News & Politics

Michigan is the latest state bracing for a debate over transgender accommodation in public schools, as a Republican lawmaker is confronting a sweeping State Board of Education policy about to take effect and crafting legislation designed to empower parents and protect the privacy of all students.

In February, the Michigan State Board of Education quietly passed a new transgender policy for K-12 public schools.

“When we found out about it, it was almost down to the end as far as time for public comment,” said State Senator Tom Casperson, who is drafting legislation to address the policy.  “They had set this policy and put it in motion back in February.  In February, they said they would take public comment until April 11th.”

Only discovering the proposed policy change in recent days, Casperson said he had no choice but to take the lead publicly on the issue.

“We were getting very close to April 11th, so that’s why we jumped on it.  More so to get the public aware of the policy so that they had some honest input on it.  That’s why we did what we did and when we announced we were going to have legislation drafted pertaining to it, then the media picked up on it immediately and now the parents have picked up on immediately,” said Casperson.

As a result, public comment has been extended to May 11, and Casperson says the parents he’s heard from have been sounding a consistent message.

“I’m hearing overwhelmingly a problem with the breadth and the scope of the policy,” said Casperson, who points out the policy would have otherwise taken effect and school districts statewide would be required to follow the guidelines of the State Board of Education.

The board’s policy would allow students to use bathrooms according to the gender with which they identify.  However, it doesn’t stop there.

“The bathroom is one component but they’ve gone so far as to say they’re going to allow the kids to blend together even in locker room settings.  So you’re going to put a young boy in with the young girls, as if somehow that’s acceptable,” said Casperson, a father of four.

The aspect of the policy that may bother Casperson most is language that would keep parents in the dark about the gender identity struggle of their children.

“They also have a policy that they put in place that would allow for the school to let the child recommend they want to change their gender and they want to change their name but they don’t want their parents involved.  This policy says then that the school then must not let the parents know about what’s going on,” said Casperson.

He says that will effectively lead to chaos.

“For parent-teacher conferences, the teacher would have to change back and identify the child by their biological name for the parent-teacher conference but then go back and let the child be identified with the other gender,” said Casperson.

“That is unacceptable,” he added.  “To exclude the parents and almost be deceptive to the parents about what’s going on when their child is going to school like that is out of bounds.”

Casperson is hoping to avoid the fierce backlash seen in other states over this issue by taking a more limited approach.  On the bathroom and locker room front, he’s seeking accommodation for all.

“We’re suggesting through the legislation that they make accommodations for kids that are struggling with their gender identity and they they not be forced to go into either [bathroom], but at the end of the day they have an option to go somewhere, probably more like a private situation, a singular bathroom,” said Casperson.

But he says the State Board of Education recommendation is a non-starter with him.

“It seems like the Board of Education is just suggesting it’s absolutely no big deal to send what would be a little boy into a girls’ bathroom because they’ve identified themselves through their gender as a girl,” said Casperson.

As for the policy that would potentially keep parents in the dark about their child adopting a a different gender while at school, Casperson says his legislation would allow any suspicion of abuse in the home to be reported to authorities and figured out in court.  Outside of such accusations, he says parents must be involved.

“If there’s none of that known or nothing is identified as wrong at home, parents have to be proactive with the child to make the request.  The request can still be made.  The child can change the identity, but it needs to be done with the parents,” said Casperson.

Michigan House Speaker Kevin Cotter is strongly supportive of the bill and Republican State Rep. Ed McBroom is drafting similar legislation in the Michigan House of Representatives.

But the pushback is already brewing.  State Board of Education President John Austin says the legislation could put Michigan in violation of federal civil rights laws.  He also says it would be “damaging for young students” and put those at issue in a position for bullying, depression or suicide.  Austin says he doesn’t want Michigan to follow the path of North Carolina.

Casperson defends his bill against both arguments.  First, he says every provision is designed to protect the rights of all students.

“There’s been accusations made towards myself and what the bill does and it’s not accurate at all.  We are recognizing the need and that there are things that need to be set in place to protect these children.  We’re simply saying the policy should be looking at all children and making sure all children are protected and safe and that all children certainly have a right to privacy,” said Casperson.

