Mediaboss Marketing

By Jim Sonneville| The Hawk Eye

Most Iowans are focused on the presidential election but the outcome of our U.S. Senate race may prove even more influential.

Joe Biden has a commanding lead in most nationwide polling. If those polls are correct, and Biden triumphs on Nov. 3rd, his administration will push for the largest amnesty and the biggest expansion of legal immigration -in U.S. history. And if his party controls the Senate, his push will likely prove successful.

Iowans who want to block those policies can do so by sending Sen. Joni Ernst back to Washington for a second term and keeping the Senate under GOP control.

The Biden/Harris ticket is shaping up to be the most open-borders, pro-mass-migration ticket in modern American history. Not only would a Biden administration be bad news for Hawkeye State workers, it could mean higher taxes and more strain on local hospitals and schools. If left unchecked by the Senate, Biden's stances on immigration would threaten Iowans' way of life.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris support no-questions-asked amnesty for all 11 million illegal aliens in the United States. According to his campaign website, Biden plans to create "a faster-track to a green card" and increase the number of temporary visas available to foreigners. The Democratic ticket also favors allowing as many as 125,000 refugees into America annually, up from 18,000 this year.

Those policies would be disastrous for Iowa.

Despite recovering a bit from its pandemic-battered highs, the state's unemployment rate still clocked in at 6% in August. Ernie Goss, a respected Creighton University economist, believes that number doesn't account for a large portion of out-of-work Iowans. He estimates about 9% of state residents are unemployed. If Biden has his way, those unemployed Iowans will have to compete for jobs with a huge influx of immigrants.

Mass migration also harms Iowans in other ways too. An Iowa State University study at the turn of the century concluded immigration was exacerbating the state's housing shortage. The National Conference of State Legislators found providing a K-12 public education for one illegal immigrant costs more than the typical family of illegal workers pays in state taxes for more than 50 years. Providing health care for illegal immigrants costs American taxpayers $17 billion per year.

Fortunately, a harmful expansion of immigration isn't inevitable. A Republican Senate could effectively block Biden's agenda, just as the Republican-controlled House blocked Democrats' attempts at amnesty in the early 2010s. If Iowans value their jobs, their schools, and their health care, they'll send Joni Ernst back to Washington.

Jim Sonneville is a citizen activist who previously served as the County Chair of Des Moines County for the Ted Cruz for President Campaign. He lives in Burlington.

Read the original:
Jim Sonneville: Protecting Iowans' health, safety, and economic security - Burlington Hawk Eye

Womens Rights Under Attack Photographed on January 19, 2018

Scene from the Women's March in Washington, D.C. Sarah Silbiger/The New York Times

There have been moments when its felt like the backlash to electing a man whos been credibly accused of sexual assault by more than a dozen women and who has in fact bragged about assaulting women has been so profound, so righteous, that it could be harnessed to overhaul society as we know it.

The raw fury of the Womens March the day after President Trumps inauguration and the flourishing of the #MeToo movement were promising. Some men were held accountable for their abuses. A record number of women ran for office, and many of them won. The Equal Rights Amendment lurched back to life.

Nearly four years on, its clear that the patriarchy, while jostled on its pedestal, stands tall. Some people think it unmanly to wear a mask during a deadly pandemic, for goodness sake.

More troubling: Roe v. Wade, which is already so hobbled, could soon be overturned or gutted, leading to the further criminalization of pregnant women.

Since Mr. Trump took office, more women have come forward with credible sexual assault allegations against him including one that surfaced just last month. One of Mr. Trumps legacies will be whatever damage has surely been done to the national psyche for these claims to be buried by so many other disturbing events.

The bodies of Oscar Alberto Martnez Ramirez, a Salvadoran migrant, and his nearly 2-year-old daughter, Valeria, after they drowned trying to cross the Rio Grande from Mexico to Brownsville, Texas. Julia Le Duc/Associated Press

The Trump administration has worked to reduce the number of legal and illegal immigrants to the United States with a fanaticism and attention to detail that are notably absent from almost any other area of policymaking, save packing the courts with conservative judges.

