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Louis Biad, Your view Published 2:56 a.m. MT March 15, 2020

Louis Biad, Mesilla Valley chile farmer, pecan farmer and co-owner of Picacho Hills Country Club.(Photo: Jett Loe / Sun-News)

Theres an interesting dichotomy playing out in New Mexico.

No, Im not talking about which of the superstar Mikeis going to win our states primary and go on to crush President Trump in November. We learned recently that it wont be Michael Avenatti or Michael Bloomberg.

Nor am I talking about the raging debate about stupid pedicabs versus money wasting trolleys from NMSU to Downtown.

In the last month, in this newspaper, we have seen that our legislature will leap into action if the US Supreme Court takes steps to curtail abortion rights. We have seen impassioned commentaries from a New Mexico practicing OBGYN detailing how dangerous it would be to pass abortion bans and restrictions. (Feb. 9). On Feb. 5, we read an article by a reproductive rights attorney for the ACLU of New Mexico arguing that abortion bans are an assault on reproductive freedom.

On the other side of the scale, in suspiciously quiet fashion, a daughter of New Mexico had the honor of speaking at the same podium as the president of the United States. It is easy to look at poverty, childrens healthcare, education, late-term abortion rates and see what is wrong with New Mexico. But, born into a humble community, Elisa Martinez is what is right with New Mexico. So well-known has she become among pro-lifers that she was invited to speak at the pro-life rally in DC.

She is a solid on every issue. Passionately warning New Mexicans about the real dangers of socialism and leftism. She has lived it. Up close has she has seen the havoc it wreaks. While Martinez is no one-trick pony, perhaps she does hold the key to pulling in conservative Democrats who are not thrilled with the prospect of voting for the two far-left, wealthy, whitemen running for president. Or for the establishment, Santa Fe swamp rat running for the open US Senate seat from New Mexico. Elisa, and defense of life may be the wedge that gives traditional Hispanic, Catholic, Democrats permission to hold their nose and vote for a Republican or two.

What else is going on here? Pro-abortion Democrats who have become more fervent over the recent years, are panicked that Trump courts, and even more so, the hearts, minds and souls of Americans are challenging the future of abortion in America. Even the reliably progressive Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that the Trump Administration may continue to enforce a rule that federal planning funds, such as Planned Parenthood, separate themselves from abortion activities. This is yuuge. And the left knows it.

The party of JFK is gone. It is dead. Now the party of AOC, it is no longer the default party of blue-collar workers, Catholics, families, anti-war voices, fair trade or moderation of any kind.

This is an opportunity. If the state party, pro-life activists, and religious folks come together there is a chance to save untold unborn children in New Mexico. Even the New Mexico Catholic bishops can help if they can take a timeout from their advocacy of no borders, minimum wage, global warming, and lawsuit settlements to truly live the statement that they made at their 2019 USCCB Fall Assembly.

"The threat of abortion remains our preeminent priority because it directly attacks life itself, because it takes place within the sanctuary of the family, and because of the number of lives it destroys."

Do they truly believe this? Its time for them to put up and be counted on the issue of life.

Make no mistake, the culture war has come to the Land of Enchantment.

Louis Biad was born in the area, and lives and works in Las Cruces.

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Pro-life Democrats have a candidate in the GOP - Las Cruces Sun-News

President Trump in an early morning tweet on Monday accused the"Fake News Media" and Democrats of trying to inflame the coronavirus outbreak as thevirus spreads globally and across the U.S.

The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant, Trump tweeted.

Surgeon General, 'The risk is low to the average American, Trump added.

The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, The risk is low to the average American.

Its unclear exactly what prompted Trump's tweet.

Many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have issued calls for putting politics aside as the nation grapples with the outbreak.

More than 500 cases have been confirmed in the U.S., and multiple people have died from the virus, mostly in Washington state.

At least eight states have declared states of emergency due to the outbreak, including Oregon, which announced its state of emergency Sunday after its number of cases doubled to 14.