Furthermore, he says the Michigan bill differs considerably from the new law in North Carolina.

“I’m not going as far-reaching as what they are.  I’m simply dealing with K-12 education in the State of Michigan.  When it comes to the private sector and business community, if they want to set policies for restrooms inside their facilities in their businesses, I’m not dealing with that,” said Casperson.

With just a few weeks until the public comment comes to a close, Casperson says he will be ready for whatever moves the State Board of Education tries to make.

“We don’t have that far to go before the Department of Education gets final with their weigh-in period, so they’re all coming together pretty quick here,” said Casperson.

“I suspect they’ll have a chance to change it.  If they don’t want to change it, then I’ll make an attempt to run the legislation,” said Casperson.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review embark on an all-Hillary edition of the podcast.  They laugh as the Clinton campaign accuses Bernie Sanders of trying to rig the nomination by urging super-delegates to switch to his side.  They also slam Hillary Clinton for nodding along as her supporter says American citizens are terrorists and gun and ammo makers are making us that way.  And we shake our heads as the Clinton campaign again stresses that she will release any information as to whether aliens visited the earth.

President Obama tried to downplay the FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private server for handling some of the government’s most sensitive information, but a former top Justice Department official says Obama’s comments ignore the law and are an obvious attempt to convince the FBI not to recommend charges against Clinton.

On Fox News Sunday, anchor Chris Wallace asked Obama if he was convinced that national security was not compromised by Clinton’s handling of sensitive information.

“Here’s what I know.  Hillary Clinton was an outstanding secretary of state.  She would never intentionally put America in any kind of jeopardy,” said Obama.

Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General Victoria Toensing is appalled by that explanation.

“Doesn’t this former constitutional law professor know the law?” she asked.

Beyond trying to downplay Clinton’s actions, Toensing believes Obama’s comments are meant as a message to the FBI.  She compared it to the impact of Obama scolding the Supreme Court at a State of the Union address over it’s ruling in the Citizens United v. FEC decision.

“He wanted to get rid of what he called the benefactors of that opinion.  The IRS heard that message and they started a war against conservative groups, not letting them get their tax-exempt status,” said Toensing.  “[Obama’s statement on Hillary Clinton] was a message to the FBI and to the Department of Justice.”

Toensing says “intent” works against Clinton in two different ways.  She says the first federal statute in question is 18 U.S.C 1924.

“The only conduct one has to intend in that statute is to take classified information and put it in an ‘unauthorized location.’  Those are the exact words of the statute,” said Toensing.  “She had to intend to have classified information in an unauthorized location and  the statute doesn’t say diddly squat about whether the information had to be marked classified.”

She says 18 U.S.C. 793(f) is even more dire for Clinton.

“In that statute it talks about grossly negligently handling classified information.  That’s a felony.  There’s no intent in that.  It just had to be grossly negligent,” said Toensing.

Obama then tried to reassure Americans that no top secret information was in danger of being compromised.

“There’s classified and then there’s classified.  There’s stuff that is really top secret and there is information that is being presented to the president or the secretary of state that you might not want on the transom or going out over the wire but is basically stuff you could get in open source,” said Obama to Fox News Sunday.

Toensing agrees that classified information comes on several different levels and some is far more sensitive than other pieces.  But she says that distinction doesn’t help Clinton either.

“Hillary Clinton’s emails have been deemed in that very top category.  This was not stuff that was just information from public sources.  This was not the lowest level.  She had the top, top level on her server.  In fact, it’s so top level that, guess what, they won’t release it,” said Toensing.

Toensing is also livid at the mainstream media for failing to challenge erroneous assertions made by Clinton and her supporters.

“On George Stephanopoulos yesterday, Tony Podesta said, ‘Well, we now found out that Colin Powell did it.  Condi Rice did it.’  No, neither one of them had a private server for all of their government business,” said Toensing.

She admits other officials may have sent or received private emails that contained classified information but that is far different than what Clinton did.

