NEWS AND VIEWS THAT IMPACT LIMITED CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT
"There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with
power to endanger the public liberty." - - - - John Adams
Traitor Republican Governors are everywhere: Vermont, Iowa, Ohio, Maryland and more.
Republican Vermont Gov. Phil Scott is giving schools the green light to interrogate students about their Thanksgiving activities following the break.
According to Scott, students or parents who admit to violating the state’s holiday travel and gathering rules will be forced to participate in online school for two weeks, he announced via Twitter on Tuesday. The penalty will be reduced to one week if the students in question take a COVID-19 test.
The same quarantine method, Scott claimed, should apply to businesses whose employees decide to celebrate the Thanksgiving holidays with friends and family.
(Huffington Post) - Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Sunday pushed back against Democrats who said his gun control record was out of step with the party, arguing he's the candidate who can get beyond the noise and pass real legislation.
During an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," Sanders touted his lifetime voting record of D-minus with the NRA.
"I do not accept the fact that I have been weak on this issue," Sanders said. "In fact, I have been strong on this issue. In fact, coming from a rural state which has almost no gun control, I think I can get beyond the noise and all of these arguments and people shouting at each other and come up with real, constructive gun control legislation which, most significantly, gets guns out of the hands of people who should not have them."
Asked about Malloy's comments, Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist running for the Democratic nomination, argued that he has taken a strong stance on stricter gun laws.
"I voted in a state, by the way, Jake, which has almost no gun control, not an easy vote -- I voted against the NRA, and I voted to ban certain types of semiautomatic weapons," he said. "I voted to eliminate this gun show loophole which allows people to purchase guns without a background check."
Sanders added that the U.S. needs to do a better job when it comes to mental health and ensure people are able to get the care and counseling they need.
(Politico) - Bernie Sanders has raised about $15 million since he launched his presidential campaign on April 30, his campaign announced Thursday.
The Vermont senator, whose insurgent campaign is challenging front-runner Hillary Clinton from the left, had an average donation of $33.51. The campaign received nearly 400,000 contributions from about 250,000 people, and 99 percent of those donations were $250 or less.
Sanders, an ardent campaign finance reform advocate who has refused a super PAC, doesn’t have much of a fundraising strategy to court big donors. The campaign said that the vast majority of donations were made online.
Sanders has more than $12 million on hand, according to a source close to the campaign, who added that there’s no campaign debt or candidate loans from the candidate. The person added that the campaign has more than 50 staffers on payroll, including 30 people on the ground in Iowa.
It’s a good start for the Sanders campaign, which has set a goal of raising $40 million-$50 million before next year’s Iowa caucuses. The numbers come a day after the Clinton campaign announced it raised more than $45 million in her first quarter as a candidate with 91 percent of the donations $100 or less.
On Tuesday, Sanders released a statement knocking his fellow presidential candidates’ last-minute cash dash before the June 30 FEC deadline, calling it “a national disgrace.” That day, he sent a fundraising email to his supports asking for $3 donations and accusing billionaire class super PACs of “already running ads against our campaign.”
Sanders raised more than $5 million for his last two Senate reelection bids and will continue to court financial support from organized labor, a core constituency of his.
The senator, who has long had an robust social media presence, has been surging in early-state and national polls and has hosted huge crowds in Iowa, New Hampshire and progressive cities across the country. One day after his campaign hosted the biggest rally of the cycle with 10,000 people in Madison, Wisconsin, a new Quinnipiac Iowa poll showed him polling at 33 percent in the state, up 18 points in two months.
As a Conservative Constitutional Federalist I actually agree with many points that Bernie makes. Both parties have been taken over by Big Government loving Wall Street special interests looking to treat the U.S. Treasury as their personal bank account.
Liberal, limp-wristed Vermont caves to Sharia Law and removes a bacon advertisement because it offends Muslims.
The news article below concerns the response of a Vermont community to a Muslima who was offended by a public display of the word “bacon”.
Such stories are not all that unusual these days. In fact, a complete cave-in after a single culturally enriched complaint (or even before any such complaint is made) is becoming more and more typical.
