentioned.  He may not hold any desire to do us harm.  But we simply have no way of knowing.  And the risk to other Americans, if he is among the jihadist minority, or even just among the sharia-supporting majority, is a potentially lethal risk.  Yes, lethal.

Those who hope to reach the point at which our vetting system is perfect are living in a dreamland.  A researcher requires data to perform research, and for billions of people on earth, there simply is no data to study.

This is the problem at the core of our debate, on immigration, on travel and work visas, and especially on the question of refugees.  How do we know, with any safety, who poses a danger and who does not?  There is a limit to how much we can accomplish, even with the most robust vetting process.

We don’t need to import dangers on purpose; we have enough home-grown dangers already.

And this goes double for immigration, particularly for “refugees” from hotbeds of islamofascist/jihadist philosophy.  No sane country knowingly imports the citizens of an enemy country or movement while at war with them. The entire concept is just stark raving madness.

Copyright 2017 John F. Di Leo 

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based writer, actor, and trade compliance trainer.  He served as chairman of Chicago’s Ethnic American Council during President Reagan’s second term, a group that worked to bring anti-communist freedom fighters from captive nations to America on speaking tours, so he knows the importance of bringing the right people to America… and also the dangers of bringing in the wrong ones… because those captive nations only became captive when Soviet and Cuban infiltrators arrived to foment revolution in the first place.

Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included.

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http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/01/25/john-fund-and-hans-von-spakovsky-why-trumps-probe-voter-fraud-is-long-overdue.html

John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky: Why Trump's probe of voter fraud is long overdue

John Fund, •Published January 25, 2017

President Trump has announced that his administration will be launching a major investigation of voter fraud, including those who are registered in more than one state, “those who are illegal” and those voters who are dead but still registered. This followed a media firestorm in which the New York Times and others called Trump’s assertion a “lie.”  

But just last week, President Obama told a whopper at his last news conference that went almost completely unnoticed, much less criticized. 

He promised he would continue to fight voter-ID laws and other measures designed to improve voting integrity. The U.S. is “the only country among advanced democracies that makes it harder to vote,” he claimed. 

This is demonstrably false. All industrialized democracies — and most that are not — require voters to prove their identity before voting. 

Britain was a holdout, but last month it announced that persistent examples of voter fraud will require officials to see passports or other documentation from voters in areas prone to corruption. 

The real problem in our election system is that we don’t really know to what extent President Trump’s claim is true because we have an election system that is based on the honor system.  

What we do know, despite assertions to the contrary, is that voter fraud is a problem, and both sides of the political aisle should welcome a real investigation into it -- especially since the Obama administration tried so hard for eight years to obfuscate the issue and prevent a real assessment. 

Former Justice Department attorney Christian Adams testified under oath that he attended a November 2009 meeting at which then-deputy assistant attorney general Julie Fernandes told DOJ prosecutors that the administration would not be enforcing the federal law that requires local officials to purge illegitimate names from their voter rolls.

This refusal to enforce the law came despite a 2012 study from the Pew Center on the States estimating that one out of every eight voter registrations is inaccurate, out-of-date or a duplicate. About 2.8 million people are registered in more than one state, according to the study, and 1.8 million registered voters are dead. In most places it’s easy to vote under the names of such people with little risk of detection.

The Obama administration did everything it could to avoid complying with requests from  states to verify voter registration records against federal records of legal noncitizens and illegal immigrants who have been detained by law enforcement to find noncitizens who have illegally registered and voted.   

The Justice Department has also opposed every effort by states—such as Kansas, Arizona, Alabama and Georgia—to implement laws that require individuals registering to vote to provide proof of citizenship. This despite evidence that noncitizens are indeed registering and casting ballots.

In 2015 one Kansas county began offering voter registration at naturalization ceremonies. Election officials soon discovered about a dozen new Americans who were already registered—and who had voted as noncitizens in multiple elections.

These blatant attempts to prevent states from learning if they have a real problem with illegal votes makes it impossible to learn if significant numbers of noncitizens and others are indeed voting illegally, perhaps enough to make up the margin in some close elections.

