Celebrate God's Blessings on America

Celebrate God's Blessings on America

President Trump Beats the Green Wave and the Liberal Media

Originally published at Fox News  Newt Gingrich

The big story of the 2018 election is how totally the news media missed the issue of what waves were building.

There was no red wave. If there had been, Republicans would have kept the House and had even more pickups in the Senate.

There was no blue wave. If there had been, Democrats would have gained control of the Senate.

There was an underreported green wave, which attempted to drown Republicans in left-wing money.

There was the usual anti-Republican liberal media wave, which tried to prop up Democrats.

This was a fascinatingly complex election in which unique Republican personalities won re-election as governors in New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Maryland — three clearly blue and one purple state in the Northeast.

The biggest change in this election was the sheer volume of money generated by left-wing billionaires and activist groups who hated Trump.

In congressional race after congressional race, Republicans suddenly found millions poured in against them on a scale that resembled Senate races in the past.

House Republicans had hurt themselves by allowing the number of House incumbent retirees to become larger than any time since 1930, when the Brookings Institutionstarted tracking it. Breaking an 88-year record for retirees is a tough way to start an off-year election for the incumbent president’s party.

Despite this institutional disadvantage, President Trump’s House losses were far less than either the 54 seats President Clinton lost in 1994 or the 63 seats President Obama lost in 2010.

Measured against the Clinton-Obama standard, you would have to give President Trump an A+ for keeping Republican House losses to a minimum – and setting the stage for a Republican majority comeback in the 2020 presidential election.

In the Senate, the President, working with Leader Mitch McConnell, put together a great, focused campaign that has reversed historic norms and gained seats. In fact, as I am writing this, it appears that enough Republicans will have won senate seats that it will be far more difficult for Democrats to have a shot at winning a Senate majority in 2020 than anyone might have expected.

The best example of the green wave’s failure is Congressman Beto O’Rourke. He became the darling of the media – the Left’s political rock star to battle Senator Ted Cruz (who the media despises). O’Rourke raised more than $70 million, a record for U.S. Senate races – and an amount we used to associate with presidential campaigns. After all the liberal media hype, and the sheer volume of money from the green wave, O’Rourke lost. Once again, the voters of Texas disappointed the liberal media by refusing to elect their darling.

Republicans gained Senate seats to an unprecedented degree, because President Trump personally crisscrossed the county holding massive rallies (which dwarfed the size of Obama’s rallies).

This was President Trump’s victory, and he and Senate Leader McConnell will use it well to continue getting judges and other nominees confirmed, to block left-wing actions by the Pelosi Democrats, and to set the stage for key legislative achievements the American people want (probably starting with infrastructure investments and reforms).

I will write in more detail in a few days on the green wave and the scale of the Left’s commitment to defeat President Trump.

For the moment, suffice it to say that the President defeated both the money wave and the liberal media – and had a very successful midterm election for a first-term president.