The administration deliberately separated thousands of children from their parents to deter immigration. It cut the number of refugees admitted each year to the lowest level on record, denying sanctuary to thousands of people fleeing domestic and political violence. It has pursued the deportation of people brought to the country as small children, who have never known another country. It has prevented the immigration of scientists, engineers and other specialists whose talents might help to revitalize the American economy.

The president also is obsessed with building a wall along the Mexican border an inane idea his advisers first suggested because they wanted him to talk about immigration, and they knew he liked to talk about building things. The wall became such a fixation for Mr. Trump that he shut down the federal government in late 2018 in an attempt to wring funding from Congress. When that failed, he sought funding by declaring a national emergency. And when that failed, too, he took money from the defense budget to build a little bit of a wall.

If America once shone as a beacon of hope to the world, Mr. Trump tried his best to extinguish it.

At least 10,000 people protest in Los Angeles. The protest was organized by activists from Black Lives Matter as well as from an anti-fascist group calling for President Trumps immediate removal from office. Bryan Denton for The New York Times

Some of the most consequential moments of the Trump era thus far were the roughly eight minutes that a police officer knelt on George Floyds neck, suffocating him to death.

Mr. Floyds death at the hands of a police officer an appallingly common occurrence for Black people in the United States prompted one of the countrys largest social movements almost overnight. Millions of Americans, mostly masked to prevent coronavirus transmission, took to the streets in cities from coast to coast, outraged by police violence.

Adding to the righteous fury this year: the killing of Breonna Taylor in her home by the police for which no officer has been charged.

Mr. Floyd and Ms. Taylor became some of the most recognizable victims of police violence in recent memory. But this years uprisings were a supercharged continuation of the Black Lives Matter movement, which had been growing since the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012. Those who march do so not just for the names we know but for all the names we dont.

Correction: An earlier version of this article described incorrectly the killing of Breonna Taylor. She was shot in a hallway of her home, not in her bed.

A fire burns 36,000 acres and 113 structures in California, forcing 68,000 residents to evacuate. Max Whittaker for The New York Times

For anyone who cares about the health of the planet, the Trump years have been, to say the least, profoundly discouraging. Barely two months in office, Mr. Trump ordered his cabinet to review and remove any regulatory obstacles to the production of oil, gas and coal; shortly thereafter, he renounced Americas support of the landmark Paris climate agreement, thus shedding any claim to American leadership on a global crisis.

It was more or less downhill from there. He methodically decapitated Obama-era rules aimed at limiting emissions from power plants and oil and gas operations and mandating increases in fuel-efficient vehicles. He also opened public lands hitherto shielded from exploration to mining and drilling.

There were other assaults large and small on environmental protections, but the most damaging were those that undermined rules to diminish greenhouse gases while enabling the industries that produced them. All this despite the climate-related carnage in front of his own eyes, conspicuously the fires in California and despite authoritative studies warning that failure to wrench emissions drastically downward over the next decade will bring irreversible damage.

Emissions in America, pre-Covid, declined slightly, thanks partly to the switch to cleaner fuels and the determined efforts of states and cites to do the job Mr. Trump wont do. Globally, however, theyve been rising, and the seas with them.

Vehicles fill a stadium parking lot before the start of a San Antonio Food Bank distribution. William Luther/The San Antonio Express-News, via Associated Press

Across America people are waiting for food, sitting in their cars in endless lines that stretch down streets or bend back and forth across blacktop parking lots. The scenes are reminiscent of the Great Depression: Images from a grim past come suddenly to life.

The coronavirus pandemic shut down much of the nations economy in the spring and, because the virus continues to spread, millions of people remain out of work.

At first, the Trump administration worked with Congress to provide aid to Americans in need. The Cares Act included one-time payments to most households coupled with an expansion in unemployment insurance.

Then the stock market began to recover, and Mr. Trump lost interest. As the federal funds ran out, the number of Americans living in poverty has grown by eight million since May, according to recent research. That increase happened even as the job market improved, a troubling sign that the economy isnt recovering fast enough to make up for the shrinking social safety net.