There is no question that there are dishonorable people who willing to exploit the loopholes in our honor system. 

An undercover video released in October by the citizen-journalist group Project Veritas shows a Democratic election commissioner in New York City saying, “I think there is a lot of voter fraud.”

A 2013 sting operation by official New York City investigators found they could vote in someone else’s name 97 percent of the time without detection.

A second O’Keefe video showed two Democratic operatives mulling how it would be possible to get away with voter fraud.

They were both fired.

How common is this? If only we knew. Political correctness has squelched probes of noncitizen voting, so most cases are discovered accidentally instead of through a systematic review of election records.

The danger looms large in states such as California, which provides driver’s licenses to noncitizens, including those here illegally, and which also does nothing to verify citizenship during voter registration.

In a 1996 House race, then-challenger Loretta Sanchez defeated incumbent Rep. Bob Dornan by under 1,000 votes. An investigation by a House committee found 624 invalid votes by noncitizens, nearly enough to overturn the result.

How big is this problem nationally? One district-court administrator estimated that up to 3 percent of the 30,000 people called for jury duty from voter-registration rolls over a two-year period were not U.S. citizens.

A September report  from the Public Interest Legal Foundation found more than 1,000 non-citizens who had been removed from the voter rolls in eight Virginia counties. Many of them had cast ballots in previous elections, but none was referred for possible prosecution.

There are many other examples of Justice’s dereliction of duty. In 2011, the Electoral Board in Fairfax County, Va., sent the Justice Department, under then-Attorney General Eric Holder, information about 278 noncitizens registered to vote in Fairfax County, about half of whom had cast ballots in previous elections. There’s no record of anything being done.

A 2011 study by three professors at Old Dominion University and George Mason University used extensive survey data to estimate that 6.4 percent of the nation’s noncitizens voted in 2008 and that 2.2 percent voted in 2010.

This study has been criticized by many academics who claim that voter fraud is vanishingly rare. Yet the Heritage Foundation maintains a list of more than 700 recent convictions for voter fraud.

A postelection survey conducted by Americas Majority Foundation found that 2.1 percent of noncitizens voted in the Nov. 8 election. In the battleground states of Michigan and Ohio, 2.5 percent and 2.1 percent, respectively, of noncitizens reported voting. 

The best argument for a real investigation into just how big voter fraud is stems from the refusal of the general public to believe the media’s claims it is insignificant.

The Washington Post conducted a poll last October using the Pollfish firm that found 84 percent of Republicans believe that a “meaningful amount” of voter fraud occurs in U.S. elections, along with 75 percent of independents. A majority of Democrats -- 52 percent -- also believed there was meaningful voter fraud.  When it came to types of fraud, nearly 60 percent of Republicans told Pollfish they believed illegal immigrants were voting, but so too did a third of independents and a quarter of Democrats.

One Democrat who has personal experience with voter fraud is Bruce Franks Jr., a 31-year-old Black Lives Matter activist in St. Louis, who ran for state legislature last year. Last September, he got a local judge to call a new primary election after irregularities in hundreds of absentee ballots were found. He went on to win the new election with 71 percent.

Conducting an investigation that will help resolve the size of the voter fraud problem is straightforward. The Department of Homeland Security should cooperate with states wanting to check the citizenship status of voters on their rolls.

The Justice Department should put pressure on, or sue, counties and states that refuse to clean up their rolls.

The IRS has issued 11 million Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers, most of them to illegal immigrants so they can file taxes. Privacy rules allow the IRS to share information for some law enforcement purposes, but not in a way that results in deportations. Those rules could be tweaked to allow states to compare the names of illegal immigrants the IRS has with their voter records.

Our honor system for voting doesn’t work. We don’t know how big of a problem voter fraud really is because no systematic effort has ever been made to investigate it.  But the public doesn’t think it’s as insignificant as the media insists.

It’s time to learn more about just how many people are exploiting weaknesses that damage election integrity.