Not everyone should vote

Jay Baker

Voting, restricting, demonizing, question begging and shooting the most electoral, racist, anti-white, fallacious and propagandic fakeries in the week's fake news. Not everyone should vote On the day before some 100 million Americans (most of them actually citizens) went to the polls to vote in local, state and national elections this week, the globalist mouthpiece publication Foreign Policy (FP) asked, "Why is it so hard to vote in America?" The editorial posits that a voter turnout that lags behind socialist utopias like Belgium, Sweden and Denmark indicates that voting in America is too difficult. FP laments that the United States has onerous roadblocks in some states, like a so-called complicated registration process, requiring people who vote to actually be who they say they are (voter ID), dumping inactive voters off the rolls, requiring voter information to match government databases, voting during the week on a normal work day and no established national holiday for voting. America has a huge "scheduling problem," FP claims, because, "To cast their ballots, many Americans have to rush to their polling stations before work or face long lines at the end of the day. That's because voting in the United States is done in the middle of the week." So FP suggests a number of things the U.S. can do to encourage more voting. Among its suggestions are automatic voter registration, establishing a national voting holiday and expanded early voting.  The idea that voting in the U.S. is difficult is fake news indeed. Registration opportunities abound. Kids get registered at school when they turn 18, they can register at the local courthouse and many civic organizations set up registration booths at local fairs, pageants and celebration day events. The federal government has online registration, as do many — if not all — states. In the weeks leading up to the registration deadline, government men and celebrities alike take to the airwaves to encourage registration and explain how to begin the process. When voting day comes, polls are open anywhere from 11 to 15 hours… and longer if any hint of ballot trouble, foul weather or impropriety arises. Some states require a photo ID, but everything from writing a check to applying for government services requires one, so not more than one in a million adults are likely without one. Then there is early voting that goes on for weeks, and absentee voting. A greater percentage of whites vote than blacks — except in 2008 and 2012 when racist blacks turned out to vote for the half-black man simply because he was black — but only by a couple of percentage points. And older people are much more likely to vote than younger people by a wide margin. People aged 60 and older turn out at a rate of 70 percent which debunks the argument that voting is difficult and standing in line is a problem. Almost 60 percent of people aged 30 and up vote. It's the young people who don't participate, and all of them are technologically savvy enough to find a way to vote if they want to. So what we have here is that FP believes everyone must vote, and conventional wisdom holds that everyone should. As the boss recently noted: You are vilified and looked down on for not voting. Witness the rise of the "I voted" buttons you will see everywhere on Election Day. Oh how they want to make our country like the socialist utopia where voter participation is 100 percent! The opposite of the yellow star during WWI. Those who don't wear an "I voted" sticker are supposed to feel ashamed. But the truth is, if you're too dumb to know who's running or what they stand for, you shouldn't vote. If you think that transferring wealth from one segment of society to another is a good idea that will create a society of equality, you shouldn't vote. And if you're too lazy stand in line when all the old codgers who can manage totter up to the polling place do it a smile on their faces, you shouldn't vote. FP has decided that everyone wants to vote but more than 30 percent of those who don't vote didn't vote because they were being hindered, even though there's nothing to back that premise. You can be sure that if anyone was denied an opportunity to vote there'd be video of it on the interwebz immediately. But all that's assuming that voting makes a difference anyway. On a national scale, I'm not so sure that's the case. Your vote just determines which cronies get the choicest seats at the table. Correction: Socialists want everyone to vote except straight white men Seems the boss erred when he said that socialists want a utopia where voter participation is 100 percent. Stephen Clifford, author and former CEO of the King Broadcasting Company and National Mobile Television, says that the U.S. government should "prohibit straight white males from voting" in U.S. elections as a way to "save" democracy. As PJMedia reports: "I think it's the only hope for democracy in America and I will be leading a great movement to prohibit straight white males, who I believe supported Donald Trump by about 85 percent, from exercising the franchise and I think that will save our democracy," Clifford said during an interview after speaking at the forum "Destroying the Myths of Market Fundamentalism," which was organized by the Center for Study of Responsive Law – a group former independent presidential candidate Ralph Nader founded in 1968. Umm. Mr. Clifford: America is not a democracy. And if you cut out straight white men you're going to bring down the voter participation rate, which is going to make heads explode over at FP. Who needs white men, anyway? Certainly not Kirsten Powers, who used to make sense — at least for a leftist — but seems to have lost her marbles since she started hanging out with the gay white guys at CNN. Powers — who was married to one white guy and is now engaged to another — was on a special Sunday edition of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon — thearticulate light-skinned black guy who dates a white a guy but still hates white guys — and said that "white men are very violent and a problem." The comments came during a discussion of Lemon's recent nonsensical statement that "We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men…" Said Powers: If all these school shootings were done by someone from the Middle East, there'd be a very different reaction to them. I think if they were frankly done by African-Americans, it would be a very different reaction to them. So what we see here is we ignore — and we have statistics here showing that white men are very violent and a problem, and nothing's being done about it. And then we have the President of the United States talking about a bunch of brown people like they're the terrorists. I mean, we have a county where we — every other day it seems like a white woman calls the police on a black man for barbecuing or gardening or delivering the mail, and yet we sit quietly while all these white men are out, you know, terrorizing people essentially. I mean, every time there's one of these shootings, and it's a white man. As we noted last week, black men commit far more crimes with guns — murders included — than whites, even though they make up less than 7 percent of the population. But it's politically incorrect to talk about that. So Powers is right in one respect. If these shootings were "frankly done by African-Americans, it would be a very different reaction to them." The MSM would ignore them like it does the problem of blacks killing an inordinate number of people. Politifact is unbiased, just ask them Politifact has checked itself for bias and failed to find any. Begging the question, much? Politifact has just delved into logical fallacy. We can trust them because they say so. Here's how they proved their point: Not only have they given negative ratings to Donald Trump, they also have given negative ratings to Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters and — shocker of all — Barack Obama. The more one makes inaccurate statements, the more they fact check them. They correct their errors. They don't take money from anonymous sources, political parties, politician or any other source they Politifact deems has or creates a conflict of interest (except leftwing organizations). We're so glad they cleared that up. I guess we were imagining things when we pointed out they were biased and fake news so many times in this space. But if you're as far left as Politifact, even the center looks right wing. 60 Minutes lies about mass shooters' "weapon of choice" The unhinged anti-Trumper Scott Pelley, fired from his job as anchor of CBS Evening News and booted over to 60 Minutes, continues to make stuff up. This week it was a report that said that the AR-15 is the "weapon of choice" for mass shooters. Pelley mentioned five shootings in his report: Tree of Life Synagogue (Oct. 27, 2018), Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. (Feb. 14, 2018), the church at Sutherland Springs, Texas (Nov. 5, 2017), Las Vegas concert (Oct. 1, 2017), and Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Conn. (Dec. 14, 2012). The report is no doubt a prelude to the coming attempts to ban so-called "assault rifles" that are sure to come now that Democrats have control of the House of Representatives. Communist Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York, who bears a stunning resemblance to Jabba the Hut, didn't even wait until the smoke cleared in the Thousand Oaks, California shooting — which did not involve a rifle of any kind — before going off on an anti-gun rant on Twitter. But according to research from globalist think tank Rockefeller Institute of Government, rifles have been used in less than 29 percent of all mass shootings. Which stands to reason, given that the FBI Crime Stats show that only 403 people were killed by criminals using rifles in 2017 — fewer than died from attacks by knives, clubs and hammers and hands and feet. So once again Pelley is fake news. Calls for bans on so-called "assault weapons" are not about saving lives. They are about restricting your freedoms.

