By TEMPLE LI

A world without cattle.  But wait, why would we want a world without these bovines?  Cattle have been in our history for around 10,500 years.  That’s 10,500 years of cattle farts!

Apparently, all cattle are descended from animals that were domesticated from wild ox in the Near East.  Cattle are an all-encompassing term for bovines, both males and females, including cows, bulls, steers, heifers, bullocks and calves.   Cows are bovine females that have had offspring and heifers are females that have not had claves.   Bulls are the males of the species and bullocks usually refer to young bulls. Steers are castrated bulls.

Dairy cows can produce more than 8 gallons of milk per day.  As a result, dairy cows supply us with not only milk, but other products—some good for us; some bad—including butter, cheese, sour cream, cottage cheese, cream cheese, whey , condensed milk and ice cream.   Based on the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics, toddlers should consume 2.5 daily servings of whole milk—not soy milk and not almond milk.

“Where’s the beef? “   Steers, heifers and bullocks produce beef of the highest quality and calves supply us with veal.  A serving of 3 ounces of lean beef provides 10% of the daily recommendation for protein, zinc, and Vitamin B12.  Beef production in the U.S. is a $200 billion industry with the average American consuming about 65 lbs. of beef per year,   But that’s just to satisfy our appetites.  In actuality over 98% of the beef bovine is used, with 45% as food.  The rest is an array of by-products, which include consumer goods from perfumes, detergents and shampoos, to athletic equipment, to gummy bears and pet food.

Cattle’s plethora of contributions to the health and well-being of society is apparently offset by their proclivity to excessive burping and farting,   If the Union of Concerned Scientists is to be believed, the methane gas they produce as a result of their flatulence , a gas many times more potent than carbon dioxide, equals annual heating-trapping emissions of 24 million cars.

So, what to do?  Do we follow the direction of the proponents of the Green New Deal to eliminate all farting cows within 12 years or are there saner heads with more realistic solutions?  Scientists are currently working on a genetic fix which would lessen methane emissions, while contributing to cost efficiencies; improving the nutritional make-up of the forage in pastures and climate-friendly pasture management.

So for the milk drinkers and steak eaters of America—there still is hope as long as the Green New Deal remains aspirational and not operational!

Temple Li is the news editor for Empire State News, where she frequently authors her own editorials (just because she feels like it). She graduated at the top of her class at a mediocre college, infuriating her professors with her conservative wit and sultry charm. Empire State News allows Ms. Li to make a living, and to have a platform to tell people what she thinks. What could be better than that?

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By CANDY STALLWORTH

Along with other insane phenomena, such as stay-at-home orders, business restrictions, and mask mandates brought about by COVID-19 in 2020, virtual/hybrid learning for K-12 schools is has been ubiquitous throughout the nation (and many parts of the world) since mid-March.  At that time, COVID-19 was spreading rapidly, and state governments quickly jumped to shutdown orders that effectively closed every school, public and private, in their respective states. In nearly all K-12 school settings across the county, this was the end of in-person schooling for the 2019-20 school year, as almost no schools reopened and all schooling was completed online.

But now, it’s the 2020-21 school year, and schools across the country have been in session, in some form other, for a month or more. There is tremendous variation in what students are experiencing this year. Let’s take a look, shall we, at the oxymoronic concepts of virtual learning and hybrid learning.

Virtual learning refers to learning via online tools. Typically, students’ school day consists of participation in an online,  “virtual” meeting using their computer and webcam and interacting with the teacher and other classmates through a platform such as Zoom or Google Meet.  Along with this, they may complete online activities such as watching videos, completing documents, playing games on educational websites, and the like.

Hybrid learning refers to learning through both in-person instruction and virtual learning. Students who engage in hybrid learning attend school in person part of the time and use virtual learning the rest of the time. So they have some normalcy in that they get to attend school. But even the in-person learning experience is fraught with changes and mandates that make it very different from any previous school year.

