Tax cuts may reduce gas, electric bills in Michigan, regulators say

Tax cuts may reduce gas, electric bills in Michigan, regulators say:
"LANSING, Mich. — Michigan regulators are ordering 13 utilities to study the impact of new federal tax cuts and how savings will be passed along to consumers through lower electric and gas bills.
The order was issued Wednesday during a special meeting called by the Michigan Public Service Commission.
...Commissioner Rachael Eubanks says utilities will likely see a "significant" reduction in federal taxes, and their response to the state will "provide broader input regarding the appropriate avenue for how to extend benefits to customers."...
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Confederate monument vandalized inside Georgia cemetery resulting in $200,000 worth of damages - Washington Times

Confederate monument vandalized inside Georgia cemetery resulting in $200,000 worth of damages - Washington Times:

"Authorities in Rome, Georgia, are investigating a recent act of vandalism that caused an estimated $200,000 worth of damages to an 130-year-old statue of a Confederate soldier.
The confederate monument called Rome’s Myrtle Hill Cemetery home for over a century until it was discovered seriously vandalized last week, ABC News reported Tuesday.
“It has been reported, the damage has been estimated and, yes, [we] are investigating,” said Rome Police Department Lt. Danny Story.
Vandals appeared to have breached the cemetery’s grounds late Wednesday evening or early Thursday morning and subsequently smashed the soldier’s face and removed a stone rifle from its hands, according to news reports."

Trump's Momentous First Year

Trump's Momentous First Year:
"We’ve experienced a miracle in our day that a lot of us thought we might never see again.

The conservative base wanted a consequential President; one who could overcome a combination of our country’s decline, the neutering of conservative principle, the increasingly poor economy, the leftward lurch of our major institutions, the suicidal tendencies grafted into our country by the left, and the increasing mindlessness of our culture.   
Trump filled the ticket as a candidate.
We’ve seen his Presidency for the better part of a year.  
We can now say emphatically, this is the most effective first year of any President in our lifetime, perhaps in a century.  
Including Ronald Reagan, who was the one that drew me to the political realm...
An incomplete list:

• The economy has taken an unprecedented move towards the better.
• GDP is moving upwards.  Most are forecasting close to 4% growth in 2018.
• New jobs are increasing monthly. 
• Manufacturing jobs are returning to the country for the first time in thirty years.
• The bleeding of corporations leaving the country has stopped.
• Corporations have begun to reinvest in American factories and interests.
• Trade deals are being renegotiated to our economic benefit.
• The first major tax cut legislation in thirty years was just signed into law.
• Massive amounts of regulation have been cut, spurring business optimism.
• Consumer optimism is higher than in the past two decades.
• The coal industry in our country has been revived.
• Pipelines for oil have been released for construction completion.
• We have expanded oil drilling, even in ANWAR.
• We are virtually energy independent as a nation.
• Our energy businesses have become exporters.
• Our stock market is through the roof, up 30%, new highs almost daily.
• Business optimism has not been higher.  Atlas stopped shrugging.
• The horrid Obamacare individual mandate was torpedoed.
• Justice Neal Gorsuch was voted to the Supreme Court.
• Trump appointed more judges in his first year than any other President.
• He is remaking the judiciary in a conservative image as he promised.
• He has slowed illegal immigration to a level not seen in thirty years.
• He is destroying MS 13, and other illegal immigrant gangs.
• He is speaking openly of ending chain immigration.
• He has successfully gone after ISIS, virtually driving them into the ground.
• He has acknowledged Jerusalem as the Capitol of Israel.
• He has reset our alliance with Israel.
• He is quietly helping to remake a Middle East that is a bulwark against Iran.
• He has quietly reset our alliance with the new leaders of Saudi Arabia.
• He is quietly reversing the horrible Iranian deal left us by Obama.
• He has been the first President to stand against the insanity of North Korea.
• He has connected with the Chinese leadership, enlisting them as allies.
• He has pulled out of TPP, beginning negotiation on a better deal.
• He is renegotiating NAFTA.
• He has pulled us out of the ridiculous and harmful Paris Climate Accord.
• He has begun to dismantle the corruption of climate data by our bureaucracies.
• He has reset an agenda for space exploration by NASA.
• He has brought hope to the mission of our military. 
• He has worked and enacted better care and treatment for our Veterans.
• He is redefining our mission in national security with his speech last week.
• He has put the United Nations on notice for their arrogant nonsense.
• He has and is exposing the national media for the leftist activism base it is.
• He has fought the self-tarnished media more effectively than any other.
• He has exposed the Democratic Party as corrupt, issueless, and powerless.
• He has exposed the fecklessness, and fraud of the GOP.
• He is quietly remaking the GOP from their own ashes.
• He has exposed the deep state to public view.  And is just beginning.
• He is exposing the corruption of our bureaucracies by the Obama administration.
• He is exposing the insanity of the hard left, and their utter lack of decency.
• He has driven mad the constituency of #nevertrumpers on the right.  Exposed.
• Last mentioned: he has earned the unity and praise of the elected GOP.  Which has been well deserved.  This is one we on the right should all applaud.