John Fund is a columnist for National Review. Follow him on Twitter @JohnFund.

Hans A. von Spakovsky is a Senior Legal Fellow at The Heritage Foundation and former Justice Department official. Along with John Fund, he is the coauthor of “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk” and “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.”

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http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/01/25/donald-trump-advisor-steve-moore-explains-how-he-could-make-mexico-pay-wall

Here's How Trump Could Make Mexico Pay for the Border Wall

by Fox News Insider 

In an interview Wednesday, President Trump doubled down on his campaign promise that he will build a wall along the southern border and Mexico will pay for it.

Trump confirmed that U.S. taxpayer dollars would be used to start the construction, but he said reimbursement from Mexico would follow.

“I’m just telling you there will be a payment," Trump said. "It will be in a form, perhaps a complicated form.

On "America's News HQ" today, Steve Moore, former economic advisor to Trump, explained how Trump could make Mexico pay for the wall.

Read Full Article

A tariff on products imported to the U.S. from Mexico could help fund a border wall.

Moore said one possibility is the creation of an import tariff with a provision that the funds go to pay for the wall.

He acknowledged this wouldn't be his preferred strategy, but it's something Trump could do unilaterally without congressional approval.

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Poll: Some Cite Trump as 1 in 3 Californians Support Secession from US

Obama Quietly Sent $220 Million to Palestinians in Final Hours of Presidency

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A border crossing "transaction fee" could help raise money for Trump's border wall.

Moore said another option is to institute a border crossing fee whenever a person or vehicle enters the U.S. from Mexico.

"That wouldn't necessarily be a bad way to fund it," Moore said. "It's sort of like a user fee. You're using the border, so therefore you pay for security at the border."

Watch more above, and let us know what you think in the comments.

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Secret Service Agent Suggests She Wouldn't Take Bullet for Trump

NFL Legend Peyton Manning to Speak at GOP Retreat in Philadelphia

Gutfeld to Emanuel: 'Shut Up' About Trump & Focus on Chicago's Murder Epidemic

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https://www.hermancain.com/trump-looking-at-reducing-or-possibly

Trump looking at reducing, or possibly eliminating, U.S. role in UN

Consequences.

When it comes to the United States, there's one thing and one thing only that matters to the United Nations: $3 billion. That's what we give them every year in funding, which is far more than any other nation on this Earth. It accounts for more than 20 percent of the UN's total budget, and an organization that lives on salaries, accommodations and travel expenses for its bureaucracy will find itself in a real fix if it's major funder decides to stop or reduce the checks.

So I'm going to guess that they're a tad bit nervous today:

The Trump administration is considering actions that would reduce the U.S. commitment to the United Nations and evaluate whether the United States should pull out of multi-national treaties, officials said.

The results could be reduced American funding for the U.N. agencies and withdrawal from treaties like the Paris climate accord reached by the Obama administration, said the two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the actions were not completed yet.

Trump has criticized some multi-national agreements and the United Nations, the latter in especially harsh terms after the Security Council voted in December to condemn Israel over settlement activity in disputed areas also claimed by Palestinians. The Obama administration abstained in that vote instead of using the U.S. veto in the Security Council.

After tweeting that the U.N. had become “just a club for people to get together, talk, and have a good time," Trump told reporters in December that "there is such tremendous potential, but it is not living up ... When do you see the United Nations solving problems? They don't. They cause problems.”

Remember, the Trump Administration has powerless to do anything about the UN's Screw Israel resolution, which passed in the waning days of the previous administration after John Kerry and his boss worked out the language with Israel's enemies and refused to veto the measure. That creates real problems for Israel because it has the potential to make West Bank settlers and Israel officials international criminals, subject to prosecution at the Hague.

The resolution is in force now, and Trump can't veto it retroactively. What he can do is make the UN pay a price for pulling this little stunt in the first place. Past Republican presidents complained about the UN at times but never even hinted at reducing our involvement in or commitment to it. One of the reasons the establishment is nervous about Trump is that he doesn't simply accept that we have to always do certain things just because we've always done them, and the UN is certainly rife for a re-evaluation, as are all treaties to which we've signed on.

