Or so the brochures will tell you. The fact is, college is becoming a riskier proposition for students and their families with each passing year. The job market for college graduates is extremely competitive, and many young people find themselves settling for jobs outside their field of study. Sometimes, they find themselves taking jobs that they didn’t even need a degree for in the first place just so they can start chipping away at the mountain of debt they took on to pay for that degree.
               It makes many parents wonder if college is worth it. A growing number of students have determined that it’s not.
               College dropout numbers are rising sharply, according to the American Enterprise Institute. In 2016, more than 40% of all students who started a four-year program in 2010 had not completed it. Put another way, close to two million students who begin college this fall will drop out before they earn a degree. Public two-year colleges have it even worse. Only 26% of full-time, first-time students will complete their degree within three years.
                The decreasing likelihood of a college degree paying off and the increasing possibility that a student may not even finish college should make parents wary about blindly submitting their children to the college experience.
               Leftists like Barack liar-nObama, liar-Hillary Clinton and commie-Bernie Sanders have pushed the idea that college is the be-all-end-all for getting ahead in life. The higher education industry (let’s face it, it is an industry) has happily embraced the idea. Together, the Left and colleges and universities, which are overwhelmingly run by the Left, have convinced parents that if their kids don’t go to post-secondary school, then they will be losers. Thus the socialists’ proposal for “free college.”
               Leftists want all Americans going through college so that they can be further indoctrinated. The colleges want the money. It’s quite a deal they’ve struck.
               Along the way, colleges have milked the federal government, and many states, to subsidize tuition while steadily inflating the cost of an increasingly inferior education. Leftists have turned higher education into an entitlement, arguing that (only) college educated people are good for the country, so the country should help fund their education. And with taxpayers footing the bill, there is no end to how high leftists will push tuition costs. Look at what they’ve done with every other taxpayer-funded entitlement.
               Having an educated workforce is good for the economy. People who graduate with a degree in science or engineering are very likely to find work early and contribute significantly to society. But what about those who majored in diversity studies or social justice? Where’s the market for those jobs?
               Bryan Caplan, author of The Case Against Education and economics professor at George Mason University, argues that college has become a scam.
               “Just because it is lucrative for an individual doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for a country,” Caplan says of college. When most everyone goes to college, “you just raise the bar. Imagine you’re at a concert, and you want to see better. Stand up and of course you’ll see better. But if everyone stands up, you just block each other’s views.”
               College graduates are having a tough time finding jobs, but that doesn’t mean that the job market is bad. It just means that all these potential workers are crowding into fields where there’s already a glut of talent.
               The manufacturing sector is growing and looking for workers, and these are jobs that can be secured with vocational training that is significantly less costly than a college degree. Learning can be done anywhere at any time.
               “If you want to go to Princeton, you don’t have to apply,” says Caplan. “Just move to the town and start attending classes.”
               While we don’t necessarily endorse crashing college classes for free, Caplan makes a good point. Information on subjects you want to learn more about can be found online or at the local library or practically anywhere. But college students looking to start a career need to be practical about how they spend their time and money. Go where the jobs are, not where your passion leads you.   ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/56356?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3526&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             Conversely, in 2013, liar-nObama adoringly told America’s most notorious abortion mill: “Thank you, Planned Parenthood. God bless you.” Here’s the irony: Half a billion taxpayer dollars go to Planned Parenthood every year, which means that taxpayers aren’t just funding abortion-on-demand, they’re also helping sustain a form of human trafficking that liar-nObama once deemed “barbaric,” “evil” and something that “has no place in a civilized world.” The proof is provided by a new Live Action report. Zero tolerance? Hardly.
               The Live Action exposé documents numerous examples of abuse, including incestuous child rape wherein 12- and 13-year-old girls were taken to Planned Parenthood clinics for abortions after being impregnated by family members (multiple times in at least one case). As horrible as this is, the worst part is that the perpetrators got away with their crimes thanks to Planned Parenthood’s nonexistent convictions.
               As one former manager explained it: “We were all required to be mandatory reporters, but … we really were discouraged from calling [the abuse] in, just because they didn’t want to have the trouble — the angry parent, the angry boyfriend, whatever it was. So, more than once I was told, ‘No, that is not reportable. You don’t need to call it in.’” Furthermore, Live Action says, “Planned Parenthood’s repeated failure to report such incidents has allowed abusers to continue abusing their victims, often for years. This reputation has led to Planned Parenthood becoming a haven for sexual abusers and sex traffickers. Planned Parenthood is a favorite place to take their victims to cover up their crimes.”
               Matt Walsh writes, “I don’t believe that staff members at your average Planned Parenthood clinic support rape, per se. I think they just care much more about the financial and ideological bottom line. Financially, rape is good for business because it brings in money. Repeated rape, especially the repeated rape of a child by a family member, is extremely good for business because it creates a sustained revenue stream. And ideologically, it would hurt the cause of ‘reproductive rights’ if people began to understand just how often women are coerced or outright forced to ‘choose’ abortions.”