It’s not the just the surrender to sharia that’s so dismaying, but the obsequious, truckling, craven dhimmitude of it. A thousand years ago, Christians and Jews submitted with full cowering humility after seeing the murderous brutality and rapine of Muslim invaders. Today, in the nominally free United States of America, full surrender occurs just because someone is offended, before there is even a whisper of violence.
Advertisement removed after resident expresses offense Business advertises food, neighbor offended
WINOOSKI, Vt. —A sign on a lamp post at the bottom of the Winooski Circle displayed the words “Yield Sneakers Bacon” until Friday morning. The bistro owners took it down.
It got there as part of “Operation Bloom.”
A city program put it in place to keep its flower beds beautiful. If businesses do some gardening they can post an advertisement where they do it, but the word “bacon” on the Sneakers Bistro sign started a discussion about diversity on the Winooski Front Porch Forum.
It started with a post from one woman who wrote that the sign was insensitive to those who do not consume pork. She said as a Muslim she is personally offended by it.
The owners of Sneakers spoke to WPTZ. They say they’ve reached out to the individual who made the post and proactively took the sign down. They also say they regret any harm caused by the sign, and that their goal was never to cause stress or bad feelings.
“It’s nice that they were respectful enough to take it down,” said Caleb Wiley an area resident, “but I also think they shouldn’t have, or had to at any right.”
Other Winooski residents joined the conversation, and online too. One post reads the word “bacon” is not offensive. It’s something that describes food.
Winooski’s city manager spoke on behalf of the city. She said:
“The cool part of living in a diverse community is that it’s not always comfortable. It’s a fascinating place with lots of opportunities for conversation. The City has to pay attention to a lot of factors while acting within what we can regulate,” said Katherine “Deac” Decarreau.
Others recognize it’s a complicated issue, too.
“I respect her religion and her right to believe what she wants but I’m pretty sure the first amendment extends to bacon and the selling of it.”
Sneakers’ owners say their goal is to provide a joyful place for the entire community.
The Winooski Islamic Community Center was not available for comment.
For the record: There is a polite, reasonable way to respond to absurd complaints of this sort, one that does not involve abject surrender. The company’s statement should have read something like this:
It is unfortunate if someone’s feelings were hurt by our use of the word “bacon”. However, this is the United States of America, where freedom of speech is a universally respected right. Anyone who is offended by bacon is perfectly entitled to exercise his or her right of free speech and issue a counter-bacon statement in response.
U.S. tax dollars (instead of private bank loans) are being used to fund a granite products company in Brazil that pays poverty wages to put Americans out of work.
Granite manufacturers are one of many U.S. industries struggling to compete with foreign competition -- which makes it odd that the federal government is subsidizing a Brazilian granite project.
The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) is a federal agency that subsidizes U.S. businesses that set up operations in foreign countries. In 2012, OPIC approved a $6 million taxpayer-backed loan to support a U.S. company expanding its Brazilian operation that extracts granite and cuts it into slabs for countertops to ship to the U.S. and other countries.
The OPIC subsidy obviously helps the recipient — Wisenbaker Building Supply — but it hurts American companies that excavate granite or shape granite blocks into countertops in the U.S. reports the Washington Examiner.
U.S. rock quarries have pared back operations over recent decades. In Barre, Vt., jobs in the industry amount to one-third of the1960s peak, Barre Granite Association's Executive Director Ed Larson told a local newspaper last summer. “Mainly because of foreign competition," the paper said.
“Imports chip away at Vermont Granite Industry,” a Boston Globe headline declared in 2008. “The competition remains fierce overseas,” the article reported, “where quarry workers earn as little as a few dollars a week. The cost of extracting and cutting the granite is so low that even after the cost of shipping it to the United States it is cheaper than Vermont's.”
“All the pressure is foreign,” Joe Timilty of Massachusetts-based USA-Granite told me over the phone.
American companies will always complain about foreign competition, but this isn’t a matter of free trade. This is the federal government subsidizing foreign competition.
Wisenbaker is a U.S. construction company with many operations around the globe, including the granite quarry in a rural region of Brazil. The $6 million taxpayer loan was to help Wisenbaker “make investments related to granite quarries in Brazil for export of granite slabs to China and the U.S. for homebuilding industry,” as one OPIC public summary puts it.
