Category: Opinion

Recently there has been some scandal surrounding New York Governor Andrew Cuomo after it was revealed that he grossly undercounted the number of COVID-19 related deaths in nursing homes. Things only got worse when a top aide to Cuomo let it slip that the administration purposefully withheld data on COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes to avoid scrutiny from the feds.

Now committee Ranking Member James Comer along with all of the Republicans on the panel have sent a letter to Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney urging her to subpoena the governor so the committee could “hear the truth, under oath, directly from Governor Cuomo.”

Comer and fellow Republicans claim that Cuomo and his administration “engaged in a cover-up affecting those most vulnerable to COVID-19,” and demand that Maloney “immediately notice a full committee hearing with Governor Cuomo as the sole witness.”

According to Comer, Cuomo “ordered contagious patients into nursing homes lied about it, tried to cover up the data, and now is threatening anyone who crosses him.”

They wrote in the letter, “Additionally, we formally request a thorough investigation by the Oversight Committee. We owe it to the thousands of families who lost loved ones because of Governor Cuomo’s alleged recklessness.”

Republicans have requested nursing home and fatality data from Cuomo several times already and each time they were “ignored.”

“Today, we respectfully request that you subpoena the documents, information, and communications previously requested by the Select Subcommittee Republicans,” they wrote, adding that Cuomo has “been actively obstructing Congress’ access to this information.”

“Additionally, we request that you issue a subpoena for Governor Cuomo’s testimony before the full Oversight Committee,” they wrote. “The governor has a documented track record of misleading the public about his lethal March 25 order, including orchestrating a cover-up to conceal the truth from the New York State Legislature, the U.S. Congress, and, possibly, the U.S. Department of Justice.”

Other contributing members of the committee are Jody Hice, Andy Biggs, Glenn Grothman, Bob Gibbs, Nancy Mace, Pat Fallon, Bryon Donalds, and more. All of them are Republicans.

Virginia Democrats called it quits on Monday and have decided to give up on their controversial AR-15 gun confiscation bill.

Thousands of NRA members and gun rights advocates showed up in Richmond, Virginia to oppose the new gun control laws proposed by state Democrats.

The next day the NRA requested that its members “flood” the Virginia Senate meetings to make sure their pro-Second Amendment voices are heard.

.@NRA members getting ready to Stand and Fight in Virginia! #valeg pic.twitter.com/XGs7glbtER

— NRA (@NRA) January 13, 2020

“We are beyond impressed by today’s turnout,” D.J. Spiker, Virginia state director for the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action. You can see the passion and enthusiasm that the citizens of Virginia have in joining us in this fight.”

Due to the amount of gun rights supporters that attended Senate Democrats had no choice and formally withdrew SB16 – a bill that confiscated AR-15’s, and included restrictions on magazines and suppressors – and toned down several other proposals.

“I was disappointed to see the state legislature was interested in instituting these pieces of legislation,” Richard Cosner, a preacher from nearby Chester and a 10-year Virginia resident, said. “The Constitution is specific; it ‘shall not be infringed.’ If somebody wants to restrict those rights then they need to follow it by altering the Constitution, not by putting in place legislation that is in conflict with the Constitution.”

The Virginia Senate Judiciary Committee did advance a “red flag” law – which would allow a judge to temporarily confiscate a person’s firearms but, restricted who could file under the law. The Committee also advanced a measure allowing local municipalities the right to regulate firearms, however, only on local government property or during permitted protests.

President Joe Biden was allowed out of his basement today to inform us that the earth only has nine years left before climate change will be irreversible so we need to let him raise our taxes.

The massive tax hike comes from a “unity task” proposal co-chaired by former Secretary of State John Kerry and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

The plan will reverse every tax cut President Trump created to make the best economy this country has ever had pre-pandemic.

Biden: We’re down to 9 years to save Earth from global warming pic.twitter.com/1mCgN7Hkre

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) July 14, 2020

Under Biden’s plan, the corporate tax would be raised from 21% to 28%, income and payroll tax would be raised from 37% to 51%, small business income tax would be raised from 37% to 39.6%, and capital gains tax would be increased from 23.8% to 39.6%.

Coming out of an international pandemic that has hit small businesses the hardest, Joe Biden’s plan would punish them further.