               Amazingly, Democrats have literally asked God to bless an organization that doesn’t just perform hundreds of thousands of abortions every year but shields rapists. And it’s no wonder. As the Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Timothy 6:10, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”   
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/56345?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3526&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             In its place, hate and hysteria, rigidly enforced by rank hypocrisy — directed at Donald Trump, his family, his associates and his supporters — has become the dominant mindset in the leftist universe.
               Roseanne Barr was universally scorned for her racist tweets directed at Barack liar-nObama’s senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. Meanwhile, MSNBC’s Joy Reid engaged in anti-homosexual blogging and lied about it. Moreover, newly discovered blog entries included the image of Sen. rino-John McCain’s head photoshopped onto the body of the Virginia Tech shooter, suggestions that Israeli Jews should go back to Europe, and a post that encouraged her readers to check out “Loose Change 9/11,” alleging the 9/11 terrorist attacks were perpetrated by the U.S. government.
               Barr apologized. Reid apologized. ABC canceled TV’s highest-rated show, and all episodes of “Roseanne’s” earlier incarnation have also been taken off the air.
               By contrast, Reid not only remains on the air, she was tapped to host an MSNBC town hall, “Everyday Racism in America,” only hours after Barr’s tweet. Reid was joined by Jarrett, who spoke about Barr’s tweet as a “teachable moment” — while sitting next to Al Sharpton, whose use of the “n word,” rants about “Chinamen” and “Greek homos” and an anti-Semitic reference to a Jewish shopkeeper with a store in Harlem as a “white interloper”  earned him a job at MSNBC, numerous visits to Barack liar-nObama’s White House, and a 2014 Politico column describing him as the former president’s “go to man on race.”
               The contemptible double standard that tossed Barr under the bus while Reid was not only protected by her network but legitimized as a spokesperson on race is also a “teachable moment.”
               For the double standard on steroids we turn to Samantha Bee. On her TBS-hosted show, “Full Frontal,” the so-called comedienne referred to Ivanka Trump as a “feckless c—t” on a program that is scripted, edited and pre-taped — meaning it had the approval, not only of Bee, but TBS itself, before being aired. Bee apologized and TBS stated that it was “our mistake too, and we regret it.”
               Mistake? Columnist Maggie Serota called it a “calculated risk measured against the cheap outrage it would incur from the opportunistic right which makes the swift apology all the more disappointing.”
               Cheap outrage from the opportunistic Right? Serota is a member in good standing of a deranged Left that sought to justify Bee’s shamelessness. Propagandist Michael Moore called it a “brilliant rant against Ivanka.” “Honestly I think Samantha Bee was being generous,” wrote comedian Billy Eichner. Actress Sally Field took it another direction, tweeting, “I like Samantha Bee a lot, but she is flat wrong to call Ivanka a c—t. C—s are powerful, beautiful, nurturing and honest.”
               Really, Ms. Field? So if Bee had referred to, say, Michelle liar-nObama the same way, you’d applaud it? Would Bee still be receiving an award like she got Thursday night at the TV Academy’s annual Honors event? Moreover, where are the pu—y-hatted storm troopers of the Woman’s Marches and their #MeToo movement? Their silence is especially deafening — and quite revealing.
               Leftist women are “more equal” than non-leftist women. It gets worse. Leftists are so invested in smearing the president, “guilt by association” is reaching metastatic levels. As recently as last Thursday, Google listed Nazism as one of the California Republican Party’s ideologies in its “knowledge panel” next to its search results.
               Like Reid, Google blamed someone else for the “error.” “Sometimes people vandalize public information sources, like Wikipedia, which can impact the information that appears in search,” a spokesperson for the company told Fox News.
               Those “vandals” have been busy. Google’s knowledge panel also labeled North Carolina Republican state senator Trudy Wade a bigot.
               What was/is genuine Nazism? Among many things, it was the co-option of hate and hysteria into a political movement, replete with a specific group of people who were/are demonized as the root cause of every societal problem.
               In America, the fringe, or “alt-right” as they are now labeled by the media, behave in exactly that manner. On the other side of the political divide, a panoply of groups embraced by mainstream  leftists and the Democrat/Media Complex routinely demonize those they deem to be beneath contempt. The Black Lives Matter movement demonizes “murderous” police. The LGBTQ community demonizes “bigoted” Christians. Academia demonizes “privileged” white males and allows conservative speakers to be shouted down or run off campus in fear of their lives. Bicoastal elitists contemptuously dismiss the entire middle of the nation as “flyover country,” populated by those described by the last two Democrat Party standard-bearers as “deplorables,” xenophobes and misogynists, (liar[-Hillary Clinton), who “cling to guns, God and religion,” and maybe “just want to fall back into their tribe” (Barack liar-nObama).
