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Thursday, June 28, 2018

Comey Kept Assange Captive to Hide DNC Fraud

Former FBI Director sabotaged immunity deal

Strozk hides behind “National Security” secrets, refusing to give any information to the House Intelligence Committee which is cleared so they can perform oversight.

Also, we learn how James Comey scuttled the deal to release Assange in exchange for getting information about how the DNC emails were actually obtained and how to better protect National Security documents like VAULT7 that had been sent to WikiLeaks.

GOP’S BALLS JUST DROPPED: REPUBLICANS RELEASE AD SAVAGING ‘UNHINGED’ DEMOCRAT PARTY

This is Trump’s Republican Party now

The GOP released a savage ad on Tuesday showing how the Democrats have become completely “unhinged” radical extremists.

From The Gateway Pundit:

The well produced ad opens with Senator Bernie Sanders saying, “a few years ago, ideas that we talked about were thought to be fringe ideas, radical ideas, extremist ideas — those ideas are now mainstream,” over footage of graffiti that reads “revolution or death” and Kathy Griffin holding President Trump’s severed head.

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"He's Out!": Establishment Democrats Rocked By Joe Crowley Primary Loss To Socialist Millennial

Establishment Democrat Joe Crowley's nearly two-decade career in Congress came to an end Tuesday night in a shocking primary loss to 28-year-old Democratic Socialist and former Bernie Sanders organizer Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - a harsh critic of Israel and immigration enforcement.

Crowley - the 56-year-old Chairman of the House Democratic caucus had long been viewed as a potential House Speaker, and has been a staple in New York City politics as chairman of the Queens County Democratic Party.

His loss to insurgent candidate Ocasio-Cortez, his first primary challenge in 14 years, is a major upset to establishment Democrats trying to cobble together a "blue wave" of progressive support to combat Republicans in the upcoming midterms. Instead, it looks like Democrats are as fractured as ever.

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Tim Tebow suddenly looking like a pro baseball player

The jokes have slowed considerably. The playful jabs have begun to subside. Tim Tebow is proving he belongs, and lately he’s doing more than that. He has been performing at a high level this month.

Just ask opposing Double-A managers who raved about the strides the former Heisman Trophy winner has made this year with the Mets’ affiliate in Binghamton. They have cited his improved plate discipline, pitch recognition and opposite-field power.

“He looks like a different guy than last year,” Double-A Hartford manager Warren Schaeffer told The Post in a phone interview.

“I saw him last year at [Single-A] Columbia. He’s come a really long way,” Schaeffer said. “He’s a tough out right now. We had a really tough time against Tim Tebow. He hits fastballs well. He’s a strong kid. His approach has gotten a lot better. He’s spitting on pitches now he wasn’t early on this year. You can tell he works hard.

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Trump aides urged to get a gun

Facing a new wave of potentially dangerous threats, called for by a top Democratic lawmaker, legal and gun experts are calling on top Trump aides to get their concealed carry permit and back it up with a pistol.

"There are simply not enough police in D.C. or Virginia or Maryland to protect all Trump officials at their homes and when they go out to restaurants. Getting a concealed handgun permit would be helpful to protect themselves and their family,” said John R. Lott Jr., president of the influential Crime Prevention Research Center.

“High level officials in the Trump administration, especially if their faces are likely to be recognized by many in the public as a result of appearances on TV, might want to consider applying for a license to carry a concealed weapon in the District of Columbia, and/or other states they frequent, in view of the call by Rep. Maxine Waters for the public to ‘absolutely harass’ these officials in public places, and other recent events indicating the increased danger they are in,” added public interest law professor John Banzhaf.

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Republican lawmakers escalate demand for DOJ documents with imminent vote

The House plans to vote Thursday on a new resolution from a House Republican who has been pressing the Justice Department for a pile of documents for months — a sign that the back-and-forth between the agency and Trump-allied lawmakers is heating back up.

The House Rules Committee met Wednesday afternoon and passed the resolution by Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., by a vote of 8-4, setting up a full floor vote for when Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will simultaneously be on Capitol Hill for a House Judiciary Committee hearing.

The text of the Meadows resolution, which is unenforceable, replaces a similar resolution that passed by the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

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The Drug War Is Pushing More Migrants to Our Borders

Over the last couple of weeks we have been bombarded by news coverage of the US government handling of foreigners illegally crossing the southern border and having their children separated from parents by our government. At first I tried to avoid subjecting myself to this circus, but I have been paying close attention for about a week.

I describe it as a circus because of the hysteria involved. Everyone from the Know- Nothing wing of the Trump party to the ultra-PC progressives, and the libertarians, and even the First Lady Melania Trump have jumped on the emotional roller coaster. The story is all the rage on talk shows and even reporters for NPR, remarkably, have shown audible signs of emotion.

Despite my diligence in reluctantly following this story, without exception there has been no coverage of the reason why these people from Central American are risking their lives during a treacherous journey. They leave all to get to a country where they face our hostile president and government and they don’t even speak the local language. While Mexicans have been crossing into America at least since the US annexed Texas in 1845 and stole the northern half of Mexico in 1848, Central American immigration to the US is a relatively new phenomenon.

If we knew what was causing this new phenomenon of the highly risky immigration we might be able to stop it and end all the hysteria. Yet, the media does not appear to be interested in discovering the cause of this effect. Maybe they are not bright enough to recognize that most effects have causes?