Trump administration officials sought to ease fearsin a series of appearances on Sunday morning talk shows, but some Democrats have questioned the administrations response.

Despite Trumps claim last week that anyone who needs a test can get one, Sen. Chris MurphyChristopher (Chris) Scott MurphyCoronavirus takes toll on Capitol Hill Graham warns of 'aggressive' response to Iran-backed rocket attack that killed US troops US paints murky picture of Russian disinformation on coronavirus MORE (D-Conn.) said thats not the case in his state.

Issues over available tests make it difficult to assess the scope of the epidemic, Murphy said Sunday on CBSs Face the Nation.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams said on CNNs State of the Union that the nation is entering a so-called mitigation phase and people should not panic even as more cases appear.

Trump in tweets later Monday praised Vice President Pence and others members of the White House coronavirus task force, saying his decision to restrict travel from virus-stricken nations saved many lives.

Great job being done by the @VP and the CoronaVirus Task Force. Thank you!

The BEST decision made was the toughest of them all - which saved many lives. Our VERY early decision to stop travel to and from certain parts of the world!

"So much FAKE NEWS!" he added in another post.

So much FAKE NEWS!

Updated at 9:27 a.m.

See original here:
Trump: 'Fake News Media,' Democrats working to 'inflame the CoronaVirus situation' | TheHill - The Hill

More than one-fifth of all income for the top 1 percent of earners in America comes from capital gains, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.

Its really not an issue of billionaires sit on piles of cash, of idle money that the government should take, said Gabriel Zucman, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley. Its really an issue of you have people who have capacity to pay a lot of taxes and the way to get them to pay more is by taxing capital.

The need for more tax revenue is clear to many Democrats who want to fund government programs meant to help the poor and the middle class, including universal child care, paid leave, early-childhood education and free college.

But the United States taxes income from capital gains at a lower rate than it taxes income from jobs. Orthodox free-market economists argue that comparatively lower taxes on capital gains stimulate investment, and conservatives warn that raising those taxes would hamper economic growth.

Right now, one of the biggest problems we have is low investment even with low interest rates, said Karl Smith, vice president for federal policy at the Tax Foundation in Washington, a think tank that tends to support lower taxes on businesses and capital gains. In general, taxing capital or productive assets is going to make that problem even worse.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders favor raising the tax rate for capital gains, such as profit on the sale of a stock or a business, to the same rate as taxes on labor income. Mr. Bidens increases would be smaller, and apply to fewer Americans, than Mr. Sanderss.

Currently, married taxpayers earning up to just under $80,000 a year pay no taxes on capital gains from assets held longer than a year. The top rate, for those earning just under $500,000 a year, is 23.8 percent, compared with a top rate of 37 percent for labor income.

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How Democrats Would Raise Taxes on the Rich - The New York Times

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

You dont ever want a crisis to go to waste. Its an opportunity to do things that you would otherwise avoid.

So said former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who was President Obamas chief of staff and an astute practitioner of smashmouth politics.

Its worth remembering this as the Democrats and their media do everything they can to hype the dangers of the Wuhan coronavirus. Not that it isnt deadly serious. It is. People are contracting it and dying, all over the world, and it has cratered the U.S. economy.

But here are three items you wont hear much about: Only a handful of children in China have contracted the virus. Factories are reopening and hospitals are closing in Wuhan, where the virus was centered. And in South Korea, the epidemic appears to be leveling off amid mass testing, with the fatality rate for deaths from infections less than 1 percent.

The Wuhan virus, re-dubbed COVID-19 by the World Health Organization, was first identified in December. The Communist government covered it up at first, quarantined the city and then confined 60 million people before the virus began leveling off in March.

Now, Communist Chinas Internet trolls are accusing anyone who uses the term Wuhan virus or Chinese virus as xenophobic. A Chinese military portal is claiming that the virus is a biochemical weapon developed by the United States to target China. The Communist Party is spreading the idea that the virus was brought over to China by U.S. military personnel in October.