Even the Washington Post published a column that Biden’s plan would “hold back the economy.”

Jared Dillard wrote in the Washington Post:

Biden’s credibly threatens to take a tax code that is already steeply progressive and make it even more progressive, with nearly all of the increased tax burden falling on the top 2% of taxpayers. That’s a problem for a couple of big reasons. For one, it would clearly discourage savings, investment, and business formation, potentially causing lasting economic damage. Plus, it wouldn’t do much to reduce income and wealth inequality.

Dillard explains how it would hurt small business owners:

If Biden’s plan passes, our marginal income tax rates would become grotesque, with a hypothetical couple paying 24% in taxes on incomes up to $320,000, rising to 51% on $408,000 in income if that couple is self-employed. The U.S. has enjoyed strong rates of business formation, but that wouldn’t last very long if Biden becomes president and his tax plan becomes law.

So under the Biden tax plan if you own your own business and your company makes over $408,000 a year your income tax rate will be 51%.

That will be the end of small businesses in America. But, that’s what progressives like AOC want so they can dump people into unions.

It’s high time that lawmakers in certain states stand up to the ridiculous and completely arbitrary rules that have been put into place during this pandemic.

Most of these orders have come from out-of-touch governors such as Gavin Newsom in California, Andrew Cuomo in New York, Gretchen Whitmer in Michigan, and Tom Wolf in Pennsylvania.

However, these nonsensical orders are in many more states and one group of legislators has taken the steps need to put an end to it.

The North Dakota House of Representatives passed a bill Monday that would “prohibit state and local officials, schools and businesses from mandating face masks.”

[Fauci] told CNN on Sunday that Americans may need to wear masks until next year and that he can’t predict when things in the U.S. will return to normal.

“You and the president have suggested that we’ll approach normality toward the end of the year. What does normal mean?” CNN’s Dana Bash asked. “Do you think Americans will still be wearing masks, for example, in 2022?”

“You know, I think it is possible that that’s the case,” Fauci said. “And again, it really depends on what you mean, by normality … because if normality means exactly the way things were before we had this happen to us, I mean, I can’t predict that.”

After being passed by a narrow margin in a 50—44 vote, the bill will go to the State Senate.

Republican North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum issued a statewide face coving mandate in place three months ago, but it reportedly expired in January. Before the mask mandate was enforced across the state, other cities and counties — including Fargo, Grand Forks, and Bismarck — had already required masks in public.

Vice President Kamala Harris interview with NBC Today host Savannah Guthrie was a train wreck as she basically admitted that the Biden Administration has no real plan to open schools.

The entire interview was a mess not only did Harris admit they don’t have a real plan to open schools, she didn’t provide any strategy on how the Biden Administration is distributing the vaccine.

In December Joe Biden promised to get schools open within his first 100 days now they are settling to “open as many as possible.”

Watch Harris’ entire trainwreck-of-an-exchange on schools. She basically admits they have no plan whatsoever, aside from overruling the CDC on teacher vaccines.

Her new goal: “open as many as possible”

Props to @SavannahGuthrie for not letting her boilerplate her way out. pic.twitter.com/0ecW0NunGe

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) February 17, 2021

Harris was also asked about the vaccine but wouldn’t give any details on when average Americans would be able to receive it. Her best answer was that all Americans can chose to get the vaccine by “the end of July.”

“First of all, we have a vaccine now, and that is great, but we need to get it in the arms of all Americans. And as the president said last night, we expect that that will be done, in terms of having the available supply, by the end of July. And so we are very excited about that. And we’re excited about what we’ve been rolling out. You’re right, we’re four weeks in as an administration, but we have, during these four weeks, done a lot that is about a national protocol for getting the vaccines to folks, supporting the states who needed that kind of coordination and support.”

Biden has come under after he claimed the virus didn’t exist until he became president, totally forgetting he received his first dose of the vaccine while Trump was still President.

Biden says there was no vaccine when he came into office.

That is abjectly FALSE. President Trump brought about the fastest vaccine for a novel pathogen in history.

How does Joe get away with this? pic.twitter.com/OcFeVbQ3At

— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) February 17, 2021

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said during CNN’s “State of the Union” that it’s “possible” for Americans to need to continue wearing their face masks until 2022, even after the country has reached a certain “degree of normality.”

