Those of you who have read one of my earliest stories know how close I came to an abortion when I was pregnant with my fourth child. I considered it as a single 40-year-old mom of three. Now having just passed my son’s third birthday, I reflect on what could have been had I chosen death instead of life. Here’s what I would have missed.

I would have missed my baby calling me “Mama” for the first time. More than that, I would’ve missed hearing him sleepily say “Mama, I want you,” first thing in the morning as he’s waking in his crib.

I would’ve missed his cuddling and the kisses where we play who-can-smack-louder and say “MUA!”

I would’ve missed his first dance as I played TobyMac’s Feel It. (Incidentally, the chorus says, “You take our brokenness and make us beautiful.”)

I would have missed that precious day when a little voice in the back seat of the car said, “Mommy, you’re my best friend.” I almost cried.

I would have missed him saying “No, I want Daddy to change my poopy diaper,” because only Daddy knows how. (That is just fine with me).

I would’ve missed the dumbfounded look on his face when he was watching Johnny Depp play Willy Wonka and hearing him say, “Something on the T.V.’s strange.”

I would’ve missed hearing him say, “Mommy, I want to sleep in your big girl bed.” (Um, no.)

I would’ve missed hearing him talk about a bad day at daycare and concluding the story with “Every single one of those kids get on my last nerve!” (I laughed hysterically.)

I would’ve missed hearing him quote one of my favorite Madea movies, hollering at me: “Do you understand the words that are coming out of my mouth??!”

I would’ve missed all of the firsts. First kiss, first hug, first steps, first words, first tooth, first real meal.

I wouldn’t have known that he loved green beans. Or boudain (gross). Or hot salsa from Mexican restaurants. Or black olives that he puts on his fingers before popping them in his mouth.

I wouldn’t have known he was so independent. That his mantra would be, “I want to do it all by myself!” while brushing his teeth, or crawling into his car seat, or sitting on the big boy potty.

I wouldn’t have known his awesome personality. I wouldn’t have known him.

Yes, I would’ve missed all of the temper fits, the corner time, the spitting, the screaming, the poopy diapers. But I would’ve missed the greatest blessing in my life, too. I would’ve missed an unconditional love that is almost unequaled. Only Jesus did that better.

If I chose death over life, I would’ve still been trying to convince myself that it was only tissue. That I wasn’t ready. That I didn’t make a mistake. That a baby would’ve complicated things. And they do. But in the best way possible.

(For more from the author of “My Near-Abortion Experience: What I Would Have Missed” please click HERE) http://joemiller.us/2017/04/near-abortion-experience-missed/

In six months, the Trump administration plans to produce a plan to shrink the size of government, eliminate programs, and reduce the federal workforce—and is seeking public input on how to proceed.

The memo from Office of Management and Budget Director Mick Mulvaney directs federal agencies:

As part of their planning efforts, agencies should focus on fundamental scoping questions (i.e. analyzing whether activities should or should not be performed by the agency), and on improvements to existing business processes.

Requiring agencies to justify their functions is long overdue, said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute. He said the “scoping” should include determining if activities are “nonessential, whether they violate federalism, and whether they would flunk a cost-benefit test.”

Still, he said the success of the plan could depend on the will of both Congress and political appointees implementing the reforms.

“This could be the best shot we have of eliminating agencies,” Edwards told The Daily Signal. “A lot will depend on the quality of political appointees, and are they committed to smaller government. During the [George W.] Bush administration, a lot of the political appointees were just corporate climbers.”

“Also, will members of Congress be supportive? After [President Donald] Trump’s skinny budget, we saw a lot of Republicans in Congress, unfortunately, defend programs in their region,” Edwards added.

Trump has moved at a very deliberative pace in filling political positions thus far, noted Robert Rector, a senior research fellow with The Heritage Foundation, who is skeptical of the plan.

“Policy changes can’t come from the bureaucracies themselves,” Rector told The Daily Signal. “Policy change needs to come through Congress and comes when you bring outsiders in to impose reforms.”

Rector said neither the Department of Health and Human Services nor the Department of Housing and Urban Development were likely to come back with viable plans for change.

“If they did, it’s the exact opposite of what reform you would want,” he said.

In a White House video, Mulvaney said, “President Trump calls it draining the swamp. What it really means is making government more accountable to you, more effective and more efficient.”

The Mulvaney memo doesn’t outline cuts, but with the requirements, the video says, “Mulvaney is building a case to cut government a year from now.”