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Supreme Court rules law requiring pro-life centers to promote abortion is illegal

California can’t force pro-life crisis pregnancy centers to promote abortion as a health care option, the Supreme Court ruled Tuesday, saying the state’s attempt to do so violated the groups’ First Amendment speech rights.

The justices, in a 5-4 ruling, said a 2015 state law requiring the centers to post notices about obtaining an abortion, including state assistance in paying for the procedure, amounted to government-coerced speech.

“The people lose when the government is the one deciding which ideas should prevail,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority.

California argued that the law was needed to educate low-income women with state-funded services. Backers also said they feared women seeking abortions were being duped by the pro-life centers.

But the pro-life centers claimed discrimination because of their views. In posting the notices, they said, they were being forced to advocate for a procedure to which they vehemently object.

Justice Thomas agreed, saying the law specifically targeted clinics with pro-life beliefs instead of all clinics throughout the state. He said if the goal was merely information, then the state had other options.

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Supreme Court delivers major blow to government unions with Janus ruling

The Supreme Court delivered a major blow to public-sector unions Wednesday, ruling that they cannot force government workers to join or financially support them.

The 5-4 ruling in the case, called, Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, by the court's conservative wing overturned a four-decade-old precedent and affects about seven million people.

Union leaders expect the ruling to result in major membership losses and drained treasuries as workers, who previously had no choice, start opting out of being involved with unions.

Public-sector unions account for about half of the nation’s 14 million union members, so the blow is expected to ripple through the union movement as a whole. The case also raises the possibility that the court will extend the same logic to private-sector unions in a future case, compounding the impact.

Plaintiff Mark Janus said he was elated with the ruling. "I’m thrilled that the Supreme Court has restored not only my First Amendment rights, but the rights of millions of other government workers across the country. So many of us have been forced to pay for political speech and policy positions with which we disagree, just so we can keep our jobs. This is a victory for all of us. My right to say ‘no’ is at least as important as my right to say ‘yes,’" he said.

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Father of Michael Jackson, Joe Jackson dead at 89 from cancer

It was a life of platinum records and an iron fist.

Joe Jackson died at 89 early Wednesday in hospice in Las Vegas, TMZ reports.

The Jackson Family patriarch was suffering from terminal pancreatic cancer, the Daily Mail reported.

Jermaine Jackson told press last week that the family was having a difficult time visiting him or getting information about his condition.

“No one knew what was going on — we shouldn’t have to beg, plead and argue to see our own father, especially at a time like this,” he lamented at the time. “We have been hurting. We were not being told where he was and couldn’t get the full picture. Even from the doctor. My mother was worried sick.”

Days after the interview was published, TMZ reported that the family, including Joe’s wife, Katherine, as well as the couple’s children and grandchildren, had visited him at the hospital.

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Alexander: Democrat Protagonists Are Masters of Hypocrisy

Group generalizations are rarely accurate, but in the case of Democrat protagonists, hypocrisy is a virtually unanimous trait.

This past week provided several notable examples of how leftist hypocrites have taken their trade to new lows, as if such duplicity were virtuous.

Last weekend, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders was dining with family and friends at Red Hen, a hole-in-the-wall restaurant in Lexington, Virginia. After she was recognized by one of the Hen’s gender dysphoric employees, he frantically phoned the restaurant owner to respond to this crisis.

When owner Stephanie Wilkinson arrived, by her account she asked her employees, “Tell me what you want me to do. I can ask her to leave. They said ‘yes.’” According to Wilkerson, a leftist sympathizer, Sanders works for an “inhumane and unethical” administration, whose “cruelest policies could not stand.”

She asked Sanders to step outside and told her to leave. She went back to the table to gather her belongings, and not wanting to create a disturbance for the rest of the customers, she and her friends walked out. According to Wilkinson, “They offered to pay. I said, ‘No. It’s on the house.’” (Isn’t that special!)

Wilkinson added, “This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.” She then followed Sanders and her party across the street to another restaurant where she heckled her from the sidewalk.

Such brave and bold bigotry!

More here

Paul Craig Roberts: "How Long Can The Federal Reserve Stave Off The Inevitable?"

When are America’s global corporations and Wall Street going to sit down with President Trump and explain to him that his trade war is not with China but with them? The biggest chunk of America’s trade deficit with China is the offshored production of America’s global corporations. When the corporations bring the products that they produce in China to the US consumer market, the products are classified as imports from China.

Six years ago when I was writing The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, I concluded on the evidence that half of US imports from China consist of the offshored production of US corporations. Offshoring is a substantial benefit to US corporations because of much lower labor and compliance costs. Profits, executive bonuses, and shareholders’ capital gains receive a large boost from offshoring. The costs of these benefits for a few fall on the many - the former American employees who formerly had a middle class income and expectations for their children.

In my book, I cited evidence that during the first decade of the 21st century “the US lost 54,621 factories, and manufacturing employment fell by 5 million employees. Over the decade, the number of larger factories (those employing 1,000 or more employees) declined by 40 percent. US factories employing 500-1,000 workers declined by 44 percent; those employing between 250-500 workers declined by 37 percent, and those employing between 100-250 workers shrunk by 30 percent. These losses are net of new start-ups. Not all the losses are due to offshoring. Some are the result of business failures” (p. 100).

In other words, to put it in the most simple and clear terms, millions of Americans lost their middle class jobs not because China played unfairly, but because American corporations betrayed the American people and exported their jobs. “Making America great again” means dealing with these corporations, not with China. When Trump learns this, assuming anyone will tell him, will he back off China and take on the American global corporations?