Many American companies import granite blocks and form them into countertops, and so expanding Wisenbakers’ granite-cutting operation in Brazil hurts U.S. counter-top makers.
Also, hundreds of granite quarries still operate in the U.S. This Brazilian operation is their competition, and the U.S. government is subsidizing it.
Rock of Ages Quarry Rock of Ages is a granite quarrying and finishing mine located in Graniteville, Vermont. It was founded in 1885. The company employs around 230 people. But the Feds use American taxpayer dollars to mine cheaper granite in Brazil and put U.S. workers out of work.
An alliance of Libertarians, Constitutional Federalists, Liberals and Socialists is coming together to limit the 1984 Police Surveillance State.
BURLINGTON, Vt., (UPI) -- U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (Independent - Vt.) said Friday he has asked the National Security Agency whether it has spied on members of Congress and other officials.
In a posting on his official congressional website, Sanders said he has written to the NSA director, Gen. Keith Alexander, to ask whether the agency has monitored telephone, email and Internet communication by others in Congress or in other elective offices. .
"Has the NSA spied, or is the NSA currently spying, on members of Congress or other American elected officials?" Sanders asked in the letter. .
The post on Sanders' website said spying includes "gathering metadata on calls made from official or personal phones, content from websites visited or emails sent, or collecting any other data from a third party not made available to the general public in the regular course of business?" .
Sanders -- who has introduced legislation to restrict powers of the NSA and the FBI to secretly monitor Americans' electronic communications -- said he is "deeply concerned" by disclosures that the NSA has collected massive amounts of data on phone calls, emails and Internet activity "by millions of innocent Americans without any reason to even suspect involvement in illegal activities." .
He said the United States "must be vigilant and aggressive" in protecting against terrorist attacks but noted a federal judge in Washington recently called the surveillance policies "almost Orwellian" in ruling the practice is likely unconstitutional.
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The Obama administration Friday filed a formal appeal of the ruling.
Matt Drudge, Bernie Sanders and Ron Paul vs Barack Obama, George Bush and Big Brother . Say what you want about Drudge, but his site has been a compendium of the exploits and abuses of Big Brother. Say what you want about Paul and Sanders, but they have both warned for years about the dangers of the Big Brother state. . Say what you want about any other issues, but on this matter Drudge, Paul and Sanders are on the side of Jefferson, Madison and Ben Franklin, who said we have a republic, if we can keep it. We will only keep our republic if we end the abuses that unfold every day, whether it is the abuses of the IRS against the Tea Party, the abuses of the national security state against our liberties or the abuses of big business against our privacy when we bank, shop, walk, talk, drive, email or make phone calls. . Yes, some secrecy is needed, and some eavesdropping is necessary. But what is happening is wrong. What is happening is out of control. What is happening, the way it is happening, and the magnitude of what is happening, poses the great danger to the American republic that is more dangerous than any plot hatched by any terrorist. . From my experience with these matters I warn: Beware of secrecy imposed by elitists of any kind who claim that only they know what is good for us, only they are allowed to know which rights they will allow us to have, and only they can decide whether they tell us which rights they choose to attack, undermine and destroy rather than preserve, protect and defend. . Personally I am willing to accept a little more danger to my life from terrorists than the greater danger posed by those seeking to destroy our rights under the pretense that they are making us safe. What say you? . See more at The Hill.com
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.” George Orwell 1984
New England - Once the heartland of the GOP, now the wasteland of the GOP
The GOP is becoming a regional party of the South and Mid West.
Republicans have ceded entire sections of the nation to the Socialist-Democrats.
Not being competitive will over time make it almost impossible to win the Electoral College or Congress.
By Gary;
That window of victory in the Electoral College gets more narrow every election for the right-of-center Republicans. In the Presidential race the GOP has lost all of New England and the Mid-Atlantic states down to Virginia, lost the Great Lakes states, lost Florida again and lost the entire West Coast.
To be a winning party you need to be a true nationwide party.
New England is a good example. In the next Congress, there won’t be a single Republican House member from the entire region of New England and just two Senators: Susan Collins of Maine and Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire. The only two GOP House members from all of New England were defeated in New Hampshire.
