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Families receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, also called food stamps, are less likely to save money by buying generic brands or using coupons if they are buying food with government benefits, researchers at Brown University claim in a study published Monday.

The study upends the idea that food stamps recipients use the taxpayer-funded benefits just like they would use cash, and instead show that people’s food choices change when using food stamps.

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Our friend Katherine Kersten is senior fellow at the Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota’s conservative think tank, at which John Hinderaker serves as president. Kathy is an indefatigable analyst and advocate who has effectively promoted good public policy and opposed bad public policy while breaking major stories illustrating the way we live now.

Most recently, Kathy has turned her attention to the destruction of student discipline in the St. Paul public schools. This destruction has been wrought in the name of “racial equity.” In telling this story, Kathy offers a dystopian case study demonstrating the destructive ideological fevers that power the left generally and the Obama administration in particular.

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Dr. John Bates, the former principal scientist at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., told the Daily Mail NOAA’s 2015 study was meant “to discredit the notion of a global warming hiatus and rush to time the publication of the paper to influence national and international deliberations on climate policy.”

Bates said NOAA scientists made a “blatant attempt to intensify the impact” of global warming to eliminate the “pause” in temperature rise since 1998. The Daily Mail claims Bates showed it “irrefutable” evidence NOAA’s study relied on “unverified” data.

But you knew that.

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Perhaps wary of the fact that it took years to pass the most recent Farm Bill in 2014, Congress has already moved to begin deliberations over the next five-year bill, which would likely become law in 2018. The U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee will hold its first hearing on the upcoming Farm Bill in Kansas later this month.

The Farm Bill is perhaps best known for handing billions of dollars of taxpayer money to a small number of the shrinking percentage of Americans who farm. Pres. Franklin Roosevelt’s agriculture Henry Wallace pitched payments to farmers during the Great Depression as “a temporary solution to deal with an emergency.” The emergency—the Depression—ended around the same year that my grandparents went to prom. But the subsidies remain. In fact, they’ve only mushroomed in the decades since their adoption.

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Same old, same old.

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One of the most delightful consequences of Trump’s election is that the statist Left bureaucracy is fighting defense for the first time in my lifetime.

The EPA is one of the reasons that Richard Nixon will burn in Hell for all eternity.

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It will be entertaining to see how cognitive dissonance ties up the Chattering Class into knots.

Pass the popcorn.

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It’s amazing how positions change depending on which foot the shoe is on. Back in the sixties, the Crust were all about savaging local politicians who resisted enforcing the laws against, say, segregation. But now it all runs the other way.

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Democratic Rep. Elizabeth Esty from Connecticut launched a tweetstorm Monday afternoon against President Donald Trump’s travel ban, but quickly backtracked after followers confronted her on her visa-related voting history.

People in Congress (and there are far too many of them) who turn their positions on a dime in order to follow partisan marching orders from their leadership are so used to being in control of the public narrative that it often comes as a shock when they are called to account. Of course, in a rightly-ordered society it would be the ‘journalists’ who would do the vetting, but as we all know the DemLegHump Media can’t perform that function on Democrats.

Esty co-sponsored H.B. 158 on Dec. 3 2015, a bi-partisan bill that enabled the executive branch led by the the Department of Homeland Security to severely limit or curtail visas from countries like Iran and Iraq.

Hmm. Not that long ago, even. Must be something in the water in Connecticut. Yeah, that would explain what’s been going on at Yale, too.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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Information is to be gathered, reviewed and summarized during the periods of suspension so that policy can be conformed to the national interest of the United States. Indeed, the order focuses throughout on the national interest of the United States, as in this provision that will never be quoted in a New York Times story:

Sec. 1: …In order to protect Americans, the United States must ensure that those admitted to this country do not bear hostile attitudes toward it and its founding principles. The United States cannot, and should not, admit those who do not support the Constitution, or those who would place violent ideologies over American law. In addition, the United States should not admit those who engage in acts of bigotry or hatred (including “honor” killings, other forms of violence against women, or the persecution of those who practice religions different from their own) or those who would oppress Americans of any race, gender, or sexual orientation.

