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Saturday, Lynn joined me at the commencement celebration of Lakeisha Ruth. "Keisha" is my favorite waitress at one of our clubs. and I told her if we returned from Raleigh in time we would be there to see her receive her diploma in Psychology from Saint Leo University.
Saint Leo is a Franciscan school. located in Tampa with branches in about 7 states. The ceremony was dignified, very well attended by a multitude of families. "Keisha" has two children, very devoted and a great mom from everything I can tell and wants to become a servant of the court as a Parole Officer.
On the side, she also wants to design shoes and she was wearing a pair of high heels studded with glistening silver stones. You could not miss her.
About 175 were graduating with masters, bachelor and associate degrees.
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Over the next few days Trump and N Korea's leader will be meeting face to face and discussing whether N Korea is willing to renounce their vaulted nuclear and missile programs in return for certain economic benefits as long as we are able to verify.
Trump is prepared to walk away if he gets the signal his opposite is not serious about meeting our pre-conditions.
Iran will be observing these talks and should they fail what additional, and supposedly crippling, sanctions Trump is prepared to place on this "Hermit Nation."
From everything I read and learn, Trump is not interested in bringing down Iran's government because there is too much instability in the Middle East but Netanyahu, according to various sources, is itching to attack Iran's nuclear facilities but was stopped by Obama on at least two occasions. Trump might be less inclined to prevent Bibi, in the event the N Korean negotiations do not go well.
Which ever way the N Korean meeting goes the mass media seem totally prepared to find nothing positive in them as they continue their personality based coverage and miss the larger picture.
Also, next week the report by the Justice Department's Inspector General is due to be released and from leaks it appears it will be scathing in its criticism of how Atty. Gen. Lynch of The Justice Department, The FBI and several of its senior members acted. The mass media also seems prepared to pick holes in this report as well should it be critical of Hillary and the way Comey concluded no jury would find her guilty even before his agents interviewed her and then not under oath.
The Inspector General, after releasing this report, will then delve more deeply into the entire Clinton episode according to leaks so the 2018 campaign will be set against continuing investigations on the part of Mueller and the Justice Department's investigation of itself.
While all of this is going on Democrats will continue to do whatever they can to slow walk any co-operation with Trump in the belief the less he accomplishes the better their election prospects. As for America, winning elections trumps any Democrat concern about the nation.
The geni is out of the bottle regarding Social Security and Medicare as to their eating into their respective "rainy day" reserves. Mounting deficits remain my greatest concern when it comes to our over spending and our electric grid remains my greatest technological concern when it comes to our nation's vulnerability. Until we address and resolve these potentially crippling issues, among others, I cannot ignore these ominous clouds and the fact that nothing is being done about them.
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What if we replaced elections with sortitions? Would this solve the issue of how people live together in harmony yet, in a democratic manner?
https://ted.com/talks/brett_
And:
(See 1 below.)
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When it comes to the matter of G7 leaders, most cow tow to demands of their constituents and therefore, they have to display they are tough, they will resist American demands and demonstrate that they reject appeals to even obviously unfair tariffs. Will their resistance resolve itself in some reasonable accommodation or will they dig their heels in and bring about trade wars which the mass media will quickly blame Trump because he opened this can of worms by disrupting trade? Certainly Democrats will seize any opportunity to blame him for trying to re-balance what have been policies that are patently unfavorable because they believe that makes for good politics. Time will tell. ( https://tiny.iavian.net/nbam)
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Soros attacks Trump and in doing so defines himself. (See
Billionaire and liberal donor George Soros blasts Trump's presidency. https://tiny.iavian.net/nbaa
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Parker on Krauthammer. (See 2 below.)
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Not all Democrats march in lockstep. (See 3 below.)
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IDF needs to get tougher regarding Hamas.
No matter what Israel does to defend itself the world community will never give them the time of day so they need to stop, at whatever human cost, Hamas. (See 4 below.)
Tunnel, which begins at a Hamas post 3 km from the border and ends 2-3 meters underwater, would've allowed Hamas's elite Nukhba naval commandos to make their way to Israel undetected.
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More evidence, Obama became the consummate liar when it came to Iran. (See 5 below.)
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Illinois isn't alone. (See 6 below.)
And:
Sander's Socialism (See 6a below.)
