Court Voids Act's Ban on State Tax Cuts
U.S. District Judge Douglas Cole issued a permanent injunction against a provision in the Biden's Administration's "American Rescue Plan" that bans states from cutting taxes. Cole called the ban "an unconstitutional usurpation of state sovereignty."
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen labeled the ruling "dangerous. First, tax cuts cause inflation. Neither judges nor state governments are qualified to unilaterally inflict this hardship on the country. Only the federal government has the expertise and scope of authority to do so. Second, no state has standing to challenge this law until we actually withhold federal aid. The fact is, Judge Cole has gone out of his way to invent an unprecedented limitation on the federal government's authority to compel states to obey its power over them. Federal aid of the sort included in the Act has traditionally come with strings attached. If states want the federal money they have to abide by the requirements we demand."
Cole's ruling disagreed with Yellen's argument and held that "there is a difference between the long-standing practice of requiring states to match federal funds at a prescribed ratio and dictating state tax policy. Much of the nation's highway system was built using federal funds matched by state funds. However, the decision on how to obtain the matching funds is reserved to each state."
Yellen contended that "the broader issue is whether the country is to have unity or anarchy. Letting subdivisions of government decide for themselves how to manage their finances deviates from the mandate voters granted to President Biden in his landslide victory over Trump and his supporters in last year's election. States seeking to rely on this one judge's opinion will be denied federal rescue aid if they enact any tax cuts. We are confident that in the end the US Supreme Court will side with us on this issue "
China Escalates Threats
Irritated by foreign criticism of some of his policies, President Xi Jinping vowed that "The Chinese people will absolutely not allow any foreign force to bully, oppress or enslave us and anyone who attempts to do so will face broken heads and bloodshed in front of the iron Great Wall of the 1.4 billion Chinese people." The examples of "bullying" that so incensed Xi include objections to China's treatment of the Uyghurs and its culpability for the coronavirus pandemic that has resulted in nearly four million deaths around the globe.
The Uyghurs are an ethnic minority whose members are being held in concentration camps. Atrocities inflicted on these people by the Chinese government include forced labor, religious suppression, brainwashing, and compulsory sterilization. Xi claims "these harsh measures are necessary to remake these backward people into committed socialists" and insisted "this is an internal matter that the International Criminal Court has agreed is outside its jurisdiction." Xi contrasted his country's "organized efforts to deal with troublesome minorities with the chaotic approach used in America where lax gun control allows blacks to murder each other in the streets."
XI totally rejected any blame for the pandemic, saying "the evidence shows that it was the US National Institute for Health that funded the risky 'gain of function' research at our Wuhan Lab. Frustrated that his own country's government blocked this research from being conducted in America, the very devious Dr. Fauci foisted it on us. This germ warfare attack on China would have provoked a justifiable retaliation were it not for our regard for human life that restrains us from striking back. It does, however, remind us of our obligation to extend our protection to our compatriots living in Taiwan."
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken credited "the years of tireless diplomacy exercised by Hunter Biden during his various business dealing in China and around the world for the surprisingly moderate stance taken by Xi. From his point of view I can see that he has good reason to resent the way his country has been treated. If it weren't for the soothing influence of the President's son we might well be at war today."
In related news, according to intelligence reports China is building 100 new long-range missile silos in the northwest corner of the country—a location that US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called "diabolically clever. With the missile solos so close to the Uyghur concentration camps they are off-limits to any potential effort on our part to try to neutralize this threat lest we be the authors of the genocide of the internees."
Supreme Court Upholds Arizona Voting Rules
By a vote of 6-3, the US Supreme Court overturned an appeals court decision invalidating Arizona's ban on ballot harvesting and the requirement that in-person voting must take place at the precinct where the voter is registered to vote. The majority opinion was written by Justice Samuel Alito who called the Arizona rules "appropriate measures for protecting election integrity."