Here’s a sampling of what virtual learning and hybrid learning look like for students at various schools:

Some students, whose schools have mandated fully virtual learning, sit in front of their computer screen ALL DAY. That is, from approximately 8:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., depending upon their schedule. They endure hour after hour of tiled faces on their screens, of the inevitable struggles to sustain their attention, and the likely technological failures that can pop up at any time.  They take a quick, half-hour lunch break (of course, eating lunch in their own homes) and if they are lucky enough to finish eating with a few minutes to spare, can take laps around the backyard (or the house) as “recess” before they settle in for their afternoon in front of the screen.

At the other end of the virtual learning spectrum are the students who briefly meet with their teacher for a few minutes online, usually at the beginning of the day and then perhaps, for some, at the end of the day. For the rest of the day, they are working on assignments and activities that are delivered to them through their online platform, such as Google Classroom. If they have adults or older siblings around them to guide them or at least periodically check on them, then they have a better chance of actually learning something. If not, they are on their own.

Students in hybrid learning situations face a cacophony of schedules and structures. All of the following are actual hybrid school schedules that are occurring this year:

• Students attend school in person every other day, for half a day. So one week, they attend Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. The next week, they attend Tuesday and Thursday. The following week it is Monday, Wednesday, Friday again.
• Students attend school for two set days (either Monday/Wednesday or Tuesday/Thursday) for half a day. Each group attends every other Friday, so students attend either two or three days, depending on the week.
• Students attend school for five days one week, and the next week they are virtual all week. The following week, it’s back to school all week, and so on.
• Schools have A,B,C,D,E (or some group of letters) days, rather than Monday through Friday. The letter days that they attend school vary, depending on holidays and other scheduling variations. Some schools actually have letter days in combinations with the actual days of the week, so students must keep track of the days of the week in the real world and the days of the week in their school world, in order to know when to attend school.

While this is a sample of hybrid instruction scheduling, there are many more scenarios. In all of these virtual and hybrid learning settings, the amount of actual teaching and learning that occurs is significantly decreased. In education circles, it is commonly understood that students lost at least 30% of the expected learning in the last school year. It is too soon to tell how much they will lose this year, if the shutdown insanity continues.

Not to mention, the quality of the school experience is far less than normal for those who are in school. Children are confined to circles, or squares, or plexiglass-enclosed areas that are “socially distanced” (there’s another oxymoronic term) from one another. Lunch time and recess, two major times for interaction and social growth, are minimized or eliminated in most schools. Instruction in subjects outside the core subject areas, such as gym, art, and music, are also minimized or typically relegated to asynchronous or optional instruction.  Academic support services such as speech, reading support, and occupational therapy are hit or miss. IEP’s for students with identified learning needs may or may not be followed carefully.

And speaking of losing, everyone is the loser when children have anything less than five-day-a-week, fully in-person instruction. Teachers lose out because they are working extra hard; on any given day, they are planning for students who are in school for the day, students who will come to school on their next scheduled day, and in many cases, students who are fully virtual. Teachers who are compelled to teach all virtual must scramble to gain proficiency with online tools. Administrators have become hand sanitizing/mask-wearing police, while figuring out their schools’ air filtration system and turning their hallways into one-way walkways, and addressing a host of other issues, such as how to sanitize books and lab equipment, ensuring everyone’s technology is functioning well, and understanding legal/privacy ramifications of online schooling. Parents and family members lose out, when working adults must adjust their work schedules and work spaces to accommodate children who are learning from home, and when they must become their child’s tutor to reteach concepts their children did not grasp through a computer screen.

But children are losing the most. The social interaction that comes from school is crucial for their development. To be physically separate from their peers and teachers, to be compelled to wear a mask all day at school, to have to conform to one-way arrows in the hallway, to enter through separate entrances into their school building, or to be forced to stay home and learn online is to be denied basic childhood experiences. Children need school in its usual form.

The hysteria that has led to closing schools altogether or opening in some inadequate fashion is sorely misplaced. It is well-established as medical fact that the survival rate for children who test positive for COVID-19 is above 99.99%. Teachers’ and administrators’ ages vary, of course, but the COVID survival rates overall are similarly high. There is no need for the widespread shutdown of schools that the country is facing now. Normalcy in our country is long overdue. Getting students back into schools is a good place to start.

