By a 4-3 vote, the Muncy Borough Council told the federal government to stay out of my town’s business.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the organization that oversees national disasters, had offered to buy and tear down 19 local homes because they sat in the flood plain of the Susquehanna River.
About 40 percent of the town of 2,400 residents sits in the flood plain. The last big flood happened in 2004, with some minor to moderate flooding every five or six years.
What concerns Council President Bill Scott is that the purchased homes will be torn down, leaving the borough with an estimated yearly loss in local revenue of nearly $30,000.
“I’m not for it,” Scott said. “Half of our town floods. That’s the main issue.”
Scott said he believes it is better to look at flood control studies before removing properties from the tax base.
“That adds up,” he said. “That’s a significant amount of money over time.”
Scott and three other council members decided that it was better to stay off the federal government tax trough and see if there was a better solution.
“Being an engineer and not giving up too easily, I think it can be solved,” Scott added. “It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s a long-term thing.”
The local homeowners complain that they can’t see their homes for a profit because they’re in the flood plain.
The argument sounds a lot like the student loan issue. People who make lousy decisions want the government to pay for their mistakes.
When we moved to Muncy, the possibility of a flood concerned us—as it does many people in the area. That’s why buyers have a home inspection and an appraisal before purchasing a house.
Moreover, flood insurance isn’t cheap—an estimated $1,400 a year above basic coverage—but it comes in handy should water damage happen. It’s the cost of buying and maintaining a home.
I applaud my local leaders for saying no to the feds and trying to devise an alternative solution. More local governments should determine whether federal programs actually hurt their communities.
Posted: April 15, 2023 by datechguy in Uncategorized
Sir Humphrey Appleby: The question in a nutshell is ‘What is the difference between a breech of the Official Secrets Act on the one hand and an unattributable off the record briefing by a senior official?. The former a breech, is a criminal offense, the latter, a briefing, is essential to keep the wheels turning. Now is there a real objective difference or is it a matter of convenience and interpretation? and is it a breach of the Act , if there is an unofficial bib attributable briefing by an official who has been unofficially authorized by the Prime Minister?
PM James Hacker: If it’s authorized by the Prime Minister then no.
Bernard WooleyThat’s what I said
PM James Hacker: Surely it’s ub to me wheatear it’s in the national interest for something to be disclosed or not. The point is it’s not up to officials and last week’s leak must have come from an official.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: But what if the official was officially authorized? Or even unofficially authorized? What if the Prime Minister officially disapproves of a breach of the act but unofficially approves? Now that would mean that a leak would be unofficially official, but officially unofficial.
Apparently the Pentagon is having an issue finding how how the alleged leaker of info on Ukraine that contradicts the narrative of this administration.
Yes Prime Minister Official Secrets 1987
None of the rest of us could explain how an enlistee in the Air National Guard got his hands on highly classified military and diplomatic intelligence leaked over the past few months. Now it turns out that the Pentagon doesn’t have a good answer for that question, either.
Back in the days when I worked for Raytheon, had secret clearance and had to sign a document saying there were several things that, if I did them, carried the death penalty, you didn’t get access to stuff unless you actually needed them for your job. Ed Morrissey continues to ask the relevant question:
Jack Teixeira served in the 102nd Intelligence Wing of the Massachusetts Air National Guard, based on Cape Cod. What would the MANG “need to know” about Mossad communications, Russian and Ukrainian military operations, and diplomat communications? The former chief of Massachusetts Homeland Security, Juliette Kayyem, doesn’t have an explanation for it either:
Former CIA officer Larry Johnson, who did presidential daily briefings during the George H.W. Bush administration, told “Judging Freedom” host Andrew Napolitano that he thinks the latest leak of Ukraine War documents is an inside job.
About the source, he said: “I’d put it above the CIA. This is elements connected to the Director of National Intelligence… There’s no way that some National Guardsman doing [temporary duty] at Fort Bragg would have access to that.”
“The information was leaked for [a purpose], to prepare the U.S. public for the crash landing that’s going to take place with respect to U.S. foreign policy,” he said.
“The documents are real. I’m not saying the documents are fabrications, they are not. But this cover story that’s been manufactured to explain how these documents came to be produced, it just falls apart… This thing is too tidy a package, this has been wrapped up nice and neatly, this is like an episode of ‘Law And Order.'”