               What is genuine bigotry? “Roseanne’s problem turned out to be that she far too authentically represented the actual worldview of a significant chunk of the Trump base,” tweeted  MSNBC’s Chris Hayes. “Haters and losers may the Trump’s most durable base of support,” stated columnist Erin Gloria Ryan. “There’s No Such Thing as a Good Trump Voter” states the title of a Jamelle Bouie column. Pro-Trump black voters are “useful idiots,” declared Juan Williams.
               “The Left’s carnage-inducing words and images have reached their apotheosis,” columnist Deroy Murdock asserted. “It’s far past time for liberals to stop whining about an election they lost fair and square, leash the dogs of war, and, instead, craft a positive agenda for the American people.”
               Murdock wrote that column just under a year ago — shortly after a socialist opened fire on a baseball diamond filled with Republican lawmakers, nearly killing Rep. Steve Scalise. And despite his assertion that leftist hatred had reached its apotheosis, contempt for Trump and his supporters has intensified, not waned.
               “Everything changed once Trump got elected,” asserts Fox TV host Tucker Carlson. “Celebrities threatened to abandon this country, business leaders started behaving like political activists. Candidates for office embraced positions so extreme that they had rejected them just months before. News reporters became rigid propagandists.”
               Compared to what? A re-ignited North Korea summit. An American embassy in Jerusalem, fulfilling a promise made in 1995. A"right-to-try" bill giving gravely ill patients access to experimental drugs. Record wage growth and record-low unemployment for blacks.
               The Left’s reaction? “May’s jobs report shows that strong employment numbers mean little to the families hit with soaring new costs under the Republicans’ watch,” asserts Nancy Pulosi. “There’s no question today’s job report is good news, including the news that we’re as closest we’ve ever been to full employment in the black community. But what’s full employment without full respect?” asks CNN anchor Don Lemon.
               Far better for Americans than your racist presumptions and the Left’s unrelenting hatred and hysteria, Mr. Lemon.  ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/56325?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3524&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

            If you own property that could be stolen from you and then used in some type of criminal activity, your property, once recovered, doesn’t have to be returned to you. If you simply possess a large amount of cash and are stopped and searched, the money can be taken and held for an administrative review to determine if, indeed, it was lawfully obtained or possessed. It may not be returned.
               So, in reality, there’s a real possibility your life may be impacted by the issue of civil asset forfeiture. Regardless, it’s an issue that emphatically demonstrates the metastasizing cancer of bureaucratic government.
               What is civil asset forfeiture and why should you care? Civil asset forfeiture is the confiscation of property by law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels when that property is alleged to have been derived from or used in the commission of a crime. Unlike criminal asset forfeiture, property is seized and held from individuals or entities without a conviction or even formal charges filed. In short, there is no requirement of proof of guilt, a conviction or even formal charges. It’s entirely legal, and there’s often little recourse against it.
               Despite reforms or the abolition of civil asset forfeiture in roughly half the states since 2014, the federal government is still using this tool as a tactic in fighting drug- and gang-related crimes. Too often, it sweeps up innocent people. Attorney General Jeff Session is a proponent of the tactic when fighting true organized drug trafficking and gang activity that notoriously deal in cash. Unfortunately, that means increasing the use of it.
               Granted, in 1985 when the Justice Department’s Asset Forfeiture Fund first collected $27 million, it was within its intended bounds to address money involved in drug trafficking. However, in 2015, near the end of scumbag-Eric Holder’s tenure as AG and despite liar-nObama administration declarations that the practice of property confiscation without a conviction had stopped, the fund had ballooned to $5 billion.
               So why has the practice become so widespread? If you don’t remember the movie scene, you’ve likely seen the memes on social media of Tom Cruise playing Jerry McGuire, a high-priced sports agent, yelling into the phone to please his celebrity-athlete portrayed by actor Cuba Gooding, “Show me the money!” Just as in professional sports, it seems there’s an underside of law enforcement that’s earning its ill-repute around the notion of money. You see, the assets seized are liquidated with the revenues going to the arresting agency.
               Still, there’s no way innocent people are caught up in this, right? Yes, they are. The most recent abuse of this practice occurred in October 2017 at the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, where Rustem Kazazi boarded his first flight connecting to Newark, New Jersey, on his way to his native Albania to make repairs on a family home and property. As a result of a routine security check, airport security seized and held the $58,100 in cash placed in his carry-on luggage.
               A retired Albanian policeman, Kazazi had been selected in 2005 through the visa lottery to enter the U.S. and he became a citizen in 2010. Due to concerns about the integrity and safety of 12 years of savings in weak local banks in Albania, he decided to travel with cash. Kazazi arranged his personal treasure in three separate bundles along with bank receipts documenting withdrawals and records pertaining to his property in Tirana, the capital city.