There could be down sides to leaving the UN, one of which is that our veto on the Security Council is the only thing that stops far worse mischief from happening. That's probably why they're talking about a "reduction" but not a full withdrawal, at least not yet. The UN is a creation of the post-World War II era, and the world is not aligned the way it was 70 years ago. It's also more than fair to say that the UN has strayed far from the original vision of its founders. Why should an American president in 2017 consider himself honor-bound to operate within this structure when it might make far more sense to establish new agreements with trustworthy allies?

Especially in light of what the UN's been doing recently, these are questions long overdue to be asked.

Dan's new novel, BACKSTOP, is a story of spiritual warfare and baseball. Download it from Amazon here!

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http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/10-executive-actions-trump-signed-far/

The 10 executive actions Trump has signed (so far)

Lisa Desjardins

President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order to advance construction of the Dakota Access pipeline Jan. 24 at the White House in Washington, D.C. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque.

On working day two of the Trump administration, it seems worthwhile to set aside the highwire battles over words and inauguration crowd size and look at the concrete actions President Trump has taken to launch his presidency.

President Trump has taken 10 executive actions since entering office. They largely fall in line with the “Contract with the American Voter” blueprint his campaign released last October, which laid out Trump’s vision for his first 100 days in office.

Here’s the list of Trump’s executive actions so far, starting with the most recent.

10. Review manufacturing regulations. In this memorandum, the president ordered the Commerce Secretary to begin a 60-day review of regulations for American manufacturers, with the aim of finding ways to speed up permitting and all federal processes for them.

9. American steel in pipelines. President Trump directed the Commerce Secretary to come up with a plan to ensure that all pipelines built or repaired in the United States be constructed with American-made materials “to the maximum extent possible.”

8. Speeding up environmental reviews for all priority infrastructure. President Trump ordered that agencies and the chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality work together to set up faster deadlines and environmental approval for “high priority” infrastructure projects. It gives significant power and responsibility to the White House Council on Environmental Quality chairman, who will decide within 30 days if a proposed project is “high priority.” (The president has not yet nominated a new CEQ chairman.)

6 + 7. Speeding approval of Dakota Access and Keystone Oil Pipelines. President Trump ordered that permits for the the Dakota Access Pipeline be approved in an expedited manner, “including easements or rights-of-way to cross Federal areas.” (Army denial of an easement was a previous victory for pipeline opponents.) In his Keystone memorandum, Mr. Trump invited TransCanada to resubmit its application for a pipeline permit, and he directed the State Department to issue a final decision on that application within 60 days.

5. Federal hiring freeze. The president has told agencies they cannot fill any vacant positions nor open new ones, with two exceptions: military personnel and critical public safety positions.

4. TPP. This memorandum withdraws the United States from all Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations and from signing the trade deal.

3. Abortion. President Trump has ordered that federal dollars cannot go to organizations that provide abortion services.

2. Regulation freeze. The president has frozen all regulations now in process (but not approved) until they are approved by him or an agency after he took office. This means any regulation signed by former President Barack Obama in his final weeks in office — including some that deal with energy efficiency standards — are on hold until they’re reviewed by Trump’s administration.

1. ACA rollback. Mr. Trump has allowed all agency heads to waive requirements of the Affordable Care Act to the “maximum extent permitted by law.”

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http://www.allenbwest.com/allen/ok-liberals-youre-delusional-think-can-refute

Ok liberals, you’re DELUSIONAL if you think you can refute this…

I love two genres of music: classical and classic rock. One of my favorite classic rock bands is the group Styx, and one of my favorite songs of theirs is “Grand Illusion.” However, in the wake of the 2016 presidential election through the inauguration of President Donald Trump, it appears the progressive socialist left is operating under a grand delusion.

In 2009, the progressive left embarked on an ideological agenda evidencing a serious delusion and disconnection with America. Instead of focusing on two simple issues — economic growth and national security — Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and their acolytes plotted a course for America that wasn’t rooted in sound policy, but, rather, their interpretation of “fairness.”

