Daily Archives: November 23, 2021

The Illinois Association of School Boards voted during a Thursday meeting to end its membership with the National School Boards Association, effective immediately.

The decision follows previous attempts by IASB to initiate changes to the governance structure, transparency, and financial oversight of the national association, the Illinois group said in a press release, adding that although states depend on a healthy national association, the IASB no longer believes that NSBA can fill this important role.

The Illinois association cited the infamous domestic terrorism letter that the NSBA sent to President Joe Biden without knowledge or support of its state association members.

The NSBAs president and interim CEO sent the letter to the Biden administration on Sept. 29. In it, they asked the administration to use domestic terrorism laws as a way to deploy federal law enforcement against parents who are concerned about critical race theory in schools, other curricula, and ongoing COVID-19 protocols.

The letter, which has since been walked back, was sent after the NSBA colluded with Biden administrationofficials in crafting it. On Oct. 2, NSBA President Viola Garciaconfirmed that the organization had been engaged with the White House and Department of Education for several weeks now.

Attorney General Merrick Garland used the letter as evidence of rising threats of violence to justify using the FBI to target parents who attended school board meetings to voice their concerns.

NSBA officials wrote the letter without consulting or notifying its state groups, prompting backlash from many. Including Illinois, 26 state school boards associations have now distanced themselves from the NSBA, with 13 of those groups ceasing participation, no longer paying dues, or completely cutting ties.

Read the rest here:

Illinois Association Of School Boards Cuts Ties With NSBA - The Federalist

The New York City Council plans to pass a bill that would authorize approximately 800,000 immigrants who are not citizens of the United States to vote in local elections.

The Our City, Our Vote legislation would ensure that migrants who hold green cards, migrants who maintain a legal work status in the United States, and DACA recipients are granted special voter registration forms that are used to obtain a local-only ballot at the polls.

The legislation calls for training poll workers and community education campaigns to ensure every voter receives the correct ballot, The New York Times reported.

Outgoing Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio said he has mixed feelings about the legislation because it could dissuade migrants from obtaining citizenship, and he reaffirmed his belief that giving immigrants special voting privileges has to be decided at state level, according to state law. The veto-proof majority in the Council, however, plans to move forward with the bill on Dec. 9.

One councilman, Ydanis Rodriguez, told The New York Times that the bill is a good thing for Democrats who can use it to further the talking points claiming that voting rights are being attacked across the country.

Its important for the Democratic Party to look at New York City and see that when voting rights are being attacked, we are expanding voter participation, he said.

Republicans, however, are already fighting Democrats efforts to legislate noncitizen voting into permanency in other places around the country. In October, the Republican National Committeeannounced it would sue Montpelier and Winooski, Vermont, for altering their town charters to accommodate municipal voting by noncitizens.

Democrats are trying to dismantle the integrity of our elections. In addition to attacking widely supported safeguards like voter ID, Democrats also want foreign citizens to vote in American elections. Republicans are fighting back on this far-left assault against election integrity unlike radical Democrats, we believe that our elections should be decided solely by American citizens. This is a matter of principle and we will fight in all 50 states to ensure this remains the case, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said.

Jordan Davidson is a staff writer at The Federalist. She graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism.

See the original post:

NYC Is About To Let 800K Noncitizen Immigrants Vote In Its Elections - The Federalist

The Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech joined Jason Chaffetz to talk about The Federalists inception, and the current campaign by Big Tech companies to shadow-ban outlets like it, on Fox Newss Jason In The House podcast Wednesday.

Noting how the old guard of conservative media was not engaged in the culture war in a way that I felt they needed to be, Domenech said that he, along with Mollie Hemingway, David Harsanyi, and Sean Davis felt like there was a need for some new voices that could command some direction or come to represent a space of ideas that was being lost.

There was a need for some new blood, some new injection of an entity that would both report and analyze the news, be laser-focused on media bias and what we felt like was a truly organized combination of the left and the media working in tandem together, going beyond bias to really be propagandistic in a lot of ways, Domenech added.

He also cited Andrew Breitbarts influence in furthering the idea that politics is downstream of culture.

After The Federalists launch in 2013, we pretty quickly added to our team, built a number of younger voices into it, and one of the things we particularly made an aspect of what we were trying to do was to get younger women involved in key positions from the beginning, Domenech said.That was not so much out of any kind of affirmative action attempt, but it was long past time that we had mastheads that actually resembled the people who are most important in terms of directing American culture.

Since then, Big Tech companies including social media sites and search engines have targeted outlets like The Federalist to suppress their reach. The point where [search engine and social media supression] really started to be noticeable was that we were pretty aggressive in calling for the investigation of the lab leak thesis from the beginning, Domenech said.

While a lot of right-wing sites took serious hits in the summer during George Floyd, we sort of started to get it earlier in April or May, he added.