Candy Stallworth, an Empire State News staff writer, whipped her way through a doctoral education at the finest of American higher ed institutions, noting how unoriginal, inept, and annoying many of the schools’ professors were in their robotic attempts to maintain a politically correct narrative. BTW: she hates words like “narrative”, “optics”, and “gaffe.” Other than that, her turn-offs include non-masculine men, women who hate men, men who hate men, phonies, disloyal people, and overflowing garbage cans. She likes New England clam chowder better than Manhattan clam chowder, but prefers Manhattan to New England.

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By CATHERINE MORTENSEN

When April Long, a 45-year old suburban mother in Detroit pays the family bills, she sets aside an extra $100 each month that she calls her “Trump cash.” That’s how much her family saves each month from the 2017 Trump tax cut.

“Trump has been a blessing to our family,” Long said. “Under Obama, our family struggled for many years. My husband lost his job. We couldn’t afford to buy a home. Those were tough times and I don’t want to go back to those days.”

Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden has promised to repeal the Trump tax cuts if elected.

“My husband and I work hard to support ourselves and our son,” explained Long. “That extra Trump cash goes to savings. I don’t want Joe Biden taking that from us for pay for more of his big government programs.”

In elected, Biden plans to  roll back that tax cut and raise taxes to finance his socialist healthcare agenda. He’ll need to raise $2.25 trillion over the next decade to pay for it, according to an analysis from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That’s not counting the cost of lowering Medicare’s eligibility age to 60.

But Biden has repeatedly promised voters who earn under $400,000 that his tax hikes will not affect them. Narrowly speaking, that is true. However, according to the independent analysis of  the Penn Wharton Budget Model, those households would see lower investment returns and wages as a result of Biden’s corporate tax increases.

Economists at The Tax Foundation, agree. Board member and former head of the Congressional Budget Office Doug Holtz-Eakin recently pointed out, “it simply is not economically possible to segregate the impacts on the high-income from everyone else.”

That’s because the rich purchase items from others, some not as rich, and from businesses that employ workers across the income spectrum. The corporate tax falls partly on workers in the form of lower pay. Similarly, the individual income tax that is paid by pass-through businesses falls partly on employees of those businesses.

Senior policy analyst Garrett Watson of the Tax Foundation has written at length about the Biden-Harris campaign plan to eliminate deductible traditional contributions for 401(k)s, individual retirement accounts (IRAs), and other types of retirement vehicles. The plan would instead provide a 26 percent refundable tax credit for each dollar contributed. As a result, this plan would reduce the tax benefit of traditional retirement accounts for those earning above $80,250.

The Biden-Harris campaign proposes multiple reforms to firearm regulation, including an expansion of the number of firearms subject to the National Firearms Act (NFA), which imposes a $200 tax on the registration of each NFA weapon. As a result, certain gun owners would see their tax liability rise, regardless of their income.

Analysts at the National Taxpayer’s Union warn that America’s middle class should be worried about a Biden presidency.  A recent study concluded, “any kind of tax plan intended to pay for a massive spending program like ‘Medicare for All’ or student loan forgiveness would have a hard time raising sufficient revenue without dramatically increasing taxes on middle-income households.”

Americans for Limited Government president Rick Manning put a finer point on it, saying, “Joe Biden’s tax plan is going to ruin this country. The idea that he is going to only raise taxes on people who make over $400,000 is a complete fraud. The money is in the middle class.”

Biden often talks about eliminating Trump’s corporate tax cuts. Manning explained that those cuts resulted in a net drop to federal coffers of between $50-75 billion. “That’s not anywhere near enough money for Joe Biden to pay for all his government giveaways. The real money, as everyone knows, is always in the middle class. That is why big-spending politicians like Biden always end up taxing the middle class, either directly or indirectly.”

In addition, when politicians tax corporations, the corporations pass that along to the consumer. Governments don’t really tax corporations, they tax consumers.

“Biden will raise taxes on the middle class,” concluded Manning. “The very people who are struggling to make a living. He wants to raise taxes on somebody who is trying to save money so their kid can go to college or trying to figure out how to pay for their parents’ elderly care. There are so many people in the middle class, politicians can raise taxes by five seven percent and get a lot more money than raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations.”

Biden is simply not telling the truth when he says his tax hikes would not affect households earning less than $400,000 a year.