While Fauci did admit he can’t see into the future to know when the country could return to normal pre-pandemic life, he did say he believes by the end of the year, the United States could have “a significant degree of normality beyond what the terrible burden that all of us have been through over the last year.”

“As we get into the fall and the winter, by the end of the year, I agree with [President Biden] completely, that we will be approaching a degree of normality,” Fauci said. “It may or may not be precisely the way it was in November of 2019 but it’ll be much much better than we’re doing right now.” 

Dr. Fauci says that it's "possible" that Americans will be wearing masks in 2022.

"When it goes way down and the overwhelming majority of the people in the population are vaccinated, then I would feel comfortable in saying, you know, 'We need to pull back on the masks'" #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/8Upirj9VGb

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) February 21, 2021

However, Fauci stressed that it is just an estimate and that “a lot of things can happen to modify that.”

“That’s the reason why we’ve got to be careful,” Fauci added. “Because you have variance that you need to deal with. There are so many other things that would make a projection that I give you today on this Sunday, wind up not being the case six months from now.”

Fauci explained that the community prevalence of the coronavirus will be the determining factor as to when Americans will not need to wear masks, noting that he would like to see the level of transmission drop to a baseline so low that there is a “minimal threat that you will be exposed to someone who is infected.” 

“If you combine getting most of the people in the country vaccinated with getting the level of virus in the community very, very low, then I believe you are going to be able to say you know for the most part we don’t necessarily have to wear masks,” Fauci said. “When it goes way down, and the overwhelming majority of the people in the population are vaccinated, then I would feel comfortable in saying you know we need to pull back on the masks, we don’t need to have masks.” 

According to a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 63 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have now been distributed across the United States.

CNN gave President Joe Biden the usual special treatment during Tuesday night’s town hall in Milwaukee by avoiding any topics that the administration or other Democrats might deem uncomfortable.

While most of the event wasn’t focused on how Biden was handling the coronavirus pandemic, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper pressed the president on whether he agreed with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that Senate Republicans who voted for the acquittal of former President Trump were “cowards” and if he would be directing his Department of Justice to investigate his predecessor.

But it seems that Biden isn’t the only one who gets the easy way out with the media.

Meanwhile, the scadal surrounding New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his administration’s withholding of data on nursing home deaths during the early months of the pandemic went unmentioned.

Cuomo, who Biden repeatedly praised during the 2020 election cycle, is facing bipartisan backlash after one of his top aides revealed that it had hidden the data from state lawmakers out of fear the damning figures would be used against them. 

Also ignored during the televised event was the dramatic resignation of White House Deputy Press Secretary TJ Ducklo, who was forced to resign Sunday after it was revealed that he berated a Politico reporter with sexist language and threatened to “destroy” her for pursuing a story about his blossoming relationship with Axios reporter Alexi McCammond. 

Biden came in for criticism during the fiasco, with critics pointed to comments he made last month warning administration appointees: “I’m not joking when I say this: If you’re ever working with me and I hear you treat another with disrespect, talking down to someone, I will fire you on the spot. On the spot. No ifs, ands, or buts.” 

Ducklo was initially only given a one-week unpaid suspension after the story broke, which came three weeks after the White House communications staff was made aware of his conduct. 

Cooper did, however, dedicatee the last several minutes of the town hall to ask Biden “what’s it like” to live in the White House.”

“Was it different than you expected it to be in some ways?” he asked at one point. 

During the 2020 campaign, CNN was heavily criticized for its “softball” town hall featuring the Biden..

Despite his recent acquittal during a second impeachment trial in front of the Senate, it seems that there is still some trouble awaiting Donald Trump.

First, there’s the coming congressional investigation into the events of January 6th, that the Democrats will almost certainly use to paint a picture of some ingenious Trump, pulling the strings behind the scenes. They’ll foolishly play him up as some Machiavellian mastermind during that probe, even after having spent the last 5 years attempting to convince the world that Donny was a dunce.

They’ll say anything to get their way, after all.

Now, in addition to Trump’s probable congressional tarnishing off over the horizon, it seems as though he’ll be forced to endure a little guff from the NAACP as well.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and the NAACP are suing former President Donald Trump and his longtime ally Rudy Giuliani for allegedly conspiring with a pair of hate groups to storm the U.S. Capitol and block the Electoral College count in January. And they’re using a 150-year-old law as the basis of the suit.