On a virtually daily basis, one can find authorized leaks in The New York Times, The Washington Post, on CNN and NBC News: meaning stories dressed up as leaks from anonymous sources that are, in fact, nothing more than messaging assertions that the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security and the Pentagon have instructed these subservient media corporations to disseminate. When that happens, the leaker is never found or punished: even when the leaks are designated as the most serious crimes under the U.S. criminal code, such as when The Washington Post‘s long-time CIA spokesman David Ignatius in early 2017 published the contents of the intercepted phone calls between Trump’s incoming National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Most of Russiagate was constructed based on authorized leaks, a generous way of describing official propaganda from the U.S. Security State laundered in the American corporate press.
But when it comes to unauthorized leaks — which result in the disclosure of secret evidence showing that the U.S. Security State lied, acted corruptly, or broke laws — that is when the full weight of establishment power comes crashing down on the head of the leaker. They are found and arrested. Their character is destroyed. And now — in a new and genuinely shocking escalation — it is the largest media corporations themselves, such as the Times and the Post, that actually do the FBI’s work by hunting down the leaker, exposing him, and ensuring his arrest.
Military police have arrested Jack Teixeira for allegedly leaking classified documents that contained information on the war in Ukraine. Teixeira, an Air National Guardsman, is currently kicking himself for not just leaving documents strewn around an unlocked garage as the President did.
“Ugh! I’m so stupid! Why didn’t I just print them out and leave them in a garage, or a vacation home, or the trunk of a Corvette?” said the distraught Teixeira while being hauled away. “What on earth was I thinking?”
Mr. Johnson might be right about this being deliberate, but if that’s the case the government has one big advantage in selling their narrative. I’m not aware of anyone who would have trouble believing this administration and woke military was incompetent.
“I heard my momma cry, I heard her pray the night Chicago died.” The Night Chicago Died, Paper Lace, 1974.
Any doubt in my mind that Chicago would be the next Detroit evaporated last Tuesday night as election results came in showing that far-left Democrat Brandon Johnson would replace the disastrous Lori Lightfoot as mayor of Chicago.
It was the night Chicago died.
There are serious lessons from this Democrat battle for Republicans.
Moderate Democrat Paul Vallas, a policy wonk who can produce a white paper as easily as quickly as a Kardashian can upload skanky pics on Instagram, offered a commonsense solution to Chicago’s crime epidemic: hire more cops.
Woke triumphed over wonk.
Johnson, whose political career is a creation of the neo-Marxist Chicago’s Teacher Union, has a “roots cause” outlook in regard taking back Chicago. He favors sending social workers to domestic disturbances instead of police officers. And almost as if on cue on the day after the first round of voting for mayor, Andres Vasquez-Lasso, a 32-year-old cop, was shot to death responding to a domestic disturbance call.
Six months ago, few Chicagoans had heard of Johnson. He’s been a Cook County commissioner since 2019, a rubber stamp body, for the most part, is controlled by Toni “Taxwinkle” Preckwinkle. She is also the chairman of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization, aka, the Chicago Machine.
Well, it was Chicago’s Machine.
The new machine in the city is the Chicago Teachers Union, which is aided by a couple of key allies, two other public-sector unions, SEIU and AFSCME.
Johnson, after a few years as a teacher, where he admitted he never assigned homework, moved on to be a CTU organizer. In fact, he kept collecting about $100,000 a year from the union even though he was an elected official.
And despite Johnson’s “defund the police” rhetoric from 2020, which be backed off of as his campaign gained traction before the February runoff, Johnson is Chicago’s mayor-elect.
With crime soaring in Chicago, how did that happen?
That’s easy, it was that new machine, CTU and friends, that got Johnson elected.
“They were brilliant,” former ABC Chicago political analyst Clarence Thomas told Chicago’s Morning Answer Dan Proft last week of CTU. “They did it, they went door to door, they knocked on doors, they found those vote by mail ballots, and said, ‘Hey, let’s fill this out, let’s send this in.'”
Vallas, meanwhile, ran a conventional political campaign, heavy on collecting corporate campaign contributions, big-name endorsements including Dick Durbin, former governor Pat Quinn, recently retired six-term Illinois secretary of state Jesse White, and many Chicago alderpersons. Illinois’ most-read newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, endorsed Vallas.
That was a wonderful strategy–that is, if Vallas was a candidate for mayor of Chicago in 1991.
How many doors did Dick Durbin knock for Vallas? Or Quinn? How many voters did the Chicago Tribune reach out by way of text messaging, reminding them when, where, and how to vote? How many voters did Jesse White contact in regard to receiving a mail-in ballot? How many social media private messages did those pro-Vallas alderpersons send? How many people got rides to polling places from those corporate megadonors?
The answer to those questions is the same: almost certainly zero.