“They didn’t purposefully have every single bit of government business in a personal server,” said Toensing.

Obama also told Fox News Sunday that he never discusses an active investigation with his attorney general but insisted that politics would never influence decisions over whether to bring charges against someone.

Toensing finds that absurd.

“Let’s go back to Lois Lerner.  Do you doubt for one second that she broke the law in what she did to conservative organizations by holding them up?  And who at the Justice Department investigated Lois Lerner?  Someone who had contributed $8,000 to the Obama campaign,” said Toensing.

She that is another example of the media double standard.

“Can you imagine George Bush handing someone who had donated thousands of dollars to his campaign, putting them on an investigation of someone in his administration.  The press would have gone crazy,” said Toensing.

Toensing says no one knows when or if the FBI will recommend charges but did note that FBI Director James Comey recently said there is no timetable for finishing the investigation.

“I guess that should worry you if you’re Hillary Clinton,” said Toensing.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review discuss the controversy in the GOP delegate and Donald Trump’s frustration with the process while the real story seems to be that Ted Cruz knows what he’s doing in delegate matters and Trump doesn’t.  They also slam Pres. Obama for saying Hillary shouldn’t be in trouble for her emails because she was a good secretary of state and because some classified information needs to be protected while other classified material isn’t really that important.  And we unload on vile Trump internet supporters for telling Mary Katharine Ham they’re glad her husband is dead because she wrote a column unflattering to Trump.

The Republican Party rejected at least two chances to allow convention delegates to vote for their candidate of choice, assuming current rules would benefit establishment candidates, and now party officials are scrambling to change the rules late in the game since the existing ones favor their least favorite candidates.

At the same time, one of the leading Republican rules experts says the campaigns need to follow existing rules on delegates that have been in place for decades and not complain that the process is unfair.

At issue for national Republicans right now is Rule 40(b), which states no candidate can be placed in nomination unless they have won a majority of delegates in eight states.  It was instituted by the Mitt Romney campaign at the Republican National Convention in 2012 to make Romney the only eligible candidate and trigger a unanimous nomination.  The rule passed over loud objections, particularly from backers of former Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas.

Following the 2012 elections, Republican National Committeeman Morton Blackwell tried twice to remove Rule 40(b) in an effort to allow delegates to vote for the candidates they are pledge to support.

His first attempt was three years ago.

“I got 25 states back in April of 2013 to support my repeal, but the other states and D.C. and the territories voted the other way,” said Blackwell.

He then tried to change the rule at the start of this year, before any votes were cast in the primaries and caucuses.

“I proposed a rifle shot amendment to establish the principle that duly elected delegates, who were credentialed at the convention and were voting in accord with their state party rules and state law, would have their votes counted, even if they didn’t vote for somebody who had made this artificial eight-state threshold,” said Blackwell.

His amendment was adopted without much opposition, but soon RNC attorneys huddled with party leaders and suddenly there was a motion to reconsider.

“After they voted to reconsider they then amended out the end of this disenfranchisement of duly elected delegates,” said Blackwell.

Blackwell says even just a couple of weeks before the votes started, the Republican Party was convinced Rule 40(b) would steer one of the establishment’s favored candidates toward the nomination.

“I think what happened it the establishment that put in these rules, expecting that it would help establishment candidates for president, still believed in January that these rules would facilitate the nomination of an establishment person,” said Blackwell.

The party’s attitude toward the rule has now shifted 180 degrees due the primary and caucus results seen across the country.

“It appears that the only two candidates for whom votes may count at the convention coming up in Cleveland would be Ted Cruz and Donald Trump.  That is why the establishment is now talking about changing these rules,” said Blackwell.

The goal of such a change would be to allow a candidate who has not done as well – or not run at all – to be eligible for nomination in a multi-ballot convention.  Blackwell says the Republican Party’s explanation for the opinion change is very dubious.

“The word is spreading through the establishment types that we don’t have any rules now.  The convention always writes it’s own rules.  Nobody’s ever made that point in previous discussions about the rules because essentially it’s not true,” said Blackwell.