Google News Biased Toward the Left 4-to-1

By Corinne Weaver | October 17, 2018 4:51 PM EDT

Is Google News neutral? Not according to a new report that studied the issue and determined that its results were skewed liberal.

AllSides, a media technology group, spent two weeks analyzing Google News’ homepage and determined that news outlets with a left-leaning bias were always at the top of the list. The study determined that out of 123 individual measurements, 65% of the news links provided were liberal, while only 16% of the links were conservative. That’s a 4-to-1 ratio. 20% of the links given were considered to be from a middle perspective.

The study pointed out that the positioning of the news was very important. Overall, left-wing news tended to be in the top two results, and right-wing news was always below the fold, 12 positions down.

AllSides wrote, “The numbers are so significantly strong and consistent in favor of news media sources from the left that the overall conclusion of a leftward bias is well justified.” Later on in the study, it stated, “AllSides analyzes the news on a daily basis and have often found it difficult to find perspectives from the right when using Google News.”

In the methodology, AllSides noted that sites like ABC, Buzzfeed, CBS, CNN, NBC, NPR, Politico, Time, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Huffington Post were heavily favored, while sites like Breitbart, The Blaze, The Daily Caller, Fox News, and the National Review were almost always below the fold. Even some of the news considered to be in the center wasn’t necessarily neutral, as the study included NPR, Bloomberg, Al Jazeera, and BBC.

91% of the 123 measurements “indicated at least some preference for news media with a left bias over sources with a right bias.” It went even further: apparently 80 percent of the 123 measurements preferred left-wing news over news from a center source.

USA Today reported that AllSides CEO John Gable said, “Right now, technology overly puts a spotlight on the most popular perspective, or the perspective that most fits you, and that cuts out other perspectives. It reduces an individual’s ability to decide for themselves or know the whole story.”

Google told USA Today that the “search is not used to set a political agenda.” The search engine company also denied any bias towards a political ideology.

If tax reform were to be gone,people would have $26,906 less in take-home pay over next 10 years.

Rachel del Guidice

Reporter

A new report from The Heritage Foundation shows that if tax reform were to be repealed or expire, the average American would have $26,906 less in take-home pay over the subsequent 10 years.

“After 2025, most of the individual tax cuts revert to prior law. The tax cuts expire,” Adam Michel, a policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation’s Thomas A. Roe Institute for Economic Policy Studies, told The Daily Signal in an email.

Michel is a co-author of the study, released Wednesday, that found that repealing the tax reform or letting it expire and causing taxes to revert to their former rates and structure would leave Americans “$26,906 poorer over the following 10 years.”