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In a previous memo I explained my distrust of progressive climate change pronouncements. More support as to why. (See 7 below.)
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Illinois isn't alone. (See 6 below.)
And:
Sander's Socialism (See 6a below.)
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In a previous memo I explained my distrust of progressive climate change pronouncements. More support as to why. (See 7 below.)
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1) Millennials Are Shifting Right. It Shouldn’t Surprise You.
It’s fun to pick on millennials. After all, they’ve made a public showing of stuffing their feet in their mouths for the better part of a decade. All joking aside, they are as dynamic and interesting a generation as those who came before, and right now, they’re at a crossroads that is truly fascinating.
It seems like millennials are starting to shift right. So, we’ll delve into the topic with some scrutiny. We’ll see if the shift is really happening, and if it is, why.
It was a survey by Reuters that jump started the conversation. While they aren’t the most unbiased source, the numbers reported caught the attention of everyone on both sides of the political spectrum. What they found is that from 2016 to 2018, millennial support for Democrats plummeted from 55 percent to 46 percent.
For those keeping score, that’s a nine-point decline in two years. It’s beyond massive. In addition to those numbers, the poll found that only 39 percent of white millennials now openly support Democrats. That’s looking like GOP numbers at their worst.
Of course, it’s important to note a few things. First, this is only one study. If the modern climate can teach you anything, it’s that you kind find at least one study to support any claim. But, because this comes from a left-leaning source, it’s more likely to be at least moderately accurate for this topic.
Secondly, the migration away from Democrats does not inherently mean millennials are flocking to the GOP. While Democratic support dropped by nine points, GOP support only grew by six points during the same period. Still, the trend is clear: millennials are shifting right. Now, we get to the ever important question. Why?
Economics
Sure, we could talk about how people tend to shift right on economic policy as they age. Later, we’ll even discuss how Trump has won over a lot of these millennials through economic reform. But first, we need to cover something more specific. In short, liberals don’t like to pay their interns. That might seem simplistic, but it’s an important point.
In Washington, for instance, Republican Senators and Representatives are twice as likely to pay their interns. Democrats still believe in “experience and changing the world” as sufficient compensation. A lot of millennials worked these internships in a down economy. Now, they can see the long-term differences in working for the opposing groups.
This difference becomes more extreme when you look at career fields in general. Engineering and other STEM internships pay way better than their liberal arts counterparts. Aside from the anomalous situation in San Francisco, STEM fields tend to lean heavily towards the right. This is especially true in engineering, which is the field where unpaid internships are rare and paid internships are highly competitive in compensation. Over time, the millennial generation has noticed that right-leaning employers walk the walk that Democrats can only talk.
Internships aren’t the only way conservatives are winning the hearts of this generation through economics. The youngest millennials are still in college and new to the workforce, and as such, they are impressionable.
In the last few years, Republicans have devoted extraordinary effort to taking back colleges and young minds. They have a long way to go, but they are currently outspending Democrats on youth outreach by a factor of three to one. It’s not enough to single-handedly win the war, but it has put a dent in the Democratic monopoly on youth. And, it hasn’t just worked on millennials. So far, Generation Z is polling much more conservative than those who preceded them.
Meritocracy
Now, we’ll get more into general economics. As you already know, one of the fundamental philosophical differences between the right and left is their view of meritocracy. To put it bluntly, millennials are growing up. They have reached a point where they have started to develop their professional skill sets, and in many cases, they aren’t on the bottom rung of the workforce anymore.
All of a sudden, working in a meritocracy is to their advantage. The progressive vitriol that meritocracy is evil no longer resonates. Even worse for the left, millennials are starting to learn first hand that their parents and grandparents were right about this the whole time.
Starting Families
This is obvious to anyone with a brain, but it comes as a complete shock to the far left. A lot more millennials are starting families. Many of them, being more educated than previous generations, chose to delay having kids for economic reasons. Those reasons are disappearing, and babies are popping out all over.
What does this have to do with politics? Well, it turns out that nothing catalyzes a person’s shift to being pro-life quite like having children. Obviously, this won’t convert everyone, but millions of millennials are turning away from abortion politics, fully charmed by the love they have for their children.
The Recession
In the end, the Great Recession will remain the defining issue in millennials’ young lives. The oldest of the generation were just entering the workforce when the recession hit. They suddenly faced the worst hiring conditions in 50 years.