The first delusion was trying to make the American people believe that Keynesian economic policy — tax and spend — was still viable. The first thing out of the gate was a massive $1 trillion stimulus package centered on “shovel ready jobs.” It was embarrassing when Obama sat on a stage with his economic council stating, “I guess shovel ready was not exactly ready.” The fact that Obama did so with a laugh and smirk was a slap in the face of the American taxpayer.

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Obama, in his eight years, focused more on wealth redistribution. You know, we all do better when we “spread the wealth around.” Furthermore, Obama made the seminal statement which presented a window into the mindset of the progressive left when he stated, “if you own a business, you didn’t build that.” There could be no more disrespectful or delusional assertion directed toward hard working Americans and their indomitable entrepreneurial spirit. Obama and his disciples of economic disaster failed to grasp that economic growth emanates not from Washington DC, but rather from the policies that unleash American investment, ingenuity, and innovation…along with production and manufacturing.

Due to his far left intransigent ideology, Obama didn’t get Americans back to work. His design was to expand the welfare nanny state of government dependency. The result of this delusion was our national debt going from $10.67 trillion to $20 trillion. We’ve exploded our food stamp and poverty rolls, and suffered the lowest workforce participation rate in some 40 years.

Secondly, Obama and the left sought to destroy effective free market policy to improve the healthcare situation in America. Instead, they believed there was a mandate to do what they had always wanted: push a government-driven healthcare system. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — aka Obamacare — was nothing more than a domestic wealth redistribution scheme, with some twenty new taxes. It spanned the gamut from increases in capital gains and dividends taxes to the creation of an individual and employer mandate tax, along with taxes on medical devices and health savings accounts.

Obama said there would be an average savings of $2500, and you’d be able to keep your doctor and insurance. The latter was awarded 2013’s “Lie of the Year” by Politifact. Funny, that was the year after Obama’s re-election…and the promise to Vladimir Putin for “more flexibility.” The American people in October 2016 did not see savings; they saw massive increases in their health insurance premiums, the result of the delusion of redistribution of healthcare. Obamacare turned out to be nothing more than a huge expansion of Medicaid. It proved unaffordable, didn’t provide protection for patients, and only a segment of people got something for free. A rational policy approach would have meant Obama and his team focused on the real issue, but they overreached. And as Nancy Pelosi said, “we have to pass the bill, in order to find out what was in it,” — a true example of delusion.

Third, Obama departed the White House trying to have us buy into his delusion by stating on his watch there hadn’t been a terrorist organization attack. He left still embracing the line that Ft. Hood was the result of “workplace violence,” and commuted the sentence of someone who’d leaked over 700,000 classified documents –- causing the death of some as a result of HIS nefarious actions.

Obama and the left could never articulate that the non-state, non-uniform unlawful enemy combatants we face on the 21st-century battlefield are Islamic terrorists and jihadists. Obama was more interested in freeing them under the delusion that being detained in GITMO was the impetus of their hate and a recruiting tool. Instances of Islamic terrorist attacks on our soil were attributed to the lawful ownership of guns by law-abiding Americans. And the left, aided by the complicit liberal progressive media, tried to castigate those who understood this enemy as “Islamophobes” — a moniker created by an Islamic organization with ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas.

I could go on about other critical issues, like a lack of focus on our border security leading to deaths of Americans like Kate Steinle.

The overarching issue is that we’re watching the progressive left continue to wrap themselves in their own delusion. This past weekend there were marches focused on women’s rights. Where were those voices when Christian and Yazidi girls were being raped and sold as sex slaves by ISIS – that group Obama called the JV team, which was not Islamic? If this is about misogyny, where were those voices calling out Bill Clinton, an “elder statesman” of the Democrat Party?

More violence, threats, intimidation, rantings, protests, denigrating, disparaging, and demeaning language from the left will not win folks over to their cause. It will only further distance them from the America that has rejected and repudiated them, the electoral losses of the past eight years are evidence.