The loss of middle class jobs has had a dire effect on the hopes and expectations of Americans, on the American economy, on the finances of cities and states and, thereby, on their ability to meet pension obligations and provide public services, and on the tax base for Social Security and Medicare, thus threatening these important elements of the American consensus. In short, the greedy corporate elite have benefitted themselves at enormous cost to the American people and to the economic and social stability of the United States.

The job loss from offshoring also has had a huge and dire impact on Federal Reserve policy.

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Non-citizen Arrested for Alleged Illegal ‘Voter Assistance’ Scheme in Texas Border City

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Tuesday that authorities arrested a noncitizen for her alleged role in a voter assistance scheme during a 2016 border city runoff election.

Marcela Gutierrez, a non-United States citizen, was taken into custody following an investigation conducted by the AG’s office. On June 3, she was indicted by a Hidalgo County grand jury and charged with illegal voting for marking a ballot without a voter’s consent in a June 2016 Hidalgo city runoff election. Gutierrez purportedly misled a voter to believe she was demonstrating how to use a voting machine when, actually, the accused cast votes on a ballot for a slate of candidates she was paid to support.

In Texas, illegal voting is a second degree felony punishable by two to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000. Gutierrez also faces 10 misdemeanor counts of unlawfully assisting a voter.

Two of her fellow campaign workers, Sylvia Arjona and Sara Ornelas, were implicated in the alleged voter assistance scheme.

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Annapolis newsroom shooting leaves 5 people dead; suspect in custody, officials say

At least five people were killed and several others injured during a shooting at the newsroom of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, Thurday afternoon, local officials said. An unidentified suspect is in custody, Anne Arundel Sheriff Ron Bateman told Fox News. | Fox News

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https://fxn.ws/2tDTYL5

Republicans Demand Speaker Ryan Publicly Condemn Maxine Waters on House Floor

Republicans met with House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) Tuesday morning and called on Ryan to condemn Rep. Maxine Waters’ (D-Calif.) comments calling on her supporters to harass members of the Trump Administration.

Republicans urged Ryan "to make a public statement on the House floor," Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) told radio host Laura Ingraham in an interview following the morning meeting of about a hundred GOP congressmen:

“We’re calling for, one, for him to, which I think he will do, to make a public statement on the House floor to call attention to this type of activity. It’s unfair and it’s unfounded, and I don’t know what exactly what the result will be with Speaker Ryan.

“But, he’s well aware of the problems, as of about an hour ago. We met at nine; we made it loud and clear what he should be doing.”

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Pelosi Pissed As Liberal Media Loves Socialist Millennial Who Beat Democratic Leader

In what will almost certainly be remembered as a softball interview for the ages, "Morning Joe" hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough feted the upstart winner of the Democratic primary in New York's 14th Congressional district, which covers parts of Queens and the Bronx. In an upset that's being compared to Tea Party activist David Brat's 2014 upset of then-Majority Leader Republican Rep. Eric Cantor, 28-year-old socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez trounced longtime Rep. Joe Crowley, a member of the Democrats' Congressional leadership.

The upset even caught the attention of President Trump, who tweeted that Crowley perhaps "should've been more respectful" to his president (and fellow Queens native).

Wow! Big Trump Hater Congressman Joe Crowley, who many expected was going to take Nancy Pelosi’s place, just LOST his primary election. In other words, he’s out! That is a big one that nobody saw happening. Perhaps he should have been nicer, and more respectful, to his President!

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Snyder: "While Many On The Right Are Sleeping, Many On The Left Are Promising To Bring War To The Streets Of America"

You might want to start taking the radical left seriously. When they tell us “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet” and that “this is just the beginning”, they are making threats that they intend to back up.

There have been other times in modern American history when the left has resorted to physical intimidation and violence, but I believe that what is coming is going to far surpass anything that we have ever experienced before. Of course not everyone agrees with me.

On Monday I authored a piece about the “civil war” that is rapidly approaching, and there were some that loudly criticized me for it. They insisted that we didn’t have anything to worry about from the left and that I was blowing things out of proportion. As you read the rest of this article, I hope that everyone will start to see that I am not exaggerating the threat one bit.

And what we should all be able to agree on is that the radical left is super energized right now. Just look at what happened on Tuesday. 28-year-old radical socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez absolutely crushed 10-term congressman Joe Crowley in a Democratic primary in New York. She was outspent 18 to 1, and in normal times something like that would never happen.

But these aren’t normal times.

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Police: Man Kills Stepmom, Hides Body In Chest, Then Kills Concerned Neighbor

BALTIMORE CO., Md. (WJZ) — Police have arrested a man for the murder of Cindy Testerman and charged him with another count of murder after finding his stepmother dead inside a chest in her home that is across the street from Testerman’s house.

Ryan Michael McGuire, 32, faces two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Testerman — who was found dead one day before her 62nd birthday — and McGuire’s stepmother Judy Elizabeth Slezbak. McGuire is currently being held without bail.

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American Tech Manufacturer Accuses Chinese Company of Stealing Secrets

Fujian Jinhua Integrated Circuit Company, in partnership with UMC, allegedly stole microchip designs from Idaho’s Micron Technology in an attempt to fuel a new $5.7 billion dollar factory.

In documents filed last December in Federal District Court for the Northern District of California, Micron claimed that designs for its memory chips were stolen after rejecting an acquisition and multiple partnership offers from Chinese tech companies.

Micron said Taiwanese company UMC and China’s FJICC colluded in the theft of valuable trade secrets. Micron was first alerted to the suspicious behavior when one engineer used Google to try and find instructions on wiping a laptop. Later, a brazen attempt to lure Micron engineers to UMC gave a powerpoint presentation which included internal Micron code names.