“To solidify the current broad-based economic expansion, Congress must make the tax cuts permanent,” Michel said. “A series of three new bills that make up ‘Tax Reform 2.0’ have passed the House.

“The package would make much of last year’s tax reform permanent, introduce new simplifications for family saving, and provide a helping hand for new small businesses,” he said.

Take-home pay for the average family of four could drop by $45,739 over 10 years, according to the study, and taxpayers could face decreasing job openings, lower incomes, and higher taxes in every congressional district.

The tax-reform package, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act—which cleared Congress Dec. 20 and went into effect Jan. 1 after President Donald Trump signed it into law—repealed the corporate alternative minimum tax and cut the corporate income-tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, among other changes.

According to Americans for Tax Reform, a conservative-leaning taxpayer-advocacy group, 90 percent of workers in America are receiving more take-home pay due to the tax reforms.

The group has cataloged 730 examples of business expansions, job-benefit increases, utility-rate reductions, pay raises and bonuses, and 401(k)-match increases, all because of the tax reform.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi has said that she would repeal the tax-reform law.

The Heritage study says that repealing tax reform would be detrimental and contends that lawmakers instead should work to pass “Tax Reform 2.0.”

“Instead of repealing the tax cuts, or rolling parts of them back, Congress should make the [Tax Cuts and Jobs Act] permanent and reduce the deficit by reducing spending to align with projected revenues,” the report argues.

“A balanced budget and lower tax rates will lead to a larger economy by both increasing the capital stock and allowing Americans to keep more of what they earn,” it says.

POSTED ON OCTOBER 5, 2018 BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN ACADEMIC LEFT, BRETT KAVANAUGH, DEMOCRATS, MEDIA BIAS

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Brett Kavanaugh will be confirmed to the Supreme Court tomorrow, bringing to a close one of the most appalling episodes in American political history. The Democrats’ shameful treatment of Robert Bork in 1987 has distorted our politics–not just the politics of the Supreme Court–for the last 30 years. But the slanders the Democratic Party directed toward Kavanaugh were, if anything, even more disgraceful. We will feel their impact for many years to come.

So, looking to the future, what are the notable features of our political landscape?

1) The validation of violence for political ends. This didn’t start with the Kavanaugh nomination. It has been brewing for a while. Barack Obama famously said, “If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.” Antifa has been taking Obama at his word for some years.

What we are seeing today is mob action by Democratic Party activists: harassing Republicans when they go out to dinner or walk through airports; busing activists to Republicans’ homes to harass them and frighten their children; invading Republican Congressional offices with threatening mobs; and, in some cases, shooting or violently assaulting Republican office-holders. I wrote yesterday about Kellie Paul’s appeal to Cory Booker to withdraw his incitements to violence. Maxine Waters is another prominent Democrat who has endorsed immoral and potentially illegal harassment of Republicans.

Why are Democrats confident that political violence is a one-way street? Conservatives are, on average, better armed than liberals and–I think it is safe to say–more personally formidable. Yet liberals clearly have no fear that conservatives will respond to their violence and mob intimidation in kind. I think that is because they assume we are better than they are. We care about our country, we value its institutions, and we try to maintain the basic presumption of good faith that underlies our democratic system.

The Democrats are right to think that we are better than they are, but conservatives’ patience is not infinite. The potential for significant political violence is higher today than it has been at any time since the Great Depression, and perhaps since the Civil War. The Democrats are sowing the wind, and they may reap the whirlwind.

2) The final discrediting of the liberal media. This is nothing new, of course. But the manner in which the liberal press jumped on board with the absurd allegations against Judge Kavanaugh exposed reporters and editors, perhaps to an unprecedented degree, as nothing more than Democratic Party activists. The press publicized the most absurd fabrications about Kavanaugh as though they were news: He organized gang rapes when he was in high school!

And they solemnly declared Christine Ford to be “credible,” when the facts showed that she had massively changed (i.e., fabricated) her story in collaboration with Democratic Judiciary Committee staffers, and when every witness identified by her repudiated her account. The press elevated a transparent liar to the status of a heroine, for political purposes.

Not to mention the ridiculous hypocrisy of smearing a man with the strongest possible reputation on the basis of an unsupported 36-year-old allegation, dating to high school, while studiously ignoring the far more recent and actually true claims of sexual abuse that have been levied against a succession of Democrats. If you are a Democratic Party reporter–as virtually all of them are–any smear will do, as long as it is directed against a Republican. Otherwise, you avert your eyes.