Justice Elena Kagan sharply criticized the ruling in her dissenting opinion. "There can be no question that having any rules will filter out the votes of residents who do not follow those rules," she wrote. "Barring ballot harvesting will reduce the options for people who are too indifferent to make the effort to personally fill out and mail their own vote. Not everyone is as well informed and motivated as Justice Alito thinks they should be. Ballot harvesting allows others to intervene and assist voters to cast their ballots for the candidates who will best represent their interests. And the requirement that people must vote in the precinct in which they reside is just silly. Arizona's fixation on election integrity despite virtually unanimous agreement among experts that there is no evidence that election fraud affected the outcome of 2020 is simply a further demonstration of the systemic racism that has plagued America since 1619."
Alito addressed and rebutted Kagan's arguments, saying "Arizona's law allows anyone who wants to vote by mail to do so. There is a website
https://azsos.gov/votebymail for voters to request either a permanent or a one-time vote-by-mail ballot. Those who choose to vote-by-mail are sent a ballot four weeks ahead of election day. This ballot is accompanied by instructions and a pre-addressed postage-paid return envelope. All the voter has to do is fill out the ballot, sign the envelope, and put it in his mail box. The postman will pick it up and deliver it so it can be counted in the appropriate precinct. There is no need for ballot harvesting. Similarly, voting in the correct precinct in-person is also easy. A voter information pamphlet is mailed to every registered voter's address. This pamphlet gives the location of the precinct where the voter should cast his ballot. A voter would have to go out of his way to end up at the wrong precinct."
In related news, the recent revelation that Carter Jones, a contractor hired by Georgia's secretary of state to monitor election counting in Fulton County, had forwarded a 29-page memo detailing massive election integrity failures to Brad Raffensperger in November of last year. These failures included double-counting of votes, insecure storage of ballots, violations of voter privacy, the mysterious removal of election materials at a vote collection warehouse, and the suspicious movement of too many ballots on Election Day. Raffensperger said "if I had seen this memo back then I would never have certified the election results. It seems that the 2020 election may not have been as clean as I thought it was."
COVID Vaccines Bad for Children & Young Adults
President Biden's insistence that everyone should be vaccinated for COVID is not supported by science. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that for every 100,000 vaccinations given to children and young adults 200 will require hospitalization. Vaccination advocate Dr. Anthony Fauci was quick to point out that "two hospitalizations per 1,000 vaccinations is a small price to pay for being protected against COVID." However, the CDC data for hospitalizations for COVID among children and young adults is only 50 per 100,000. These figures indicate that for this segment of the population the vaccine "cure" is worse than the COVID disease.
Reminded of this inverse risk/reward relationship for young people vis a vis the experimental vaccines, Fauci argued that "the comparison overlooks the possible benefits to others from imposing this risk on young people. We simply don't know whether society as a whole would or wouldn't be better off if everyone is vaccinated. I think the sacrifice of a relatively small percentage of our population needed to thoroughly test this experimental vaccine is worth it."
Another instance of the vaccination's harmful effects on the ultra-young was revealed in the New England Journal of Medicine in an article titled "Preliminary Findings of mRNA Covid-19 Vaccine Safety in Pregnant Persons" by Tom T. Shimabukuro, et al. The article found that miscarriages among women injected with either the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine in the first 20 weeks of their pregnancy were 82%--an outcome that Fauci declared is "no worse than an abortion, which has close to a 100% fatality rate for the fetuses. Our country has survived over 60 million abortions since 1973. Surely, the few thousand miscarriages that the vaccines will induce will hardly be noticed."
In related news, the Biden Administration is preparing to send COVID-19 "surge teams" to communities with low vaccination rates to combat "vaccine hesitancy." White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients said "these teams will go door-to-door to check the vaccination status of residents and offer immediate shots to those who need them. Data from the last six months shows that 99.5% of COVID fatalities have been unvaccinated persons. Our mission is to turn that around."