Thompson and the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization, allege in the suit, obtained by NBC News, that Trump, Giuliani, the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers used “intimidation, harassment, and threats,” to stop the vote count and caused the Jan. 6 Capitol riot in the process. This, they said, violated the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.

“I guess it tells you something when you can use a Ku Klux Klan law from the 1870s,” said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University. “It’s part of a series of laws enacted after the Civil War. Everything old is, unfortunately, new again.”

So, how would this particular law apply?

The statute was first passed following the Civil War to combat KKK violence and allow Black people to take action against hate groups who use “force, intimidation, or threat” to prevent leaders from doing the duties of their office, Levin explained. Particularly, it prohibits people from using violence and conspiracies to keep Congress members from doing their jobs. The law was passed at a time when the KKK was openly, violently terrorizing Black people and Congress members while seeking to block Reconstruction-era reforms for Black people in the South.

“Thompson has standing because they interfered directly with him working to certify the election,” Levin said.

The Trump team was defiant, however, stating plainly that then-President Donald Trump had “no part” in organizing or provoking the violence that occurred.

American households could start receiving a third stimulus check in just a few weeks as congressional Democrats are pushing forward with President Biden’s $2 trillion coronavirus relief package.

As soon as Congress approves the emergency aid bill, Biden will only need to sign the legislation to begin sending out the $1,400 checks. The IRS and Treasury Department would then distribute the cash payments via direct deposit, paper checks, and prepaid debit cards.

It took about two weeks back in April for the federal government to begin distributing the first round of $1,200 payments, and about a week for the next round of $600 in January. House Majority Whip Representative Jim Clyburn expects Americans to begin receiving the money “within a week” of the bill being passed.

The White House is aiming for the first week of March to approve the bill begin the necessary relief measures since supplemental unemployment benefits are set to expire on March 14.

Democratic leaders and House committee chairs met with Biden at the White House during which time House Speaker Nancy Pelosi vowed to have a bill approved and sent to the Senate within the next two weeks as lawmakers wish to enact the proposal before unemployment benefits run out.

The legislation is expected to allow $160 billion for vaccine distribution, raise unemployment benefits to $400 a week through September, and another round of stimulus checks worth $1,400.

It’s unclear which Americans will qualify for the money and while Biden has said the size of the check will not change, he is open to limiting the eligibility for the money. The administration has not defined the income threshold for the payments.

One senior Democrat proposed lowering the threshold for the payments to begin phasing out at $50,000 for individual taxpayers, $75,000 for those filing as head of household, and $100,000 for married couples.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that any American earning $60,000 per year should qualify for the full promised payment.

“The exact details of how it should be targeted are to be determined, but struggling middle-class families need help,” said Yellen.

Yellen predicts that if Congress approves the emergency aid package in a timely manner, the country will return to full employment within the next year otherwise, the labor market could take years to reach its pre-pandemic levels.

The coronavirus pandemic has been a nightmare for the United States, and not only because we had hundreds of thousands of Americans die from this deadly illness but also because of the devastating blow to the economy.

This has been an incredibly tough time for Americans financially.  A great many of our industries rely on people gathering together with disposable income.  Obviously, with a highly contagious virus, there is a greatly reduced desire to be in bars and sports arenas, elbow to elbow with other revelers.

So, in order to try to offset this economic downturn, the US government is providing relief where they can.  This could come in the form of direct payments, or perhaps enhanced unemployment benefits.

Or, in the case of this week’s latest maneuver by the Biden administration, it could come in the form of mortgage assistance. 

The Biden administration announced Tuesday that it would extend the foreclosure moratorium and mortgage forbearance through the end of June.

The actions would block home foreclosures and offer delayed mortgage payments until July, as well as offer six months of additional mortgage forbearance for those who enroll on or before June 30.

The actions are an extension of an order that was originally enacted under the Trump administration in March of last year. President Joe Biden — as one of 17 orders he signed on his first day in office — initially extended the eviction and foreclosure moratoriums through the end of March.

The administration stated that 2.7 million mortgage customers have taken advantage of the program, out of a potential figure of up to 11 million who were eligible.