Thursday AM ~ TheFrontPageCover

TheFrontPageCover
~ Featuring ~  
Challenging Disparate Impact
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by Arnold Ahlert  
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US Supreme Court Takes Up 
Clean Water Act Dispute
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by Michael Bastasch
{dailycaller.com} ~ The U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether or not the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals erred in a Clean Water Act (CWA) case that petitioners say would dramatically expand the law’s reach... The case, County of Maui, Hawaii, v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund, centers around whether or not the CWA requires permits for “nonpoint” sources of pollution that travel through regulated waterways. Maui’s attorneys argue the 9th Circuit’s “radical expansion of point source permitting” goes beyond the CWA’s scope by applying its case-by-case test that expanded what projects require CWA permits. Petitioners also argue the decision would subject taxpayers to costly permits and fines. The 9th Circuit ruling could also mean property owners with, say, septic tanks could be looped into a new regulatory scheme. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) oversees  CWA permits, but the agency often delegates implementation to states — though EPA does issue CWA permits for Hawaii. The Ninth Circuit appeals court unanimously ruled against Maui County in early 2018, siding with environmental activists who support the expansion of CWA authority. The county petitioned the Supreme Court to hear its case in August 2018...
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Democrats Should Be Alarmed at 
the Socialists in Their Ranks
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{westernjournal.com} ~ I published a piece recently on the reaction to President Donald Trump’s condemnation of socialism in his State of the Union. He said something indisputably factual and indubitably obvious to most Americans... “Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” It was a revealing moment not only for Trump but also for the Democratic Party. I noted that, to their credit, Democrat leaders Nancy Pulosi and Chuck scumbag-Schumer applauded, as did a decent number of Democrats in that chamber. That was in contrast to the Democratic Party’s two socialist stalwarts, commie-Bernie Sanders and commie-Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. commie-Sanders was visibly agitated. commie-Ocasio-Cortez did a better job concealing her displeasure, as she sat stone-faced. But I’ve since learned something even more interesting among Democrat reactions. No less than Elizabeth dinky-Warren, about as left-wing as a Democrat senator can get, joined scumbag-Schumer and Pulosi in applauding Trump’s condemnation of socialism. Yes, dinky-Elizabeth Warren. Better, whereas Pulosi offered mild applause from a seated position, dinky-Warren stood and clapped emphatically, as a sea of silent white-wearing congresswomen sat behind her unmoved. I learned of dinky-Warren’s surprising reaction from the communist press, namely from  People’s World, successor to the Daily Worker, in a headline that mocked, “A Specter is haunting Donald Trump — the specter of socialism.” So disappointed were the comrades at People’s World that they scorned dinky-Warren as an “erstwhile progressive leader.” Beyond that Democratic Party split in that chamber, however, are the further fissures that have subsequently opened among the wider left’s pontificators. Veteran columnist E. J. Dionne fired off a piece for the Washington Post reprinted as the lead at RealClearPolitics with the defiant title, “Trump’s War on Socialism Will Fail.” “He wants to tar all Democrats as ‘socialists,'” insisted Dionne, “and then define socialism as antithetical to American values.”...   https://www.westernjournal.com/democrats-alarmed-socialists-ranks/?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=afb-pac&utm_campaign=dailyam&utm_content=ps
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CBS' Lara Logan Calls Out Media For 
Propaganda-Like Coverage: 'This Interview 
Is Professional Suicide For Me'
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by Amanda Prestigiacomo
{dailywire.com} ~ Emmy Award-winning journalist Lara Logan talked about the mainstream media’s left-wing bias in a podcast called “Mike Drop,” hosted by retired Navy SEAL Mike Ritland...  Logan, former chief foreign affairs correspondent for CBS News and a correspondent for “60 Minutes,” blasted the media for dropping even the pretense of being objective, likening some journalists in the mainstream media to “activists” and “propogandists.” “This interview is professional suicide for me,” Logan told Ritland at the end of the revealing podcast. Logan said she agreed with Ritland for suggesting most outlets are “absurdly left-leaning.” “The media everywhere is mostly liberal, not just in the U.S. But in this country, 85% of journalists are registered Democrats – that’s just a fact. No one is registering Democrat when they’re really a Republican. So, the facts are on the side that you just stated: most journalists are Left, or liberal, or Democrat, or whatever word you wanna give it,” started in Logan...   https://www.dailywire.com/news/43610/propagandists-emmy-award-winning-journalist-lara-amanda-prestigiacomo?utm_medium=email&utm_content=021919-news&utm_campaign=Actengage