Read on!

The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 and the Breakdown of the Black Family

The Davis-Bacon Act of 1931 and the Breakdown of the Black Family
"Conservatives tend to regard the growing trend of single-parent families as an issue of personal responsibility, but what if the liberals who blame society are partly right? 
What if they can point their finger to a bill sponsored by two Republicans and signed into law by a Republican president?

Prior to the 1930s, the labor force participation rate for black Americans was roughly equal to that of whites. 
Following passage of the first federal minimum wage in 1931, these rates started to diverge, and from the 1950s to the present, national black unemployment has remained at double the rate for whites. This is not surprising: Minimum wage restrictions discourage businesses from hiring workers who are regarded as “less marketable” due to either their lack of experience or societal prejudice.

The impact of minimum wage on worker participation depends on how much it exceeds market-based wages. 
...To detect the effect of the regulatory environment on black Americans I limited the data to states with significant black populations because these states are more likely to provide a representative sample for this group. 
Based on this sub-sample the line representing blacks is noticeably steeper than the line representing whites (Fig. 1). 
This means that the “employment gap” between blacks and whites widens as state regulations become less conducive to business.

Fig. 1: Based on data from Forbes (2016), the  U.S. Census Bureau (2015), and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2015) as cited by Thomas C. Frohlich in 24/7 Wall Street. 24/7 Wall Street.

Read it all!

Lunch video-----Where Does the Federal Government Get All That Money?

Noon-toon

LA County: Only 197 Concealed Carry Permits for 10.2 Million Residents - Breitbart

LA County: Only 197 Concealed Carry Permits for 10.2 Million Residents - Breitbart:

"An audit by the California State Auditor shows Los Angeles County has only issued concealed carry permits to 197 of its 10.2 million residents."

How they "think"-----Time To Make Life Hard For The Rich

Time To Make Life Hard For The Rich
"It is time for polite, respectable, rational people to start saying what has become painfully obvious:
It is time to stop respecting the rich, and start stealing from them. 
In earnest.
Inequality is eating America alive.
It has been growing for decades.
To say that “the American dream is dead” is no longer a poetic exaggeration—it is an accurate description of 40 years of wage stagnation and declining economic mobility that has produced a generation that cannot expect to live better than their parents did.
How long are people supposed to tolerate being smacked in the face? 
By the rich? 
Who already have more than enough?...
Read on!

News - Colorado Attorney General Fights Against Personhood Claim for River | Heartland Institute

News - Colorado Attorney General Fights Against Personhood Claim for River | Heartland Institute
"Colorado’s Attorney General has asked a Federal District Court to dismiss a “first-of-its-kind” claim filed by a radical environmental group, requesting the court recognize the Colorado River ecosystem as a legal person with constitutional rights.
Colorado’s Attorney General’s office has asked a federal court to dismiss a “first-of-its-kind” claim filed by members of Deep Green Resistance (DGR), a self-described radical environmental group, requesting the court recognize the Colorado River ecosystem as a legal person with constitutional rights..."

#1 This day 1975-----Bay City Rollers - Saturday Night • TopPop

Confirmed: John Brennan Colluded With Foreign Spies to Defeat Trump | The American Spectator

Confirmed: John Brennan Colluded With Foreign Spies to Defeat Trump | The American Spectator: "This is the open scandal that Congress should investigate.
An article in the Guardian last week provides more confirmation that John Brennan was the American progenitor of political espionage aimed at defeating Donald Trump.
One side did collude with foreign powers to tip the election — Hillary’s.
Seeking to retain his position as CIA director under Hillary, Brennan teamed up with British spies and Estonian spies to cripple Trump’s candidacy.
He used their phony intelligence as a pretext for a multi-agency investigation into Trump, which led the FBI to probe a computer server connected to Trump Tower and gave cover to Susan Rice, among other Hillary supporters, to spy on Trump and his people.
John Brennan’s CIA operated like a branch office of the Hillary campaign, leaking out mentions of this bogus investigation to the press in the hopes of inflicting maximum political damage on Trump.
An official in the intelligence community tells TAS that Brennan’s retinue of political radicals didn’t even bother to hide their activism, decorating offices with “Hillary for president cups” and other campaign paraphernalia.
A supporter of the American Communist Party at the height of the Cold War, Brennan brought into the CIA a raft of subversives and gave them plum positions from which to gather and leak political espionage on Trump.
He bastardized standards so that these left-wing activists could burrow in and take career positions. Under the patina of that phony professionalism, they could then present their politicized judgments as “non-partisan.”..."
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You ought to know!