               At the Ohio airport, however, officials refused Kazazi access to an interpreter and denied him the ability to contact his family for help. They physically searched him extensively, finding no drugs, no contraband and no connection to an alleged or actual crime. His “crime” was to have a large amount of legal currency on his person as he legally traveled.
               After the interrogation, Kazazi was given a receipt for “U.S. Currency” with no dollar amount recorded. Now, more than seven months later, the savings of this family are still being held with only a notice of seizure declaring, “Enforcement activity indicates that the currency was involved in a smuggling/drug trafficking/money laundering operation.” No formal charges. No court date. No evidence. Instead, the Kazazi family has had to resort to a lawsuit to have their money returned.
               There are many other incidents of the seizure of cars, property, homes and cash without conviction of crimes or even charges filed.
               What Fourth Amendment? Civil asset forfeiture, as noted in the above citation of seizure, is permitted through the jurisdiction of in rem, the Latin term meaning “against the property.” This refers to the power given a court over real property within that court’s jurisdiction. Pure and simple, the use of civil asset forfeiture regards the action against the inanimate object or property, not the perpetrator, and thus circumvents the need to charge a criminal.
               Does this sound like a justice system or a legal system styled to convolute, obstruct and run out the clock? Granted, where legitimate crimes are committed, related assets seized should be liquidated to offset costs of pursuit, prosecution and incarceration. That’s called restitution. But as The Heritage Foundation cited in its 2015 report and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has recognized, abuse of this practice is not uncommon and must be halted.
               In Frederic Bastiat’s timeless 1850 book The Law, the French economist spoke of the legal plunder of excessive taxation. He argued that the seizure of property from one to employ for another’s use is criminal for all but the State. In 2018, civil asset forfeiture, while intended by some as a tool for good, has become legal plunder to fuel the treasuries of various agencies.
               So, if you’re ever asked to show your money, it better not be in cash.   ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/56337?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3524&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             No sooner had we reminded readers Friday that she once called the tax cuts “Armageddon” before dismissing them as “crumbs” than the minority leader was at it again. “May’s jobs report shows that strong employment numbers mean little to the families hit with soaring new costs under the Republicans’ watch,” she insisted. What a depressingly dour — not to mention false — view of a booming economy.
               Headline unemployment dropped to 3.8%, the best since 2000. U-6 unemployment is at 7.6%, the lowest since 2001. Black unemployment hit a record low of 5.9%. Female unemployment is at 3.6%, the lowest since 1953. And Pulosi says the sky is falling.
               Just for giggles, let’s take a trip down memory lane to look at “soaring new costs” implemented by a political party. Anyone remember liar-nObamaCare? Yes we do, because we’re all still paying its soaring costs, month by month in higher premiums and then again when our renewals jump double-digit percentage points. No Republicans voted to saddle Americans with those soaring costs, which Democrats imposed during a recession/stagnant recovery. Yet Pulosi blames premium hikes on “Republicans’ cruel, cynical health care sabotage.” The hypocrisy is stunning.
               Or what about the “stimulus”? That Democrat spending spree was supposed to keep unemployment below 8%. It topped out above 10%, and the nation was burdened with $1 trillion in extra debt that went straight to the pockets of Democrat cronies. Worse, the “stimulus” became a new spending floor, meaning the federal budget is permanently higher because of it. Each American bears the soaring costs of that Demo debt bomb.
               “Democrats know that the American people deserve A Better Deal, with Better Jobs, Better Wages and a Better Future,” Pelosi’s statement declared. That “Better Deal” is nothing more than what Mark Alexander called “a cheap knock-off of Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 ‘New Deal’ slogan and an updated do-over of FDR’s failed socialist policies while cloaking them in the language of Donald Trump’s middle class appeal.” The New Deal prolonged the Great Depression by several years. Democrats want to try it again, and, combined with identity politics and Trump Derangement Syndrome, that’s what they’re offering come November.   ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/56335?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3524&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             The Court’s majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by all but the dissenting Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, stated, “The laws and the Constitution can, and in some instances must, protect gay persons and gay couples in the exercise of their civil rights, but religious and philosophical objections to gay marriage are protected views and in some instances protected forms of expression. While it is unexceptional that Colorado law can protect gay persons in acquiring products and services on the same terms and conditions as are offered to other member of the public, the law must be applied in a manner that is neutral toward religion.”
               The Court did not, however, totally settle the issue of whether religious objections cover a multitude of denied services. Kennedy said larger questions “must await further elaboration.”
               During oral arguments, Justice Kennedy notably criticized the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for its disparagement of Phillips’ religious convictions. The commission outrageously compared his beliefs to defenses of slavery and the Holocaust. Kennedy stated at the time, “This sentiment is inappropriate for a commission charged with the solemn responsibility of fair and neutral enforcement of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law — a law that protects [against] discrimination on the basis of religion as well as sexual orientation.” The commission’s hostility to Phillips’ view was the basis for the SCOTUS ruling.
