Interesting discussion on Iowa Public Radio about what's going on in Des Moines right now.
*The House debated for over 9 hours on a bill that would supposedly allow arbitrators in salary disputes in schools to have more latitude. The bill wasn't going anywhere in the Senate.
*The Senate approved legislation making texting while driving a primary offense. If this moves along, and I have no idea why it won't, cops will be able to pull drivers over on the suspicion they are texting. Brad Zaun was one of only 6 Republicans that voted against it. He said you "Can't legislate common sense". Odd thing to say. Murder isn't common sense, but we make rules stating it's illegal anyway.
*Katie O'Bradovich was on the panel and she said she thinks Chuck Palmer, who is the head of the Dept. of Human Services, will be the sacrificial lamb in the fight over closing the state facilities in Clarinda and Mt. Pleasant. Say one thing about Terry Branstad. He's never been afraid to throw a pal under the bus if it keeps the stink from getting on him. Palmer must be reconfirmed this year, and their are rumblings several Republicans want Palmer gone.
*After scaling back commercial property taxes the financial stress is making school funding very hard. House Republicans refuse to move off of a 1.5 percent increase in funding. Democrats in the Senate have come down from 6 percent to 4 something.
*Don't take it for granted that Branstad will be able to stuff the Board of Regents with stealth candidates. With three open seats on the board he's intent on politicizing it.
*No funds have been approved for outdoor recreation and water quality improvements even though the voters approved this several years ago. It was tied to an unspecified future increase in the state sales tax. One of the panelists noted that like the gas tax several years ago, the Iowa Farm Bureau is now pushing quietly for the sales tax to go up, thereby funding more water quality improvement projects.

Kind of an odd session. It's an off year for elections, so you'd think with a split chamber and a governor with so few principles something would get done. But, besides a rapid push through of the increase of the gas tax very little has been accomplished.

Discuss amongst yourselves.

He is 2nd in command of the DNC. Why haven't they distanced themselves from this man?

https://www.usnews.com/opinion/thom...eith-ellison-problem-after-the-dnc-chair-race

Today on “The 700 Club,” a viewer told Pat Robertson about a “satanic cult” to which the viewer’s father allegedly belongs that supposedly “has put curses on my son and I,” and asked if the curses can “hurt us if we are both Christians.”

Robertson said the viewer must pray away the curses and “send those curses back where they came from.”

He also warned that witches are trying to put a curse on President Trump: “I read that a bunch of witches have gotten together to put a curse on Trump, and I think the Christians need to be praying for him to defend him,” he said.

Co-host Wendy Griffith added that “probably millions” of Christians were recently in prayer “canceling out those curses by the witches.”

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/pat-robertson-stop-witches-from-cursing-donald-trump/

never mind it was just a white guy from Indiana

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This is driving me crazy. We're too smart as a people and too capable to let chapter 25 of The Grapes of Wrath define us yet again today.

How can we straighten this out?

Went to I, Tonya last weekend. Definite thumbs up. I've always been intrigued by the story of Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan. This movie does an exceptional job of giving you an inside look at the people involved. Very good acting. Plenty of humor but also plenty of reality that included the disaster that was Tonya, her mother, and the people in her life. Good flick ...

Part of me really wants to see how it would play out. HROT would definetly be better for me.

If you pop 15mg of adderall in the morning, do not consume ANY caffeine until at least 3 in the afternoon. JMO

/csb

Obozo be like Nothing to see here.. The libs care so much about the children though..

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ATTN Gun Grabbing Hillary My Parents Survived Auschwitz; I Saw A Movie Where Only The #Government Had Guns It Was Schindler's List

Donald Trump has already distinguished himself as the first elected president of modern times to have had no previous political experience or close connections to the political establishment. His own party, the Republican Party, had many party diehards who refused to acknowledge his popularity with voters. Trump defeated the GOP establishment, won more primary votes than any Republican candidate in history, defeated the Democrat Party establishment, and the media establishment

He has one more establishment he must defeat: the Washington bureaucracy and its nationwide administrative infrastructure. This establishment was not elected. It owes its existence and political influence to the manipulation of the Democrat Party. So while he can appoint agency heads and try to execute his policy goals through them, he has an army of bureaucrats against him.

To understand the political and financial power of the bureaucracy it’s necessary to understand both its administrative structure and financial influence. It’s essential to understand how government has grown the bureaucracy and acted to protected it and enable it to protect itself.

The administrative bureaucracy that matters to Trump is the socioeconomic bureaucracy: those agencies that make policy for the distribution of entitlement benefits and education. Essentially, any agencies that deal with the public. The military is a very large bureaucracy but only can be used to implement foreign policy.