Catherine Mortensen is Vice President of Communications at Americans for Limited Government. You can read more of her articles at www.DailyTorch.com. 

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By CANDY STALLWORTH

If there ever was a story that epitomized the insanity over mask-wearing during the COVID-19 pandemic, here it is. Recently, a woman attending a middle school football game in Logan, Ohio was handcuffed, tased, and arrested for not wearing a mask while she sat outside on the bleachers and watched the game.

Alecia Kitts, a parent from the visiting team of Marietta City Schools, was simply sitting maskless with her mother and attempting to watch her son’s football game when she was approached by the school’s assistant principal, who asked her to put on a mask or leave the game. She refused to do so, stating that she had asthma.  The school resource officer, Christopher Smith, quickly intervened and, according to cell phone video footage of the incident, physically struggled with Kitts, a woman who appears to weigh at least 100 lbs. less than him. Kitts resisted the burly officer’s attempts to physically remove her from the stands, proclaiming, “I’m not doing anything wrong”, “Get off of me,” and “What the f**k is wrong with you?” Her mother tried to assist by attempting to reason with both the officer and the assistant principal, who stood by watching the officer’s efforts to cuff Kitts.  Smith, evidently quickly frustrated with her, tased her to subdue her. Then he cuffed Kitts and proceeded to arrest her for trespassing.  The video of this event immediately went viral and angered many; indeed it is shocking (no pun intended) and disturbing on many levels.

ESN has detailed here the uselessness and even harmful effects of wearing masks. At the start of the pandemic, many well-meaning people did believe that masks were needed and complied with government mandates to wear them. But now, months later and with much research available for anyone to inform themselves, many more people have now caught on to the reality that they do absolutely nothing to stop the spread of COVID.  It is obvious that they are not needed in any setting, certainly not outside at a football stadium, with no one else immediately adjacent in any direction. It is pure insanity that Kitts was told to put on a mask or leave her son’s game.  What ensued next is appalling and downright scary. While BLM and Antifa protestors have been allowed, and encouraged, to gather en masse and protest, riot, and loot all over the country with or without masks, this woman was engaging in an everyday, law-abiding activity of watching a youth football game. She is the one got arrested, not the actual lawbreakers.

In response to the outcries and threats against Logan High School, the official word was that Kitts was not arrested because she was not wearing a mask, but because she refused to leave the stadium. Nonsense. She should not have even been asked to leave the game. Mask mandates are not about public health. They are all about control. This incident clearly demonstrates that reality.

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Candy Stallworth, an Empire State News staff writer, whipped her way through a doctoral education at the finest of American higher ed institutions, noting how unoriginal, inept, and annoying many of the schools’ professors were in their robotic attempts to maintain a politically correct narrative. BTW: she hates words like “narrative”, “optics”, and “gaffe.” Other than that, her turn-offs include non-masculine men, women who hate men, men who hate men, phonies, disloyal people, and overflowing garbage cans. She likes New England clam chowder better than Manhattan clam chowder, but prefers Manhattan to New England.

 

By Robert Romano

Republicans have come within striking distance of reclaiming a majority in the House of Representatives, based on the latest tally of votes from the Nov. 3 election.

If every seat Democrats are clearly leading goes their way in the final tally, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would lose 14 seats — Republicans could pick up 15 seats including the Justin Amash seat — an outcome almost nobody was predicting.

With the results still coming in, that would bring the Democratic majority at a scant 219 to 216, if the current numbers hold.

During this cycle, this author had toyed with the notion that Trump could be the first sitting President since Harry Truman in 1948 to flip the House in an election bid for a second term as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) held up coronavirus economic relief legislation.

Trump got close. Really, really close.

And the counting is not over yet. Republicans would potentially need to only flip two more seats, and they would get the majority. It may be unlikely, but it’s still out there.

In fact, Democrats have not picked up a single seat in the election on a net basis. They have picked up three seats, two in  North Carolina, and one in Georgia. But that is being more than offset by 18 potential Republican gains elsewhere.

Elsewhere, one race to keep your eye on is Pennsylvania’s 17th Congressional District is within a point, with U.S. Rep. Conor Lamb (D-Pa.) slightly leading challenger Sean Parnell.

