CapFax: Treasurer Frerichs’ home targeted again by late-night protesters

This is old news, I sat on it and well now I want to bring it to your attention. This is something that I strongly oppose. And I see there are some sides that have no shame as far as when or even how they protest. This is an issue to me.

As you may know all the executive offices in Illinois are held by Democrats and the "Free Palestine" crowd have opted to single out the family of Democrat State Treasurer Michael Freirichs.

Do you want to know why? Because his office failed to divest some investments with ties to the State of Israel and doubled down. They came to his house once before last year and then they recently came back.

Eh? Really disturb the peace at 3 A.M. some people have nothing better to do and worse still this.

“The lead woman had a bullhorn, and she made it very clear what her reasons were (for protesting),” he said. “She made it very clear by singling out my children, calling out, saying she knew that they were at home, knew that they were in their cribs and that they shouldn’t be allowed to sleep.”

Are you guys for real? Why are you making that man's children suffer? And again you're disturbing the peace with your protest!

For Treasurer Freirichs' part his statement:

I will always defend the right of people to peacefully protest. But coming to my home with bullhorns at 3 a.m. and frightening my family simply goes too far. This is intimidation to cause fear through scare tactics. They made it clear as they were leaving that they would continue to harass my wife and children where they sleep until my office divests from Israel Bonds. I won’t back down from these threats. I stand by the investment decisions I’ve made.

OK, I'm with it. But they shouldn't be protesting in a private neighborhood at 3 A.M. Well I don't know where he lives, and that's not really my business anyway. I presume he lives in a Chicago neighborhood and such activity would be disruptive. 

I stole this screencap of a sign in his yard from CapFax.

Glenn Beck: How difficult was Oswald's shot at JFK?

 

[VIDEO] I haven't read too much in it so far, however, Glenn Beck is discussing the fallout from the release of files regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Anyone here see the files? What revelations caught your eye?

Glenn Beck: Why Trump Must Audit Fort Knox’s Gold Reserves Now!

 

[VIDEO] What's the real state of the United States' gold reserves at Fort Knox? And then I have more questions.

Such as why are we holding so much gold there?

Could we get $5K checks from Federal Gov't thanks to D.O.G.E.?

 When I saw this post from IG, I was all for it.

The 16th Amendment

 Every once in a while you would hear about President Donald Trump talking about eliminating the income tax. He could start with the 16th amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

What Trump has been talking about is eliminating or cutting taxes on overtime and on tips. As far as tips there has been movement in Chicago at least to eliminate tips. Tips is of course for workers such as servers or bartenders to make some extra income.

Either way, who knows if Trump is serious about eliminating the 16th Amendment. Amending the constitution seems like a long and difficult process anyway.

At least the repeal prohibition amendment (18th Amendment) wasn't exactly an unpopular deal during the Great Depression. How much support would repealing the 16th Amendment receive?

Also, I'm all for Trump and Elon Musk's D.O.G.E. having a look at what goes on with the Internal Revenue Service.

Also, it came out the President wants the U.S. Treasury to cease production of the penny. This was something that was mentioned last month. It cost more to produce a 1¢ coin and I'm for it, now does this mean that prices will be rounded to the nearest nickel. If that's the case I'm for it!

I just hope prices for goods and services doesn't increase as a result.

The Onion: Congress forgets how to pass laws

 It's not often I inject humor onto this blog, but this seems timely.

[VIDEO] In spite of the fact that The Onion's bid for Alex Jones' company was effectively rejected by a court once a judgement against Jones for his statements regarding Sandy Hook, this video seems very timely with President Trump's ongoing singing of executive orders.

Granted the U.S. Senate is plenty busy with confirmation hearings right now, but what does both houses have to do right now. I'm not seeing nor hearing much action out of either of them right now.

CapFax: Pritzker blocks pardoned Jan 6 rioters from state jobs

 I saw a brief video about this via Chicago's ABC News affiliate and here's a link from Capitol Fax about this. The discussion is interesting.

O'Reilly: The United States of Trump

 

[VIDEO] I'm sorry to say I don't read too many of Bill O'Reilly's books.

O'Reilly who refers to himself as a "news analyst" known for his long-running TV program The O'Reilly Factor and currently has the program The No-Spin News has written a number of historical books including this one. Though in the case of The United States of Trump it's a bit more current than many of his books.

He analyzes Trump, discusses his own personal history with him. They're both New Yorkers of course and he may say they have similar personalities. It's a fascinating look at a man who's competitive, flamboyant, a showman, an entrepreneur, and later a politician.

Allow me to add, Trump as the 45th P.O.T.U.S. was the first one to have had no experience in either politics or gov't and the military. He went directly from the business/entertainment world to the political world. Isn't that amazing?

And you know that kept me from voting for him in 2016. He was an unknown to me as a politician. He was known for his business dealings (and the case could be made he was a true cultural icon in-spite of that snarky line I had assigned to the now former Vice President Kamala Harris) and his TV program The Apprentice.

Either way, does this 1 hour program give you any great insight about President Trump? Does it change your opinion of him.

Milestone

The year is 2025, do you know what this means?

I started this blog this month in 2005 and that means this blog is 20 years old. Perhaps the question to ask is why have I been posting here for 20 years?

How many of you have been here since the beginning?

And do you follow the "Beta" blog?

And how many Presidents since I started this blog.

• Bush
• Obama
• Trump
• Biden
• Trump (again!)

Can I do this another 20 years?

D.O.G.E. might cut the penny

From CBS News:

In Tuesday X post, Musk's DOGE wrote that the U.S. spends about 3 cents to mint each penny, which, of course, is only valued at 1 cent.

"The penny costs over 3 cents to make and cost U.S. taxpayers over $179 million in FY2023," DOGE wrote. "The Mint produced over 4.5 billion pennies in FY2023, around 40% of the 11.4 billion coins for circulation produced."

In pointing out the penny's costliness, DOGE is taking aim at an issue that has sparked debate for years, although the price of manufacturing the cent has only grown over the past several years. In 2016, for instance, the U.S. was spending about 1.5 cents to mint each penny, or less than half of its current manufacturing cost.

Still, the cent's $179 million in costs represents mere metaphorical pennies when it comes to DOGE's mandate to cut federal spending. President Donald Trump has said DOGE will provide recommendations to "slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies." Musk has said the group will aim to trim $500 billion in annual federal spending.

Probably time to cash in the pennies I have around the house. Convert it into some real cash.

Federal officials have proposed suspending the penny in prior years, with former Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew pushing the idea in 2015. Some economists have also advocated for dropping the penny from circulation, but there could be a costly downside to ditching the cent, as transactions would be rounded to 5-cent intervals, the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond said in a 2020 blog post.

"For a single item or small-value purchase, rounding up or down could represent a significant price change," the post noted.

Other nations have ditched their equivalent of the penny, including Canada, which stopped minting its one-cent coin in 2012. One 2018 economic analysis found that Canadian consumers paid about $3.27 million in additional Canadian dollars at grocery stores each year due to prices being rounded higher after the change.

"On the other hand, there may be additional, hard-to-quantify costs to using pennies that would argue in favor of elimination. Counting pennies to make change takes time, and as the old business adage goes, time is money," the Richmond Fed noted.

I don't know. I often don't use change when I spend cash. It has become more convenient for me to use a debit card for every day purchases. Although most of the time I do prefer cash.

I suppose since there are more options than cash when you have to spend at the store (any store - especially supermarkets) is it possible that change will have to be rounded up to a nickel?

Time will tell.

h/t Newsalert