The delusion of the progressive left is that they’re not conducting a self-analysis or assessment. Their way did not advance economic growth or national security.

Albert Einstein said, “The definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing, and expect different results”. Einstein’s definition certainly befits the grand delusion of the progressive left.

[This article first appeared at Townhall.com]

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http://www.dennisprager.com/americas-second-civil-war/

America’s Second Civil War

It is time for our society to acknowledge a sad truth: America is currently fighting its second Civil War.

In fact, with the obvious and enormous exception of attitudes toward slavery, Americans are more divided morally, ideologically and politically today than they were during the Civil War. For that reason, just as the Great War came to be known as World War I once there was World War II, the Civil War will become known as the First Civil War when more Americans come to regard the current battle as the Second Civil War.

This Second Civil War, fortunately, differs in another critically important way: It has thus far been largely nonviolent. But given increasing left-wing violence, such as riots, the taking over of college presidents’ offices and the illegal occupation of state capitols, nonviolence is not guaranteed to be a permanent characteristic of the Second Civil War.

There are those on both the left and right who call for American unity. But these calls are either naive or disingenuous. Unity was possible between the right and liberals, but not between the right and the left.

Liberalism — which was anti-left, pro-American and deeply committed to the Judeo-Christian foundations of America; and which regarded the melting pot as the American ideal, fought for free speech for its opponents, regarded Western civilization as the greatest moral and artistic human achievement and viewed the celebration of racial identity as racism — is now affirmed almost exclusively on the right and among a handful of people who don’t call themselves conservative.

The left, however, is opposed to every one of those core principles of liberalism.

Like the left in every other country, the left in America essentially sees America as a racist, xenophobic, colonialist, imperialist, warmongering, money-worshipping, moronically religious nation.

Just as in Western Europe, the left in America seeks to erase America’s Judeo-Christian foundations. The melting pot is regarded as nothing more than an anti-black, anti-Muslim, anti-Hispanic meme. The left suppresses free speech wherever possible for those who oppose it, labeling all non-left speech “hate speech.” To cite only one example, if you think Shakespeare is the greatest playwright or Bach is the greatest composer, you are a proponent of dead white European males and therefore racist.

Without any important value held in common, how can there be unity between left and non-left? Obviously, there cannot.

There will be unity only when the left vanquishes the right or the right vanquishes the left. Using the First Civil War analogy, American unity was achieved only after the South was vanquished and slavery was abolished.

How are those of us who oppose left-wing nihilism — there is no other word for an ideology that holds Western civilization and America’s core values in contempt — supposed to unite with “educators” who instruct elementary school teachers to cease calling their students “boys” and “girls” because that implies gender identity? With English departments that don’t require reading Shakespeare in order to receive a degree in English? With those who regard virtually every war America has fought as imperialist and immoral? With those who regard the free market as a form of oppression? With those who want the state to control as much of American life as possible? With those who repeatedly tell America and its black minority that the greatest problems afflicting black Americans are caused by white racism, “white privilege” and “systemic racism”? With those who think that the nuclear family ideal is inherently misogynistic and homophobic? With those who hold that Israel is the villain in the Middle East? With those who claim that the term “Islamic terrorist” is an expression of religious bigotry?

The third significant difference between the First and Second Civil Wars is that in the Second Civil war, one side has been doing nearly all the fighting. That is how it has been able to take over schools — from elementary schools, to high schools, to universities — and indoctrinate America’s young people; how it has taken over nearly all the news media; and how it has taken over entertainment media.

The conservative side has lost on every one of these fronts because it has rarely fought back with anything near the ferocity with which the left fights. Name a Republican politician who has run against the left as opposed to running solely against his or her Democratic opponent. And nearly all American conservatives, people who are proud of America and affirm its basic tenets, readily send their children to schools that indoctrinate their children against everything the parents hold precious. A mere handful protest when their child’s teacher ceases calling their son a boy or their daughter a girl, or makes “slave owner” the defining characteristic of the Founding Fathers.