As Investigations Find No Collusion, 
Trump Haters Learn Nothing
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{dailysignal.com} ~ Here is the problem for Trump critics. They began with the wrong premise. They believed that scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton should have won the 2016 presidential election... Then they deluded themselves by embracing the notion that Donald Trump was illegitimate, unstable, stupid, and an offense to everything they consider normal. This led the scumbag/liar-nObama holdovers in the Justice Department and the major media to construct a Russian collusion scenario, based on evidence they had to know is false. These included Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI, who was fired for lying to government investigators. In his new book and in a recent “60 Minutes” interview, McCabe admits he was part of a coup attempt to remove Trump from office, using the 25th Amendment as the means. McCabe said Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was not joking, as Rosenstein claims he was, about wearing a wire, hoping the president would say outrageous things Rosenstein could take to the vice president and the Cabinet to convince them that Trump was unfit to hold public office...  https://www.dailysignal.com/2019/02/19/as-investigations-find-no-collusion-trump-haters-learn-nothing/?utm_source=TDS_Email&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=CapitolBell&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiWldFNE9XRmlPR000WVdSbCIsInQiOiJxeGdTOU9oQzZpWjlXK1NRaE02V3BENXdLZVNxZWFpdHdtZ01RWFNmNmo1WjE1ZWExXC9YZ1dsUWtBeWNkMWxjVU9VejJZWUp0U1o4cE1pMVV6T25MSjk2MDE3TUhydFM1b1V5N0NmTjQ1aXhJZnBYTnBRdktOa0F0WDI4S3grUXYifQ%3D%3D
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The Two Venezuelas and Foreign Intervention
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{nationalreview.com} ~ Today Venezuela is at an impasse, a term allegedly coined by Voltaire to refer to a situation devoid of exits. It has infinite inflation, four immobilized branches of government, two presidents, and the worst humanitarian crisis to hit the Americas in decades... There is sporadic violence on the streets and in improvised prisons hidden away from YouTube. What today resembles a civil war without weapons could easily escalate into bloodshed. Yet it is foreign powers and not domestic actors that will determine the country’s fate. The Bolivarian divide runs so deep that the republic now has two presidents: Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó. Maduro, elevated to power by the late Hugo Chavéz, insists that he has begun his second constitutional term, sworn in by the Supreme Court, backed by the courts and, crucially, the country’s armed forces. Guaidó is recognized by the National Assembly, the unicameral legislature that Chávez himself created when he wanted to do away with a Senate keen on opposing his accumulation of power. Hundreds of thousands of exiled Venezuelans, including former Chavista officers and representatives, support him, too. The international media have paid scant attention to Venezuela. With rare exceptions, the crisis has seemed far away, complex, and entirely domestic to the outside world. Yet that perception is misguided: Venezuela’s crisis is no longer a mere constitutional battle; it is a power struggle among international powers.  When Guaidó invoked articles 233 and 333 of the Venezuelan constitution to declare himself president, he did so with plenty of support. The United States had already refused to recognize Maduro after last year’s presidential “election,” in which he was effectively the only candidate allowed to run. Same with the so-called Lima Group, a gathering of Latin American nations led by Brazil and Argentina. Such support allowed Guaidó to unify an opposition whose internal divisions had previously enabled Chávez and then Maduro to accumulate power. A few days later, the European Union joined the anti-Maduro forces, in a move ironically led by the socialist government of Spain, but not by Italy, where the populists of the Right the Northern League could not get the populists of the Left the 5 Star Movement, old friends of Chavismo to abandon Maduro...
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Challenging Disparate Impact
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by Arnold Ahlert:  “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” —Section 1, Amendment XIV, U.S. Constitution