That, combined with the impressionable nature of young minds made them susceptible to the propaganda of the left. They believed that the recession was Bush’s fault (when really it was Clinton’s), and they were wooed by the promises of Obama and genuinely believed in him.
When he couldn’t make things better, they just assumed that a down economy was the new normal. The rapid success of Trump’s economy took them completely by surprise, and they’re slowly learning that they believed in lies this whole time.
It’s difficult to concisely describe this monumental impact, but basically, Trump has shattered their world views by overtly defying the left and succeeding at the same time. Of course it’s pushing them to the right!
As you can see, there are a lot of reasons why millennials are shifting right, but it’s far from being a closed book. Half of the generation is still woefully young and susceptible to leftist propaganda. Also, it takes time for people to change their minds.
While anyone with any real-world experience would have expected this shift all along, the mechanics of it suggest that it might just barely be in time for the impending midterms, and they are going to prove to be one of the most important midterm elections in modern history. We’ll see how it plays, but one thing is certain: the left can no longer assume they have the millennial vote.
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2) A few words on Charles Krauthammer
Charles Krauthammer, a man who has beaten unbelievable odds and overcome obstacles that would defeat most mortals, has finally encountered one foe over which he says he can’t claim victory.
In a note to readers on Friday, he announced that he has only a few weeks to live following a battle with cancer.
The nobility with which Charles has conducted his life was, as ever, apparent in his brief note. With his customary writer’s concision and his physician’s precision, he explained his circumstances without sentimentality. A tumor had been removed from his abdomen early on, he reported, and though his prospects for recovery had seemed good for a while, the cancer returned and is moving rapidly.
Most people don’t get to say goodbye, and almost none as eloquently. He thanked all who have helped him along the way, including colleagues, as well as his readers and television viewers, “who have made my career possible and given consequence to my life’s work.”
In the final two paragraphs, Charles summed up his life and principles: “I believe that the pursuit of truth and right ideas through honest debate and rigorous argument is a noble undertaking. I am grateful to have played a small role in the conversations that have helped guide this extraordinary nation’s destiny.
“I leave this life with no regrets. It was a wonderful life — full and complete with the great loves and great endeavors that make it worth living. I am sad to leave, but I leave with the knowledge that I lived the life that I intended.”
Anyone reading those words must be thinking the same: I hope I can say that someday. Of course, someday is any day, as Charles learned at age 22 when a diving accident left him paralyzed from the neck down.
Undeterred, he completed medical school and became a psychiatrist. Charles later recounted that professors came to his room and projected his lessons on the ceiling over the bed where he lay.
He went to work in government and then political commentary, casting a dispassionate eye on the world around us. Whether in writing or on TV, it never seemed as though Charles had a personal ax to grind. Between his calm demeanor and a probing intellect, he seemed most like an anthropologist remarking upon the fascinating behaviors of an indigenous people.
I was a regular Krauthammer reader before I knew him. I admired him not only because I often agreed with him but also because of his inimitable style and the flow of his logic. There are very few writers — much less doctors — who can write with the artfulness that Charles brought to his column. Nor are there many debaters who could match wits with him.
When I think of Charles, several fond memories come to mind. First, he is a consummate gentleman. He is warm, affectionate and funny. Once, when we were both at the White House toward the end of the George W. Bush administration, he said to me, “We better enjoy this, because I have a feeling it’ll be the last time we’ll see the inside of this place.” Barack Obama had just been elected.
As it turned out, we did see each other inside the White House again not long after when Obama invited us, among others, to an off-the-record meeting. I remember nothing about it other than Charles’s wry smile, the one that often found his face and allowed him to say everything without uttering a word.
Another time we were both invited to the White House, I was stalled at the security gate, unable to convince the guards that I should be allowed to pass. As I was about to leave in frustration, Charles pulled up in his van, winked at me and said to the guard, who obviously knew Charles well: “She’s with me.” Calling out to me, he said, “C’mon, I’ll give you a ride.”
I was as tickled as any girl’s ever been when the coolest guy in the class shows her the slightest attention. This is how I’ll always remember you, Charles, if you’re reading this — as the smartest, handsomest, most dignified gentleman and scholar ever to wield a pen in the pursuit of truth and right ideas.
