The Court’s decision prompted an unusual chastisement from Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote, “What explains the court’s refusal to do its job here? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that some respondents in these cases are named ‘Planned Parenthood.’”
               Thomas further argued, “It is true that these particular cases arose after several States alleged that Planned Parenthood affiliates had, among other things, engaged in ‘the illegal sale of fetal organs’ and ‘fraudulent billing practices,’ and thus removed Planned Parenthood as a state Medicaid provider. But these cases are not about abortion rights. They are about private rights of action under the Medicaid Act. Resolving the question presented here would not even affect Planned Parenthood’s ability to challenge the States’ decisions.”
               The root question: Do Medicaid recipients have the right to challenge a state’s determination for who qualifies as a medical provider? Kansas and Louisiana determined that Medicaid recipients were not free to challenge the qualification for acceptable medical providers, specifically that Planned Parenthood failed to meet their qualifications. Thomas’s argument for accepting the case was sound, as he noted the appeals court split: “Five Circuits have held that Medicaid recipients have such a right and one Circuit has held that they do not.”
               The Washington Post speculated that the reason SCOTUS refused review was that “a majority of the court may be steering clear of controversial issues — at least for now.” But does this dodge by Kavanaugh give a foreboding glimpse into the future with respect to any case impacting abortion? Time will tell, but it’s hard to see this as anything other than a big miss by SCOTUS.
               A point of observation. Imagine the tone of the media coverage if the issue before the Court was half a billion in annual government funding of the National Rifle Association, an organization that, unlike Planned Parenthood, exists solely to defend an actual constitutional right.
               On a final note, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and the presidency for the past two years and could have tackled this issue by passing legislation to prevent government funding of Planned Parenthood. They failed to do so.  ~The Patriot Post  