More here

SPD: Death Investigation In Salisbury


Orlando Stops Testing Amazon’s Facial Recognition System

Orlando, Florida, is currently debating whether to resume testing Amazon’s “Rekognition” facial recognition system in the city, following complaints and an expired contract with the tech company.

According to the Daily Mail, civil rights groups “raised concerns that the service could be used in ways that could violate civil liberties.”

“The City’s pilot with Amazon regarding the potential viability of their Rekognition technology ended last week,” declared Orlando’s city government and the Orlando Police Department in a statement. “Staff continues to discuss and evaluate whether to recommend continuation of the pilot at a further date. At this time that process is still ongoing and the contract with Amazon remains expired.”

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Israeli Defense Minister to Iranians: ‘Where Is All Your Money Going?’

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Tuesday addressed protesters in Iran, telling them in Farsi that the Iranian regime is wasting billions of dollars in proxy wars instead of investing it in the country.

The wave of protests in Tehran that initially started in response to economic difficulties have broadened to include anger against the regime’s political decisions. Demonstrators have started adding “Death to Palestine” to their chants in an apparent attempt to convey their discontent that Tehran cares more about Palestinians than its own beleaguered population.

“Where is all your money going?” Liberman said on Facebook, according to a translation by Hebrew-language newspaper Yediot Aharonot. “Until today, despite domestic economic difficulties, the Iranian regime continues to invest millions in Syria, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis and Shiite militias in Iraq.”

“Even last month, when you were fighting for your bread in the streets of Tehran, Qassem Soleimani took several actions, including a logistical operation intended for Syria at the price of $70 million,” Liberman said in reference to the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

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Hill Article Quotes Trump Saying ‘You Can’t Come in,’ Ignores ‘You Have to Go in Through a LEGAL Process’

An article posted by The Hill Tuesday reports President Donald Trump said that U.S. immigration policy should be “You can’t come in” – but, fails to mention his very next sentence, in which he says he wants people to come in – just legally.

The Hill’s article, “Trump: Immigration policy should just be 'you can't come in',” quotes Trump saying, “You can’t come in” – but, doesn't cite his very next sentence (see video) in which he clarifies that “You have to go in through a legal process.”

In the video, Trump says:

"We inherited a lot of different things. But, of all of them, immigration makes the least sense. It is a hodgepodge of laws that has been put together over the years. And, we have to change it.

"And, it’s so simple: it’s called, 'I’m sorry, you can’t come in – you have to go in through a legal process.'”

The Hill’s article is based on a Twitter post by Bloomberg News White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs.

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Schumer Demands...

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned President Trump and Republicans against nominating a Supreme Court justice to replace Anthony Kennedy prior to the 2018 election, and demanded they reject any nominee who would seek to overturn Roe v. Wade.

"[R]eproductive rights for women and countless other protections for middle-class Americans are at stake," Schumer said.

He demanded that the Senate's top Republican, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, abide by the so-called Biden Rule when deciding to commence proceedings to confirm a Supreme Court pick.

In 1992, then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) gave a speech calling for Congress to delay any prospective Supreme Court pick until after then-President George Bush's ultimately unsuccessful reelection bid.

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http://insider.foxnews.com/2018/06/27/anthony-kennedy-retires-schumer-rips-trump-republicans-not-choose-pick-biden-rule

Quarter Auction


Supreme Court deals sharp defeat to public employee unions, banning mandatory fees

The Supreme Court dealt labor unions a sharp defeat Wednesday, ruling that teachers, police officers and other public employees cannot be forced to pay dues or fees to support their unions.

By a 5 to 4 vote, the justices overturned a 41-year-old precedent and ruled that the 1st Amendment protects these employees from being required to support a private group whose views may differ from theirs.

The decision, in Janus vs. AFSCME, strikes down laws in California, New York and 20 other mostly Democratic-leaning states that authorize unions to negotiate contracts that require all employees to pay a so-called fair share fee to cover the cost of collective bargaining.

The ruling is likely to have a political impact in many states where these unions have been strong supporters of the Democratic Party.

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Teen brothers arrested in fatal gang-related stabbing in Silver Spring; 3rd suspect wanted

SILVER SPRING, Md. (ABC7) — Two teens have been arrested in the gang-related killing of a man found dead in some woods last month, while a third suspect is still being sought.

Sixteen-year-old brothers Lenin and Bryan Mancias-Callejas were arrested and charged Wednesday with first-degree murder, second-degree murder and other related charges in the stabbing death of 19-year-old Herson Mejia-Alvarez.

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MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace to Swalwell: Ready to ‘Get Mean and Fight?’

MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace asked Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) on Wednesday if he and other Democrats were ready to "get mean and fight" in light of recent events concerning the Supreme Court.

Swalwell agreed he was willing to do just that following news Wednesday that Justice Anthony Kennedy will retire from the Supreme Court this summer and considering a stream of recent rulings from the Court that did not favor liberals.

"We've now heard almost word-for-word the same analysis from former Republican Steve Schmidt, from former Democratic Congresswoman Donna Edwards, from our own Rachel Maddow that it is time for you guys to get mean and fight," Wallace said. "Are you ready?"

"Yes, Nicolle," Swalwell said. "And we've seen this week that we cannot count on the Court to save us from the wrecking ball that is Donald Trump. And as far as what I can do as a congressman, electing a Democratic majority that can push that big red button to stop the wrecking ball, that's what we have to do."