It is incomprehensible that you are soon to leave us, but I’m not at all surprised that God would need a good shrink.
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3) A Democrat Dissents on the Mueller Probe
Mark Penn helped design the Clinton campaign against Ken Starr. He says he’s being consistent.
Jason Willick
Left to right: Ken Starr, Mark Penn and Robert Mueller. Illustration: KEN FALLIN, Getty Images (2)
President Trump opened the week in a typical fashion, angrily denouncing special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. But Mr. Trump appealed to an unlikely authority: Mark Penn, the Democratic pollster who guided President Clinton through his second-term scandals and then served as chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
“ ‘Why are there people from the Clinton Foundation on the Mueller Staff?’ ” the president tweeted, paraphrasing Mr. Penn’s appearance on Fox News. “ ‘Why is there an Independent Counsel? To go after people and their families for unrelated offenses...Constitution was set up to prevent this...Stormtrooper tactics almost.’ A disgrace!”
Mr. Penn, now a lecturer at Harvard and a private-equity investor, has condemned the Mueller probe both on television and in columns for the Hill newspaper. These broadsides have turned heads in Washington, especially among fellow Democratic political professionals, who accuse him of selling out. Hillary Clinton’s longtime aide Philippe Reines told the New York Times that Mr. Penn is “making a play for something.” Top Obama adviser David Axelrod charged on Twitter that Mr. Penn’s “reemergence as Mueller-basher seems less like courageous truthtelling than cynical opportunism.”
Mr. Penn says it is his detractors who are putting political interest over principle. “There were not enough Republicans who came out in ’98 against the process,” he tells me, “and there are not enough Democrats who are coming out against the process now.”
By “the process” Mr. Penn means the use of legal tools to settle political differences, a phenomenon he sees as getting worse. “If all politics, even after elections, becomes the politics of personal destruction and destroying our opponents rather than fighting for the next election,” he asks, “what will be left of an ideas-based democracy?”
Mr. Penn helped design what he calls Team Clinton’s “aggressive campaign” against the Kenneth Starr investigation. That inquiry originated with suspicions about the Clintons ’ Arkansas land dealings and culminated with Mr. Clinton’s impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice in testimony arising from a sexual-harassment lawsuit. Mr. Penn sees strong similarities between then and now: “In 1998, the country was being torn apart in an investigation that had gone on for many years and then had segued into some other area, after having really not found anything in the areas in which it was set up.”
The process has intensified this time, as Mr. Trump takes on a more personal role than Mr. Clinton did. Mr. Penn also highlights the involvement of Mr. Obama’s former law-enforcement and intelligence chiefs, including Jim Comey, Jim Clapper and John Brennan. “It’s not unprecedented for a president to criticize an independent or special counsel,” he says. “It is unprecedented for people like Comey, Clapper and Brennan to go out and become full-bore political figures on the talk show circuit blasting the president as though they are pundits and not intelligence professionals.”
In addition to corroding “ideas-based” politics, Mr. Penn believes special-counsel investigations can push administration policy toward the extremes. He is credited with helping nudge Mr. Clinton into the political center in the mid-1990s. But in 1998, he says, Mr. Clinton had to retreat leftward to keep his party united behind him: “Those were the votes for acquittal in impeachment.”
Could the threat from the Russia probe force Mr. Trump to lean more heavily on his populist base? Mr. Penn is certain it already has affected the administration’s calculus on foreign policy. “If the idea was to use Russia as a fulcrum against Iran and China, that policy got blown up,” he says. “It’s not irrational policy,” but “the investigation made it impossible.”
The overarching problem, Mr. Penn contends, is that when law-enforcement agencies conduct “impeachment investigations,” it creates “a separation of powers problem.” He therefore recommends undertaking such probes “only when things are on the surest of grounds.”
Absent a smoking gun, in other words, Congress should take the investigative lead. But what if the political system is so polarized, as now, that lawmakers would be reluctant to challenge a president of their own party? “Elections come around every two years in this country,” he says. While lawyers often view the legal process as the key to accountability, Mr. Penn, a pollster, has a sunny optimism in the ability of the electorate to play that role.