You mean we aren’t already doing this? We must be out of our minds.

Sec. 2. Policy. It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from foreign nationals who intend to commit terrorist attacks in the United States; and to prevent the admission of foreign nationals who intend to exploit United States immigration laws for malevolent purposes.

You mean we aren’t already doing this? We must be out of our minds.

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Well, that’s what happens when Democrats are in charge.

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One agency, the Centers for Disease Control, has been called out for wasteful spending and duplication of effort for many years. Now a new report published Dec. 19, 2016, by EconoSTATS had done it again. The think tank’s work revealed that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has been duplicating work done by 19 other federal agencies.

Yet, the broadcast networks have ignored this latest evidence of CDC waste. Between Dec. 19, 2016, and Jan. 23, 2017, NBC, CBS, and ABC morning and evening news broadcasts failed to report the EconoSTATS findings at all.

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Currently, only five of NATO’s 28 members—the U.S., Greece, Britain, Estonia, and Poland—meet the alliance’s target of spending at least 2 percent of their own gross domestic product on defense, a fact that is especially concerning, experts say, because of Russia’s aggressive behavior.

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Teachers are speaking out against a week-long BLM curriculum starting Jan. 23 aimed at kindergarten to 12th grade, reportsPhilly.com.

One teacher said that Black Lives Matter does not need to be in the classroom.

“It challenges nuclear families, and our justice system. I don’t think kids should be taught that Western society is perpetrating a war on black people,” Christopher Paslay, an English teacher, said.

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‘We’re from the government, and we’re here to help … oh, wait….’

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Cotton was reportedly irate with Schumer’s delay of the confirmation vote and loudly accosted him on the Senate floor. Schumer retorted that the Senate had never confirmed a CIA director on Inauguration Day, adding that Senate Republicans did not do the same for former President Barack Obama. He continued that Cotton would have known this if he had been in the Senate eight years ago.

“Eight years ago, I was getting my ass shot at in Afghanistan,” Cotton reportedly shot back. He continued, “So don’t talk to me about where I was 8 years ago.” Cotton served two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan in the U.S. Army as a member of the 101st Airborne Division.

Schumer, of course, has never served anywhere except as a politician.

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Somebody send this clown a copy of the script, he appears to be off the reservation.

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Obama spent a lot of money on things that didn’t work.

He didn manage to double the national debt, though, and I suppose that’s something.

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The Obama administration has been the most lawless in U.S. history. I don’t mean that in the Nixonian sense of personal corruption, whereby the president is personally above the law, although the idea that Barack Obama’s tenure has been ethically pure is laughable.

No, my accusation rests on the 44th president’s seeing himself as professionally above the law, ignoring the executive branch’s legal limits and disrespecting constitutional bounds like federalism and the separation of powers.

But don’t just take it from me. Liberal law professor Garrett Epps (a professional acquaintance) admits that “even for those like me who admire Barack Obama, the constitutional record is disturbingly mixed. Obama leaves the Constitution weaker than at the beginning of his terms.” Epps labels Obama’s posture to be one of “aggressive compliance,” torturing statutory language as far as it can go in order to avoid constitutional claims.

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NAO’s report found the U.K.’s Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy spent an initial $84 million on CCS, but then pumped another $123 million into a second competition after the first failed.

“The Department has now tried twice to kick start CCS in the UK, but there are still no examples of the technology working,” Amyas Morse, head of the NAO,told The Construction Index. “There are undoubtedly challenges in getting CCS established, but the Department faced an uphill battle as a result of the way it ran the latest competition.”

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The Obama legacy.

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There’s something perverse about an ideology that views the disposing of an unborn child in the third trimester of pregnancy as an indisputable right but the desire of parents to choose a school for their kids as zealotry. Watching President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for education secretary, Betsy DeVos, answer an array of frivolous questions this week was just another reminder of how irrational liberalism has become.