               Politically speaking, there are two reasons Democrats will seize on this decision for 2018. First, they will argue this decision is why Demos must control the Senate, so as to keep Trump from appointing any more judges. Second, they will also do so because, even though homosexuals are a minuscule percentage of the population, their biggest supporters are Demos’ biggest and most loyal constituency, women voters.
               This ruling should be welcomed by all Americans who hold our religious liberty in high esteem. The Founders certainly did. It’s why they crafted the First Amendment. But there will be more battles on this front in the coming years, so keep your powder dry.   ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/56339?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3524&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             Noting that “Washington set a record … in 2017 by passing six short-term extensions in less than a year,” the author goes on to report: “The latest spending bill, approved in February, did more than continue to fund the federal government; it also set America on a course to add at least $1 trillion a year to the national debt by 2020. … It took almost 200 years for the federal government to accumulate its first $1 trillion in debt. The next $20 trillion took less than four decades.”
               This is inexcusable, indeed, and the writer puts his finger on the only viable solution: “The answer is clear. Republicans and Democrats in Congress must put aside divisive (and pointless) sound-bite politics and at long last get serious about meaningful spending restraint and entitlement reforms. Those discussions should begin with proposals to deal with the costs of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security, which are the greatest contributors to spending and debt. Congressional leaders from both parties must pledge to vote on a package of meaningful reforms.”
               Entitlements and welfare together siphon a huge proportion of government revenues, and they are projected to worsen significantly in the years and decades ahead. liar-nObamaCare didn’t help — in fact, it made the fiscal situation before its implementation seem relatively tame. Sadly, many state governors, tempted by the inflow of federal dollars that would ensue, took the bait by expanding Medicaid. Even the Republican governor of Ohio, John Kasich, expanded Medicaid and became one of that program’s most ardent advocates. In February 2017, he stated that Medicaid expansion rollbacks represent “a very, very bad idea, because we cannot turn our back on the most vulnerable.”
                Furthermore, as National Review’s Jason Hart noted in June 2017, “Kasich’s public-relations campaign for liar-nObamacare’s Medicaid expansion could wipe out whatever chance remains for Congress to pass a substantial liar-nObamacare-repeal bill.” It apparently worked.
               Which brings us full circle back to the Wall Street Journal op-ed. The author of that piece? Ohio Gov. John Kasich — the man who betrayed conservatives with his embrace of liar-nObamaCare’s Medicaid expansion. Patriot Post contributor Robin Smith highlighted the dual forms of hypocrisy on this matter, enjoining, “Hey, Wall Street Journal, please explain your credibility in publishing an opinion by the Ohio governor who expanded liar-nObamaCare in his state.”
               The biggest irony of all? If we are going to get our fiscal house in order, Republicans truly need budgetary and constitutional stalwarts, not drifters who check to see which way the political winds are blowing before making critical decisions. Gov. Kasich is symbolic of the latter, his faux conservative bromides on health care notwithstanding. If only he knew how to follow his own advice.   
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/56289?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3520&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             The Post notes that recent U.S. Census Bureau reports indicate there are currently 40 million people living in poverty in America. (Poor is a relative term, of course.) The article then sneaks in this statement: “Put that together with the fact that in the U.S., about 2.6 million people die every year — and most of those deaths are associated with poverty.” Whoa. How exactly are most of those deaths “associated” with poverty? The article never tells us. So what we have here is little more than journalistic sleight-of-hand — a key claim with no support for its validity.
               The authors of the study — an assistant professor of political science and a doctoral student — clearly have an agenda: promoting socialism. You see, the poor in America are dying because there aren’t enough government programs, such as universal health care, to help them live longer, more politically active lives. Worse yet, the political clout that’s necessary to enact and implement these programs would exist if only the have-nots were living long enough to vote for them. (Somewhere here, there’s a bad joke about dead people and Democrat votes.)
               This, of course, is the kind of agenda-driven research that gives the social sciences such a bad name. It’s reminiscent of the line from the movie “Anchorman”: “They’ve done studies you know. 60% of the time, it works every time.”
               One of the biggest problems with the researchers’ assertion is the leftist idea of social economic stagnation — the idea that the poor remain poor while the rich remain rich. In fact, people move out of poverty regularly, and economic stagnation has been the exception rather than the rule throughout U.S. history and especially since World War II.
               So to suggest that the poor will always be poor and will therefore require ever more government provision is false. Further, how in the world can the researchers be certain how these dead people would’ve voted had they only lived? It seems a stretch to assume that those “poor people” who “die younger” were destined to spend their golden years on the socialist bandwagon.
               Just for a bit of humor, here’s that previously referenced line from “Anchorman”:   ~The Patriot Post

             But this burgeoning population isn’t merely the result of cleaning our streets of violent offenders; it’s also due to overzealous prosecutors eager to tout their toughness in America’s war on crime.