A lot of voters who are perhaps too young to remember Rathergate learned something about the “mainstream” media in the course of the press’s crazed attacks on Judge Kavanaugh.

3) The yawning chasm between our institutions and our people. Not just the press, but America’s institutions in general disgraced themselves by endorsing the Democratic Party’s absurd smear campaign. Take the American Bar Association–please! The liberal ABA has long been a joke when it comes to politics, but to its credit, its committee on nominations unanimously acknowledged that Brett Kavanaugh is “well qualified” to serve on the Supreme Court, its highest rating. But ABA President Robert Carlson, apparently going rogue, authored an anti-Kavanaugh letter. Within the last few hours, it was reported that the ABA is “re-evaluating” its endorsement of Kavanaugh. Of course it is: the ABA is a Democratic Party tool. I know, I was a member for many years.

Then we have the universities. Again, this is nothing new, but the facts are particularly stark, given the thinness of the Democrats’ attacks on Kavanaugh. Kavanaugh graduated from Yale and Yale Law School, and after an initial expression of support from those who had anything to do with him at Yale Law School, the worm turned. Academics, including those at Yale, pretty much universally joined the Democrats’ lynch party.

And Kavanaugh has been teaching for some years at Harvard Law School at the invitation of former law school dean and now Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. This is because Kavanaugh is universally acknowledged to be a brilliant legal scholar. But 40 Harvard Law professors signed a letter opposing their colleague’s confirmation to the Court, and the law school has announced that Kavanaugh will not be returning as a teacher.

Meanwhile, polls show that most Americans want Kavanaugh to be confirmed. Most people know little about the legal issues that Supreme Court justices address, but they have a basic sense of fairness. It wasn’t hard to see that the Democrats behaved in an outrageous manner, or that Kavanaugh is a brilliant and decent man.

Professors at Harvard Law School, Yale Law School and the like think their opinions should influence the rest of us because they are exceptionally smart and knowledgeable. Does anyone buy that claim anymore? I certainly don’t, and I graduated from Harvard Law School. I agree with Bill Buckley: I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University.

4) In that context, Donald Trump is the man of the hour. The incoherent Democrats are reduced to street violence, the press is discredited, our institutions are mostly pathetic. Who benefits? President Donald J. Trump. Trump truly is the man of the hour. Trump has been on to the “fake news” press from the beginning. And if there ever was any fake news, it is Christine Ford’s Democrat-engineered lie. Trump represents normal Americans who didn’t go to Harvard or Yale but have a modicum of common sense, which many professors at those institutions obviously don’t.

Trump nominated a solidly conservative justice to the Supreme Court, and steadfastly stood by him despite the Democrats’ wacko smears. I don’t think the Democrats understand how many millions of people view their smear campaign with contempt, and appreciate President Trump for standing by his nominee.

Who is about to be confirmed. This is a huge victory for those who vote for Republicans but sometimes despair as to whether it does any good. It is victory, not defeat, that motivates voters. Confirmation of a sane, brilliant, non-political justice to to the Supreme Court is a signal victory for normal Americans. And we have Donald J. Trump to thank. His approval rating is surging, as well it should.

I didn’t see this coming two years ago, but President Trump is now the standard-bearer for normal Americans who resist the encroachments of the far Left, which now owns the Democratic Party.

McCann Betrays Illinois Conservatives

McCann Betrays Illinois Conservatives   Is Sam McCann just looking for his taxpayer-funded job in the Pritzker Administration? We don’t know, but it may explain why he sent out attack mailers on a commonsense conservative like Tom Morrison.   Yesterday, mailers from Sam McCann’s campaign hit in the 54th House District portraying State Representative Tom Morrison as a Rauner Puppet. The mailers were funded by union-backed State Senator and gubernatorial candidate Sam McCann. These attacks on Morrison demand a response. They are patently false. Tom Morrison is one of the few state legislators in Springfield who stands up for conservative values every time they are under attack in the Illinois House. He is one of the most reliable conservative votes in Springfield on both fiscal and social issues. Is Sam McCann working for Mike Madigan? Is he hoping to receive favorable treatment under a Governor Pritzker? Is he so clueless that he doesn’t realize how his platform is being used by the state’s vicious public sector unions? I don’t know. And I don’t really care. McCann is lying about Morrison. Lying is not a conservative value. Many Illinois Conservatives looking for a candidate who represented their values had found hope McCann’s candidacy. Illinois Conservatives have once again been betrayed.

