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WSU officials call for unity after riot breaks out at University of Virginia

College Republicans President James Allsup waves a Trump flag in celebration of Donald Trumps victory.

College Republicans President James Allsup waves a Trump flag in celebration of Donald Trumps victory.

REBECCA WHITE, Evergreen news editor August 13, 2017

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Many students at WSU have called for a response from the university after WSU College Republican President James Allsup attended a rally turned riot in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Allsup was publicly identified in several photos by a Twitter account, Yes, Youre Racist, which has released identities of several Unite the Right attendees. Allsup said he was there as a member of the media and to speak at the event and condemned racism and Nazism.

In a series of tweets, WSU President Kirk Schulz condemned Naziism and racism as well and asked the university to come together. Schulz did not acknowledge Allsup or the requests for his expulsion directly, but did make a note that a university is a place where controversial voices must be heard.

Allsup said in an interview before the tweets that he would be insulted if the university took the time to respond or condemn his participation in the Unite the Right Rally.

The university should not be in the business of disavowing what their students do, what their tuition-paying students do in their professional careers, Allsup said.

Allsup said most of the violence at the event was started by the counter protesters, who pepper sprayed a fellow alt-right media figure, Baked Alaska. He blames the police for the death and injuries caused by a car plowing into counter protesters, saying that they did not do a good enough job protecting the rally attendees and separating the two groups.

Allsup said the basis of the rally, as a protest of the removal of a confederate monument of General E Lee, was not a symbol of hate and the neo Nazis in attendance were not representative of the majority of people there.

I think we should check our northern privilege and consider the alternate experiences of people of this country, Allsup said.

Allsup added that he sees any action or response from the university as an affront to his free speech rights and singling him out as a member of the alternative media.

ASWSU President Jordan Frost and student body presidents at other universities posting a statement in solidarity with the University of Virginia.

We are united with the students of the University of Virginia, as what affects one of our campuses affects us all College Campuses are spaces that students should be able to call home, not places of violence, hate and racism.

Other leaders at WSU and in the Pullman community also posted to social media and held candlelight vigils condemning the violence and racism on the University of Virginia campus.

Excerpt from:
College Republicans president attends Virginia rally, sparks backlash - The Daily Evergreen

More than seven months into the 115th Congress, Republican majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate have been notably dysfunctional. President Donald Trump and his White House staff are in disarray. The budget process is way behind schedule, and every day brings the United States closer to what should be the unthinkable: defaulting on the national debt by failing to raise the debt ceiling.

While raising the debt ceiling should be routine, the current mix of political dysfunction and administrative mismanagement could signal trouble ahead with dire consequences. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin says the debt ceiling must be increased by September 29. But Congress is in recess until after Labor Day and President Trump has left town for a seventeen-day golf getaway in New Jersey, leaving only twelve joint days where both the House and Senate are in session to address the issue.

The debt ceiling is like a gun pointed at the entire economy, and this has become an increasingly dangerous game of Russian Roulette. This is not a game the United States should playif it ever wasand the time has come to repeal the debt ceiling for good.

When Congress makes tax and budget decisions resulting in spending greater than revenue, it must make up the difference through borrowing. The debt ceiling is a statutory limit on the maximum amount the federal government can borrow. It is an ineffective tool for fiscal restraint since Congress has already committed to spending the money. Without the ability to borrow, the U.S. government would not have sufficient funds to pay its obligations. This would result in a default, forcing the government to renege on some of its commitments made in law, such as salaries for military and civilian personnel, Social Security benefits, and interest payments on treasury bonds.

The United States has never defaulted on its financial obligations, and the repercussions would be severe. According to a Treasury Department report, a default may lead to a crisis on par or worse than the Great Recession. It would become more difficult to access credit, and the value of the dollar would fall.

A default could cause a sharp spike in interest rates, due to increased risk of investing in U.S. government-backed financial instruments. Homeowners would see housing values plummet. If interest rates increased by five percent, for example, the median home price could decrease by more than $70,000.

Sharply higher interest rates also discourage investment since the cost of borrowing goes up. This means negative effects for the construction industry, auto sales and overall business expansion, leading to fewer new jobs. In fact, higher interest rates from default could mean millions of jobs lost.