Which is no surprise; most of what Democrats do is immoral.

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Hope, maybe, but where was the Change?

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There’s a legacy for you.

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Not bad for a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

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I spotted a Muslim women in a trash bag shuffling up to one of the counters. Two swarthy men were hovering around her. They guarded her virtue as she exposed her head for the license photo. From what I saw, they have no fears of rival males carrying her off. Everyone in the place was intently watching the scene, even the surly functionaries. For a minute, all of us were plugged into the collective consciousness, wondering why our rulers are doing this to us.

This is an example of why open borders will end in disaster. In a world without government, people will sort themselves out, one way or another. In the custodial state, everyone is dealing with the state. That means the interface has to accommodate all comers. In a world where the picture ID is critical, a people who think photos steal their soul or make Allah angry with their women is doomed to failure. The DMV can handle Mexican fruit pickers, it cannot adapt to Bronze Age barbarians.

The funny thing about the diverse community is they will sit forever, waiting for government service. Honkies get impatient with lines and expect the government to work like the private sector. The diverse are much more reasonable in this regard. Everyone had head phones so they could listen to their music while they stared at their phones, doing whatever it is they do on their phones. They came prepared to entertain themselves for the day. Maybe it is from habit or maybe it is from nature. Regardless, these are not people who will be voting libertarian.

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Just in case you were wondering. I know I was.

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I’m sure they’ve all wanted to say that at one time or another.

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FBIThe FBI does want you to understand that while, yes, they do seize and keep billions of dollars in assets from citizens through a system that doesn’t require them to prove a crime, they’re doing it for the financial benefit of communities.

Nowhere in this new FBI “news story” titled “Forfeiture as an Effective Law Enforcement Tool” will you find the words “Fourth Amendment, “Due Process,” or “innocence.” Instead it uses a single example of using forfeiture to snag drug dens in Rutland, Vermont, and returning them to the community. By “community” they mean the organization with a $1.25 million redevelopment grant and not the family that was forced out of one of the buildings and ended up living in a trailer. That’s right—the FBI is using a case where families got bounced out of their homes as an example of the benefits of forfeiture. The FBI wants to convince us that this is what civil asset forfeiture looks like—that it is all for our benefit.

‘Hi! We’re from the government and we’re here to help … ourselves.’

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

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In his invaluable history of the maniacal leftist terrorism of the 1970s, Bryan Burrough frankly characterizes FALN leader Oscar López Rivera as “the man behind the deadliest bombing campaign of the era.” That’s quite a distinction.

And the man remains unrepentant, as they say. He therefore escaped pardon by Slick William J. Clinton in his corrupt departure from office at the end of his second term. Clinton pardoned 16 of the 18 FALN terrorists convicted in the group’s bombing campaigns; the other two convicted FALN members rejected Clinton’s offer of pardon. Debra Burlingame condemned these “terror pardons” in a superb 2008 Wall Street Journal column. They felt they had nothing for which to apologize.

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When Prohibition ended in 1933, my great-grandfather, Giuseppe Marano, thought his money-making glory days were over. Having made a good living selling alcoholic beverages to willing buyers at a time when that business was illegal across the country, he and his cohorts certainly viewed the passage of the 21st Amendment as the end of a very profitable era.

Except that it really wasn’t. Politicians may have formally dumped the national ban on booze, but in many places they’ve imposed enough foolish restrictions to keep bootlegging a going concern.

And, of course, it was Prohibition that gave us the Mafia’s glory days.

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Spending is what Democrats do best, so long as it’s somebody else’s money.

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How many can you name? None? Maybe that’s because the DemLegHump Media DIDN’T COVER THEM.

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That would be … entertaining.

President-elect Donald Trump met with a Princeton University physicist and skeptic of man-made global warming who observers believe could be the next White House science czar.

Trump met with Dr. Will Happer in New York City Friday. Happer didn’t take any questions entering or leaving Trump Tower last week, so it’s hard to say what the meetings were about. Trump has yet to fill key energy and science roles in his administration.