             The national organizations for Kappa Alpha Theta, Kappa Kappa Gamma, Sigma Chi and Sigma Alpha Epsilon, along with Harvard’s chapter of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, filed the federal lawsuit. They were joined by three unnamed Harvard students who are members of all-male social clubs — students who asked the U.S. District Court in Boston to let them proceed under pseudonyms so they could avoid “harassment and threats” from the public and “retribution” from the college.
               The federal suit alleges that barring members of single-gender final clubs (secretiveall-male groups), sororities, and fraternities from holding leadership positions in recognized student organizations, becoming varsity team captains, or receiving the college’s endorsement for prestigious fellowships, violates Title IX’s ban on sex-based discrimination and the United States Constitution.
               The sanctions were aimed primarily at those final clubs, accused by Harvard in a 2016 report of having “deeply misogynistic attitudes.” Yet as the suit ironically notes, “Harvard succeeded, perversely, in eliminating nearly every women’s social organization previously available to female students at Harvard.”
               The state lawsuit was filed by Delta Gamma’s national organization, Alpha Phi’s International Fraternity, and its Harvard chapter. It also addresses that allegation, noting the sanctions have essentially privileged men. Their organizations “remain open” because they are better equipped to resist the mandate, the suit explains. By contrast, members of women’s organizations “now have limited access” to the same experiences.
               That suit also challenges Harvard’s virtually certain assertion that a private college can do whatever it wants. “Harvard has a special role within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Founded by the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1636, Harvard has its rights and status enshrined in chapter 5 of the Massachusetts Constitution,” the suit states. “However, by its recent actions, Harvard has breached the very Constitution under which it purports to operate.”
               In addition to an injunction imposed against the sanctions going forward, the state lawsuit seeks financial compensation to offset the costs the sanctions imposed on the affected organizations.
               “Harvard has really shown a disregard for the rights of its students to associate with people they want to associate with,” stated attorney David A. Russcol. “What they do off campus shouldn’t be any of Harvard’s business. It’s disappointing that the plaintiffs have had to take this action.”
               The sanctions were initially rolled out in May 2016, and Dean Rakesh Khurana revealed the mindset behind them in an interview. “At Harvard, we have a very specific mission of educating citizens and citizen leaders for our diverse and interconnected society,” he declared. “We do not believe that it is effective to basically institutionalize segregation.”
               Unless it’s political segregation. A survey of more than 1,000 members of Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences revealed that more than 83% of those faculty members self-identified as very liberal or liberal, compared to just 1.6% who identified as conservative or very conservative.
               The right of association, protected by both the First and Fourteenth Amendments, has long been upheld by the courts, beginning as a response to lawsuits filed in the 1950s and 1960s against states attempting to curb the political activities of the NAACP. It would be certainly useful to know if, hypothetically speaking, Khurana believes those sanctions should be imposed on members of a black student association if it refused to open its ranks to members of a white supremacist group.
               For the sake of diversity and interconnectedness.  Regardless, like all social justice warriors, Khurana apparently believes the ends justify the means. According to the Boston Globe, he held a May 2015 meeting supposedly called to “ensure the groups were aware of the latest school policies on alcohol and sexual assault,” the paper reported. Instead, Khurana waved a sheet of paper in the air he claimed contained accounts of sexual assault. “Khurana said that the papers in his hand were very embarrassing to the clubs and that he could not guarantee that they would not be leaked,” the federal lawsuit states. “But, Khurana said, if some clubs became co-ed — systematically and soon — that would help the situation. It was an unmistakable threat.”
               It was an effective one, and no one bore the brunt of that effectiveness more than Harvard’s women’s associations. In 2014, there were nine sororities and all-female final clubs on campus. Now only one still exists, according to the lawsuits.
               Khurana’s efforts to impose the sanctions were driven by a complaint received by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights regarding how Harvard handled allegations of sexual harassment and assault. Thus in 2014, Harvard President Drew Faust ordered the creation of a task force composed of students, faculty, and administrators to address the issue.
               Caitlin Flanagan wrote a lengthy Atlantic Magazine piece in March 2014 revealing that “the contemporary fraternity world is beset by a series of deep problems, which its leadership is scrambling to address, often with mixed results.” Nonetheless, in another article published a month later, she insisted the report produced by the task force “burns with moral indignation that its evidence does not warrant.”
               Flanagan finds the assertion made by 47% of female senior club participants, who reported having nonconsensual sexual contact during their years in college, especially dubious. Those encounters, she explains, “could have happened at the hands of a nonmember, in a location unrelated to a final club and before the victim even participated in a club event. In fact, the club whose event she attended could have been an all-women’s final club. It would be almost impossible to concoct a more meaningless statistic.”
               Not quite. The bogus statistic that either one-in-four, or one-in-five women have been raped or targeted for attempted rape, first asserted in a 1987 Ms. Magazine article, goes to the top of the list.
               Columnist Heather Mac Donald put that stat in  perspective in 2014, noting it was 400 times higher than Detroit’s 2012 combined rate for murder, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault. Nonetheless, she wrote, “female applicants are beating down the doors of selective colleges in record numbers.”
               How bogus are Harvard’s sanctions? “A Harvard undergraduate could join the American Nazi party, or could create an off-campus undergraduate chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, without running afoul of the sanctions policy, or any other Harvard student-conduct policy,” the federal suit asserts.
               The real agenda? Harvard wants the power to determine which aspects of freedom of association are “more equal” than others. That the same school eagerly embraced the “minority” bona fides of a certain Harvard professor claiming to be 1/64th to 1/1024th Native American, and claimed that different SAT score standards for prospective students based on factors such as race and sex isn’t discriminatory?
               Is there an off-campus organization for arrogant hypocrites associated with the most overrated college on the planet?  