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Poll: 59% fear violence from Trump haters, 31% predict civil war

The division in the United States that has escalated into the organized harassment of presidential aides has six in 10 worried about the violence from anti-Trump advocates and nearly a third fearing it will end in civil war.

The latest survey from Rasmussen Reports found that 59 percent of all voters “are concerned that those opposed to President Trump’s policies will resort to violence.”

And, added Rasmussen, 31 percent believe “it’s likely that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years.”

More here

Contempt, impeachment in play for Rod Rosenstein

The showdown between Congress and the Justice Department over Russia escalated Tuesday after the House Judiciary Committee voted in favor of a resolution demanding that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein hand over sensitive documents related to the investigation into suspected meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections.

Committee members approved the resolution on a 15-11 party-line vote. It is now up to Republican leaders to decide whether they will bring the measure for a vote before the full House.

If the resolution passes, Mr. Rosenstein will have seven days to respond to the document request, but there is no penalty if he does not comply. Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, promoted the measure as a first step toward punishing Mr. Rosenstein if he does not turn over documents requested by the committee.

“We want the full weight of the United States House of Representatives behind this resolution saying ‘we are entitled … to get the information we need to do our oversight duty,” Mr. Jordan said.

Options include a subpoena for Mr. Rosenstein, holding him in contempt of Congress or going so far as to impeach him.

Although impeachment is rarely used, conservative lawmakers have discussed it more frequently in recent weeks. In April, the House Freedom Caucus drafted eight articles of impeachment against Mr. Rosenstein.

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Owner Of The Restaurant That Kicked Out Sarah Sanders Steps Down As Leader Of Business Board

Stephanie Wilkinson, the owner of the Red Hen restaurant that asked Sarah Sanders to leave, has stepped down as the leader of her business board.

Stephanie Wilkinson was the executive director of Main Street Lexington, a volunteer-based board tasked with revitalizing the town’s business district and boosting its economic prosperity.

Elizabeth Outland Branner, president of the organization, told WSLS she had accepted Wilkinson’s resignation on Tuesday.

‘Considering the events of the past weekend, Stephanie felt it best that for the continued success of Main Street Lexington, she should step aside,’ she said.

So again– why did this happen? Because of the backlash from Wilkinson’s actions. Not only did she kick Sanders and her family out. She led ANOTHER protest after Sanders’ dinner party decided to eat across the street.

“The owner of the Red Hen – who had just thrown Sarah out – organized a group of people to yell and scream at them at another restaurant,” Huckabee said.

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72% of Americans Believe Establishment Media Deliberately Report Fake News

More than two-thirds of Americans, a full 72 percent, believe “traditional news outlets knowingly report false or misleading stories,” according to a Axios/SurveyMonkey poll.

Only 25 percent of Americans believe the media “rarely” or “never” deliberately report fake news.

In other words, only one-quarter of the country believe the media are not guilty of intentionally spreading lies to mislead the American people.

The partisan breakdown is even more revealing…

Introducing Ben Jealous

The Rise of the Mob

This week, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., issued a clarion call to Democrats outraged at the policies of the Trump administration: It's time for mob action. In the wake of mobs targeting Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, Waters explained: "God is on our side! On the side of the children ... Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they're not welcome anymore, anywhere."

Waters has always been a fan of mob action. She infamously touted the violent and brutal 1992 Los Angeles riots, which did approximately $1 billion in property damage and ended with 63 people dead. Waters called the events a "rebellion," labeling them a "spontaneous reaction to a lot of injustice and a lot of alienation and frustration." And yet Waters has been affectionately nicknamed "Auntie Maxine" thanks to her rabid attacks against the Trump administration.

Democratic leaders ranging from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., denounced Waters' words. They've done the same with regard to violent protests on college campuses. That is meritorious and deserves praise.

But there is little question that major political figures on both sides of the aisle have played footsie with mob action to little or no blowback. It's not just Waters. President Obama made excuses for riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, during his presidency; Rev. Al Sharpton, who has actually been involved in precipitating mob violence, still gets to play peacemaker on national television; during President Trump's 2016 campaign, he repeatedly referenced the possibility of violence against protesters.

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This Will Brighten Your Day

Pending Home Sales Slump As NAR Warns "Activity Has Essentially Stalled"

New Home Sales rose in May, Existing Home Sales dropped in May, and today we find out that Pending Home Sales also tumbled in May...so that's 2 down, 1 up - not good (especially as mortgage apps are tumbling in June).

This is the second monthly decline in a row, but Pending home sales are down 2.2% YoY - the 5th straight month of annual sales declines.

Home sales fell for the year in all regions YoY, but the decline in the last month was concentrated in the South, while the other three regions reported MoM increases.

“Realtors in most of the country continue to describe their markets as highly competitive and fast moving, but without enough new and existing inventory for sale, activity has essentially stalled,” Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, said in a statement.

He now forecasts 2018 existing-home sales of 5.49 million, which would mark a 0.4 percent drop from 2017. Previously he had projected 5.54 million, a 0.5 percent increase.

As a reminder, economists consider pending sales a leading indicator because they track contract signings. Purchases of existing homes are tabulated when a deal closes, typically a month or two later

Finally, we note that homebuilder stocks continue to trend lower with disappointing US housing data...

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You’ve Won Amazon's HQ2. Now the Hard Part Begins.

How the winning community deals with the gains and pains holds lessons for any place hosting a booming industry.