Under President Barack Obama, Republicans in Congress attempted to use the debt ceiling to extract policy or budgetary concessions, which took the country dangerously close to default. In theory, raising the debt ceiling today should be a smoother political process, since Republicans control the House, Senate and White House. Yet, it seems some members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus want to deploy similar tactics to force through deep spending cuts. If these members on the far right take this approach again, then they will essentially be holding the Republican Partyand the full faith and credit of the United Stateshostage, and few good things ever come from taking yourself hostage.

Read more here:
Will Republicans Keep Playing Russian Roulette with the Debt Ceiling? - The National Interest Online

The easier lift came Sunday: Illinois state senators voted 38-19 to force into law a new school funding plan, with its comparatively generous treatment of Chicago Public Schools. The vote was a rebuke to Gov. Bruce Rauner and his rival proposal: The governor would give less to CPS but more to many other Illinois districts, especially those that also educate sizable numbers of disadvantaged students.

Sunday's vote wasn't a surprise; the Senate, with its Democratic supermajority, did as expected. Now comes the harder lift: Will members of the House, scheduled to convene Wednesday, also vote to override Rauner?

If they do, the bill legislators passed May 31, and which Rauner has tried to rewrite via an amendatory veto, will become law. But a House override requires 71 votes, and the bill got only 60 yeses in the House in May. Even if all 67 Democrats now vote to override Rauner, they'll need a handful of his fellow Republicans to do the same.

Going into the weekend, we might have bet a nickel, but not a whole dime, that the House would vote to override. Several downstate school officials had complained publicly that the governor's rival plan his amended version of the bill would hurt their districts. But on Saturday, the Illinois State Board of Education finally issued calculations that may make an override a much tougher vote for some House members of both parties: Rauner's plan evidently would give most districts not named CPS more money than would the Democrats' Senate Bill 1.

Those new Rauner plan numbers popped up in Sunday's Senate debate. Distilling Republicans' points to their essence: Why should we send this much money to a Chicago district that already spends twice as much per pupil as our children's schools can spend? Why not uphold Rauner's veto and bring more money to our districts? His plan would give CPS millions more than it's getting now.

Expect House Republicans and Democrats outside Chicago to hear similar challenges from their constituents between now and Wednesday.

Chicago Tribune Staff

Illinois school funding: A tale of two plans

Illinois school funding: A tale of two plans (Chicago Tribune Staff)

Maybe House Speaker Michael Madigan already has persuaded enough Republicans to join Democrats in overriding Rauner. If so, game over.

But if Democrats are having trouble getting to 71, this an ideal time to summon an endangered species in Springfield: a compromise. What can Democrats offer Republicans, at this late date, to win some of their votes? To spare Senate Bill 1 from collapse?

Yes, this invites logistical hurdles: If the House changes Senate Bill 1 to attract Republican votes, the Senate would have to concur. A little more work for legislators, but they've kept a light schedule this year.

So Republicans are in a position to seek the sort of compromise-maker we advocated over the weekend: creating scholarships for low- and middle-income kids to attend public schools outside their district boundaries, or to attend private schools. Republicans also have spoken (including on Sunday) about reducing unfunded state mandates for schools, and about allowing districts to limit collective bargaining.

Democrats might not like those paths to compromise; teachers unions hate school choice almost as much as they'd hate any limit to collective bargaining. But Democrats also own a huge mess that many of them are frantic to address: the devastated finances of a CPS long mismanaged by, um, their fellow Democrats in Chicago's City Hall.

If Democrats refuse to compromise and let Senate Bill 1 die, they can wear that jacket. Or they can make a few sensible changes and attract enough Republicans to a funding plan that still gives CPS a heap of new loot.

Over to you, Speaker Madigan.

Join the discussion on Twitter @Trib_Ed_Boardand onFacebook.

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Continued here:
School funding: How new numbers could nudge Dems to compromise with Rauner's Republicans - Chicago Tribune

Jay Moor wonders what the moral difference is between teenagers refusing to assist a drowning man and politicians opposing the Affordable Care Act.

Let me take a stab at answering.

In the world of the progressive, government is everything. If there isnt a government program, nothing is being done. Changing a program will kill millions. If government isnt spending oodles more money, its immoral.