Mulvaney released the 14-page memo Wednesday, titled “Comprehensive Plan for Reforming the Federal Government and Reducing the Federal Civilian Workforce,” that aims to save tax dollars and require each government agency to submit a proposal to modernize and streamline operations in 180 days. The OMB is seeking input from the public, and will incorporate the final plans into the fiscal year 2019 budget proposal issues next March. President Donald Trump’s signed an executive order on March 13 directing the OMB to submit a comprehensive plan to reorganize the federal government.

The Mulvaney memo proposes “crosscutting reforms” to streamline all programs over the next four years, including reducing the number of federal employees.

But the plan will have opponents. The leader of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union representing federal workers, said, “There are some good ideas and some very dangerous ideas” in the memo.

One he didn’t like stresses more outsourcing, when the government already spends twice as much on contractors as employees, according to the union.

“Nobody knows precisely what these contractors do, how well they do it, who they’re hiring, or where they’re working,” American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox said in a statement. “In contrast, the data on federal employees’ jobs, pay, productivity, demographics, and location are completely transparent and widely scrutinized, as is appropriate.”

Cox also defended funding for the Environmental Protection Agency workforce. But the union president did find some common cause with the Trump administration’s report.

He said that it would be useful to evaluate layers of management—or the problem of having too many supervisors per worker.

“As representatives of front-line employees, AFGE members can tell you that excessive ratios of managers to workers on the front lines creates operational inefficiency and takes resources away from the direct provision of services to taxpayers,” Cox said in the statement. “The government does have too many managers and some of those positions should be converted to jobs that serve the American people.”

Reducing the workforce is important, but eliminating whole government programs is where the money is, Edwards said. The report requires agencies to justify why government should be involved in a specific function.

“There is no doubt the left has built a fortress to defend programs,” Edwards said. “Federal money goes to the states and then to city and local governments and every level will defend that money. So will government employees, contractors, and interest groups. It’s a fortress, but it’s not insurmountable. When Republicans are able to cut spending, it doesn’t hurt them politically. It usually helps them.” (For more from the author of “Trump White House Moves Forward with Plan Government Employee Union Dubs ‘Dangerous'” please click HERE) http://joemiller.us/2017/04/trump-white-house-moves-forward-plan-government-employee-union

Once again, academia proves itself to be a hotbed of delusional communists, who seek to warp the minds of the young with propaganda.

MIT Press, a publisher affiliated with the world renown Massachusetts Institute of Technology, recently published a children’s book titled Communism for Kids. Its content is every bit as asinine as the title suggests. According to the book’s description:

…This little book proposes a different kind of communism, one that is true to its ideals and free from authoritarianism. Offering relief for many who have been numbed by Marxist exegesis and given headaches by the earnest pompousness of socialist politics, it presents political theory in the simple terms of a children’s story, accompanied by illustrations of lovable little revolutionaries experiencing their political awakening.

Considering that the far-left consists of a bunch of unimaginative joykills, it’s not surprising that the book isn’t very good, as the many one star reviews on Amazon can attest. One reviewer stated, “Essentially the book is summarized thusly: The world is terrible because a bunch of entrepreneurs invented things like television, cars and nice homes. Because of scarcity, not everyone can have those things. Therefore, those things are evil and pursuing them is capitalist brainwashing.“ Another reviewer wrote “Will sell like hotcakes in Venezuela. They need toilet paper.”

Though the description claims that this book is “perfect for all ages,” it’s not even a very good children’s book. It’s apparently riddled with with academic jargon and references to political movements that no child would understand.

What’s most surprising, is not that a book with this subject matter would be published, but that it was published by MIT press. MIT produces some of the most brilliant graduates in the world, who go on to make countless contributions to the global marketplace through inventions, research, and startups. It’s an engine of entrepreneurship. It’s estimated that if all the companies that were started by MIT graduates were one country, it would be the 17th largest economy in the world. I guess no school is safe from the blathering madness of leftist academics. (For more from the author of “MIT Press Publishes Children’s Book Titled “Communism for Kids”” please click HERE) http://joemiller.us/2017/04/mit-press-publishes-childrens-book-titled-communism-kids/

It has become quite clear that Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin has come to deeply regret throwing the weight of his security state behind now-President Donald Trump’s election campaign. Unlike the administration preceding him, Trump has acted decisively to combat Russia’s worldwide influence. From the American missile strikes against the Assad regime in Syria to the inclusion of Montenegro to NATO, Putin massively miscalculated in his strategy to use his state-media and other influence and intelligence operations to support President Trump’s bid for the presidency.