No matter where you turn for news, it's inescapable: the hullabaloo over "HQ2," the frenzied competition to host Amazon's second corporate headquarters. Hungry for the infusion of jobs and investment ($50 billion, at least), communities have promised everything from big tax breaks to free hamburgers for the 50,000 HQ2 staffers. It's hard to overestimate the intensity of anticipation with which the 20 cities and regions that made the finalist list await the company's choice of a winner.

But Seattle's experience with HQ1 makes it clear: Hosting Amazon isn't all puppies and rainbows. I lived in the Emerald City for more than 20 years, serving as the city's first sustainability director for eight of them, and helped develop some of the plans and policies that lured Amazon from an old hospital building in Seattle's Beacon Hill neighborhood into the downtown.

I've seen the good, the bad and the ugly as Amazon mushroomed from a tiny online bookstore into the world's largest internet retailer. The good includes 45,000 jobs and the transformation of Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood from a motley array of parking lots and warehouses into a thriving urban community. The bad includes jam-packed buses and roads (Seattle is ranked ninth worst in the country for traffic congestion) and an affordable-housing crisis rivaling San Francisco's. Which gets us to the ugly: Skyrocketing prices are not only rendering Seattle housing out of reach for many but also exacerbating the challenge of homelessness: Seattle now has the country's third-largest population of homeless people.

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Italy's Salvini: "We Need A Mass Cleansing, Street By Street, Quarter By Quarter" In The EU

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini continues to pile the pressure on Brussels and expose his more fascist credentials as he warned today that it will be decided within a year "whether a united Europe still exists or not," according to Germany’s Der Spiegel.

"Whether the whole thing has no sense any more" will be seen in particular in talks on budget and within context of 2019 European Parliament elections.

On migrants, Salvini confirmed:

"We can’t take even one more, actually we want to hand over a couple," adding that...

he is aware his stand on migrants could lead to fall of Chancellor Angela Merkel but this isn’t Italy’s intention "even though we’re very distant, not just on the migration issue."

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Comey And Lynch Will Be Subpoenaed By Senate Unless Feinstein Obstructs

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) says he'll issue subpoenas for former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, but the panel's top Democrat Dianne Feinstein (CA) has to agree to it per committee rules. Grassley also said he would be open to exploring immunity for Comey's former #2, Andrew McCabe.

"I will want to subpoena him," Grassley said of Comey during an appearance on C-SPAN's Newsmakers."

The Iowan added that committee rules require that he and Feinstein "agree to it, and at this point I can’t tell you if she would agree to it. But if she will, yeah, then we will subpoena." -Politico

Feinstein may be hesitant to sign on, as she says she thinks Comey acted in good faith - which means she thinks Congress shouldn't have a crack at questioning a key figure in the largest political scandal in modern history.

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Supreme Court: Cops Can't Track Cell Phone Location Without A Warrant

The Supreme Court ruled Friday that law enforcement cannot track people's movements for periods of weeks or months without a warrant.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court held that the acquisition of cell-site records by government officials is covered under the Fourth Amendment.

Chief Justice John Roberts who wrote the opinion sided with the court's four liberal judges; Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer - while Justice Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch dissented.

While stressing that their decision doesn't question longstanding surveillance techniques and tools such as security cameras, Roberts said that historical cell-site records present even greater privacy concerns than monitoring via GPS.

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Justice Thomas Warns Against Power Grab by District Courts

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas raised concerns Tuesday about the increasingly common use of nationwide injunctions issued by federal trial court judges to block laws and policies.

It has been a favorite tactic of liberal activist groups that fancy themselves part of the so-called resistance confronting President Donald Trump. If plaintiffs can get a U.S. District Court judge to grant an injunction and apply it nationwide, they can gum up Trump’s policies for months or longer — even if they ultimately lose the underlying case.

This is what happened Tuesday when the high court ruled 5-4 to uphold Trump’s temporary ban on travelers from seven countries he deemed a security risk. Before the ruling, however, lower courts had blocked previous versions of the executive order from taking effect.

Thomas suggested in a concurring opinion that judges are abusing their authority.

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Take Action On the Supreme Court’s Internet Tax Ruling – Sign the Petition

Dear xxxxxx

The U.S. Supreme Court has announced their decision on the S. Dakota v. Wayfair case, overturning the long-standing rule that states could not tax businesses or sellers outside of their borders. Now is the time for Congress to act on legislation that protects small businesses.And we need your help.

Please consider signing our petition to show our country's political leaders that these new Internet tax burdens could permanently damage U.S. small businesses. The petition takes less than a minute to complete. We will soon deliver this petition to President Trump, key members of Congress, and select state governors, so we need you to participate now.

eBay has always supported tax policy that is fair to entrepreneurs, artisans, and small businesses. Rest assured that eBay will continue to fight this battle on behalf of all of our valued customers.

Sincerely,

eBay
Learn More

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell promised a quick vote on a Supreme Court nominee by fall. Democrats appeared helpless to block it.

It means that Mr. McConnell, who led the blockade against President Barack Obama’s choice in 2016, in the last year of his presidency, will have the opportunity to usher two Republican-nominated justices on to the Supreme Court in the first two years of President Trump’s term.

Now It All Starts Making Sense – Deep State “Fixer”: Henry John Kerner, The Cover-Up Expert….

Years of questions about how so many DC scandals never ended up with any accountability are now slowly beginning to make sense. Henry Kerner is a missing piece of a very frustrating puzzle…

Thanks to the efforts of Judicial Watch, we now find a name at the very heart of some of the most controversial investigative collapses in modern political history.