Job losses have been concentrated among low-wage workers, many of whom now need help to feed their families. The result: In the wealthiest nation on earth, hunger is on the rise, and overwhelmed food banks are struggling to help those whom the government has failed.

President Trump held a reception for Judge Amy Coney Barrett, his nominee for the Supreme Court, in the Diplomatic Room of the White House. Doug Mills/The New York Times

American conservatives made a bargain in rallying behind Donald Trump: Theyd turn a blind eye to his malevolence and incompetence in exchange for judges more than 200 federal judges and most likely three Supreme Court seats, as it turned out. Their eye was on numerous prizes: Destroy abortion rights. Expand religious freedom. Protect Americans nearly unfettered access to firearms. Cripple the federal governments ability to regulate the environment, interstate commerce and more.

This strategy has worked out pretty well for them. But it has come at a cost. This was made clear with the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett especially when the White House ceremony that was held to honor her in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic turned into a super-spreader event because most participants went unmasked and many mingled and shook hands indoors.

Still, conservatives will almost surely get their third seat on the court, affecting its makeup and very possibly eroding many Americans civil rights for a generation. Indeed, the bigger cost of the Republican Partys bargain with Mr. Trump will take many more years to calculate.

Armed protesters massed at the State Capitol in Lansing, Mich., in opposition to coronavirus-related orders. Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Guns sales in the United States typically rise under Democratic presidents and fall when a Republican is in the White House. That was true during the Trump presidency until the coronavirus pandemic hit and racial justice advocates began exercising their right to protest. Then, Americans armed up.

There may be no more iconic image of the Trump years than that of Mark and Patricia McCloskey, the white St. Louis couple who were charged with unlawful use of a weapon for brandishing their guns at a crowd of demonstrators outside their gated home.

Far more alarming, though, was the sight of groups of men armed with semiautomatic military-style rifles, calling themselves militias, who appeared at protests around the country over the past year. President Trump has called for their ilk to stand by, and many have said theyll show up at polling places. Its a tense moment, with too many fingers resting on too many triggers.

A rally near the Brooklyn Museum and a silent march to call attention to police violence against transgender people, especially women of color. Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times

In June, some 15,000 people encircled the Brooklyn Museum wearing masks and dressed in all white, forming one of the largest demonstrations for Black transgender lives in history.

Two days before that gathering, the Trump administration finalized regulations dismantling protections for transgender patients against discrimination by doctors, hospitals and insurance companies protections that were urgently needed in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Last fall, the American Medical Association declared the killings of transgender women of color its own epidemic. Violence against the L.G.B.T.Q. community has spiked under the Trump administration, emboldened by a president who has barred transgender people from the military, rejected plans to add questions on sexual orientation to the census, prohibited embassies from flying flags for Pride Month, condoned discrimination at home and turned a blind eye to attacks on gay communities abroad.

The Obama administrations years were marked by signs of progress for L.G.B.T.Q. communities, but for every cautious step that had been taken forward, Mr. Trump signaled his intent to take running leaps backward. In the first week of his administration, all mentions of L.G.B.T.Q. rights on the White House website disappeared.

In what could be his final months in office, Mr. Trump nominated a jurist to the Supreme Court who has refused to say whether she supports the courts ruling protecting same-sex marriage. It appears that Amy Coney Barrett and Mr. Trump agree: No progress is too deeply rooted to be undone.

The rest is here:
Opinion | A Nation Adrift - The New York Times

The United States has welcomed more than 85 million legal immigrants to the United States since its founding. But at no time since it has maintained records has the country witnessed as fast adecline in legal immigration as it has seen in the second half of fiscal year 2020 (which finished September 30). Overall, the second half of FY 2020 saw 92 percent fewer immigrants from abroad than the first half, which was larger than any annual decline in the history of the United States.

Figure 1shows the monthly immigrant visa issuances under the Trump administration since March 2017. As it shows, legal immigration almost wholly stopped in April and May 2020after the State Department closed its consulates and President Trump issued aproclamation suspending new visa issuances to most immigrant categories. It has recovered slightly since then, but it remains 84 percent below last year (which was also adown year).