Iowa’s 2nd District is too close to call, too, in a dead heat with Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-Iowa) and Rita Hart (D-Iowa). That would be a pickup for Republicans should it come through.

There’s a couple of races in Nevada that are somewhat close, but Democrats usually hold those seats. It’s hard to find any other seats that Republicans might claim, and it’s still possible Democrats hold on to a few of these seats.

California’s 25th District between U.S. Rep. Mike Garcia (R-Calif.), who won a special election earlier this year against his current opponent former U.S. Rep. Christy Smith (R-Calif.), is in a neck-and-neck battle, for example. If the Democrats stand a chance of picking up any seats, it’s this one.

So, I write potentially a net 15 seats could be picked up by the GOP. Maybe more, maybe less. We’ll see.

Still, this is an extraordinary outcome. President Donald Trump had major coattails in the House in this election, and that extended to the Senate, where control will be determined by two Senate runoffs in the state of Georgia and by the outcome of the race for president, which remains too close to call with lawsuits being filed all over the place by the Trump campaign alleging fraud.

And unquestionably, President Trump’s strategy for in-person voting on Election Day — combined with his historic airport rallies, akin to Truman’s whistle stop campaign 1948 — is to thank for the outcome.

All that was done as so-called experts were urging that the President cede his advantage in the election to stave off the pandemic. If he hadn’t done it, the election would not be as close as it is.

Congressional Republicans should write a giant thank you to President Trump. In terms of electoral strength, he is one of the most consequential presidents of this generation. Truly remarkably.

With such a narrow majority in the House, and Republicans poised to keep the Senate, even if Trump loses, Biden and Democrats have virtually no mandate to govern and will hardly get anything done. The radical left’s agenda will be stopped dead in its tracks:

No Green New Deal.

No statehood for D.C. and Puerto Rico.

No bans on hydraulic fracturing.

No national, Congressionally imposed lockdown.

No tax hikes.

No public option socialized medicine.

None of it.

Republicans should do nothing to legitimize and broker no quarter to any new Democratic administration should it be seated. They get no help.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government.  You can read more of his articles at www.DailyTorch.com. 

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By Catherine Mortensen

Judge Amy Coney Barrett is a new role model for young women, and even women of her own generation. While her success is built upon the trailblazing work of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, she takes feminism in a new direction. She has reached the pinnacle of her career while still raising young children and sustaining what looks to be a happy, functional marriage, something men have done for years.

Feminism has turned a corner. With past women justice nominees, it felt like their gender defined them. It seems different with Barrett. President Trump selected her because of her extraordinary intellectual gifts and her commitment to an originalist view of the Constitution and the role of the courts, not her gender. She clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia, and shares his textualist philosophy to interpret the law as written.

While Barrett’s confirmation vetting should be solely about her past court decisions and her views on the Constitution, and not her gender, it is worth noting her gender because Barrett represents a new image of a successful career woman. It is clear that women today can succeed in careers at the same pace as their male colleagues. This was rarely the case in the past when women often left the workforce when they got married or had children and returned later, always behind their male counterparts. It is refreshing to see a woman reach the top of her field while still in her prime.

This was largely the theme shared by a  group of Republic women senators spoke in support of Barrett at a  Sept. 30  news conference.

Sen. Debra Fischer (R-NE): “I think it is so remarkable that we have such a woman before us now. When we look at Judge Barrett, we see an accomplished woman. We see a brilliant jurist. We see a nice person. We see someone who has been able to balance their family life with a husband and seven children and keep everybody on track. We see someone who’s had to make choices in her life in order to move forward in her chosen career. We see someone who’s a success.”

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA): “Folks, this is what a mom can do. I tell my daughter all the time that a mom can be a farmer or a rancher. A mom can be a combat veteran. A mom can be a financial planner, a mom can serve in the United States Senate, and most certainly a mom can be a Supreme Court Justice. Anybody that says different is absolutely wrong.”

Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ): “If confirmed on the court, she will be the first with school-age children serving on the Supreme Court. That is something that should be celebrated. Judge Barrett is by all accounts a woman of faith and of grace and of brilliance and of compassion. She is someone with seven kids, including two adopted ones and one with special needs. She is able to balance it all and do it in an amazing way. That really sets the example for so many women and girls. We should encourage everyone in America to really celebrate the fact that we have this brilliant woman who rose into the top who has been able to balance it all with grace and dignity.”

Sen. Shelley Capito (R-WV): “We should be rejoicing in the fact that we have an accomplished woman to consider that we have a role model for our girls, our daughters and our granddaughters.  She has traveled a journey that not many of us get to do and we should use that as an opportunity to inspire that next generation.”

For many young women today, feminism has a slightly negative connotation. Old school feminists are often seen as harsh, combative, and judgmental. Many women would prefer to be seen as smart, strong, and compassionate. While today’s youth certainly owe a debt of gratitude to women such as Gloria Steinem and Justice Ginsburg, to name a few, many in the rising generation have moved on to a new type of feminist ideal. An ideal that allows them to be a parent, a spouse, a community volunteer, and still succeed in careers, just as men have always been able to do.

Thanks, Judge Barrett, for your 21^st century brand of feminism.

Catherine Mortensen is Vice President of Communication for Americans for Limited Government. You can read more of her articles at www.DailyTorch.com. 

By ROBERT ROMANO

Twitter and Facebook have both limited distribution of an Oct. 14 report from the New York Post’s Emma-Jo Morris and Gabrielle Fonrouge entitled, “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad” detailing an alleged meeting between former Vice President Joe Biden and Burisma executive Vadym who Biden’s son, Hunter, used to work for, in April 2015.

The Wall Street Journal’s Robert McMillan and Jeff Horwitz reported on Oct. 15, “Twitter on Wednesday blocked users from posting links to the articles, initially citing a potential violation of its rules regarding hacked materials. The company later said the articles also violated its policies on displaying private information like email addresses and phone numbers without a person’s permission… Twitter’s move came after Facebook also limited the distribution of the articles on its platform, saying it was awaiting guidance from its third-party fact-checking partners—independent organizations that routinely review the accuracy of viral content. Facebook has slowed the spread of the Post articles pending a decision by those partners, company spokesman Andy Stone said in a Twitter message on Wednesday morning.”

According to the email obtained by the New York Post, allegedly from Pozharskyi to Hunter Biden, “Dear Hunter, thank you for inviting me to DC and giving an opportunity to meet your father and spent [sic] some time together. It’s realty [sic] an honor and pleasure.”

Twitter and Facebook have claimed the news report somehow violated their terms of service in republishing illegally obtained materials.

The outrage for Twitter and Facebook is that regardless of where the computer containing the emails came from, the New York Post has a First Amendment right to publish them. It’s freedom of the press, something social media companies have in the past defended.

For example, Twitter has never banned or throttled the Twitter account for Wikileaks, which routinely publishes classified information or other news outlets that have similar national security sources and classified materials included that by definition are illegally obtained.

The Biden campaign has denied any such meeting took place, saying it was not in the former Vice President’s “official schedule”, calling the disclosure, without evidence, supposed Russian disinformation.

Later, the Biden campaign admitted it was possible Biden met with Pozharskyi, according to Politico’s Kyle Cheney and Natasha Bertrand reporting on Oct. 14: “Biden’s campaign would not rule out the possibility that the former VP had some kind of informal interaction with Pozharskyi, which wouldn’t appear on Biden’s official schedule. But they said any encounter would have been cursory.”

The trouble for Biden, of course, was that Burisma was the natural gas firm being investigated in Ukraine, that his son worked for, and who Biden bragged he got the prosecutor looking into the company fired by threatening an International Monetary Fund loan.

Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations at the Jan. 2018 event he threatened $1.2 billion of loan guarantees in 2016 to get Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin fired: “I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money.’ …Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time.”

Shokin in April 2019 told journalist John Solomon that prior to the election of the new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, he was removed in 2016 because of his investigation of Burisma, on which Biden’s son, Hunter, served on the Board of Directors.

In an affidavit in a European court in 2019, Shokin testified, “The truth is that I was forced out because I was leading a wide-ranging corruption probe into Burisma Holdings, a natural gas firm active in Ukraine and Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was a member of the Board of Directors… On several occasions President Poroshenko asked me to have a look at the case against Burisma and consider the possibility of winding down the investigative actions in respect of this company but I refused to close this investigation.”