He’s from Princeton, so his Crustian credentials are impeccable. Trump is a judo-master with Leftist brain-space.

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Geographic mobility–the movement of people from place to place in response to changing job trends–had declined in the United States, which in turn contributes to the reduction in economic mobility. David Schleicher, a Yale University associate law professor, has written a paper arguing that this reduction is due to government regulations, including land-use regulations that make it expensive to move and occupational licensing that makes it expensive to enter new markets.

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Remember when those pesky other branches of government wouldn’t bow down to Obama’s whims, and the president famously bragged about going it alone? Now Obama’s out and it will soon be Donald Trump wielding his pen and phone.

As Barack Obama bids farewell to his presidency this week, keep in mind these five scary powers that President Trump will inherit from him.

Someone needs to remind the Left ‘be careful what you wish for’.

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Phrased as ‘he could’ but you know that ‘he will’.

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Stefan Hagopian, a doctor in Santa Monica, California, received an email from his healthcare insurance company on Nov. 8 saying his plan would be canceled on the first day of 2017. He had been one of millions of Americans whose coverage failed to qualify under the mandates insurance companies had to abide by under the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare.

Hagopian hopes to see Obamacare repealed entirely because of its requirement that all Americans obtain health insurance or pay a fine. He said the healthcare law benefitted insurance companies more than U.S. citizens and doctors.

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Honorably discharged veterans could be able to shop online at military exchange websites as early as Veterans Day, barring any objections from Congress.

…

A defense official confirmed a letter announcing the change was signed Wednesday by Peter Levine, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. Copies were sent to lawmakers on four House and Senate committees, and if no objections are raised within 30 days, officials with Army and Air Force Exchange Service and Navy Exchange Service Command expect to be able to implement the new benefit by mid-November.

…

Exchanges sell items at a discount, without a sales tax, and any profits after operating costs are either returned to the services’ morale, welfare and recreation programs, or used for construction and other improvements to stores.

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In 2014, Murray Energy Corporation and several of its affiliates sued EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, alleging that the EPA was in violation of 42 U.S.C. § 7621, § 321(a) of the Clean Air Act, which requires the agency to “conduct continuing evaluations of potential loss or shifts of employment which may result from the administration or enforcement of the provision of [the Clean Air Act] and applicable implementation plans, including where appropriate, investigating threatened plant closures or reductions in employment allegedly resulting from such administration or enforcement.”

The case is venued in West Virginia, and U.S. District Judge John Preston Bailey presides. In 2016, the parties filed cross motions for summary judgment. On October 17, 2016, Judge Bailey denied the government’s motion and granted Murray Energy Corporation’s motion. This means that Murray won the case.

Barack Obama is the first two-term U.S. President to have been at war every day of his tenure.

Not bad for a Nobel Peace Prize winner.

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The 2015 National Transit Database shows that people pay an average of 28 cents per passenger mile to ride transit. To compare this cost with driving, the American Public Transportation Association uses American Automobile Association calculations of the cost of driving, which show an average cost of about 57 cents a mile for medium-sized cars. So it seems like a no-brainer to conclude that transit saves money.

…

If you have a car, no matter how old it is, you only pay the variable cost whenever you drive it on any particular trip. According to the AAA data, that variable cost–fuel, maintenance, and tires–averages less than 15 cents a mile, and would be even lower if you had a more fuel-efficient car. So right there you are saving at least 13 cents a mile over transit.

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Local governments routinely spend resources on infrastructure they don’t really need or want simply because available funds are sitting in a federal account and are therefore viewed as “free,” according to Sen. Jeff Flake’s new edition of the Wastebook.

…

Among the transportation and infrastructure examples highlighted by Flake in the latest Wastebook are the “two federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants totaling more than $65 million” supporting a streetcar that no one seems to want.

“I’ve never been on a car with more than 25 other people; it’s usually about a dozen, in a car that can seat 60 and carry up to 195,” a journalist observed, and many passengers are homeless people just looking for shelter, who often “got a little bit rough with the operators” and left it smelling foul, according to the Wastebook.