Figure 2shows the number of new arrivals of legal permanent residents or immigrant visas approved by year from 1820 to 2020, with the third and fourth quarter of FY 2020 added. The United States witnessed amore than 90 percent falloff in new immigration from abroad during the second half of FY 2020. This brings the annualized legal immigration rate from abroad to 0.03 percent of the U.S. population. This is the lowest rate of immigration except for three years during World War II and one year during the Great Depression.

The 92 percent drop in the second half of FY 2020 is larger than the drop during any single year in American historylarger than the 73 percent decline in 1915 coinciding with the start of World War I, larger than the 70 percent decline in 1925 coinciding with Congress closing legal immigration from Europe, larger than the 63 percent declines in 1931, 1942, and 1918 following the onset of the Great Depression and U.S. entries into each world war. Table 1shows the data for all available years and the change for the second half of 2020 from the first half. While its only half ayear, Figure 1indicates how slow the immigration recovery has been. It is unlikely that the 2021 will be much different if President Trump is reelected.

Before 1924, immigrants were never required to receive immigrant visas abroad to enter and become legal permanent residents, and from 1924 to 1952, nearly all immigrants had to receive immigrant visas abroad to become legal permanent residents. In recent years, about half of all new legal permanent residents have adjusted their status to permanent residence from temporary statuses, such the H-1B visa, refugee status, or illegal status. Generally, the number of new immigrants include both the number of new arrivals from abroad and those adjusting in the United States, but its also important to see who is entering from abroad because that reflects real changes in the U.S. population. The number of work visas, of course, have also declined just as dramatically.

This historic slowdown is important for both the shortterm and longterm economic growth of the United States. Fewer workers mean that jobs will take longer to fill and slow the economic recovery, and in coming years, fewer workers will support more retirees. If the United States remains closed long enough, it could push worldwide patterns of immigration away toward other countries with more welcoming policies.

Read the original post:
No Year Has Seen Legal Immigration Cut Like the 2nd Half of FY 2020 - Cato Institute

Most will agree that a university should be a safe space for academic freedom. Yet this safety is no longer available in all universities in modern Britain.

Two bad things have happened at once. The first is that the phrase itself has been captured. Safe spaces for students are used to justify the no-platforming of thinkers who warn against the oppressiveness of woke doctrines. The Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson is only the most famous of the victims: he was offered a visiting fellowship at Cambridge but then, in March last year, was denied it after protests that his views might upset students.

The second is that British universities, craving cash and students from foreign countries, have become dangerously uncritical of the terms on which they accept them. This is particularly true in relation to some Arab countries and even more so in relation to China.

In the same week that Cambridge blocked Professor Peterson, its vice-chancellor, Stephen Toope, was making a speech at Beijing University. Professor Toope praised his hosts: It is reassuring to find here a formidable institution, which seeks an open world open to ideas, open to the exchange of goods and people a world in which no people, great or small, will live in angry isolation. Actually, Beijing University, like all universities in China, is controlled by the Communist Party. A world open to ideas is almost the last thing that the Chinese regime wants. Right now it is fiercely closing down the only part of China where open ideas had flourished Hong Kong.

Cambridge, enthusiastically led by its vice-chancellor, has Tooped to conquer, accepting considerable sums of money from Chinese universities and businesses (including Huawei) for various projects. More than 20 British universities have made similar devils bargains. It goes without saying that such Chinese sponsorship does not permit academic freedom. (Try investigating, or even raising, Beijings treatment of the Uighurs, and see.) Indeed, goes without saying is the right phrase: it is forbidden to say it.

As well as this direct warping of open-minded research, a university indirectly threatens student freedom whenever it accepts a dictatorships money. Since Chinas new security law in Hong Kong came in this year, the regime claims the right to persecute free speech all over the world. Chinese critics of Hong Kong among the student body here, or among senior members of the university, are objects of interest to the Chinese authorities. The Chinese embassy in London keeps a watch, using compliant students to intimidate and spy on outspoken ones. Their victims are left exposed by British university authorities.

So it is good news this week that an Academic Freedom and Internationalisation Working Group has been set up. Based at University College, London, but independent of it, it draws on scholars from Edinburgh, Oxford etc (though Cambridge seems to be missing from the list). It wants to enshrine academic freedom in any internationalisation of British universities, and establish a code of conduct.