Most of these tech giants, they dont actually want to have a public story about anything, so instead what they try to do is essentially shadow-ban you, to diminish your sharing, to turn the knobs and flip the switches that basically prevent things that would have gone viral from going viral, and to particularly slow down the sharing of content from channels that they deem to be ones that they just dislike.

The Federalists YouTube channel is so shadow-banned that I can search for videos of myself and not find them, Domenech added.

While we shouldnt treat these companies as good-faith actors anymore and we should do everything we can to eradicate the kind of corporate welfare that they enjoy, he said, I also dont know that theres a policy solution, and so thats why I think that this whole thing is sliding more toward break-up and antitrust versus bureaucratic regulation.

Listen to the full interview here.

Visit link:

Why A Media Counter-Narrative Matters (And How Big Tech Targets It) - The Federalist

The White House fears that an impending Congressional Budget Office analysis will say Democrats spending bill would increase federal deficits. The dispute seems unsurprising, given the myriad budgetary gimmicks in the billbut not for the reasons one might expect.

Ignore for a moment the fact that the bill contains ten years of tax increases to pay for a few years of spending that Democrats later hope to extend, meaning that independent budget analysts have pegged the bills true ten-year cost not at $1.75 trillion but nearer to $5 trillion. Ignore too the fact that front-loading the bills spending means it will almost certainly increase federal deficits in the short-term, exacerbating inflation at a time price increases are already at 30-year highs.

Instead, the proximate dispute with CBO concerns whether an increase in tax enforcement will yield as much revenue as Treasury claims. On that front, one of the biggest arguments against the Biden administrations position comes via Joe Biden himself.

The New York Times reported Monday that the White House has begun bracing lawmakers for a disappointing estimate from CBO, and is urging lawmakers to disregard the budget office assessment, saying it is being overly conservative in its calculations. While administration officials say additional tax enforcement will generate $400 billion in new revenue, CBO Director Philip Swagel on Monday said he stood by the agencys September estimate that enhanced enforcement authority will net roughly $120 billion.

The difference between the lower and higher revenue figures could determine whether the bill gets scored as a budget-saver or budget-buster. Treasury has therefore come out swinging at CBO, with Assistant Treasury Secretary Ben Harris calling the offices methodology patently absurd in an interview with the Times.

But given his own boss conduct, Mr. Harris doth protest too much on tax enforcement. After leaving the vice presidency in early 2017, Joe Biden and his wife Jill created two S-corporations, and characterized most of their book and speech earnings as profits from those corporations rather than taxable wages.

These maneuvers allowed the Bidens to dodge nearly $517,000 in payroll taxes. The Tax Policy Center called the Bidens actions pretty aggressive. And a recent Congressional Research Service report outlined several instances in which federal courts agreed with the IRS in requiring S-corporations to pay back taxesall of which arguably applied to the Bidens.

Yet despite the Bidens public release of their returns, and coverage of the irregularities surrounding them, no news has yet emerged of an IRS audit. Why?

Political bias provides one possible explanation, given past IRS harassment of conservative non-profit organizations, and unanswered questions regarding the leak of tax returns to the liberal activist site ProPublica. The Times reporting on Donald Trumps taxes last year confirmed the IRS had initiated audits of his returns well before he attained the presidency, so its reasonable to ask why Bidens pre-presidential returns have not come under similar scrutiny.

Yet a more basic explanation comes from the fact that people like the Bidens can hire high-priced lawyers to defend their actions. If audited, Biden would likely engage experts to validate taking a salary of only $145,833 in 2017, against more than $10 million in corporate profits, as reasonable compensation in line with IRS guidelines.

He might offer a low-ball amount to settle a potential audit quickly, but could also engage the IRS in years of costly litigation. After all, if the public release of his returns did not compel Biden to use less aggressive tax strategies, an IRS audit would have little effect.

Ironically, the bill in question would close the tax loophole the Bidens spent the past four years exploiting. Treasury says the change would reform a system that is unfair and provides tax planning opportunities for business owners, particularly those with high incomes, to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.

Therein lies the problem with that particular tax increase, the proposals for increased IRS enforcement authority, and the Democratic bill in general. Honest individuals and struggling small businesses, who try hard to pay their obligations to the federal government, will face higher taxes, new regulatory burdens, and a greater potential for IRS harassment. But those who have the money and tools to game the systemthe Joe Bidens of the worldwill carry on much as before.

White House claims lawmakers should ignore a CBO analysis showing the spending bill increases the deficit, because CBO underestimates revenue gains from tax enforcement, have an easy retort: How can Bidens IRS get other rich people to pay their fair share if Biden himself wont pay his?

Go here to read the rest:

Joe Biden Wants To Have The IRS Harass You While Dodging It Himself - The Federalist