The same John McCain staffer who told the IRS to weaponize their database to target Tea Party groups, was intimately involved in Fast-and-Furious, Benghazi, IRS and now -under the Trump administration- “Spygate”.

If you wanted to control or cover-up a DC scandal where would you need to be? What position(s) would you need to control? A) the witnesses, and the investigators. In essence, deep inside the agencies or committees doing the investigation. That’s exactly the functionality where Henry John Kerner comes in.

Yesterday it was revealed that Henry J Kerner (Henry Kerner), as a former McCain senior staff official, was part of a bipartisan DC team who constructed the IRS weaponization program to target the Tea Party. That’s bad enough. However, a little more digging, you’re not going to believe this: the same guy who was attached to the prior investigations, is now in charge of all DC “corruption” and “whistle-blowing” cases, including the current FBI and DOJ corruption.

Henry Kerner is Special Counsel in charge of all “whistle-blowing” witnesses and cases of government corruption. Henry Kerner controls the events as the lead official, the Special Counsel in charge of the Office of Special Counsel; and he is in the position to manipulate/control any investigative outcome.

But wait, historic sunlight makes it much worse. Consider Kerner’s DC history:

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20 Maryland Animal Shelters Waiving Adoption Fees For Cats In July

BALTIMORE (WJZ)– Baltimore County Animal Services, Baltimore Humane Society, BARCS and the Maryland SPCA — all members of the Baltimore Animal Welfare Alliance (BAWA) — are joining 16 other animal shelters across the state to waive adoption fees for people adopting cats or kittens.

It’s a part of their second annual “Maryland 2,000: Saving Lives Across Maryland” adoption event.

The adoption event began this time last year with a goal to find homes for at least 2,000 homeless cats during cat season — a time when unfixed cats are producing babies at a very rapid pace.

“It is critical that we find homes for cats and kittens currently in our shelter, so we can take in and save felines who need our help,” said Nichole Miller, director of operations at the Maryland SPCA.

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Maxine Waters told her supporters to verbally assault and harass Republicans in public!

Lightning strikes just feet away police officer in Florida

A police officer in central Florida had a close encounter on Tuesday night when lighting struck near him in the department's parking lot.

In surveillance video released by the Apopka Police Department, the canine officer can be seen placing equipment in his police SUV when the bolt struck nearby.

The lightning strike appeared to be so powerful that it turned on the lights on another cruiser in the parking lot. No injuries were reported, but the Apopka Fire Department responded due to a haze in the building.

The police department lost power in its building, and the strike damaged multiple electrical transformers, according to FOX35.

More/Video
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2018/06/28/lightning-strikes-just-feet-away-police-officer-in-florida.html

A Viewer Writes...

While seeing various election results I have gotten nostalgic over some previous candidate's promises.

Judicial Watch: Maybe Comey’s Personal Email Account Should Have Been Searched

(CNSNews.com) - “You just can’t take anything that James Comey says at face value anymore,” said Tom Fitton, president of the government watchdog group Judicial Watch.

On Fox’s “Outnumbered Overtime” on Wednesday, Fitton was commenting on former FBI Director James Comey’s explanation (see below) for his own use of private email to conduct government business:

“It’s the convenience excuse, which is something we’ve heard from Mrs. Clinton disingenuously," Fitton said. "The IG concluded that it was inappropriate, and he shouldn’t have done it, and it raises questions about responses to congressional inquiries, Judicial Watch FOIA lawsuits, and whether his email account, personal email account, should have been searched as well.”

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Breaking News: President Trump will hold one-on-one talks with President Vladimir Putin in Finland on July 16, the White House said, in their first formal summit

President Trump plans to meet President Vladimir V. Putin in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16 for one-on-one talks, according to the White House, a politically sensitive meeting that will take place while the special counsel continues to investigate the Trump campaign’s possible ties to Russia.

The Flawed Red Hen Analogy Shows Liberals Still Don't Understand Christian Baker Case

After a Lexington, Virginia, restaurant, the Red Hen, refused service to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday, commentators on the left immediately seized upon a false analogy.

They likened that incident to the Masterpiece Cakeshop case, the case of the Christian baker in Colorado who refused to craft a custom cake for a same-sex wedding.

That attempt at an analogy reveals that the left still does not understand the Supreme Court’s ruling in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Jack Phillips, the baker, serves all customers, but cannot serve all events. He declined to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple not because of their identity, because he could not communicate a message that violated his religious beliefs.

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Rep. Waters, You Are Sullying Martin Luther King's Legacy

Every January, our nation celebrates Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and every February, during Black History Month, we contemplate his words of nonviolent resistance and how the practice of that philosophy brought about the civil rights movement.

Leaders, both black and white, rightly venerate him, but somewhere along the way, his message has been corrupted or outright forgotten by some on the left.

Over the weekend, longtime Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., called for disrupting and “absolutely harassing” members of the Trump administration.

“If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out, and you create a crowd, and you push back on them!” she exclaimed at a rally in Los Angeles on Saturday.

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What Lincoln Foresaw Would Occur Under Maxine Waters' Mob Justice

In 1836, at the Young Men’s Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, a 28-year-old lawyer named Abraham Lincoln delivered one of his finest addresses.

Lincoln condemned the sharp increase of mobs in America, which had exploded in number as the debate over slavery and regional animosity intensified.

“Accounts of outrages committed by mobs, form the every-day news of the times,” Lincoln said.

Many of these mobs had turned violent and subverted the law. They were undermining free government.