Moscow is infuriated that Trump officials have charged Russia with being intimately involved in Bashar al-Assad’s chemical weapons attack on innocents in Syria last week. According to top U.S. officials, a Russian-made fighter jet bombed a hospital to cover up for the Assad regime’s use of the Sarin nerve agent (which is classified as a weapon of mass destruction) against Syrian men, women, and children. A senior National Security Council official told reporters Tuesday that the U.S. was able to confirm the aforementioned events thanks to a combination of open source intelligence, signals intelligence, and evidence samples.

In another move that angered Moscow this week, Trump approved the addition of Montenegro to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which was originally conceived — and remains partially purposed — to stop Russian intrusion into northern and eastern Europe. Russia fiercely opposes the expansion of NATO, which the Kremlin sees as an adversarial military entity.

Russian strongman Putin has basically admitted the honeymoon period between he and Trump is over, telling state-media on Wednesday: “One could say that the level of trust on a working level [with the United States government], especially on the military level, has not improved but has rather deteriorated.”

His remarks come as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian officials. Tillerson was initially set to converse with the Russian president, then Putin cancelled their meeting. Now it appears that they will indeed meet Wednesday.

Tillerson’s counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, has added himself to the long list of Moscow officials who have become upset with Trump’s policies.

“I won’t hide the fact that we have a lot of questions, taking into account the extremely ambiguous and sometimes contradictory ideas which have been expressed in Washington across the whole spectrum of bilateral and multilateral affairs,” Lavrov pouted during his meeting with Tillerson. “And of course, that’s not to mention that apart from the statements, we observed very recently the extremely worrying actions, when an illegal attack against Syria was undertaken.”

Doubling down on his anti-Putin stance, President Trump has personally added weight to critiques against the Russian leader. Discussing the Syrian strikes on Fox Business Wednesday, Trump said Putin “is backing a person that’s truly an evil person.”

Trump has also ramped up pressure on Russian allies in Iran and China. White House officials continue to refer to Moscow as being on a diplomatic “island,” utilizing the metaphor to showcase Putin’s waning influence over global affairs.

Additionally, both U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and Secretary Tillerson have called out Russia for its moral depravity in a way rarely seen in overt channels.

Last week, both Haley and Tillerson unleashed intense critiques against Russian involvement in Syria. Russia has “no interest in peace” in Syria, Ambassador Haley opined. Secretary Tillerson added that Russia and Iran “bear moral responsibility” for Assad’s slaughter.

During the American presidential campaign, Russia acted decisively in selling out in Trump’s favor. To be clear, no firm evidence has ever been presented to indicate that the Russians swung the election in Trump’s favor or even successfully influenced a single voter. Still, from the time in which he was the GOP frontrunner up to Election Day, Russian state television had nothing but good things to say about candidate Trump.

President Trump held his cards close, while his opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was much more up front in criticizing the Russian government.

All indications seemed to imply that Trump was the dream candidate for Moscow. He refused to criticize Putin for his country’s vast human rights abuses, seemed open to cooperating with Russia on a variety of issues, and was openly skeptical about NATO and the European Union.

In response, Moscow appeared to observe the rhetoric of Clinton and Trump as an indicator for future action. To the honest observer of Russian media, it became very clear who the Kremlin supported, given that the state controls the media agenda. The U.S. intelligence community concluded that Russia took their efforts a step further and attempted to influence the election in Trump’s favor by harming Secretary Clinton’s favorability. An intelligence community assessment stated that “Putin and the Russian government developed a clear preference” for Trump and attempted to “denigrate” and “harm” Clinton’s electability.

In their rage, leftist media outlets floated countless conspiracies involving Trump being allegedly controlled by Putin. In one such example, Clinton partisan and former CIA official Mike Morrell called Trump an “unwitting agent” of Russia. To this day, zero evidence has surfaced to confirm their wild allegations. The establishment media, like the Russians, appeared to misread Trump in a similar manner.

The Russians grossly miscalculated. It’s hard to imagine, just 82 days into a presidency, that Hillary Clinton would move so decisively against the Putin regime in the way that President Trump has. In less than ninety days, Trump has managed to infuriate Putin to the point where, in a sulking fit, he canceled a meeting with the U.S. secretary of state.

President Trump was never the “unwitting agent” of Russia the media made him out to be. In the end, Trump played the Russian government like a fiddle, leaving the Kremlin more vulnerable than ever. (For more from the author of “Putin and the MSM Just Learned a Painful Lesson … Trump Played Them Like a Fiddle” please click HERE) http://joemiller.us/2017/04/putin-msm-just-learned-painful-lesson-trump-played-like-fiddle/

In a recent letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, six U.S. Senators asked for an investigation into whether the United States Agency for International Development was promoting the Open Society Foundations’ left-wing policies abroad.