               Consequently, the United States has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of its incarcerated people, according to National Review’s Conrad Black. “The American conviction rate of nearly 99 percent, 97 percent without a trial,” says Black, is the result of a plea-bargain system that places the U.S. “in criminal-justice matters from the category of its socioeconomic and democratic peer countries and places it, in matters of criminal procedure and conviction rates, disgracefully among the totalitarian states.”
               Plea-bargaining is one of the primary reasons why the prison population has risen so dramatically in recent decades. The process gives prosecutors “broad, opaque powers” according to Dylan Walsh at The Atlantic.
               Walsh adds, “Judges are not regularly allowed to take part when a plea deal is made, and written records of a deal are almost never required. Though jury trials demand proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, pleas follow no standards of evidence or proof; the prosecutor offers a break in exchange for a guilty plea, the defendant decides whether to take it without knowing the merits of his case.”
               Even hard-line conservatives who typically favor tougher sentencing should be concerned about the ease with which Americans are being incarcerated, especially non-violent offenders and the drug-addicted.
               But what’s being done on the political front to address the issue?
               Until recently, not a lot. Proposals that call for tougher sentencing or building more prisons often fail to consider the vast majority of incarcerated individuals who will one day return to society.
               What’s interesting is that a leading voice for prison reform is our tough-talking president, Donald Trump, who just last week hosted a prison reform summit at the White House. (The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has also taken up the issue because his father spent a year in federal prison.)
               And it looks like the proposal is picking up steam. This week, the House passed the First Step Act by a vote of 360-59. Some of its features include providing training programs for ex-inmates to reduce recidivism, allowing inmates to build “good time” credit each year, banning the shackling of pregnant inmates, allowing for the release of terminally ill patients, and requiring prisoners to be placed in facilities within a reasonable distance of their families.
               “I will sign it,” said President Trump, “and it’s going to be strong, it’s going to be good, it’s going to be what everybody wants.”
               The bill’s supporters are hoping that the president can use the bully pulpit to push hesitant Republican senators to take up the measure, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is at the moment reluctant due to deep divisions among party members.
               Meanwhile, criminal justice advocacy groups such as Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the U.S. Justice Action Network, the Equal Justice Initiative, Koch Industries, and the American Civil Liberties Union are divided over the First Step Act for reasons ranging from potentially discriminatory practices to the lack of halfway houses for inmates to make the transition back into their communities.
               Highlighting the division over prison reform, Reason’s C.J. Ciaramella writes, “Democrats are split on it, old-school conservatives are drumming up opposition from law enforcement groups, and progressive advocacy groups are attacking it from the left. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Republican pointman on criminal justice reform, says the bill is dead in the water unless it includes major reforms to federal sentencing law as well.”
               To his credit, Grassley has successfully recruited 13 Republicans to join the bipartisan effort. Yet despite the promising efforts of House members on Capitol Hill, the future of the bill doesn’t look promising. And that’s unacceptable.
               Politicians have long ignored this complex issue, often seeking a quick fix to appease their own interest groups. And while Republicans need to realize that aggressive sentencing is not appropriate in all situations, or good for society in the long-term, Democrats need to stop looking at ex-cons merely as potential voters (yes, then-Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe did unilaterally restore voting rights to 200,000 felons before the 2016 presidential election).
               Of course, the most serious offenders should receive harsh sentences and should be locked up long-term. But those who’ll eventually leave prison to again become our co-workers and neighbors need a system that prepares them for life as productive citizens in a free society rather than creating a revolving door of convicts. Our society will be safer for it, and we can spend less money on incarceration.
               Reforming the plea bargain process, revisiting mandatory sentencing laws, and even admitting that the Drug War has failed are all steps in the right direction.
               In the end, this isn’t about getting soft on crime, but recognizing the flaws in the current system. With millions of prisoners and tens of millions of felons, Republicans and Democrats need to find common ground and do what’s right. President Trump is moving the country toward a broader conversation about prison reform, and the First Step Act is truly a step in the right direction.   
~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/56305?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3520&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

             House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) blasted Google: “It is disgraceful that the world’s largest search engine has labeled millions of California Republicans as Nazis. This is just the latest incident in a disturbing trend to slander conservatives. These damaging actions must be held to account. The bias has to stop.” McCarthy is correct. The most recent example was Google’s silencing of pro-life ads before the Irish referendum on whether to legalize abortion. But don’t forget the tech giant’s firingof software engineer James Damore last year for his daring to question the company’s leftist dogma, or its use of the hate-mongering Southern Poverty Law Center to police YouTube.
               Google responded with a “dog ate my homework” excuse, blaming the “mistake” on Wikipedia vandalism. In other words, “Oops, but it really wasn’t our fault. Can we move along now?”