“The rules that were adopted in 2012 are the temporary rules of the convention and they will become the permanent rules of the convention unless they are amended,” added Blackwell.

Blackwell is uneasy about changing any rules once the voting has begun, which is why he tried to change the rule in January.  He says there are only two ways for Rule 40(b) to change now.  One is a consensus among Trump, Cruz and RNC Chairman Reince Priebus.

He says the other avenue could be very chaotic.

“The only other way the rules can be changed, if there is not a consensus among these major players, is after a bitter, ferocious rules battle in Cleveland, which I believe could split the Republican Party,” said Blackwell.

While the rules for Cleveland are hotly debated, the battle to accumulate the  1,237 delegates needed to clinch the GOP nomination is heating up, with the Trump campaign making multiple arguments in recent days that fall on deaf ears for Blackwell.

Last month, Trump asserted that if he fails to win a majority of pledge delegates but leads Cruz by a substantial margin, then he should be handed the nomination.  Blackwell says the GOP has never operated that way.

“The Republican Party rules at the national level, from the very start of the Republican Party in the middle of the 19th century, requires that you get a majority of the delegates to the convention in order to be nominated.  I think [Trump’s] idea is a non-starter,” said Blackwell.

Trump and his campaign team also accuse Cruz of trying to “steal” delegates by getting Cruz supporters elected as delegates, who would initially be bound to vote for Trump in Cleveland but could later switch to Cruz on subsequent ballots.

Again, Blackwell says the rules on delegates have been the same for a very long time.

“If you want to have people who are personally committed to your candidate, then you have to campaign at these congressional districts and at the state convention to elect the people you want as delegates.  There’s nothing unfair about it.  It’s been done that way for decades,” said Blackwell.

He says one interesting twist, however, is that if a candidate who lost a caucus or primary can get their preferred delegates to comprise a majority of that state’s delegation, those supporters can make it known who their favorite candidate truly is.  That declaration  would then add that state to the list of eight currently needed to qualify for being nominated.

So given all these variables, what does Blackwell think will actually happen in Cleveland?

” I would hesitate to predict,” he said.  “In my experience, people who make their lives with crystal balls sometimes have to eat ground glass.”

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleasantly surprised to see Bill Clinton deliver a verbal rebuke to Black Lives Matter.  They also groan as a third of Wisconsin GOP voters say they will not support either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz in as the nominee.  And they laugh as Ben Carson dismisses the misdemeanor assault charge against Corey Lewandowski by suggesting that many people have been charged with things – maybe even his CNN interviewers.

A new, exhaustive study on precipitation levels over more than a thousand years shows the assumptions made by the United Nations and other climate change activists are badly flawed, suggesting that human activity may not be having the impact on our climate that so many insist to be true.

The report from Stockholm University in Sweden examined Northern Hemisphere rainfall statistics over a 1,200 year period.  Researchers concluded that extremes between heavy rainfall totals and droughts were more severe centuries ago, before the fossil fuel-based economy ever existed.

“Hopefully this will be one more nail in the coffin of the great deception that is the global warming deception,” said Dr. Tim Ball, a former climatologist at the University of Winnipeg, who taught classes on global precipitation for some 25 years.

Ball is also the author of multiple books, including “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science.”  He says this report comes as no shock to him.  In fact, he wrote about the very same issue just five months ago.  Ball says the problem is amounts in part to willful ignorance on the part of climate change proponents.

“They list three major greenhouse gases: water vapor, CO2, and methane.  They then ignore water vapor.  They just say the amount humans produce is of no significant so they just assume it’s constant.  That’s a problem,” said Ball.

“The second problem is there is inadequate temperature data to build their computer models.  The weather data covers only about 25 percent of the world’s surface.  How do you build your models on that?  The answer is you don’t,” said Ball.

He says reality has proven the experts wrong at every turn.

“Every single prediction they’ve made with temperature, starting in 1990, has been wrong.  Every one has been wrong.  One simple word definition of science is prediction.  If you can’t predict, you haven’t got science,” said Ball.