This is reminiscent of when the Soviet Union spread the rumor that the CIA had created the AIDS virus.

The Wuhan label has been around since the story broke, as documented by the Media Research Center, which compiled a montage of dozens of journalists using the phrase.

On Thursday, Joe Biden accused President Trump and anyone else who calls it the Wuhan virus as xenophobic. Pretty soon, Joe will accuse people of being anti-ornithology for using the term bird flu.

The first case of Wuhan coronavirus in the United States was reported on Jan. 21, and the Trump administration issued a mandatory 14-day quarantine for anyone coming into the country from Chinas Hubei province. On Jan. 31, the Trump administration announced tighter travel restrictions.

That same day, Mr. Biden told a crowd in Iowa: This is no time for Donald Trumps record of hysteria and xenophobia hysterical xenophobia and fearmongering to lead the way instead of science. A few days later, he railed against reactionary travel bans, saying they would worsen the problem. No one in the press corps seemed curious as to how letting in fewer infected people would worsen an epidemic.

Conversely, in their Feb. 4 letter to HHS Secretary Alex M. Azar II, Reps. Nita Lowey, New York Democrat, and Rose L. DeLauro, Connecticut Democrat, praised the administration for declaring a public health emergency and requested more funds for several activities, including mandatory quarantine of travelers and enhanced screening at ports of entry. What a couple of xenophobes.

Other Democrats, however, followed Mr. Bidens lead and unloaded on Mr. Trump. Rep. Eliot L. Engel (New York) called travel bans imposed by the United States and other countries, racist and discriminatory.

On March 5, Sen. Bernie Sanders took to the pages of USA Today to accuse Mr. Trump of being incompetent, political and reckless. Unlike himself, a mild-mannered communist.

No matter what Mr. Trump does, he will be accused of 1) reacting recklessly; 2) reacting too slowly; 3) being racist; 4) ignoring medical advice; and 4) treating the health crisis as a partisan issue.

The left has two good reasons to gin up hysteria. They think theyve finally found a silver bullet to take down President Trump, and they have an opportunity to create permanent government expansion through emergency legislation.

The same kind of folks who concocted the 2,000-page Obamacare legislation behind closed doors will slip Democratic socialist wish-list items into any emergency legislation.

One of them is mandatory paid leave, which might sound good in an emergency, but could become a permanent dictate to businesses with 15 or more employees. Pro-business groups have opposed it for years as a job-killing measure. Crisis, meet opportunity.

Any delay in ramming through the legislation will afford Democrats a chance to do what they do best accuse opponents of lacking compassion. And racism. Always, racism.

Sometimes, youre deemed awful even if youve uttered nothing offensive.

On Thursday, The Washington Post ran a five-column photo and feature article about first lady Melania Trump addressing the National PTA Legislative Conference about online bullying. Be best not to mention it? was the snarky headline. The writer complained that Mrs. Trump had discussed her topic without referencing the coronavirus. The runover page headline was: First ladys talking points dont include covid-19.

Could you imagine The Post giving Michelle Obama the same treatment?

If Mrs. Trump had said anything about the virus, they would have seized on it and ripped her up one side and down the other. She cant win.

Its all part of mining the crisis for political gold, which may well turn out to be fools gold before this is over.

Robert Knight is a contributor to The Washington Times. His website is roberthknight.com.

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Democrats and liberal media trying to use coronavirus to bring down President Trump - Washington Times

DES MOINES After Iowas Democratic caucuses melted down into a long night of technology glitches and error-riddled results, Laura Hubka, the chairwoman of the Howard County Democrats, got up the next morning and faced the aftermath at the grocery store.

The Democrats she met in the aisles of her local Fareway were edgy: How had it gone so wrong? And, more important, what did this mean for November?

Aside from hoping to beat President Trump in a state he captured from Democrats in 2016, Iowa Democrats are trying to hold on to two newly won congressional seats and unseat a Republican senator. And now conservatives were crowing: If Iowas Democrats could not even run their own first-in-the-nation caucus, what shot did they have at their bigger election-year goals?