Sojourners' Jim Wallis hosted a forum with Democratic presidential candidates John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2007.

Christian Socialism Is a Sinful Mix of Greed and Envy

Written by Peter Heck

I recently read a thought-provoking, though ultimately misguided, article by Daniel Jose Camacho from the faith-oriented left-wing commentary website Sojourners.  In it, Camacho argued against the preoccupation many American Christians have with capitalism, suggesting that,

“Capitalism is so deeply ingrained in our Christianity that it is the default.  Yet, this arrangement is neither natural nor inevitable.”

Such a perspective was anything but surprising coming from a Sojourners publication.  After all, the online magazine is the modern iteration of socialist Jim Wallis’s anti-capitalist magazine “The Post American.”  Wallis, who himself championed communism throughout the 1970s, changed the name to Sojourners as part of a strategy to wrap socialist ideas in Christian terminology.

Camacho has joined that movement, speaking favorably in this particular article of the many “Christian socialists” of the New Deal era, while denigrating free-market Christians.  He goes so far in that effort that while talking about Education Secretary Betsy DeVos owning 10 yachts, he asks and answers:

“Can someone who owns 10 yachts enter the kingdom of God? I’m not sure.”

If Camacho is truly “not sure,” than Camacho is leaning on his own understanding rather than trusting the word of God Himself.  Many times throughout Scripture God uses material prosperity as a method through which He blesses people – Abraham, Solomon, even Zacchaeus come to mind.  In modern parlance, Solomon owned a heck of a lot more than 10 yachts.  What prevents one from entering the kingdom of God isn’t wealth, it is making that wealth their idol, or first love.  That was the problem with the Rich Young Ruler that Jesus encountered.  If Betsy DeVos loves her yachts more than God, that will be her problem.  If she doesn’t, yachts don’t keep you out of heaven.

That glaring confusion over a fairly elementary Biblical concept should send red flags up for any discerning Christian reading Camacho’s article.  As is so often the case with Sojournerscommentaries, this article appears to originate in political dogma, with words of faith merely sprinkled on top for flavor.

If Camacho’s thesis had been that free market capitalism too often leads to greed and exploitation, I would find little to disagree with.  All Christians should be cognizant of the moral considerations accompanying any economic policy.  But that’s where Sojourners in general, and this piece specifically, goes utterly tone deaf.

Free market capitalism’s propensity towards sliding into greed and excess pales in comparison to the economic system Camacho is tempting his readers to entertain.  The heart of socialism is greed.  If feeling entitled to the fruits of someone else’s labor is not greed, after all, what is it?  Yet that (along with a side of envy) is the backbone, the foundation, of socialist economic policy.

Socialism robs an individual of their creativity, their ingenuity, their resourcefulness – in many ways it robs them of their resemblance to their Creator.  Unsurprisingly this has devastating effects not only on a human’s soul, but upon the community or culture that is so ordered.  Remarkably Camacho even illustrates that, albeit inadvertently.  He writes,

“Factor in the increasing unaffordability of basic needs like housing and health care, and ballooning student debt, and it’s not hard to see why more and more Americans are struggling to get by. According to a study released this week, 47 percent of working Californians are now struggling with poverty.”

Has Camacho paused to consider the origins of many of the very problems he laments?  Though this is admittedly an oversimplification of two complex concepts, housing and healthcare costs have gone up not as a result of free markets, but the distortion of both through third parties and government regulation.

Student loan debt is almost exclusively a government-manufactured problem.  By refusing to allow a market correction (the bursting of the college loan bubble) to take place, government has perpetuated the escalating costs.

And there is no state in the union more closely aligned with far-left socialist economic policy, including heavy taxation and massive social programs, than California – the very state Camacho notes is experiencing a poverty crisis.

Christianity transcends economic policy.  Jesus brought a spiritual kingdom, not a political one.  But for Christians we have a responsibility, it would seem, to discourage public policy that increases human suffering.  That’s why it’s confusing to see Camacho and all those at Sojourners wearing the name of Christ advocating for it.