The New England Region
12 US Senators - 2 are Republican (down from 4)
21 Congressmen - 0 are Republican
Even with a Massachusetts Governor as the Republican nominee the election was a disaster. Mitt Romney did not even bother to try and carry his home state and failed to carry any New England state.
Some in the party said the trouble this year was mechanical in nature and blame presidential turnout and polling for their losses. Others are of the thought that until the GOP changes its tone about social issues, any Republican will have a difficult time winning federal office in New England.
New England voters gather around to see a rare site - the nearly extinct Republican elephant.
Rep. LaTourette (R-OH): GOP Has To Be a National Party La Tourette is both right and wrong in this video. He is stupid to kiss-up to CNN and trash the Tea Party. Without the Tea Party the GOP would not control the House. But he is correct that to be a national political party you cannot cede to the opposition party huge parts of the nation.
The last time congressional Republicans were practically decimated in the region was 2006 and 2008, banner years for Democrats. Then, the problem was Iraq. Now it is social issues.
Many thoughtful Republicans blame stupid candidates like Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock and Missouri Senate hopeful Todd Akin for exacerbating the problem with remarks about rape.
Many also blame the lengthy GOP presidential primary they said lasted too long and brought up issues in endless live debate after debate on TV that do play well in many areas of the country. True believers love to have that red meat thrown at them, but not all issues need to be shoved in people's faces with glee. Tact is important.
Defeated Massachusetts
Senator Scott Brown.
Race and Politics - The Republicans cannot blame minorities for their poor showing like they do in many other parts of the nation. New England is still Anglo to the core.
94% White - Maine
94% White - New Hampshire
94% White - Vermont
84% White - Massachusetts
77% White - Connecticut
76% White - Rhode Island
Compare those numbers to Texas where Hispanics, Blacks and Asians together make up 52% of the population.
State Legislatures - The state elections are also a disaster for Republicans. In New Hampshire the GOP lost the lower house while in Maine Republicans lost both the House and Senate.
The only legislative chamber Republicans control in the entire region is the New Hampshire state Senate.
The GOP needs to get out of people's lives and bedrooms
Campaign on jobs, privacy, property rights and the Bill of Rights.
Freedom. What a novel concept. Leaving people alone might even win votes.
Bread and Butter - The GOP needs to win the hearts and minds of a huge mass of voters. People always vote their pocketbooks. That is why Socialist Democrats are popular. They love to steal other people's money and give it away to buy votes.
Giveaways are fun for all, but employment is #1 to the folks. Republicans need to stick to bread and butter issues at the Federal level like jobs and the taxes and debt that crushes job creation. Always structure your position around helping voters to have a job to feed their kids.
Embrace the Bill of Rights.
The GOP needs to stop paying lip service and
enthusiastically embrace all 10 Amendments, not just
the first and second.
The Bill of Rights - Republicans need to read the Bill of Rights. Really read it and really understand it. Add in the Federalist Papers for some bedside reading.
I know that reading and understanding these documents is a major step for the Big Government loving GOP.
If Republicans follow the Bill of Rights they can deflect 90% of hot button fucking insane social issues to the states as per the 10th Amendment.
If the GOP understood the Bill of Rights they could campaign against the Big Brother surveillance society instead of voting with Democrats to create it.
You cannot be an "opposition" party to the Democrats when you work with them to grow a massive, centralized unconstitutional Orwellian State.
But what do I know? I am just a "lunatic" fringe Constitutional Federalist. . (Ballotnews.org)
The map of party control of state legislatures looks somewhat better for Republicans than the Electoral College map which is a disaster. But the real action is with spending and Big Brother government in Washington, not at the state level.
Republican Weakness - New England may keep the US Senate in Democrat hands
The GOP in the region is so weak that the states of Maine, Rhode Island, Massachusetts,Vermont and Connecticut do not send a single Republican House member to Washington.
Republicans could lose the Senate seats of Maine and Massachusetts.
Democratic control of the Senate means repealing Obamacare is dead in the water.
New England was once the heart of Republican Party strength. Now the GOP nominee from Massachusetts cannot carry his own state in a national election.