A call from May 2016, leaked in May 2020, between former Vice President Joe Biden and then-Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko confirmed the quid pro quo in Ukraine,  that is, the $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the IMF approved by the Obama administration and the firing and replacement of Shokin.

In the May 2016 phone call, Biden clearly says, “[C]ongratulations on installing the new prosecutor general, it’s going to be critical for him to work quickly to repair the damage Shokin did. And I’m a man of my word. And now that the new prosecutor general is in place, we’re ready to move forward in signing that one-billion-dollar loan guarantee.” The phone call was said to have been recorded by Poroshenko himself.

This was the matter President Donald Trump sought to have Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “look into” on the July 25, 2019 phone call with current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. In the phone call with Zelensky, Trump said, “It sounds horrible to me.”

And now, it looks like Biden may have even met with Burisma executives, putting the lie to Biden’s claim that “never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings”.

In the meantime, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) has told Fox News that his committee is in touch with the individual who provided the emails and is in the process of authenticating them.

“We regularly speak with individuals who email the committee’s whistleblower account to determine whether we can validate their claims,” said Johnson, adding, “Although we consider those communications to be confidential, because the individual in this instance spoke with the media about his contact with the committee, we can confirm receipt of his email complaint, have been in contact with the whistleblower, and are in the process of validating the information he provided.”

And Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai is promising to put forward a regulation clarifying Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act that is used by social media companies as a shield from liability, stating, “Members of all three branches of the federal government have expressed serious concerns about the prevailing interpretation of the immunity set forth in Section 230 of the Communications Act. There is bipartisan support in Congress to reform the law. The U.S. Department of Commerce has petitioned the Commission to ‘clarify ambiguities in section 230.’… Many advance an overly broad interpretation that in some cases shields social media companies from consumer protection laws in a way that has no basis in the text of Section 230. The Commission’s General Counsel has informed me that the FCC has the legal authority to interpret Section 230. Consistent with this advice, I intend to move forward with a rulemaking to clarify its meaning.”

Pai added, “Social media companies have a First Amendment right to free speech. But they do not have a First Amendment right to a special immunity denied to other media outlets, such as newspapers and broadcasters.”

Adding to the furor at Twitter, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany was locked out of her Twitter account for sharing the New York Post story. “It’s not a temporary blockage. When I log onto my Twitter account it says I’m permanently banned. They essentially had me at gunpoint and said unless you delete a news story reported by the New York Post I cannot regain access to my account,” McEnany told Fox News’ Sean Hannity on Oct. 14.

McEnany has since had her account restored, but the threat to press freedom posed by these big tech firms is quite clear who have anointed themselves the arbiters of truth. But while Twitter, Facebook and other firms are certainly a part of the marketplace of ideas, they by no means have a monopoly on that market — yet.

In April 2018, Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey retweeted an article by Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira that called our political discourse a “new civil war,” with Leyden and Teixeira writing, “America can’t afford more political paralysis. One side or the other must win. This is a civil war that can be won without firing a shot. But it is a fundamental conflict between two worldviews that must be resolved in short order.”

It called for “Democratic One-Party Rule” in the U.S. as a means of reconciling issues facing the country and ultimately implementing the progressive agenda. Dorsey called it a “great read.”

Are we beginning to see what one party rule will look like in the U.S. — with Twitter and Facebook acting as party spokespersons and ministries of propaganda for the Democratic Party? It sure looks that way. This is a mortal danger to freedom of the press and of speech.

In John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty, the philosopher warned how a “social tyranny” of the majority could impose censorship that would be “more formidable” than even government censorship and that it could “enslav[e] the soul” with little room for escape.

Mill wrote, “[W]hen society is itself the tyrant — society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it — its means of tyrannising are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though not usually upheld by such extreme penalties, it leaves fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.”

Now that “social tyranny” appears to be taking root in America, arbitrating what can and cannot be shared — unless we stop it now.