~The Patriot Post  

Big Personnel Changes Afoot in the White House

by Nate Jackson

dirty cop-Mueller, scumbag-Comey,

and the  scumbag/liar-Clinton Foundation

by Political Editors

             The following statistics are relayed by Investor’s Business Daily based on information from a Center for Immigration Studies census analysis:
               The report found … that 45% of households headed by a noncitizen reported using food programs in 2014. That’s the latest year for which such census data are available. That compares with 21% for U.S. citizens. Half of noncitizen households reported using Medicaid, compared with 23% for citizens. The CIS analysis also found that 31% of noncitizen households got cash benefits, when you include the Earned Income Tax Credit. That compares with 10% for citizen-headed households. Overall, 63% of noncitizen-headed households got some form of welfare benefit in 2014, compared with 35% for citizens.
               Furthermore: Noncitizens are also far more likely to be uninsured than either native-born Americans or naturalized citizens. Census data show that in 2017 the uninsured rate among noncitizens was a whopping 24%. That compares with 7.5% for native-born and 8.9% for naturalized citizens. Looked at another way, of the 28.5 million uninsured in 2017, almost 6 million were noncitizens. In other words, while noncitizens comprise only 7% of the U.S. population, they account for 20% of the uninsured.
               The uninsured rate may seem irrelevant until you consider the implications. Emergency rooms are legally mandated to treat patients. In such circumstances, a person’s financial situation and/or citizenship status are considered immaterial. Therefore, “Hospitals pass the costs of unpaid ER bills on to everyone else,” says Investor’s. “Apparently, nobody has tried to calculate just how much noncitizens cost the health care system. But the costs aren’t negligible.”
               In a related matter, $5 billion was allocated in 2017 by the Health Resources and Services Administration for 1,400 medical centers that assist susceptible residents. Residency status doesn’t apply at these centers either. As Investor’s concludes, “The U.S. is a wealthy and generous nation. Even so, there’s an important question that needs an answer. Is it fair for hardworking Americans to pay billions of dollars in benefits to those who aren’t U.S. citizens, or worse, are here illegally?”
               The costs alone are a good enough reason to avoid the fainting couch if, as reported, illegals are indeed scrubbing federal aid in response to Trump’s illegal-immigration crackdown.  ~The Patriot Post  

             Of course, merely voting Republican won’t suddenly turn black neighborhoods around. These communities are plagued by factors too complex and deep-rooted for any politician to solve overnight. After all, many of the problems were caused by decades of Democrat leadership and the paralysis caused be ever-increasing government dependency.
               The cycle is self-sustaining. But don’t dare discuss the culture. When liberal law professors Amy Wax of the University of Pennsylvania and Larry Alexander of the University of San Diego wrote an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer lamenting the rejection of concepts such as two-parent homes and obedience to the law, they were denounced as white supremacists for suggesting that black Americans embrace a social and cultural structure created by whites.
               One of the primary consequences of the social breakdown in the black community, or any community for that matter, is violence. A young black man growing up without the influence of good parents, without a basic education, and without an opportunity for viable employment is likelier to turn to crime and drugs — and likelier to help perpetuate the awful cycle of black-on-black violence.
               In a UPI story entitled, “Study: Black males twice as likely to die, mainly from gun violence,” the news agency focuses on a report from the Centers for Disease Control. “Gun violence-related deaths were the biggest firearm-related reason for declining life expectancy for black males, with 16 out of 100,000 deaths attributed to it,” UPI says. “Black males face a total life expectancy loss of 4.14 years for any type of firearm-related death, according to the data. Life expectancy for black males begins to pick up again after age 20.”
               That framing is far too passive, as if guns are targeting black men. But despite race-hustlers like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Marc Lamont Hill blaming racism for the plight of black communities, the facts show that young black men have little to fear … except from other young black men. In 2016, the FBI reported that 90% of murdered blacks were killed by other blacks.
               Bindu Kalesan, a clinical epidemiologist at Boston University, believes we need more social programs to combat violence in inner cities.
               Really? As recently as 2014, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that we’ve already spent more than $22 trillion to fight poverty since the implementation of President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs. That is, according to The Heritage Foundation, “three times the cost of all military wars in U.S. history since the American Revolution.”
               Kalesan adds, “Victims of gun violence are victims not criminals. So increasing policing alone may not be the answer. Building social capital, education, reducing housing instability, etc. may also be answers. As of now, the focus on ameliorating firearm violence has been solely rooted in policies.”
               Actually, black victims of other black victims — not “gun violence” — often are criminals. Violence among drug-dealing gang-bangers accounts for a lot of urban murders. And Kalesan isn’t going to see more capital, better education, improved housing, or any other positive change in Chicago, St. Louis, Detroit, or Baltimore as long as the same Democrat politicians support the same failed leftist policies.     
               Simply pouring more money into black communities isn’t the answer, and neither is gun control. Prof. Jeremy Levitt  writes in the Orlando Sentinel, “Further restrictions on black ownership of guns and racial conflict in the late 19th and early 20th centuries set the stage for the massacre and destruction of entire black communities.” That’s right — gun control started out as a racist proposition, and now Democrats are using violence among blacks to justify more gun control.
               It’s no wonder that gun ownership among black Americans is rising, with the National African American Gun Association boasting more than 20,000 members. They, too, realize that self defense is an essential right.
               The cycle of violence within these same communities will most certainly continue until black civic leaders reject the worn and tired approaches of the Democrat Party. Unfortunately, what took decades to create is going to take decades to fix.
               Real solutions are on the table, including a president whose leadership has already resulted in greater economic opportunities for blacks. But until black Americans themselves realize that Democrats are using them as political pawns, their communities will, sadly, continue to suffer.  ~The Patriot Post  