With the defeat of the left in the last presidential election, the defeat of the left in two-thirds of the gubernatorial elections and the defeat of the left in a majority of House and Senate elections, this is likely the last chance liberals, conservatives and the right have to defeat the American left. But it will not happen until these groups understand that we are fighting for the survival of America no less than the Union troops were in the First Civil War.

This column was originally posted on Townhall.com.

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http://nypost.com/2017/01/22/how-trump-made-small-town-america-matter-again/

How Trump made small-town America matter again

By Salena Zito

The first time Donald J. Trump stepped onstage in Pennsylvania in April 2016 at the Farm Show Complex in Harrisburg, it was clear something very different was going on in this state, with this candidate.

It was not because the rally was massive, or because it was boisterous, or that it was poorly organized, though all those things were true.

Having already attended 18 of his rallies throughout primary states across the country, I found, in fact, that it looked very familiar.

It was different because it was in Pennsylvania.

It was a campaign that was designed to fail from the very beginning.

Trump had no grass-roots organization in the first caucus state of Iowa, while former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush had locked up the best operative in the Hawkeye State. Trump didn’t have any street cred with evangelical voters, while Texas Sen. Cruz not only had that, he had an app to get them out to vote.

Trump lost Iowa to Cruz, but not by much. Bush was dealt a devastating blow, finishing in sixth place, a bruising indictment of all things establishment.

By the time Trump arrived in New Hampshire, then South Carolina and Florida, he still had no staff, he still had no money, he still hadn’t built any relationships with the stakeholders who typically brought folks out to vote.

Everywhere Trump went, he was fighting with the establishment, he was fighting with the Democrats — even fighting his own campaign staffers.

Yet he won all three states, handily ending the candidacies of Bush, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, proving he didn’t need the establishment, he didn’t need the stakeholders and he didn’t need the money.

All he needed was that connection that he had with the people and that simple but brilliant tangible benefit he was offering to take them toward, the cry of “Make America great again.”

All he needed were the rallies.

It was the secret sauce that reporters, pollsters, academics and critics almost all missed.

Supporters cheer at a campaign rally for Donald Trump in October 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania.Getty Images

Trump’s plan was a genius gamble; use the press to get his message out, which he did, doing sometimes 10 to 12 media hits a day across the cable and network news shows. They were sometimes long-winded, rambling streams of consciousness, they were oftentimes controversial — and they never failed to get everyone’s attention.

In those moments, he tapped into a populist sentiment of enough with all things big: big banks, big government, big bureaucracies. Voters were tired of adapting to every new elite, politically correct edict, tired of being scolded by their betters and, most of all, tired of being left behind.

In primary after primary, they voted against their ideologies and, sometimes, their best interests. They crossed party lines when they could in open primaries and switched parties in closed primaries.

By the time he arrived in Pennsylvania in April, a state that had not seen a contentious Republican primary since the 1980 Ronald Reagan-George H.W. Bush contest, Trump had already annihilated 15 of his 17 Republican rivals.

And while no one was looking, 90,000 registered Democrats switched their affiliation to vote for him in the primary.

The only two left to battle against him in the Keystone State were Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who was born there, and Cruz, who had built up an army of pledged delegates in the state. Pennsylvania has a quirky delegate system: The winner is not who has the most votes, but who has the most pledged delegates, a process that requires a candidate to have deep establishment connections to the delegates and the willingness to win them over.

Cruz had plenty of that and Kasich was trying, but Trump was about to show everyone he knew how to connect when needed. *

The drive from Pittsburgh to Harrisburg on old US Route 22 to see Trump’s first rally took an hour longer than on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but the trip began to tell the story of how this candidate would most definitely be the Republican nominee, and possibly the president.

Town after town was worn down by neglect. Main Street shopping districts were half boarded up, sometimes with only a Dollar General store serving as an anchor. Voters were angry with Washington, DC, disappointed in President Obama, and were tired that every time they sent DC a message with their votes, elected officials misread it.