He insists he has been consistent on this point, and there’s a paper trail to prove it. As a college sophomore in 1973, amid the Watergate scandal but before the release of President Nixon’s incriminating White House tapes, Mr. Penn wrote in the Harvard Crimson that the special prosecutor was a “ ‘quasi-constitutional’ mechanism” and that impeachment efforts should proceed with caution.
Critics may object that Mr. Penn has not been a Democrat in good standing for some time. He co-wrote an op-ed last summer urging the party to “move to the center” on cultural issues and focus on defending the Affordable Care Act. He says this advice is “as valid, if not more valid” today, and he hopes Democrats in 2020 pick a moderate nominee who will lead in that direction. He rejects the view that Democrats can win back power by doubling down on their current coalition. “I don’t think it’s possible for the Democratic Party to become a majority party without winning back the working class,” Mr. Penn says, “and continuing to make advancements in the suburbs and particularly with independent women.”
Mr. Penn cites the GOP’s choice of Mitt Romney in 2012 as evidence that a party can moderate. “I don’t think anybody expected during the peak times of the tea party that the Republicans would nominate people like Romney, ” he says. With the right standard-bearer, moving to the center “is a process Democrats could well undertake.”
Is Mr. Penn’s polemical anti-Mueller commentary a sign that he has been seduced by the GOP? No, he insists: Republicans also show no sign of occupying the middle ground that Mr. Clinton once did. But perhaps Mr. Penn’s policy instincts and his hostility to special counsels are related. If politics is a process of messy compromise through which ideas are recontested every two years, then it makes sense to respect election results and meet voters where they are. On the other hand, if the aim of politics is a decisive ideological triumph, then it makes sense to double down on your existing base and support any means, including criminal investigations, to force rivals out of power.
Mr. Penn’s rhetoric on Mr. Mueller has been excessive, but perhaps his views simply reflect a more pragmatic approach to politics—an approach that, alas, may be out of date.
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4)
Outgoing IDF commander: Israel must prepare for escalation with Hamas
Israel “must be ready for escalation” on the Gaza border said the outgoing head of the IDF Southern Command.
By: World Israel News Staff
Outgoing head of IDF Southern Command (Maj.-Gen.) Eyal Zamir said Wednesday that Israel “must be prepared for escalation” on the Gaza border, and needs to “draw conclusions and find a suitable solution for kite terrorism as well.”
“The threat is not over and we need to intensify the efforts,” Zamir said at a change-of-command ceremony at the Southern Command, reported Ynet.
“The terror pattern of operations on the Gaza border will be defeated with determination,” Maj. Gen. Zamir added. “If required, we will use our full force.”
He argued that “calm is primarily in the interest of the Strip’s residents, who are suffering under the Hamas rule.”
Zamir also had a message to “all of those elements trying to delegitimize us—we’ll continue operating, whether you like it or not.”
Also speaking at the ceremony, IDF Chief of Staff Gadi Eisenkot said the army was “dealing with a wide variety of terror attacks” from the Gaza Strip, noting that the Israeli military “must find solutions to any kind of threat.”
Eisenkot went on to say that “some four years after Protective Edge, the mission hasn’t been completed. It will only be completed after the return of Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul for burial in Israel.”
The change of command ceremony was held four days later than originally planned because of the high tensions on the Gaza border.
Maj. Gen. Herzl Halevi, who had served as head of military intelligence, will take the post, replacing Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir who held the position for almost three years.
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5) Obama took lying to new heights with the Iran deal
When it comes to the Iran nuclear deal, the Obama administration increasingly appears to have been a bottomless pit of deception.
First, President Barack Obama failed to disclose to Congress the existence of secret side deals on inspections when he transmitted the nuclear accord to Capitol Hill. (They were only uncovered by chance when then-Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kan.) and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) learned about them during a meeting with International Atomic Energy Agency officials in Vienna.) Then, we learned that the Obama administration had secretly sent a plane to Tehran loaded with $400 million in Swiss francs, euros and other currencies on the same day Iran released four American hostages, which was followed by two more secret flights carrying another $1.3 billion in cash.
Now, in a bombshell revelation, Republicans on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led by Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), have revealed in a new report that the Obama administration secretly tried to help Iran use U.S. banks to convert $5.7 billion in Iranian assets, after promising Congress that Iran would not get access to the U.S. financial system — and then lied to Congress about what it had done. (Full disclosure: My wife works for Portman).