State Department career officials gave the senators the runaround, but if Tillerson does launch the probe, he need look no further than Colombia.

That South American country offers plenty of evidence that U.S. tax dollars are indeed being used to advance George Soros’ agenda—all under the banner of “peace.”

In November 2016, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos signed a “peace agreement” with the Marxist narco-terrorist group FARC. Though Colombians had earlier rejected the deal in a plebiscite, Santos and the Congress—which his party controls—found a loophole to ratify it, placing it above the Constitution.

The effect of this is that Santos now virtually rules by decree, answering only to an oversight commission—a junta comprised of three terrorists, three Santos cronies, and a few foreign observers.

The separation of powers has been abolished and a new peace tribunal, known as the Jurisdiccion Especial para la Paz has replaced the nation’s courts.

This act to circumvent Colombia’s Constitution was supported by many outside interests, including Scandinavian countries and the Nobel Committee, which awarded Santos the Peace Prize.

Also supportive was the Obama administration—partly through USAID—and Soros-backed nongovernmental organizations, which jointly helped launder the image, atrocities, and fortune of the world’s leading cocaine cartel.

I asked a USAID official last month whether USAID and the Open Society Foundations were coordinating in Colombia. He answered: “USAID is not funding any activities with Open Society in Colombia, directly or through any past or existing mechanism.”

But just scratching the surface of USAID activities tells a different story.

For example, Verdad Abierta, a web-based portal created by Teresa Ronderos, director of the Open Society Program on Independent Journalism, boasts on its website that it receives support from USAID.

Abierta has helped rewrite Colombia’s history, elevating terrorists to the same level as the legitimate police and military forces, and rebranding decades of massacres, kidnappings, child soldiering, and drug trafficking by a criminal syndicate as simply “50 years of armed conflict.”

Fundacion Ideas para la Paz, once led by peace negotiator Sergio Jaramillo, now a member of the oversight “junta,” is funded by the Open Society Foundations and has received more than $200,000 in U.S. tax dollars.

The left-wing news portal La Silla Vacia, another Open Society initiative, also boasts of being a USAID grantee. Its columnist, Rodrigo Uprimny, whose NGO DeJusticia also partners with USAID and Open Society, is considered one of the architects of the peace deal.

Former National Liberation Army terrorist Leon Valencia—Open Society collaborator and grantee—has received at least $1,000,000 in USAID funding through his NGOs Corporacion Nuevo Arco Iris and Paz y Reconciliacion, and left-wing news portal Las Dos Orillas, which he co-founded.

The list goes on. I’ve written in a separate piece about the long history of collaboration between Soros-funded NGOs and the U.S. State Department to undermine Colombia’s institutions, particularly through the work of Human Rights Watch.

While terrorists are rewarded with unelected seats in Congress and impunity, those who combated them will either confess to crimes they haven’t committed or go to jail.

This leads to Soros’ crowning achievement: Of the five commissioners chosen to select the judges for the new peace tribunal, three are key players in Soros’ network.

Diego Garcia-Sayan is chairman of Open Society’s Global Drug Policy Program, Juan E. Mendez is a 15-year veteran of Soros-funded Human Rights Watch, and Alvaro Gil-Robles collaborated with Open Society on the issue of Roma rights, eventually leading to the creation of the European Roma Institute—a joint initiative of the Open Society Foundations and the Council of Europe.

I recontacted USAID with follow-up questions regarding all the above. The press office declined to answer any of them, but a spokesperson did amend the original statement: “USAID is not funding any activities through Open Society in Colombia.”

Understanding the full scope of USAID and Open Society collaboration requires a government investigation. USAID‘s biggest contracts involve agreements with organizations that aren’t always transparent.

Take Chemonics. This USAID contractor received more than $20 million in 2015 alone. Some of that—USAID declined to say how much—went to formalizing relations between illegal miners in Segovia, Antioquia, and Gran Colombia Gold, the concession holder.

While the sustainability and benefits to the environment of the project are not clear (lawlessness in Segovia has intensified), certainly the company benefitted from a trained workforce not stealing its gold—albeit temporarily—courtesy of U.S. taxpayers.

One of the major shareholders of Gran Colombia Gold just happens to be Frank Giustra, a trustee of the Soros-funded International Crisis Group, along with Soros himself.

The six U.S. senators, then, are right to ask for a full accounting of USAID programs. Start with Colombia, where U.S. assistance should be for the purposes of maintaining and strengthening the gains from Plan Colombia. (For more from the author of “How Soros Used US Tax Dollars to Consolidate Power in Colombia” please click HERE) http://joemiller.us/2017/04/soros-used-us-tax-dollars-consolidate-power-colombia/