The socioeconomic bureaucracy was started by FDR in the early 1930s and to this day it uses the rationale of helping people and overcoming economic disadvantage to gain political support. The size of the national bureaucracy can be best understood by reviewing the numbers.

Here’s some facts from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The SEIU is headquartered in Washington and has 1.9 million members. Since 1989 the SEIU has given $238 million to political candidates, making them the number one political contributor with 100% going to Democrats. The number three biggest contributor is the National Education Association, their 3 million members having given $114 million, 97% going to Democrats. The number four contributor is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. Their 1.6 million members gave $100 million with 99% going to Democrats. The number nine biggest contributor is the American Federation of Teachers who gave $81 million, 100% going to Democrats. They have 1.6 million members in 3,000 localities nationwide.

These four unions, active throughout the U.S., have a total of 8.1 million active members and since 1989 have given $533 million to political candidates, 98% of which went to Democrats. And this number does not include the other municipal public sector unions, etc. which amount to about 12 million members, giving a total number of public union members of 20.2 million. This is the size of the bureaucratic opposition Trump has in the states and Federal government. On the Federal level, there are 45,000 Federal employees in Chicago alone. About 28% of all Federal workers are union members.

President Obama greatly expanded the bureaucracy with his 63 czars funded by the ARRA money and huge budget deficits. Obama used these methods to take over the legislative branch.

In fact the ARRA -- American Reinvestment and Recovery Act -- specifically states on page two “The President and the heads of Federal departments and agencies shall manage and expend the funds made available in this Act.” In effect, this takes the management of ARRA funds away of Congressional – GOP -- control. This action was so important to Obama that it was first passed by Democrats on Jan. 9, two weeks before Obama took the oath of office. The act is H.R.1, House Resolution 1, of Obama’s first term. Trump doesn’t need to take over the legislative branch since he has majorities in the House and Senate but he has to defeat the administrators who will act to sabotage the implementation of any of his new policies.

The weapon Trump has to fight bureaucratic control is to remind the bureaucrats that their Federal unions were created by executive order, EO 10988 issued by JFK in 1962. Anything created by an EO can be abolished by an EO. Only Trump can use an EO as a trump card since he is not beholden to unions, unlike the presidents before him.

In the larger context, there is nothing in the Constitution that legitimizes any kind of organization to control the Federal government, including a union organization composed entirely of Federal bureaucrats. The Federal unions primarily support only the Democrat Party. This has been proven by their campaign contributions. 95% of the IRS employees who donated to the 2012 campaign gave money to Barack Obama.

Obama was beholden to the unions and acted to restore the values of their pension investments through the QE program. Whether this creates long-term suffering for the middle-class taxpayer was not a concern. Obama put priority upon the public sector unions because all the biggest states and metropolitan areas are run by Democrats and he is beholden to them for both the propaganda preached through the public schools and campaign contributions.

Trump can also bring university salaries at state public universities under control by requiring any university that receives any kind of Federal grant money to publicly report the salaries of all employees on their websites, and ban “other pay;” that ridiculous name for million dollar bonuses given to people in public jobs. The website transparentcalifornia.com records these outrageous bonuses.

That Federal regulatory agencies overstep their bounds and affect the lives of all Americans was proven in 2015 when the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA violated Congressional constraints when it illegally changed the regulations regarding the emissions of coal-fired power plants. The Supreme Court overturned those emissions changes, but in his typically sneaky fashion, Obama encouraged rule by regulation over rule by law, expecting that a Supreme Court case would take years and by the time the Supreme Court could rule, his changes would be permanent. This has to change.

Trump and the Republican Congress should pass laws requiring that all regulatory changes should be delayed at least five years, or until such time as all court challenges have had the time to go through the Federal court system. The Federal government must provide free legal assistance to anyone challenging regulations or fines issued to Americans by the EPA, BLM, Dept. of Agriculture and any other Federal agency which create an economic burden. Right now, the EPA can fine a rancher tens of thousands of dollars for an accidental spill of a pesticide, and the rancher has no choice but to pay it.

The weight of the legal system should not be biased toward Federal agencies; right now it is. There is a presumption of guilt that goes with Federal edicts on farmers and corporations, yet no presumption of innocence. Federal agencies should have to go to court to sue any company, farmer or rancher who is fined over fifty dollars, and provide a free lawyer to the farmer. This will put these agency-edicts on a level playing field, and they will quickly diminish. If illegal immigrants can get free Federal lawyers so should farmers and ranchers.

http://www.americanthinker.com/arti...can_defeat_the_establishment_bureaucracy.html