               But aside from Google’s convenient mistake, what may be more frustrating is the regular misrepresentation, even among conservatives, of Nazism as a far-right political movement. The fact is both Nazism and communism are extreme expressions that come out of the same leftist ideological camp of socialism. Both produce totalitarian forms of government that preach the “needs” of the collective over and against individual rights and Liberty. The primary difference between the two totalitarian ideologies is that of race-based nationalism versus collectivist globalism. The term “NAZI” itself was the German acronym for National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
               By contrast, conservatism champions the protection of the rights and freedoms of the individual against the encroachment of the collective. Yet the Leftmedia has takenPresident Donald Trump’s populist message of America First (nationalism) and falsely linked it with racism in an effort to imply that Trump and all Republicans are fascist Nazis. Nothing could be further from reality, but in the age of identity politics, emotions rather than facts are what sell.   ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/56314?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3520&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=

             As with many “old guard” conservative publications, NR was befuddled both by Trump’s appeal and his ultimate election on November 8, 2016, and its editors still demonstrate some confusion about Trump’s populist support. That perplexity is rooted in the fact that many conservative intellectuals, most of whom reside inside the DC Beltway or in other equally high-brow protectorates like New York City, are disconnected from both the grassroots American Patriots who elected Donald Trump and those who didn’t initially support Trump but have since boarded the Trump Train to Make American Great Again.
               Its grassroots disconnect notwithstanding, National Review still has, in my considered opinion, the best stable of political writers on the planet, far superior to those at The Atlantic, The New Republic and the rest of the Leftmedia propaganda machine.
               There are a few NR writers whom I follow closely. One of those is Andrew McCarthy, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. A few of his more notable prosecutions include the 1995 conviction of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman and 11 others responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (and who planned additional attacks against other New York City landmarks). McCarthy was also key to the prosecutions of the terrorists who bombed our U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
               For the last 15 years, McCarthy has been a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.
               He’s also my go-to guy for legal insights and analysis on the collusion to entrap Trump by Barack liar-nObama’s CIA director, John Brennan; liar-nObama’s FBI director, James Comey(and his high-ranking co-conspirators); and their candidate,  liar-Hillary Clinton, and her corrupt campaign. This cadre of liar-nObama’s deep-state operatives has endeavored to frame Mr. Trump for “colluding with Russia” to throw the 2016 election, or to at least create the false impression that his election was illegitimate.
               The fate of that investigation, and possibly Trump’s presidency, has, for a year, been in the hands of Comey’s FBI predecessor, special prosecutor Robert Mueller, and his team of “hard-core Democrats.”
               The integrity of Mueller’s evidence was undermined again last week with revelations that the liar-nObama administration, ostensibly to protect Trump’s candidacy from Russian meddling, planted at least one “spy” within his campaign. In fact, this was just the latest chapter of the liar-nObama/liar-Clinton Trump/Putin collusion charade to be exposed.
               I profiled that last week in my column, “From ‘Crossfire Hurricane’ to ‘Backfire Tornado’.”
               This week, I’m providing you with some of Andy McCarthy’s more erudite observations about the investigation of Trump.
               His analysis, “In Politicized Justice, Desperate Times Call for Disparate Measures,” focused on the Justice Department’s double standard in handling the liar-Clinton email subterfuge and Trump/Russia investigations:
               The 2016 presidential election, we’re to believe, was stolen from liar-Hillary Clinton by disparate treatment. As Democrats tell it, the FBI scandalized their candidate while protecting Donald Trump. You might think peddling that story with a straight face would be a major challenge. But they figure it may work because it was test-driven by the FBI’s then-director, James Comey, in his now infamous press conference on July 5, 2016 — back when the law-enforcement and intelligence apparatus on which we rely to read the security tea leaves was simply certain that Mrs. liar-Clinton would win.
               If you or I had set up an unauthorized private communications system for official business for the patent purpose of defeating federal record-keeping and disclosure laws; if we had retained and transmitted thousands of classified emails on this non-secure system; if we had destroyed tens of thousands of government records; if we had carried out that destruction while those records were under subpoena; if we had lied to the FBI in our interview — well, we’d be writing this column from the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth. Yet, in a feat of dizzying ratiocination, Director Comey explained that to prosecute Mrs. liar-Clinton would be to hold her to a nitpicking, selective standard of justice not imposed on other Americans.
               Regarding the fact that the Trump/Russia investigation did not originate with Carter Page or George Papadopoulos but with the liar-Obama administration, McCarthy notes:
               With the revelation last week that the liar-nObama administration had insinuated a spy into the Trump campaign, it appeared that we were back to the original, Page-centric origination story. But now there was a twist: The informant, longtime CIA source Stefan Halper, was run at Page by the FBI, in Britain. Because this happened just days after Page’s Moscow trip, the implication was that it was the Moscow trip itself, not the dossier claims about it, that provided momentum toward opening the investigation. Then, just a couple of weeks later, WikiLeaks began publicizing the DNC emails; this, we’re to understand, shook loose the Australian information about Papadopoulos. When that information made its way to the FBI — how, we’re not told — the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation was formally opened on July 31. Within days, Agent Peter Strzok was in London interviewing [Australian Ambassador Alexander] Downer, and soon the FBI tasked Halper to take a run at Papadopoulos.