The Chicago Teachers Union game plan that got Brandon Johnson elected will be replicated by leftists nationwide in 2024. Listen, I hate early voting and I despise mail-in ballots, but until the rules are changed–and that is, if they are changed–Republicans have to adapt to the new ballgame.
The CTU looked for voters, found them, and they made sure they voted for Johnson last week–as well as the two weeks prior to Election Day. A low turnout–about 35 percent—clearly upped the odds for CTU/Johnson.
As for that abysmal turnout, shame on you, Chicago.
One more thing about Vallas. When he conceded on election night, he trailed Johnson about 10,000 votes. But that evening there were still around 50,000 outstanding mail-in ballots, and yes, they are still trickling in and being counted. Vallas learned too late that the game had changed. He knew the great majority of those mail-in ballots were from Johnson voters.
Get to work, Republicans. Find out who your voters are, connect with them, stay in touch with them, and get them to vote.
And yes, knock on doors. More people can be found at home now, many people work from there. Times have changed.
Progressives, and other Leftists, have long detested all forms of Christianity. This is because all ideologies of the political left are religions in themselves. Unlike the different denominations of Christianity, the ideologies of the left are political religions. This makes them more akin to Islam. Because progressivism is a political religion, it cannot exist peacefully with other religions.
Joe Biden, and those pulling his marionette strings, are all hardcore leftists. Because of this they seek to banish all forms of Christianity from the public square. Soon after being installed in the White House, the Biden regime began waging a war against the religions they detest. The latest major battle in this war began at the beginning of Holy Week when, under the direction of the Biden Regime, Walter Reed National Military Medical center jettisoned Catholic Priests serving as chaplains.
In a move that has stunned Catholics and religious freedom advocates, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md. issued a “cease and desist order” just before Holy Week to a community of Franciscan Catholic priests from Holy Name College that had been serving servicemembers and their families at the center for almost two decades.
On April 7, the Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services (AMS) announced that Walter Reed issued the order on March 31, just as the most sacred week of the year for Christians was beginning. AMS noted that the contract for providing Catholic Pastoral Care was instead awarded to a secular defense contracting firm that does not have the capacity to offer Catholic pastoral services such as Mass and confession, which can only be administered by an ordained priest. AMS further pointed out that without the services of the Franciscan priests, there would be only one other Catholic priest assigned to Walter Reed, an Army chaplain who is currently “in the process of separating from the Army.”
This unprecedented move sparked outrage amongst the Catholic hierarchy.
Archbishop for the Military Services Timothy P. Broglio was perplexed by Walter Reed’s decision and expressed concern that it would infringe on the ability of Catholic servicemembers and their families to freely exercise their faith while at the center.
“It is incomprehensible that essential pastoral care is taken away from the sick and the aged when it was so readily available,” he said. “This is a classic case where the adage ‘if it is not broken, do not fix it’ applies. I fear that giving a contract to the lowest bidder overlooked the fact that the bidder cannot provide the necessary service. I earnestly hope that this disdain for the sick will be remedied at once and their First Amendment rights will be respected.”
The Archbishop is absolutely correct. The Free Exercise of Religion clause of the First Amendment guarantees all Americans the right to worship as they please. Progressives claim that Establishment clause of the First Amendment created a separation of Church and state. This is absolute fiction. That clause only prevents the United States from declaring an official state religion.
AMS said that despite numerous appeals to Walter Reed by their general counsel Elizabeth A. Tomlin to reinstate the priests at least through Holy Week, they received no response from the medical center.
“Especially during Holy Week, the lack of adequate Catholic pastoral care causes untold and irreparable harm to Catholics who are hospitalized and therefore a captive population whose religious rights the government has a constitutional duty to provide for and protect,”
This move is only the latest attack on the free exercise of religion.
Additionally, in September of last year, the administration issued a rule mandating that Veterans Affairs medical facilities carry out abortions as well as provide abortion counseling. When a Christian nurse practitioner requested a religious accommodation on two occasions from having to participate in abortions, she was denied. She is now filing suit against the hospital for placing a substantial burden on her sincerely held religious beliefs.
The Weaponization of Government Committee obtained information from the FBI revealing the agency had sent undercover agents into Catholic churches to investigate them for domestic extremism. Yes, into churches. Jim Jordan wrote in a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, “Based on the limited information produced by the FBI to the Committee, we now know that the FBI relied on at least one undercover agent to produce its analysis and that the FBI proposed that its agents engage in outreach to Catholic parishes to develop sources among the clergy and church leadership to inform on Americans practicing their faith.”
This rather despicable episode also violates the Fourth Amendment. We do not live in a police state. Actually that is not accurate anymore. Progressives have now disgracefully turned the US into a police state.
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