It is irrelevant how the New York Post, or any other news organization obtains its information, classified or otherwise. The question is whether the freedom of the press will be protected or not. We do not support corporate censorship and social censorship anymore than we support government censorphip. As Mill wrote, “If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.”

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government. You can read more of his articles at www.DailyTorch.com. 

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By RICK MANNING

Last night’s debate between Vice President Pence and Senator Harris was a direct contrast between conservative Midwestern values and San Francisco, California values. Pence’s steady, low-key leadership is the perfect balance for President Trump as he leads America on his bold agenda. Senator Harris’ main distinctions were being named the most liberal senator in a Senate that includes socialist Bernie Sanders and attacking Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in what was nothing more than a #MeToo witch hunt.

One of the key issues in the debate is America’s relationship with the Communist Chinese government.  While President Trump and Vice President Pence have worked to establish a fair trading relationship with China, Senator Harris criticized the tariffs placed on China’s cheating steel industry which has systematically destroyed American made steel jobs due to government subsidies and the use of near slave labor.

It was stunning that the clearly biased, unknown debate moderator from USA Today, did not ask about Senator Harris’ personal financial ties to the Communist Chinese government through her husband’s law practice as a partner at DLA Piper.  While her husband Doug Emhoff left the firm in April of this year, it is imperative to know what actions he was engaged in with his communist Chinese partners over the past three years where Beijing’s overt attacks on America and the rest of the world became more and more apparent.

What’s more, Emhoff’s firm played a role in helping the Chinese with their infamous Belt and Road initiative, which has dramatically increased their influence in the world while permanently financially indebting many African nations to their Chinese colonizers.

And it is beyond belief that Harris who has little good to say about America, has no problem standing up for China, which is actively engaged in using child- and slave-labor according to the U.S. Labor Department, has set up concentration camps for millions of Muslim minorities and even kills political and religious dissidents by harvesting their organs one by one keeping the victim alive until their bodies are no longer of use, selling their vital organs to the wealthy around the world for transplant.

The lack of any outrage from the Biden-Harris ticket when it relates to China which has heavy business ties to both Biden and Harris is indicative that if elected, America will not any longer be a beacon of hope for oppressed peoples, but will soon kneel before its Chinese masters.

It is equally incomprehensible that Harris and Biden see nothing wrong with the hollowing out of the American economy due to Biden’s support for and eventual passage of Permanent Normalized Trade Relations with China in 2000, as well as Biden’s strong support for NAFTA in the 1990’s.

The very same NAFTA that President Donald Trump replaced with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade (USMCA)  agreement that will bring thousands of automotive jobs back to the United States while also increasing agricultural trade with our North American trading partners.  The Vice President wisely noted that Senator Harris voted against the USMCA, showing her disdain for the American worker who she would gladly sacrifice on her Green New Deal altar.

In other revelations, Harris joined Biden in refusing to pledge to not pack the Supreme Court, which would eliminate the independence of the judiciary, instead making up a story about why Abraham Lincoln did not appoint a Supreme Court Justice in 1864.

Here is why packing the Supreme Court ends judicial independence.  If the executive and legislative branches choose to expand the nation’s high court to rubber stamp their dubious constitutional policies, they have effectively ended the rule of law as the courts will not be a check on unconstitutional actions as they were designed to be.

Yet, Harris, an attorney and former prosecutor, refused to pledge to protect the Supreme Court’s independence.

On taxes, Harris tried to have it both ways when she said that her ticket would end the Trump tax cut which lowered taxes for middle class Americans by $2,000 on average, while denying that their policy is a tax hike on the middle class. Huh?

And finally, she and former Vice President Biden want to tell the public that they won’t destroy America’s energy independence through imposing the Green New Deal which Harris eagerly co-sponsored, yet their website still says that the Green New Deal underpins their climate policy which is endorsed by Green New Deal authors Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders.

America has been given a choice of competing visions for the future. Vice President Pence represents the hope of freedom and opportunity in line with the DNA of America. California Senator Harris represents the failed Marxist philosophy that impoverishes and enslaves people wherever it is tried in the world.  Mike Pence represents the solid middle American values that have made America great, and Harris promises to impose San Francisco values on the rest of America.  The choice is clear.

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government. You can read more of his articles at www.DailyTorch.com. 

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