If such a concept does not succeed, too many British vice-chancellors will continue to go round the world offering their august institutions for rent to tyrants seeking to improve their regimes reputations in the West. And too many students, currently risking the Covid-19 virus, will also be unknowingly exposed to the virus of totalitarianism.

A regular correspondent from the West Country writes to me. She had complained about BBC bias directly to the new director-general of the BBC, Tim Davie, having decided to bypass the usual, dilatory complaints procedure and go straight to the top. In fewer than three weeks, her complaint had been upheld. She is in shock.

Her complaint concerned BBC Parliaments coverage of the first day of the Commons debate on the Internal Market Bill (ie, the latest bit of Brexit) last month. The Parliament channel is usually free of the running commentary by analysts making political points which is the bane of more general BBC coverage. But on this occasion the information captions which run below the live film were devoted to a series of condemnations of the man introducing the Bill, one Boris Johnson.

This is what the BBC complaints team not Mr Davie in person, but presumably acting on his orders replied: We didnt live up to our usual standards. The accumulation of detailed quotes condemning the Governments plans gave the impression that we were only interested in criticisms of the Bill.

The proper purpose of the information captions on screen is to give supporting information to enable the viewer to understand the legal processes involved in legislation, as well as key information relating to the content of the debate Where political comments are quoted from, these should be deployed on screen specifically where those comments are referred to by the Member speaking.

We didnt do this in this case and we understand your annoyance and apologise. I would be grateful to hear from other readers who may have had a satisfactory answer from the BBC. It is a genre with which I am not familiar.

When I wear a face-mask in a shop, say, or in church I feel a bit silly when I realise that people cannot see that I am smiling at them. But then I consider how many people seem to have forgotten how to smile, even when maskless, and I conclude that it is as well to keep the facial muscles in training.

Read the rest here:
Universities must beware of pacts with the devil - Telegraph.co.uk

Excellent podcast. These sort of nuanced conversations feel like a distant memory nowadays.

I was born in 1990, and was in the last months of high school as the 2008 primaries were happening. For many of my formative years, Fox News seemed like *the* representation of the right. It made it feel as though the American right wing was populated by completely crazy people like Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh. The right was a party of racists, idiots, anti-intellectuals and conspiracy theorists, or so I thought. Thus began my own slide to the left.

As an adult I'm happy to find more center-right perspectives, and really look forward to reading the Dispatch and the Bulwark every day.

This is completely my own perspective, but I wonder how much the sharp left lean that universities have taken is a result of that anti-intellectual streak the right has had for a while. Like, perhaps over time it has created some sort of cultural expectation.

I know some younger friends still in their late teens, who lean both right and left, through video game communities that I'm in. The ones who lean left often talk as if they *have* to go to university, even if it doesn't make a lot of sense for their desired career path. Like, they feel as if they want to be an artist, for example, they have to go get an art degree (bad idea btw) or they are somehow lesser than their peers.

On the other hand, it feels like the teenagers who lean right have no interest in higher education whatsoever. Like, they've read Jordan Peterson and seem to believe that they'll somehow make 90k a year for tiding their bedrooms (exaggerating, but you get the idea). To them, it's almost like this... lifestyle/aesthetic, where you wear a suit and tie, do your hair up well, and act rude toward the 'libs', then success will be handed to you when it's your turn or something. As if they're just trying to emulate Ben Shapiro, without any sort of critical thought process behind it.

They have very little interest in classic small-government conservatism, and I don't think I've ever heard any one of them express opposition to abortion (which was THE issue I'd stay up late discussing with my conservative friends when I was in college, along with gay marriage). And they just kind of... end up where they end up. Working retail, doing side jobs.

This is starting to have a trickle down effect as well. I work as a software developer, and our company culture has a distinct left lean. It's not that we don't want to hire people based on political views, but we just don't get that many applicants who hold conservative views.

I would love to get universities back to the confluence of ideas that it was when I attended, but with current cultural trends I wonder how feasible it is.

Read the original post:
Blue Pill or Red Pill - The Dispatch