Its not been an easy week, Ms. Hubka said. Im just kind of tired.

A week after the caucus fiasco, the hangover lives on. Iowa Democratic Party leaders are still mired in questions about their leadership and the accuracy of the caucus results as the campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Ind., asked for reviews of dozens of precincts.

In an instantly symbolic moment on Monday, Troy Price, the state Democratic chairman, was speaking at a news conference in Des Moines when the partys logo fell off his lectern and clunked to the floor.

Until last week, Democrats were hopeful about their recovering fortunes in Iowa, which has been a bellwether in the last three presidential elections. In 2018, they won two of the states four congressional seats from Republicans.

But in a state where Democrats say they are also fairly accustomed to disappointing election nights, some said last weeks debacle would not dampen their enthusiasm this fall. They were motivated to vote by far more urgent issues, such as protecting their Medicaid coverage, struggling crop prices and the toll of the administrations trade war on farmers.

Ill still vote, said Becci West, who manages a pizzeria in Marshalltown and has a 13-month-old daughter. She was one of the last mothers to deliver her baby before the local hospital shut down its obstetrics ward. Health care is important to me.

Four years ago, Ms. West said, she voted Libertarian when Marshall County swung by 18 points into Mr. Trumps column. Two years after that, in the midterms, the county was part of a Democratic surge that unseated a two-term Republican congressman and elected Abby Finkenauer, a Democrat who stressed her rural roots and familys union ties. Now, like so many counties spreading east from Des Moines to the Mississippi River, it is a jump ball.

Democrats across Iowa said they worried the caucus turmoil would amplify the problems of a disappointing turnout. The caucuses were attended by 176,000 people, about 3 percent more than those who showed up in 2016, and far less than the 300,000 some campaigns had prepared for.

In some rural precincts, volunteers were distressed that only 15 or 20 people showed up to school gyms and civic-center basements where twice that many had come in past years.

I do fear that people who came on Monday will never caucus again, said Debra Zupke, who volunteered to run her tiny precinct caucus in Scott County, in eastern Iowa. Who tried to become involved and were turned off by what happened. But I do think there is a good core of people who are energized.

In Marshalltown, Kristal Acevedo De Bogue, 30, caucused for the first time last Monday, supporting Mr. Sanders, who won the county. Afterward, she said she grew increasingly suspicious of the entire process as she tracked the halting release of results that have been revised and corrected and re-examined again and again.

It did make me a little leery of the whole thing, Ms. Acevedo said. I dont have a lot of confidence in the results.

In West Des Moines, Judy Zobel was ready to dump the caucuses she helped to run.

I feel so unengaged now, she said.

She said she received no training in how to use the faulty results-reporting app, and then gave up trying to phone in her precincts results to a jammed-up hotline. She ended up driving them over to a local Democratic collection point.

I think the best thing in the world is just to do away with the caucuses, she said. Take a vote and have a paper backup.

But several rural Democrats said they were troubled by the idea of moving the first contest of the presidential primaries out of Iowa.

Yes, they acknowledged, the caucuses can feel like an anachronism: complicated, time-consuming, exclusionary to anyone who cannot afford child care or a missed shift.

But they said losing a monthslong parade of candidates who stream through tiny towns to talk farm-country issues could be a death blow for rural Democrats, who are still struggling to convert anti-Trump sentiment into local election wins in places where the president remains popular.

Several Democrats said they were frustrated by the partys response up and down the line and impatient for an independent investigation to explain the cascading problems. One county chairman has called on the state and national leaders to resign.

In Tama County, Dave Degner, a truck driver and county Democratic chairman running for State Senate, was less concerned about any long-term damage when the country seemed to have such a short-term memory.

Were living in an era where therell be another scandal, another tweet, something thats going to have everybody wound up, he said. And the caucuses? Just another blip in the news cycle that nobodys going to remember.

Michael Wines contributed reporting.

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Can Iowas Democrats Rebound From the Caucus Fiasco? - The New York Times