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This article was originally published at PeterHeck.com

Benford urges fellow candidates to earn, not buy votes

Benford urges fellow candidates to earn, not buy votes

by Carrie Bradon | Sep 13, 2018

 Alyssia Benford | Courtesy of YouTube

Campaign finance records have shown that more than 60 sitting state lawmakers have been given nearly $15 million by House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), a fact that infuriates Alyssia Benford. 

"I don’t think political donations like this should be allowed," Benford, the Republican candidate for the 98th District House seat, told the Will County Gazette. "Why do you need that much money for a state representative race? There are a lot of charities in my district that could use that money to help people in our district."

 Rep. Natalie Manley (D-Joliet) | Courtesy of Illinois House Democratic Caucus

Benford's opponent, incumbent state Rep. Natalie Manley (D-Joliet), is one of the lawmakers who has received funding from Madigan.

"My opponent, Natalie Manley made the top 10 list of candidates receiving money," Benford said. "Madigan recently gave her another $150,000 to $200,000, so now she has over $700,000 in her campaign account."

Benford is frustrated by the fact that Manley has been running her campaign with such a large budget and that she has, essentially, been paid off by Madigan.

"During the last election cycle, she was out speaking ... at an event and she said, 'Mike Madigan will always be the speaker of the House and I will always vote for him,'" Benford said. "She has voted for him as speaker, each time. They are buying votes."

Benford is opposed to political donations of this type and believes them to be unfair as they are making it incredibly challenging for individuals who are not career politicians to enter the political scene.

"How can a single parent and entrepreneur such as myself run for office to represent the people in my district when someone has $700,000 in lies waiting to attack," Benford said. "I challenge Manley to donate that money to charity and run her campaign utilizing her voting record. She can’t because she does not vote based on the needs of our district."

In this election, Benford seeks to earn, not buy, the votes of her constituents and is urging other candidates to do the same.

"It is time for a change in Springfield," Benford said. "A vote for Manley is a vote for Madigan. Let’s send a strong message to Springfield, that our vote cannot be purchased; it has to be earned."

The 98th District covers portions of Bolingbrook, Crest Hill and Joliet.

Thousands of Illinois students get private school aid in new program’s first year

Thousands of Illinois students get private school aid in new program’s first year

By Cole Lauterbach | Illinois News Network  

 FILE - School, hallway, lockers

Shutterstock photo

Illinois’ program offering state tax credits for donations to help students go to private schools have given tuition assistance to thousands of students, but officials say the new program still faces challenges and opposition.

In its first year, the Invest in Kids program is going to help nearly 5,600 students with tuition assistance that will send them to a private school of their choosing. The program offers donors a 75 percent state tax credit. The money is then distributed to students who apply. Demand for tuition aid has outpaced donations. Empower Illinois, one of the organizations that distribute the money, said more than 30,000 students still are waiting for tuition assistance.

Empower Illinois Executive Director Anthony Holter said the students applying are saying that their local public school isn’t their ideal choice.

“Those are not best fits for their child and they want to seek another option, but can’t make that happen, or it’s very difficult to make that happen,” he said.

The program was passed as part of the sweeping school funding reform legislation that was signed into law last fall. At the time, Democrats cried foul on the addition of the program just before it was finalized.

Since January, the program brought in $44 million in donations, far short of the $100 million limit.

The money is split by regions of the state. Cook County, its own region, has secured $35 million in pledged donations. The rest of the state’s regions combined received less than $10 million.

“We are truly grateful to the donors of this program,” said Larry Daly, principal of St. Teresa High School in Decatur. “This program allows families in the Decatur area the option to choose the education that best fits their needs. For this, we are truly thankful.”

Even if supporters did hit the limit set by lawmakers, $100 million wouldn’t be enough to help every student who applied for a grant.

“We have demand that would far exceed the $100 million cap,” Holter said.

Empower has hired additional fundraisers in an effort to meet the demand. Money being donated up to the end of this year would go to a student for this school year.

Democrats have criticized the program, saying it uses state money that should go to public schools. If Democrat J.B. Pritzker is elected governor, he’s said he would end the program.

“It’s a top-of-mind thing for a lot of folks on the donor side as well as the parent side,” Holter said. “The fundraising can be a challenge when people are concerned whether or not they’ll get the deduction that was maybe a motivation for them in the first place.”

The program is otherwise set to expire in 2024.

The donations would not be fully deductible on federal filings, Holter said, because the 75 percent credit would have to be subtracted.

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