In July 2015, Obama Treasury Secretary Jack Lew assured the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that, under the nuclear accord, Iran “will continue to be denied access to the [U.S.] financial and commercial market” and that “Iranian banks will not be able to clear U.S. dollars through New York, hold correspondent account relationships with U.S. financial institutions, or enter into financing arrangements with U.S. banks.” A few weeks later, one of Lew’s top deputies, Adam Szubin, used the exact same words in testimony to the Senate banking committee.
But Senate investigators found that on Feb. 24, 2016, the Obama Treasury Department “granted a specific license that authorized a conversion of Iranian assets worth billions of U.S. dollars using the U.S. financial system” — exactly what Lew and Szubin said would not happen — including unlimited future Iranian deposits at Bank Muscat in Oman until the license expired.
Not only that, Senate investigators found that officials from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), which regulates U.S. banks’ compliance with U.S. sanctions law, “encouraged two U.S. correspondent banks to convert the funds.” The report says “both banks declined to complete the transaction due to compliance, reputational, and legal risks associated with doing business with Iran.”
Then, after issuing the license, the Obama administration explicitly denied to Congress that it had done so. Lew and Szubin both failed to disclose the license in congressional testimony while continuing to assert that the Obama administration would not give Iran access to U.S. financial institutions — when they had just tried to do so. And in a June 2016 letter to Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.), Treasury officials declared “The U.S. Department of Treasury is not working on behalf of Iran to enable Iranian access to U.S. dollars elsewhere in the international financial system, nor are we assisting Iran in gaining access to dollar payment systems outside the U.S. financial system. The Administration has not been and is not planning to grant Iran access to the U.S. financial system.” This was patently false.
Investigators also found internal State Department emails, in which officials admitted that the Obama administration had “exceeded our JCPOA commitments” by authorizing Iranian access to U.S. banks. Furthermore, the report reveals that the Obama administration put on more than 200 “roadshows” across the world where they encouraged foreign financial institutions to do business with Iran “as long as the rest of the world left the United States out of it.” According to the report, during a roadshow in London, OFAC Director John Smith “downplayed the likelihood of any future penalties or fines,” telling the audience “that 95% of the time OFAC sees an apparent violation it results in a simple warning letter or no enforcement action.”
In other words, the Obama administration: (1) told Congress it would not allow Iran access to U.S. financial institutions; (2) issued a special license allowing Iran to do exactly that; (3) unsuccessfully pressured U.S. banks to help Iran; (4) lied to Congress and the American people about what it had done; (5) admitted in internal emails that these efforts “exceeded” U.S. obligations under the nuclear deal; (6) sent officials, including bank regulators, around the world to urge foreign financial institutions to do business with Iran; and (7) promised that they would get nothing more than a slap on the wrist for violating U.S. sanctions.
How bad is this? Remove the words “Obama” and “Iran” and replace them with “Trump” and “Russia” and imagine the outrage that would ensue over the same revelations. Democrats would be holding news conferences, and the story would be front-page news.
We hear a lot these days from the media about the danger of presidential lies. Well, when it comes to the Iran deal, the Obama administration took lying to new heights. And no, that’s not Fake News.
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6)With Chicago being the only major city to lose population three years in a row, it's interesting to know that Illinois isn't the only place that people are fleeing from. Here are a few other democrat-controlled states suffering the same dilemma. When will they learn that tax-and-spend libtards are ruining this country?
6a) Vermont’s Relocation Grant
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7) The Climate-Change Tort Racket
6)With Chicago being the only major city to lose population three years in a row, it's interesting to know that Illinois isn't the only place that people are fleeing from. Here are a few other democrat-controlled states suffering the same dilemma. When will they learn that tax-and-spend libtards are ruining this country?
6a) Vermont’s Relocation Grant
As residents flee, the state has an offer you will probably refuse.
By The Editorial Board
Many Americans work remotely these days, free to consider state tax rates among other things in choosing where to live. The overtaxed state of Vermont thinks that’s a recruiting opportunity, and the state government is offering $10,000 grants to recruit workers willing to move to the Green Mountain State.
Governor Phil Scott last week signed the Remote Worker Grant Program law, which invites folks who work from their laptops for out-of-state employers to do so in Vermont. The program will dole out up to $500,000 over three years to cover moving and work-related expenses for those who sign up.