For all the talk about the importance of Ohio no one mentions Massachusetts and Romney. If Romney wins it will be the first time since Woodrow Wilson in 1916 that an incoming President failed to carry his own state.
To save Socialist Obamacare the Democrats are counting on GOP weakness in New England to help them pick up Republican-held Senate seats in New England and construct a barrier against losses in Nebraska and elsewhere that could erase their majority.
In Senate math, the loss of two seats in New England complicates the GOP calculation for majority control. Republicans would have to gain a net of six seats while holding suddenly uncertain Indiana, or a net of five seats if Romney wins the presidency.
Democrats currently have the edge 53-47, including two independents who caucus with the party reports the Washington Times.
Scott Brown for Senate - "Growing Up"
The National Republican Senatorial Committee has stopped spending money in Maine, where former Gov. Angus King, an independent, leads in the polls and is seen as likely to side with Democrats if he wins.
In Massachusetts, Republican Sen. Scott Brown is suddenly considered the underdog against Elizabeth Warren as the state is poised to easily back President Obama over former Gov. Mitt Romney for president.
Republican hopes of swiping the seat in Connecticut are fading. Democratic Rep. Christopher S. Murphy has steadied his campaign against former wrestling executive Linda McMahon, who spent $50 million on an unsuccessful bid in 2010 and $42.6 million and counting this year. McMahon has had to fight the state’s Democratic tilt which has undercut the GOP candidate’s prospects.
Massachusetts Senate A 47% - 47% tie
A new Boston Globe poll shows the race between Senator Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren in a dead heat, with ample opportunity for both candidates to win the nation’s most expensive Senate race.
The survey indicates Brown holds a razor-thin 45 percent to 43 percent lead over Warren among likely voters, well within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points. Brown’s lead evaporates, with 47 percent for each candidate, when voters who are undecided are asked which candidate they are leaning toward. (Boston Globe)
Colonel Scott Brown
(R - Massachusetts)
For years, Massachusetts was one of the most solidly Republican states in the nation. From the founding of the Republican Party through 1928, the state voted for only a single Democrat, in 1912, when the Progressive wing of the Republican Party split off to form a short-lived third party.
But as time passed and more and more Irish and other minorities moved to Boston, the Democrats' strength grew. By the late 1800s Boston was a mostly Democratic city, by the 1930s the state was Democratic in national elections, and by the 1960s it was donkeys all the way down.
Today the Republican Party is now virtually extinct in the state legislature, and the state hasn't sent a Republican to the House of Representatives since 1996. But in January 2010 the political world was shocked when an obscure state senator defeated Attorney General Martha Coakley in a special election to claim Ted Kennedy's seat by a five-point margin. Coakley won the solidly liberal western portion of the state and Boston, but it wasn't enough to offset Scott Brown's margins in the suburbs.
Rhode Island House of Representatives
The weakness of the GOP in much of New England is shown in the lower house of the Rhode Island legislature. There are only nine Republicans out of 75 members.
Will Republican Senator Randy Brock become Vermont's first African-American Governor?
Hopefully the Leftist voters of the People's Republic of Vermont will wake up and elect a patriot as their Governor. Hopefully, but don't hold your breath waiting.
Senator Randy Brock, the 2012 Republican candidate for Governor of the State of Vermont, served as Vermont’s 28th State Auditor. The State Auditor is one of Vermont’s five statewide Constitutional Officers. He currently is in his second term as a member of the Vermont State Senate.
His experience includes domestic and international leadership in a multi-national corporation, experience as CEO of a fast-growing entrepreneurial firm that was packaged and sold to a public company, national non-profit board leadership, and service as a statewide elected official, a legislator, and a presidential-appointee.
Prior to entering public service, Randy served as executive vice president for risk oversight for Fidelity Investments, one of the world’s largest providers of financial services.
A Vietnam veteran, Randy left the Regular Army as a captain in the Military Police Corps. He holds the Bronze Star Medal for meritorious service and the Army Commendation Medal with 1st Oak Leaf Cluster.
He and his wife, Andrea, have one daughter. They have resided in Swanton, a town of 6,200 in northwestern Vermont, near the Canadian border, for the past 25 years. Randy has been a Vermont resident for over 40 years