               I’m not buying it. The real origination story begins in the early spring of 2016 — long before Page went to Russia and long before the U.S. government was notified about Papadopoulos’s boozy conversation with Downer. … From the “late spring” on, every report of Trump-Russia ties, no matter how unlikely and uncorroborated, was presumed to be proof of a traitorous arrangement. And every detail that could be spun into Trump-campaign awareness of Russian hacking, no matter how tenuous, was viewed in the worst possible light.
               McCarthy concludes that liar-nObama’s DOJ and its political hacks within the FBI merged the liar-Clinton email case with the Trump/Russia probe:
               The mistake is often made — I’ve made it myself — of analyzing the tanking of the liar-Clinton emails case in a vacuum. There are, after all, reasons unrelated to Donald Trump that explain the outcome: liar-nObama was implicated in liar-Clinton’s use of a non-secure email system; liar-nObama had endorsed liar-Clinton; many high-ranking liar-nObama Justice Department officials stood to keep their coveted positions, and even advance, in a liar-Hillary Clinton administration; the liar-nObama Justice Department was hyper-political and liar-Clinton was the Democratic nominee.
               But the liar-Clinton investigation did not happen in a vacuum. It happened in the context of Donald Trump’s gallop through the Republican primaries and, just as important, of the liar-nObama administration’s determination to regard the Trump campaign as a Kremlin satellite.
               With the pressure to finish MYE [Mid-Year Exam, the FBI’s codename for the liar-Clinton email probe] in the rearview mirror, liar-Hillary Clinton looked like a shoo-in to beat Donald Trump. By mid September, [FBI lawyer and Peter Strzok paramour] Lisa Page was saying as much at a meeting in Deputy Director McCabe’s office. But Strzok was hedging his bets: Maybe “there’s no way [Trump] gets elected — but I’m afraid we can’t take that risk. It’s like an insurance policy in the unlikely event you die before you’re 40.”
               Soon, as the campaign wound down, the FBI and the liar-nObama Justice Department were on the doormat of the FISA court, obtaining a surveillance warrant on Carter Page, substantially based on allegations in the Steele dossier — an uncorroborated liar-Clinton-campaign opposition-research screed. Meanwhile, the FBI/CIA spy was being run at George Papadopoulos, and even seeking a role in the Trump campaign from its co-chairman, Sam Clovis.
               On the  liar-nObama administration’s effort to spy on the Trump campaign, and its absurd pretext for authorizing operation Crossfire Hurricane in order to bolster its effort to frame Trump for the fake collusion delusion, McCarthy observes:
               The liar-nObama administration decided to use its counterintelligence powers to spy on the Trump campaign, using at least one covert informant, electronic monitoring of communications, and other intelligence-gathering tactics. It ignored the norm against deploying such tactics against political opponents, not based on evidence of a Trump-Russia criminal conspiracy, but on speculation about the Trump campaign’s Russia contacts and Russia sympathies. Speculation by a government, an administration, and a Democratic-party nominee with their own abysmal histories of Russia contacts and Russia sympathies.
               He concludes: In the end, it is not about who the spies are. It is about why they were spying. In our democratic republic, there is an important norm against an incumbent administration’s use of government’s enormous intelligence-gathering capabilities to — if we may borrow a phrase — interfere in an election. To justify disregarding that norm would require strong evidence of egregious wrongdoing. Enough bobbing and weaving, and enough dueling tweets. Let’s see the evidence.
               So, when will we see the evidence or more tangential diversionary charges?
               Nelson Cunningham, a decidedly left-of-center former federal prosecutor also from New York who worked for  liar-Bill Clinton and the 2004 presidential campaign of hanoi-John Kerry, insists, “Mueller will want to avoid interfering with the November midterms, and so will try to conclude by July or August.”
               Recall that Rudy Giuliani, as Trump’s lawyer, recently predicted Mueller would release his findings by 01 September.
               Cunningham believes “Mueller will not indict the president, but will issue a comprehensive and detailed report. … [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein will decide to release the report to Congress and the public. … Rosenstein’s move to release the Mueller report will lead to his firing. … And this is when the Senate and the Congress might finally engage.”
               Well, that’s precisely what I’d expect from a liar-Clintonista — and if that’s the team Mueller is pitching for, Cunningham just might be right.
               Frankly, I am still holding out some hope that Mueller holds to a higher standard than that of James Comey, the latter being a case study of what happens to once-right-minded government administrators who don’t properly maintain their political immunity against Potomac swamp fever, transforming as through metamorphosis into bureaucratic political hacks.   ~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/alexander/56262?utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.3518&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body