Progressives love to lecture us about morality. They never stop talking about their superior values. They are self-avowed sole authorities regarding matters of faith, and they are quite certain Jesus agrees with them.

If your morality is different than theirs, you are immoral. Youre not like Jesus. Progressive morality is so much better that it should be imposed on you via the strong arm of government. But, you are required to keep your morality out of politics. Because theocracy.

Progressives believe it is moral to for government to take your money and spend it on someone else. Thats like Jesus. But Jesus would never ask a progressive to actually help someone in need. In fact, personal compassion is immoral, because only Bible-believing extremists reject second-hand government compassion and actually go out and help people.

It doesnt matter that no government social program has ever succeeded in fixing the problem for which it was created. It isnt relevant that under ACA insurance rates are skyrocketing, insurance carriers are leaving in droves, and 8 million people paid the ACA tax penalty last year.

Lets not discuss that the uninsured rate is 11.3 percent (36,499,000 people!) this year, up from 10.9 percent in 2016. And keep it quiet that there are 10 million people who actually have insurance but cant pay their medical bills, or that 62 percent of bankruptcies are due to medical expenses.

Because their morality is better than yours.

View post:
Progressives believe their morality better than rest - The Bozeman Daily Chronicle

ATLANTA Sen. Elizabeth Warren used a speech to a grass-roots conference Saturday to take direct aim at Democrats diminished moderate wing, ridiculing Clinton-era policies and jubilantly proclaiming that liberals had taken control of the party.

While not invoking former President Bill Clinton or Hillary Clinton by name, Warren sent an unambiguous message that she believes the Clinton effort to push Democrats toward the political center should be relegated to history.

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The Democratic Party isnt going back to the days of welfare reform and the crime bill, she said, highlighting measures Bill Clinton signed into law as president that are reviled by much of the left. It is not going to happen.

Yet Warren, D-Mass., who is widely thought to be considering running for president in 2020, noted to about 1,000 activists here for the yearly Netroots Nation meeting that they hardly needed to worry about the party shifting to the middle as it did in the 1990s. Liberals, she said, have taken charge.

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We are not the gate-crashers of todays Democratic Party, Warren said, invoking a term first used to describe the liberal blogosphere that emerged a decade ago. We are not a wing of todays Democratic Party. We are the heart and soul of todays Democratic Party.

Warrens five-day trip started in Poland, where she met with US and Polish officials and had dinner with a unit of Army reservists from Brockton.

Despite Warrens words, deep divisions remain in the Democratic Party in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential campaign. There is the familiar center-versus-liberal divide as well as an increasingly animated clash between economic-focused activists on the far left and liberals driven more by issues of race, gender and identity.

While Warren first rose to stardom on the left because of her populist jeremiads against concentrated economic power, she sought to use her remarks in Atlanta to broaden her indictment against what she calls a rigged system. Expanding her signature attacks on Wall Street and its political influence, she said women, African-Americans, undocumented immigrants and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people were all suffering from fundamental inequities.

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Warren lampooned a recent New York Times opinion article, Back to the Center, Democrats, by Mark Penn, a onetime Clinton strategist, and Andrew Stein, a former New York City Council president. The path forward is to go back to locking up nonviolent drug offenders and ripping more holes in our economic safety net, she said of their argument.

Still, Warren implored the crowd not to push others out of the movement.

If were going to be the people who lead the Democratic Party back from the wilderness and lead our country out of this dark time, then we cant waste energy arguing about whose issue matters more or who in our alliance should be voted off the island, she said, drawing applause.

The annual Netroots gathering began in 2006 when it was called YearlyKos and sponsored by the Daily Kos blog. But it has grown in scale, mirroring the rise of liberals in the party.

The conference has also become a proving ground for would-be Democratic presidential candidates. Warren did little to dissuade a friendly crowd from thinking she, too, was eyeing a White House run.

Recalling the moment this year when Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, rebuked her for not following Senate rules and said, nevertheless she persisted Warren repeated the line that has become a rallying cry for her. When she vowed to the crowd in Atlanta that she would persist, chants of Warren 2020 rose up.

Read the original:
Liberals are the 'heart and soul' of Democratic Party, Warren says - The Boston Globe