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The Social Consequences of Everything (Hardly Working)

Coast Guard, state, local agencies search for missing man off Kent Island, Maryland

BALTIMORE – Coast Guard crews, with state and local partners, are searching by air and sea for a man who reportedly fell overboard between Kent Narrows and Herring Bay, Wednesday afternoon.

The missing man is described as being a white male, about 6-feet tall, 180-190 pounds, wearing blue shorts and a dark shirt without a life jacket.

Coast Guard Sector Maryland-National Capital Region received a report at about 2:45 p.m., that a person aboard a 40-foot cabin cruiser was missing. The boat owner, a novice, had gotten underway with his friend. During the trip, the friend had gone below deck and when he had not reappeared about an hour later and once the boat was in calmer waters, the owner searched the boat for his friend.

After realizing his friend was no longer aboard, he called a friend on shore, who called the Coast Guard. The reporting source stated that the man had likely fallen overboard between Kent Narrows and Herring Bay.

The sector command center launched search crews aboard a 45-foot response boat from Station Annapolis and an MH-65 Dolphin helicopter from Air Station Atlantic City, New Jersey. Additionally, the Maryland Natural Resources Police responded with boats and a helicopter, the Maryland State Police has searched with Trooper 2 and Anne Arundel County Fire Department deployed a boat.

The on-scene weather was reported as 25 knot winds, 4-to-5-foot seas and a water temperature of 75 degrees.

If anyone sees anything in the vicinity south of Kent Island, it is requested that they contact the Coast Guard sector command center on VHF-FM channel 16, or at 410-576-2525.

Wild Pigs

A thought to remember, Marx said:

"Remove one freedom per generation and soon you will have no freedom, and no one would have noticed." 

There was a professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class.  One day while the class was in the lab, the professor noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting Communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist regime. In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. 

 He asked: "Do you know how to catch wild pigs?"
The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said that it was no joke. "You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come every day to eat the free food.  When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn
again and you put up another side of the fence. 

They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side.  The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again. You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity." 

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in America & Canada. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/ Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare entitlements, medicine, drugs, etc., while we continually lose our freedoms, just a little at a time. 

One should always remember two truths: 

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and you can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. 

If you see that all of this wonderful government "help" is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America & Canada, you might want to share this with your friends.  If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life, then you will probably not share this.  BUT, God help us all when the gate slams shut! 

Think about this quote for today: 

"The problems we face today are there because the people who work for a living are now outnumbered by those who vote for a living."

When the Heart Stops, Drugs Often to Blame

"Hidden" drug overdoses account for nearly 1 in 7 sudden cardiac deaths, a new study contends.

Researchers looked at more than 900 people in San Francisco who died of an apparent out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.

Through autopsies and lab tests, they found that only 541 of those people (59 percent) actually met the criteria set by the World Health Organization for sudden cardiac death.

Of those cases, 13.5 percent (nearly 1 in 7) were due to a hidden overdose, with lethal levels of opioids found in 61 percent of them.

The study also found significant racial and gender differences. This highlights the importance of investigating apparent sudden cardiac death in women and different groups of people, according to the researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, and the City and County of San Francisco Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

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Daily Government Quotes

Texas is for everyone -- Not for bigotry. Welcome y'all.

JUNE 27, 2018
Billboard that went up in Texas in response to another billboard that had a less-welcoming message: "Liberals, please continue on I-40 until you have left our GREAT STATE OF TEXAS."
Source: CNN

It’s not a job that most people consider. Growing up, people play cops and robbers, not convicts and corrections officers.

JUNE 26, 2018
Chris Gautz, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Corrections, on the state's struggle to hire people to work in prisons and jails.
Source: Governing

They handcuffed me and put a white bag of some kind over my head. They took off all of my clothes and put me into a restraint chair, where they attached my hands and feet to the chair. They left me naked and attached to that chair for two and a half

JUNE 25, 2018
Sworn statement from a 15-year-old boy from Mexico, on his experience while being held in an immigrant detention facility in Virginia for nine months. His and other children's claims of abuse have led the governor to call for an investigation.

I think of light rail as the diamond-encrusted Rolex watch of transit. It’s something that doesn’t do as much as a real watch can do. It costs a lot more. And it serves solely to serve the ego of the people who are buying it.

JUNE 22, 2018
Randal O’Toole, transit expert for the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank founded by oil billionaire Charles Koch who along with his brother is fueling a fight against public transit.

We’re just going to have to make the best of a bad situation.

JUNE 20, 2018
Aubrey Vincent, sales manager for Lindy’s Seafood, a crab wholesaler on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Lindy's and other "picking houses" rely on seasonal Mexican laborers with H2-B visas to process the crab harvest. But the federal government this year changed the way it distributes those visas, moving from a first-come, first-served system to a lottery. Half the state's crab houses failed to get visas, leaving them without any workers for the upcoming season. One seafood wholesaler previously told the Baltimore Sunthat "this is going to cause the price of crab meat to go out of sight. There’s not going to be hardly any Maryland crab meat."
 
Source: Baltimore Sun

Why should my tips go to subsidize the labor costs of a corporation?

JUNE 19, 2018
Diana Ramirez, deputy co-director of Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a nationwide advocacy group and the leader of an effort in Washington, D.C., to end the practice of allowing restaurants and bars to pay below-mimimum wages and make up the difference in tips. D.C. residents will vote Tuesday on whether to repeal the so-called tip credit. Restaurants have said the added workforce expense would put many eateries out of business.
Source: Governing