             On Friday, a spokesman for the Trump Organization refuted the story, stating, “We have tens of thousands of employees across our properties and have very strict hiring practices. If any employee submitted false documentation in an attempt to circumvent the law, they will be terminated immediately.”
               Clearly, the Times is attempting to paint Trump as a massive hypocrite for allegedly employing illegals when one of his biggest policy agendas is stemming the tide of illegal immigration. Questions regarding the extent of his actual knowledge of the immigration status of thousands of workers employed by his business empire are sure to be brought up, but this affords an opportunity to explore an important point regarding the responsibility of the government versus employers.
               Whose job is it to deal with illegal immigration? Answer: the federal government. The Washington Times reports that “just five of the 565 companies in President Trump’s business empire are signed up to use E-Verify” before questionably asserting it’s “the government’s best tool to weed illegal immigrants out of the workforce.” E-Verify may be the most useful tool for U.S. businesses to check on the immigration status of prospective employees — and we’d be glad if more used it — but the government’s best tool for weeding illegal aliens out of the workforce is deportation. Keeping illegal aliens out of the country is not the job of American businesses.
               Blame for illegal aliens living and working in the country should not be leveled primarily at businesses but at politicians, particularly Democrats, who have long impeded the ability of U.S. border officials to more effectively do their jobs.
               This week provides yet another example, as for the second time Trump offered a deal to Democrats on legal status for “Dreamers” in exchange for funding the border wall, only to once again be rejected by Rep. Nancy Pulosi (D-CA) and Sen. Chuck scumbag/clown-Schumer (D-NY).
               Democrats and their Leftmedia cohorts don’t want to stop illegal border crossings, so why complain about American businesses employing illegal aliens? Where is the complaining from Democrats and the Left over the massive burden illegal immigration foists onto America’s welfare programs? It’s absent because Democrats believe illegals should be entitled to benefits and then vote for their benefactors. Trump may operate his business on the existing playing field, but he’s advocating and implementing policies that will correct some wrongs.  

~The Patriot Post  

             According to Reuters, “The tax credits are capped by Congress at 200,000 vehicles per manufacturer, after which the subsidy phases out. … Experts say the White House cannot change the cap unilaterally.” In other words, subsidy repeal should have been addressed long before Republicans lose their majority in the House next month. Nevertheless, the Trump administration’s position is salient.
               Investor’s Business Daily opines that the eradication of subsidies “would be a major victory on the road to energy freedom.” The editors add, “No doubt there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth within the Green Movement. How will electric cars survive without government’s guiding hand? The answer is, most won’t. Otherwise, the federal government wouldn’t need to subsidize them.”
               At its core the government is aggrandizing certain products above others, which is antithetical to and a mockery of free enterprise. “Moreover,” Investor’s notes, “the dirty little secret of the electric-car industry is that electric cars are dirty, too, and not necessarily cleaner than regular cars. … A big reason for this is the electric cars’ batteries, the heart of the industry. Many of the batteries are built in high-pollution countries like China, Thailand, Germany and Poland, all of which depend heavily on coal for their energy. So the CO2 produced just in making the electric cars is far greater than for a regular, gasoline-powered car.”
               Consider also the primary source from which these batteries are charged — fossil fuels. Or as Investor’s put it, “It’s like someone dumping their garbage on the lawn of a neighbor down the street, while defending their own yard as pristine.” And as far as slashing emissions? Economist Jonathan Lesser says, “The net reduction in carbon dioxide emissions between 2018 and 2050 would be only about one-half of 1 percent of total forecast U.S. energy-related carbon emissions.”
               Finally, just like with state and local tax deductions, electric vehicle subsidies principally assist more wealthy individuals due to the bloated costs of EVs that make them unaffordable to most of the middle class. “Wind, solar and other ‘alternative’ energies are near-perfect examples of political cronyism at its worst,” Investor’s concludes. “They produce electricity at outrageously high cost. They aren’t necessarily cleaner or better for the environment than fossil fuels. And they require subsidies to privileged, politically connected groups to exist.”
               For these reasons, Trump should pursue subsidy repeal, even if that means waiting until the next election. Now if only we could get him to see the similarities with King Corn…  ~The Patriot Post  