Swedish Women Told to ‘Stay Indoors’ to Avoid Being Raped…

Swedish Women Told to ‘Stay Indoors’ to Avoid Being Raped…:

"Sweden is famous for many things. Mainly craptastic mass-produced home furnishings, a 1970s chart-topping pop group, and rape. Lots and lots of rape. In fact, they’ve earned the title of “Rape Capital of the West,” and there’s no sign of them relinquishing that title anytime soon.

In fact, the rapery is at such a critical mass, their government is taking action to put a stop to it. They’ve instructed Swedish women to avoid rape by remaining indoors and not traveling alone. Yes, really."

Three Huge, Totally Unexpected Surprises to Look for in 2018

Check Washington's conventional political wisdom — then look the other way to see where U.S. is headed in next 12 months

Here are three leading examples of the conventional wisdom among Washington’s political experts about what will happen in 2018:

• Democrats will ride a “blue wave” of congressional campaign victories to retake control of Congress, gaining majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

• Only the richest Americans will benefit economically from passage of President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, as the stall in middle-class prosperity continues.

• Special counsel Robert Mueller will indict a host of former Trump campaign and administration figures — then the chief executive himself will be impeached and convicted by the blue wave Democratic majority in Congress.

Now here’s what will actually happen next year..."

Read on!

AM Fruitcake

History for December 29

History for December 29 - On-This-Day.com
Charles Goodyear 1800, Andrew Johnson 1808, William Gladstone 1809


Pablo Casals 1876, Mary Tyler Moore 1936 - Actress, Jon Voight 1938 - Actor


1170 - St. Thomas à Becket, the 40th archbishop of Canterbury, was murdered in his own cathedral by four knights acting on Henry II's orders.


1812 - The USS Constitution won a battle with the British ship HMS Java about 30 miles off the coast of Brazil. Before Commodore William Bainbridge ordered the sinking of the Java he had her wheel removed to replace the one the Constitution had lost during the battle.


1813 - The British burned Buffalo, NY, during the War of 1812.


1848 - U.S. President James Polk turned on the first gas light at the White House.


1851 - The first American Young Men's Christian Association was organized, in Boston, MA.


1911 - Sun Yat-sen became the first president of a republican China.


1949 - KC2XAK of Bridgeport, Connecticut became the first ultrahigh frequency (UHF) television station to begin operating on a regular daily schedule.


1952 - The first transistorized hearing aid was offered for sale by Sonotone Corporation.

MORE BIAS: Prosecutor Assisting Mueller Openly Brags About 'Legal Resistance' To Trump | Daily Wire

MORE BIAS: Prosecutor Assisting Mueller Openly Brags About 'Legal Resistance' To Trump | Daily Wire:

"Openly anti-Trump New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman bragged in a Medium post on Tuesday about his "legal resistance" to Trump. He just so happens to reportedly be assisting special counsel Robert Mueller with the probe into Russian interference during the 2016 election, aka alleged Trump/Kremlin collusion."

The way we were-----California Dreamin' - The Mamas & The Papas

Boob-tube-----Ding Dong School with Miss Frances (1953) - Classic Episode

Everything you know about toxic shock syndrome is probably wrong | Popular Science

Everything you know about toxic shock syndrome is probably wrong | Popular Science
"For a while there in the ‘90s it felt like every teen-girl magazine was required to publish at least one (terrifying) it-happened-to-me toxic shock syndrome story per year. 
“I left a tampon in for eight hours and almost died.” 
“My friend looked at a tampon once and died from TSS.” 
Maybe these tales were leftovers from the TSS epidemic in the late 1970s, or maybe editors tracked down new cases from actual teens. 
I can only assume that the intent was to make young girls aware of the dangers of toxic shock syndrome. 
Mission accomplished.
Now, TSS is back in the news because a model—who lost her leg to the disease in 2012—is on an awareness campaign to teach young girls about the dangers of tampons. 
...Every woman I know heard these tales as a kid and had one takeaway: we were all definitely going to get TSS if we left a tampon in for even a minute longer than the prescribed eight hours. 
In 9th grade I accidentally left one in for 12 hours and genuinely thought I’d narrowly escaped death. 
But it turns out almost everything that I and other girls my age believed about TSS is flat-out wrong. 
Let’s clear up a few misconceptions, starting with the basics..."
Read on!