“A theory of liability that prohibits an employer from using a facially neutral employment practice that has an unjustified adverse impact on members of a protected class. A facially neutral employment practice is one that does not appear to be discriminatory on its face; rather it is one that is discriminatory in its application or effect.” —the definition of “disparate impact.”

For years, many Americans have been unable to reconcile the Constitution’s demand for equal treatment with a theory whereby “discrimination” is defined solely by statistical outcomes as they relate to a protected class. In what might be the most ambitious effort undertaken by the Trump administration to date, White House officials are reportedly planning to ban disparate impact.

According to a bombshell report by Paul Sperry, White House Budget Director and interim Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney is the prime mover of “a proposed executive order, originally drafted by two conservative Washington think tanks” that would “repudiate the underlying rationale for scores of regulations and thousands of government lawsuits alleging racial discrimination, resulting in billions of dollars in fines.”

Disparate impact was engendered by the Supreme Court’s 1971 decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. Using Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as their vehicle, black American employees sued the power company, challenging its requirement that one must posses a high-school diploma or pass intelligence tests as a condition of employment in, or transfer to, jobs at the plant, even though those requirements were not intended to determine or measure job-related performance. SCOTUS found in favor of the employees, and further determined that Title VII “proscribes not only overt discrimination, but also practices that are fair in form, but discriminatory in operation.”

In a 5-4 ruling in 2015, SCOTUS reaffirmed disparate impact in Texas Department of Housing & Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. The Court agreed with the non-profit’s assertion that the state housing department “segregated housing patterns by allocating too many tax credits to housing in predominantly black inner-city areas and too few in predominantly white suburban neighborhoods.” Thus, SCOTUS once again endorsed the idea that statistics trumped intent.

So why challenge the law now? Sperry asserts that “conservative opponents of the doctrine believe the currently constituted high court would uphold an executive order doing away with it.”

How ironic. For decades, leftists have viewed an activist Supreme Court — empowered by a “living” Constitution — as their ultimate vehicle for implementing policies they could not get through state legislatures or Congress — all while many warned that such activism cuts both ways.

Yet there is more than activism involved here. While some claims of discrimination are obviously legitimate, Sperry explains that the Left has used disparate impact as a “social-engineering weapon aimed at equalizing outcomes and extending the government’s power over the private sector.”

Two of those incarnations were devastating. In one, when the federal government pressured banks to relax loan standards for minority applicants to avoid charges of racism, that effort fueled  the 2008 financial meltdown.

How much pressure? At one point, “valid” income considerations for obtaining a mortgage included welfare payments and unemployment benefits.

The other incarnation? An scumbag/liar-nObama administration that sued hundreds of schools for disciplining black students at higher rates than whites — while ignoring the inconvenient reality that black students committed more infractions — precipitated the Florida-based PROMISE program. PROMISE sought to limit the number of minority-student interactions with the criminal-justice system by exempting 13 specific misdemeanors from police involvement. As a result, the Parkland assailant was able to obtain the weapon with which he killed 17 students and wounded 17 more at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School last year.

Regardless, the battle to do away with this pernicious concept will be fierce. “The attack on disparate impact is the latest in a series of Trump administration assaults on civil rights,” asserts  Sarah Hinger, an ACLU Racial Justice Program staff attorney. “As the nation continues its long march toward equality, it would be outrageous to destroy such an important means of advancement — one the civil rights bar still depends on to make its case in court,” declares the New York Times editorial board. “Donald Trump wants to make racism OK unless someone can prove the accused party intended to discriminate against them,” claims columnist Michael Harriot.

That would be proof — as opposed to a legally enforceable  presumption of racism.

Roger Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank, sees the absurdity of such assertions. “The disparate-impact approach requires decision-makers to make decisions with an eye on race,” he states. “That is exactly what the civil rights laws are supposed to prohibit.”

Instead, the scumbag/liar-nObama administration forced the issue. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) discouraged employers from checking a job applicant’s criminal records because that had “disparate impact” on black men whose incarceration rate is seven times higher than that of whites. In one egregious case, auto manufacturer BMW paid $1.6 million in relief to 56 black Americans with criminal records it turned down for jobs. The feds also forced the company to ignore criminal charges against any job applicant, even if they included violent felonies.

In another case, auto lender Ally Financial was [fined(https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-and-consumer-financial-protection-bureau-reach-98-million-settlementto) a record $98 million by the DOJ and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) for refusing to admit bias against minority borrowers. Yet in subsequent congressional testimony, the CFPB admitted it didn’t even factor credit scores of minority applicants into its investigation, despite many studies showing they are the most reliable indicators of potential loan defaults.

Yet the beat goes on. New House Banking Committee Chairwoman scumbag/mad-Maxine Waters (D-CA) has promised to take on “dishonest and criminal” banking officials who don’t loan out enough money in low-income urban areas. New House Education Committee chairman Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA) wants to expand the Title VI statute to include disparate impact and precipitate more lawsuits, while Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) of the House Judiciary Committee promises to use it as a vehicle to engender reparations for slavery.

“If you don’t favor using the disparate impact approach in civil-rights enforcement to the nth degree, then you are a ‘racist,’ and the mainstream media can be counted on to accept this narrative uncritically,” said Clegg.

The American public? The bet here is the race card is “maxed out,” and that color-blindness, equal opportunity and meritocracy still resonate with a majority of the electorate. The same majority increasingly tired of the idea that the rights of specific groups supersede those of individual Americans, and that those groups are apparently entitled to equality of outcome, not opportunity.

Let the pushback begin — in earnest.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/61208?mailing_id=4084&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4084&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body
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