But as lacking as the data is on temperature levels, Ball says the scientists are even further behind on precipitation.

“The data for precipitation is even worse.  Measuring rainfall and measuring the water content of snow are some of the most difficult things to do in the weather and climate business,” said Ball.

Ball says a perfect example of the weak precipitation data could be seen five years ago when scientists tried to predict the impact of monsoons upon Africa during the growing season.  Half the models predicted a wetter season and the other half concluded it would be drier.

“Their conclusion was that there weren’t enough precipitation data stations to even meet the minimum requirement of the World Meteorological Association.  So the lack of data is the serious problem that supports what these people (in Stockholm) are finding,” said Ball.

According to Ball, this new study also puts the lie to the climate change premise that temperature is the most important factor when examining where our climate is trending.

Temperature variation is an issue but it has to change quite a bit before it comes difficult.  For example, they talk about a two-degree celsius warming.  All you’ve got to do is look at a city that’s just south of you that’s two degrees warmer and they get along very nicely, thank you,” said Ball.

He says precipitation is far more important.

“But when you get precipitation change, that impacts flora and fauna and humans tremendously,” said Ball.

Ball says 200 climatologists were surveyed in the year 2000 to select the 20 worst natural disasters in the 20th Century.  Of those 20, scientists picked 11 droughts and five floods.

“So the knowledge of precipitation and it’s impact is actually more important,” he said.

Ball the Stockholm report also erodes the credibility of climate change scientists on another front, namely their contention that rising global temperatures lead to more and more severe droughts.

“They said with global warming, there’ll be more droughts but that’s counter-intuitive.  If you’ve got warmer temperatures, you’ve got more evaporation, more water in the air, therefore fewer droughts.  Again that illustrates how wrong their thinking is,” said Ball.

Scientists who believe in human-triggered climate change admit the Stockholm study will intensify the existing debate.

“Do their results invalidate current predictive models? Certainly not. But they do highlight a big challenge for climate modelers, and present major research opportunities both for modelers and climate scientists,” wrote Matthew Kirby of California State University’s Department of Geological Sciences in response to the study.

Another researcher, James Renwick of the Victoria University of Wellington, stated the new data suggests the wet-dry extremes will come this century instead of the last one.

That leaves Ball shaking his head.

“They will look for some way around the evidence.  They’ll say this is wrong, that’s wrong and so on,” said Ball.  “They’ve done that every time.  They had a hypothesis and they accepted it as proven right from the start.  Every time evidence came out that contradicted it, they found ways of blunting that.”

He says the most egregious example was after 1998, when temperatures began leveling off but carbon dioxide levels kept rising, in contrast to the belief that the two factors were linked.

“Instead of correcting their science, they changed from global warming to climate change.  This is what they constantly do.  They try to blunt the evidence and deflect the evidence because it’s not fitting with their political agenda,” said Ball.

Or their financial agenda.  Ball contends so many scientists swear by man-caused climate change simply to keep the research dollars pouring in.

“These people, I guarantee you will find out, are very heavily funded by government in this research.  Of course, if you look at Paris and how much money was put into the Green Climate Fund.  It’s all driven by money, not by science and the truth,” said Ball.

He says this was proven by the Australian government in recent years.

“What the Australian government said was, ‘You’re telling us the science is settled.  Well fine.  We’ll cut off all the funding to the research.”  Of course everybody scrambled, ‘Oh, no no no.  Hold on a minute here,'” said Ball.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are pleased to see Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey looking to be in good shape for re-election in a state that is not all that strong for Republicans.  They also rip Pres. Obama and the VA for wait times and benefits only getting much worse for our veterans.  And they shake their heads as the Trump campaign contends its candidate doesn’t have a problem with women and any polls suggesting otherwise are manipulated.

National Taxpayers Union President Pete Sepp says new rules designed to stop American companies from setting up shop on foreign soil may work to keep some firms in the U.S. but he says the only thing that is going to allow businesses to stay and thrive is a tax code overhaul featuring lower rates and a much simpler code.