             The report, produced by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, notes that since 2007 the USPS has lost a net $69 billion, and if changes are not made to the current model, it’s expected to lose tens of billions more in the coming decade. The report asserts that the USPS is on an unsustainable financial path: “[Its] business model — including its governance, product pricing, cost allocation, and labor practices — was sustainable in an era where mail revenues and volumes grew alongside population and economic growth. However, as the USPS’s financial conduction continues to deteriorate, standalone proposals, such as forgiving the prefunding of post-employment benefits or renegotiating labor contracts, will be insufficient.”
               In other words, the USPS is essentially operating as if it were still in the pre-Internet days, and, as a result, it has become financially unsustainable. The largest source of revenue for the USPS is the delivery of First-Class mail, which has declined in volume by 42% since 2007. That decline is, of course, due to a major communications shift to online technology. Meanwhile, even though the USPS’s package volume has increased to 40% of the overall market, that hasn’t been enough to make up the lost revenue from the steadily shrinking mail volume.
               Prices need to rise to meet services rendered, the report asserts: “Although the USPS does have pricing flexibility within its package delivery segment, packages have not been priced with profitability in mind. The USPS should have the authority to charge market-based prices for both mail and package items that are not deemed ‘essential services.’” This is where Trump’s accusations against Amazon not paying fair market value to the USPS for its shipping services comes into play.
               The Package Coalition — a group of online retailers of which Amazon is the largest member — responded to the report with concern that “by raising prices and depriving Americans of affordable delivery services, the Postal Task Force’s package delivery recommendations would harm consumers, large and small businesses, and especially rural communities.”
               Finally, one of the task force’s recommendations that has already raised the most vehement opposition is the call to essentially gut the USPS’s labor union. The report notes that the “USPS’ dual-labor model — combining private sector collective bargaining law with government employee compensation law — creates unsustainable labor costs. USPS employee rights should be more closely aligned with other federal employee rights by eliminating collective bargaining over compensation.” The report adds, “USPS employees should not be afforded protections and rights not enjoyed by other federal employees.”
               One thing is clear, Americans will end up paying more for mail service either with higher mailing and shipping costs or through a government bailout paid by taxpayers.  ~The Patriot Post  

             It is exactly this type of hyperbolic pontificating — which relies on dubious computer-simulated climate models that have never accurately predicted the future global climate — that causes so many logically minded individuals to simply roll their eyes at the absurdity. We have less than 10 years left to prevent catastrophe, the climate alarmists declare. Wait, wasn’t New York City supposed to be underwater due to completely melted polar ice caps by now? What are alarmists going to be telling us 10 years from now?
               Of course, global warming is all the fault of mankind  people, because of human activity leading to increased levels of carbon dioxide. Never mind the fact that carbon dioxide only accounts for 0.04% of earth’s atmospheric gasses and that water vapor is a bigger contributor to the planet’s climate. And don’t focus on the primary source of earth’s temperatures, the sun, because, well, human activity can’t be blamed for what’s happening on the surface of the sun. No, we’re supposed to ignore all these greater, vastly more significant factors that most directly contribute to global temperatures and instead blame human industry, made that much more efficient by capitalism. Destroying free-market capitalism is the real agenda.
               Indeed, limiting human industrial freedom that capitalism unlocks is exactly what the Paris climate agreement aimed to accomplish. It’s a wealth-redistribution scheme covered in the veneer of “science” and concern for preventing “catastrophic climate change,” as if limiting capitalistic enterprise and promoting the politics of globalist socialism is the only solution to a “problem” that alarmists continue to get wrong.
               Meanwhile, President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency plans to roll back Barack scumbag/liar-nObama’s coal-killing environmental regulations. The EPA’s new proposed coal-plant-emissions standard would allow up to 1,900 pounds of carbon dioxide per megawatt-hour, which is up from  scumbag/liar-nObama’s 1,400 limit. As Reuters notes, “That  scumbag/liar-nObama rule would have forced new plants to install carbon capture equipment that is not yet commercially available.” Which is why scumbag/liar-nObama’s rule effectively killed coal-powered plants.
               Despite all this fearmongering, it is the U.S. — not a signatory to the Paris agreement the rest of the world’s emitters — that is leading the world in reducing emissions. Keep that in mind the next time we’re told we’re not doing enough.  ~The Patriot Post