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The first operational U.S. “clean coal” plant could end up increasing carbon dioxide emissions, calling into question the hundreds of millions of dollars the Obama administration has spent on such projects.

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One of the things that Streep, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention last summer in support of Hillary Clinton, didn’t address, though, is the way in which Barack Obama has handed Trump vast powers as president. There’s no question that Obama worked overtime to arrogate more power to the presidency over the past eight years, using all sorts of unilateral action to get shit done. Even Yellow Dog Democrats will grant as much when it comes to civil liberties abuses (remember Bam’s “secret kill list”?) and waging war (still waiting on his request to Congress under the War Powers Act to sanction Libya, which turned out so well). Obama was on the losing end of a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling about abusing recess-appointment powers and his moves on immigration law suffered a similar fate as well. In all sorts of ways, the plain fact is that, like George W. Bush before, Obama was ready to grab as much power as he could. And whatever presidential precedents he established will now be sitting in Oval Office, waiting for the arrival of Donald Trump.

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Taxpayers are spending $326,000 fixing the waterfront vacation home of a serial financial criminal and former Olympic gold medalist, which is nearly as much as the house was worth.

The boondoggle last year came courtesy of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) because Steven Riddick bought a home in Virginia too close to the water, leading to flooding, highlighting the agency’s often wasteful and inconsistent assistance programs.

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Anyone who thinks that, for all its flaws, at least the government is good at doing military stuff hasn’t been tracking the clown-car routines the Navy has been going through during the last fifty years (fifty years!).

When first forced to use the blue pattern camo work clothes back in 2010 U.S. Navy sailors thought their new work uniform was mainly silly. It consisted of shirt and pants in a gray, blue (mainly) and black camouflage pattern. Most sailors wear the work uniform while on a ship. What’s the point of camouflage there? This has at least led to some entertaining humor. For example, sailors called the new camouflage “Aquaflage” and tried to find some purpose in it. Some believed it was a safety measure, since if you fell overboard while wearing it there was little chance you’d ever be seen in the water, so there was no need to turn the ship around to try and find you. Along those lines, some believed that if you fell overboard, the aquaflage would make it more difficult for any sharks to spot you. Actually, sharks detect prey via smell, not sight, but no matter, it was better to laugh about this blue clothing nightmare rather that look hard and cry.

There was more to cry over. Aquaflage came along mainly because of the herd instinct at the top. Since 2001 all the services had gotten new camouflage uniforms, or gotten them for the first time. Even the air force had a blue type camouflage pattern. The admirals felt compelled to replace the traditional (and popular) dungarees and blue work shirt with the much less popular aquaflage. For more formal occasions, junior enlisted sailors were still allowed to wear a khaki shirt and black pants (an arrangement the U.S. Marine Corps has made famous). The navy “dress blues” remained unchanged.

After aquaflage was introduced the navy brass, bowing to loud and sustained complaints, agreed to allow sailors living off base, on their way home from work, to get out of their vehicles to perform short errands (picking up dry cleaning, groceries, day care, and so on), while wearing the new navy work uniform. Prior to this, navy personnel were forbidden from leaving their vehicles while outside the base if they were wearing the work uniform. While sailors appreciated being allowed to get out of their cars on the way home work, most would prefer to do it while wearing the traditional dungarees and blue work shirt rather than the cartoonish aquaflage.

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Most transit is oriented to downtown, a destination few people go to anymore. If you don’t want to go downtown, transit is practically useless.

In the Good Old Days, business was concentrated downtown for convenience — convenience in communications, convenience in supply, convenience in coordinating employees.

Nowadays, a lot of jobs don’t require you to be in any particular place, so long as you have a computer workstation and a fast Internet connection. UPS and FedEx and Stamps.Com mean you don’t need to be near a Post Office or transportation hub. More and more companies are locating their offices in suburbs, which are closer to where people actually live; ‘where are you located’ is the first question I used to ask of places where I was considering working.