At the Farm Complex, the event center was bursting at the seams. Inside, about 6,000 people patiently waited, and outside, an additional 6,000 who could not get in and were being harassed by anti-Trump protesters.

His supporters chanted, “Build that wall” and “Get a job” at the protester,s who volleyed a with a singsong, profanity-laced version of the chants. When the protesters shouted, “Black lives matter” over and over, Trump’s crowd responded with, “Blue lives matter.”

Voters were angry with Washington, DC, disappointed in President Obama, and were tired that every time they sent DC a message with their votes, elected officials misread it

Inside, Trump walked onstage to a deafening greeting and said, “Oh, we’re gonna build the wall.”

Six days later, he won the state in historical numbers over Cruz and Kasich, capturing all 67 counties, a feat no one had ever achieved. He won the delegates as well, securing the nomination — perhaps not officially, but certainly emotionally.

The numbers showed he won the support of the majority of men and women, voters with incomes over $100,000 and under $50,000, and Republicans in cities, suburbs and rural areas.

He also won among voters under 45 and those 45 and older, as well as moderates and conservatives.

In short, his victory was the result of a growing coalition that no one understood. *
To tell the story of how Donald Trump’s campaign won this election is to tell the story of how he won Pennsylvania in the general election.

As with the primary contests, his state operation was lean on staff, and its mailing effort was the least resourced of all the battleground states.

What he did have was David Urban, a longtime Pennsylvania operative who knew the state and its people inside and out.

Urban also know his best campaign strategy was to have Trump there once a week between the convention and Election Day, and he did just that, with Scranton serving as the bookend appearances.

Urban placed him not only in Scranton, where a Republican presidential candidate hadn’t won in a generation, but he also shuttled Trump to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Erie, Hershey and Gettysburg. The crowds were historic. The enthusiasm was not only palpable at the events, but it created a trickle-down impact — yard signs.

Experts will tell you yard signs do not matter, but they were so symbolic of Trump’s unorthodox campaign style: If he was not in your face on television, he sure was in your face with his yard signs in your neighborhood, large ones, small ones, homemade signs with colorful anecdotes, and even an entire house painted red, white and blue with a 15-foot-tall steel cutout figure of Trump guarding it.

So many visitors came from around the country to see the roadside spectacle (they averaged 1,400 a day), an around-the-clock security guard had to be on duty.

Every poll told you Trump was losing; every conversation you had with someone told you otherwise.

When I interviewed Trump in September, right before he was to speak at the shale conference to hundreds of oil and gas small-business men and women in Pittsburgh, he was centered and gracious.

“Two things people don’t know about me,” he said as the interview was wrapping up. “I am humbled by the people who do support me, because most of them are the ones who are almost to the point of giving up hope, and we can’t have that in America.

“And the other thing is people don’t know that I am nice, that I am a nice person.” *
By the time Election Day came around, Trump had visited Pennsylvania 15 times in 13 weeks, with his children and vice-presidential nominee, Mike Pence, making dozens of visits in between.

As with Trump’s visits to Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, experts chuckled at the waste of time and effort in states they believed he would never win. But the campaign believed there were plenty of Trump-Pence voters hiding in plain sight.

In the end, he pulled off a stunning win in Pennsylvania, turning out voters in counties like Luzerne, Erie, Cambria, Washington and Westmoreland at a rate that eventually would offset Hillary Clinton’s solid numbers in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.

The key was picking off Obama Democrats in the suburbs and rural areas, and getting regular Republican midterm voters, but squeamish presidential voters, energized. It worked. Just as it worked in Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Florida and North Carolina.

Trump’s win was threefold. It occurred during populist unrest; he was unlike anyone whom voters had ever seen before; and the experts misjudged how disliked Obama’s policies were, because the focus was too much on his personal popularity.

Data were never able to track that type of emotional push against government.

In a republic that is 240 years old, it isn’t often that a political occurrence can surprise. The 2016 presidential race was one that will go down in the history books, marking a rare occasion when a true populist was able to transfer that energy into votes.

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