On Tuesday, President Obama announced the Treasury Department is implementing new rules designed to make it more painful for American firms to purchase a smaller, foreign business and use it as an offshore hub to avoid American taxes.  It’s a concept known as an inversion.

While watching American corporations avoid paying U.S. taxes is infuriating to many, Sepp says there are bigger problems.

“President Obama calls this practice ‘insidious’ but what’s really insidious is our failure to keep up with the rest of the world in terms of reforming our business tax systems.  We have not had major tax reform in this country for individuals or businesses since 1986,” said Sepp.

Among the new Treasury Department rules are a policy putting a three-year limit on companies outside the U.S. adding American assets so as not to dodge ownership requirements for future inversions.  Treasury is also planning to put a stop to earnings stripping after inversions.

Some experts believe the new policies had an instant impact as Pfizer and Irish drugmaker Allergan walked away from their $160 billion merger.  Whether that’s the main reason or not, Sepp says a few new policies don’t solve the larger problems.

“Ultimately, it won’t effect the problem a great deal because the problem is rooted in other parts of our tax system:  High rates, twice as high as many of our economic competitors.  High effective rates, whereby even after deductions and credits, the tax burdens are too heavy for our companies to bear,” said Sepp, who then listed even more problems.

“Shareholders demand that companies limit their tax liabilities and maximize returns.  Other countries are not standing in place.  They are reforming their tax systems constantly,” said Sepp, nothing that Canada and the United Kingdom have been aggressively cutting rates and rooting out tax code complexities.

The bottom line, says Sepp, is nothing can replace what needs to be done.

“Whatever minor rule makings that the United States Treasury issues, or even laws Congress might make to create new clampdowns on inversions are no substitute for doing the heavy lifting of comprehensive tax reform,” said Sepp.

The problems are clear.  Sepp says our rates are simply not competitive, noting our corporate tax rates are north of 39 percent while the average of OECD nations stand near 25 percent.  He says Canada’s rate is now around 15 percent.

On top of that, the U.S. also imposes the highly unusual worldwide tax, meaning American firms pay taxes to the U.S. Treasury on profits earned in other nations.  Most other nations require companies only to pay taxes where the money was made.

On the complexity front, Sepp says the situation is borderline hopeless.  He says businesses spend six billion hours poring over the tax laws to make sure they are in compliance.  By the time they are done, the time and cost for properly filing taxes amounts to firms spending an additional $960 per employee.  And that’s before the the actual tax payments are made.

Sepp says he wants to hear more specifics from all presidential candidates.  As for the Republican hopefuls, he says each have their strong and weak points.

He says Donald Trump has perhaps the most aggressive plan.

“Trump’s tax plan, both for individuals and businesses is very ambitious in terms of the amount of tax relief it would grant.  But Trump’s system would preserve many of the inequities in the current tax code and would target a few industries, for example, in finance with higher tax rates.  That’s probably the opposite direction we want to take,” said Sepp.

He also sees Ted Cruz as a mixed bag.

“Cruz has proposed a flat-rate income tax for individuals and something like a value added tax for companies.  That’s raised a different type of concern as to whether we could control a system like that and prevent the rate from becoming terribly punitive, the way it has in many European countries,” said Sepp.

Sepp describes John Kasich’s plan as a hybrid, offering fewer tax rates and more simplicity.  He says both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders would impose “terribly punitive” tax penalties on businesses.  But he says everyone needs to get more specific.

“It’s one thing to say you will lower rates.  It’s another thing to say how you’re going to make the process of filing taxes easier for businesses.  And that’s on the minds of business owners large and small,” said Sepp.

Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review discuss the results of the Wisconsin primary and how they slightly increase the odds of a conservative GOP nominee.  They also slam Trump backer Roger Stone for promising to give hotel room numbers of RNC delegates to Trump activists so they can go to their rooms and convince them to stay with Trump.  And they get a kick out of liberal college students protesting the choice of Madeleine Albright as commencement speaker because she is a white feminist.