With Vermont’s high tax rates, the one-time subsidy is effectively a loan—with a punishing interest rate. Alongside a top marginal income personal rate of 8.95%, Vermont’s property taxes were third most onerous in the country in 2017, according to ATTOM Data Solutions. The burden will increase this year with the new $10,000 limit on the federal state-and-local tax deduction. In March Mr. Scott also announced a “Stay-to-Stay” initiative to convince some of Vermont’s 13 million annual tourists to stick around. Visitors were treated to networking events and job site visits, all on the taxpayer’s dime.
The politicians are taking such measures because Vermont’s labor demographics are so awful. According to Mr. Scott, a Republican who is fated to work with a left-wing legislature, the state has 16,000 fewer workers than 2009, and the problem is getting worse. Vermont’s median age, 42.7, is the third oldest in the U.S.
In other news, the U.S. Census Bureau revealed last month that 10 of the 15 fastest-growing American cities are in the South. Perhaps Montpelier should take a hint from the low-tax policies of Tennessee and Florida instead of offering money to lure out-of staters to share Vermont’s high-tax misery.
7) The Climate-Change Tort Racket
Liberal cities join the contingency-fee bar to shake down oil firms.
By The Editorial Board
Liberals want to use racketeering laws to prosecute so-called climate-change skeptics. But the real conspiracy may be between plaintiff lawyers and Democratic politicians who have ganged up to shake down oil companies.
San Francisco, Oakland, New York and Seattle have sued five global oil giants—BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips , ExxonMobil and Royal Dutch Shell —for billions in future damages from climate change. Brass-knuckled plaintiff firm Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro has been shopping around the lawsuit to other cities desperate for cash.
No court has recognized common-law claims for injuries supposedly caused by climate change, and the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in AEP v. Connecticut (2011) that the Clean Air Act pre-empts public nuisance torts against corporations for greenhouse-gas emissions. So the cities are now arguing that the mere production and promotion of fossil fuels create a public nuisance, and the suits are heading to court.
San Francisco and Oakland were counting on a home courtroom advantage with their choice of legal venue give that climate change is something of a religion in California. But Clinton-appointed federal Judge William Alsup is calling fouls as he sees them.
“We won the Second World War with fossil fuels. If we didn’t have fossil fuels, we would have lost that war and every other war,” the judge mused during a recent hearing. “And so we have gotten a huge benefit from the use of fossil fuels, right?” Plaintiff attorney Steve Berman agreed.
Judge Alsup also pointed out that the federal government and states have encouraged the production of fossil fuels. “If the nation is saying, ‘please do it,’ how can we hold them liable for that?” he asked.
The cities’ ostensible trump card was a document purporting to show that the oil companies concealed evidence that they knew for decades that fossil fuels contribute to global warming. But as the judge noted, this “smoking gun” was merely a “slide show that somebody had gone to the [United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] and was reporting on what the IPCC had reported, and that was it. Nothing more.”
When Judge Alsup asked for an example of an out-of-pocket cost that San Francisco has paid due to climate change, Mr. Berman replied: “We have people that we’ve had to employ, outside consultants, to study global warming. Had to hire them to figure out how high the sea wall should be.”
Even this was contradicted by a 2017 San Francisco general-obligation bond document that says “the City is unable to predict whether sea-level rise or other impacts of climate change or flooding from a major storm will occur.” If Mr. Berman is right, then the Securities and Exchange Commission should prosecute San Francisco for a fraudulent bond offering.
Cities are demanding billions for an “abatement fund” that will help backfill their budgets. San Francisco schools’ retirement costs have more than doubled since 2012. New York City subways are in disrepair, which its lawyers attribute to hurricane damage caused by climate change but everyone knows is the result of decades of neglect. The real public nuisances in these progressive sanctuaries are vagrancy, public urination and open drug use that are all increasingly common.
Hagens Berman, which has negotiated a 23.5% contingency fee in the San Francisco and Oakland cases, is hoping the oil giants will pay to make the lawsuits go away, which may be tempting as cases pile up. Federal Judge John Keenan is reviewing a motion to dismiss New York City’s lawsuit on June 13. But by fighting the lawsuits, the companies are giving the public a valuable education in the monetary self-interest behind climate-change politics.
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