Wednesday, August 20, 2025

Son of Conservative Va. Rep. Goodlatte Wants to Flip Dad’s Seat Blue

Ben Sellers
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0

‘I’m deeply embarrassed that Peter Strzok’s career was ruined by my father’s political grandstanding…’

Son of Virginia Rep. Goodlatte Tries to Flip Dad's Seat Blue 1
Bobby Goodlatte/LinkedIn

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The son of retiring House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte has his sight set on flipping his father’s seat from red to blue in northwest Virginia’s Sixth District.

Bobby Goodlatte issued a series of tweets earlier in the week repudiating his father’s role in the firing of senior FBI official Peter Strzok and announcing that he had given the maximum amount to the Democratic candidate vying for his father’s open seat.

“I’m deeply embarrassed that Peter Strzok’s career was ruined by my father’s political grandstanding. That committee hearing was a low point for Congress,” he posted on Twitter.

The younger Goodlatte also weighed in on the Twitter battle between President Donald Trump and Omarosa Manigault-Newman, the former “Apprentice” contestant turned White House staffer.

“Our President just called a woman a dog. It seems like every day he further lowers the dignity of our highest office,” he said, followed by a frowning emoji.

According to the junior Goodlatte’s LinkedIn page, he graduated in 2008 from Duke University with a computer science degree and spent four years as a product designer at Facebook.

He later attempted to launch a startup app called Openvote, which invited users to declare their position on political issues.

He currently considers himself a professional ‘angel investor’ based in San Francisco.

Bobby Goodlatte’s Twitter footprint includes nearly 10,000 posts dating back to February 2017 and a growing follower count around 50,000.

While his tweets have consistently attacked the president and espoused liberal positions, a cursory examination revealed no other postings directly critical of his father.

Although the senior Goodlatte has held his seat for 25 years in the historically conservative district (which includes the cities of Roanoke, Lynchburg and Harrisonburg, and much of the Shenandoah Valley), Democrats in their mission to reclaim the House of Representatives have seen Virginia as especially vulnerable due to demographic changes.

Republicans in the commonwealth saw substantial losses in 2017 state-level elections, which nearly cost them the state House of Delegates and included the election of the first openly transgender state representative, who unseated an incumbent Republican in a nearby district.

According to election handicapper Scott Rasmussen, Republican Del. Ben Cline remains the strong favorite in the contest against Democratic challenger Jennifer Lewis.

Father Charged with Murdering Restroom Peeper

Ben Sellers
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0

‘They needed to take care of the situation or he would do it himself…’

Leon Armstrong, Melvin Harris
Leon Armstrong (left) died after allegedly being beaten by Melvin Armstrong in Arizona. He believed Armstrong had attempted to enter a convenience store restroom stall his daughter was using. IMAGES: Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office via Twitter

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) An Arizona father who allegedly beat to death a man accused of trying to enter his daughter’s bathroom stall now faces second-degree murder charges.

Melvin Harris was arrested on Aug. 4 for murdering Leon Armstrong with “extreme indifference” according to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office inmate records. He is scheduled for arraignment in Phoenix’s Superior Court on Friday, Aug. 17.

According to local news reports, Harris was picking up his 16-year-old daughter at a QuikTrip convenience store around 11:30 p.m. on Aug. 2 when Armstrong, 26, approached him in the parking lot asking for money.

Armstrong went into the store with the change he received. When Harris’ daughter and her friends exited the store, they informed him that the man had tried to enter the locked stall in the women’s restroom.

The girls also told a security guard, who escorted Armstrong out of the store. Harris reportedly told the guard they needed to take care of the situation or he would do it himself.

After an exchange with the security guard, Harris followed Armstrong to a gravel area and proceeded to punch him to the ground. He then kicked and stomped on the injured man and drove off.

Armstrong suffered a broken nose and brain swelling. He died in the hospital on Aug. 7.

 

 

Colorado Officials Continue to Harass Masterpiece Cakeshop

Ben Sellers
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0

‘The state’s continuing efforts to target Phillips do not just violate the Constitution; they cross the line into bad faith…’

After SCOTUS Ruling, Colorado Officials Continue to Harass Masterpiece Cakeshop
Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips/PHOTO: Alliance Defending Freedom

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Two months since the Supreme Court upheld Masterpiece Cakeshop’s religious liberty as law of the land, Colorado officials continue to harass Christian cakemaker Jack Phillips, his attorneys say.

On Tuesday, the Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit against Colorado’s governor, attorney general and members of its Civil Rights Commission, saying that a new anti-discrimination complaint filed against him once again violated his rights.

The new suit, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Elenis, says that on the same day that the Supreme Court agreed to take up the first Masterpiece case, pertaining to a gay wedding, Denver lawyer Autumn Scardina approached Jack’s wife, Debi Phillips, requesting that she make a cake pink on the inside and blue on the outside, symbolizing a gender transition.

Despite the Supreme Court ruling, the Colorado Civil Rights Commission found the cakeshop in violation again when they refused to make the transgender cake.

The new lawsuit also states that Masterpiece has received other specious cake requests since their case came to prominence, including ones celebrating Satan, depicting sexually explicit material and promoting marijuana use.

Many, Jack Phillips believes, come from the same lawyer.

“It is now clear that Colorado will not rest until Phillips either closes Masterpiece Cakeshop or agrees to violate his religious beliefs,” it says. “The state’s continuing efforts to target Phillips do not just violate the Constitution; they cross the line into bad faith.”

The original Masterpiece decision held that Colorado officials acted with “clear and impermissible hostility” in targeting and harassing Phillips despite having allowed similar businesses to exercise their religious convictions.

“The arbitrary basis on which the state is applying its law makes clear that its officials are targeting Jack,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jim Campbell in a press release.

In issuing the case-specific decision against Colorado, the court avoided a broader ruling as to whether a business can, in principle, decline to serve customers based on protected factors like sexual orientation that may conflict with religious views.

Strzok Sets Up Twitter, GoFundMe Accounts

Ben Sellers
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0

‘The FBI and the American people deserve better…’

Strzok sets up Twitter, GoFundMe accounts 1
Peter Strzok, IMAGE: CSPAN via YouTube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Freshly fired Peter Strzok, once the FBI’s deputy chief of counterintelligence, took his case to the public sphere Monday in hopes of garnering both moral and financial support.

Echoing the scorched-earth separations of his one-time bosses, James Comey and Andrew McCabe, by taking a defiant tone against the White House, Strzok’s first post on his newly-minted Twitter account was a statement from Washington, D.C. litigation firm Zuckerman Spaeder, blaming “political pressure” for the firing and hinting at a fight to come.

It closed by saying, “The FBI and the American people deserve better.”

Strzok had been reassigned within the agency after his anti-Trump text-messages with mistress Lisa Page became part an investigation by the Justice Department’s Instructor General.

Prior to that, he had lead roles in both the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the Trump Russia investigation.

While testifying before the House Oversight Committee in July, he refused to answer many questions, citing the advice of FBI counsel.

In addition to his Twitter, Strzok established a GoFundMe account “dedicated to covering [his] hefty—and growing—legal costs and his lost income.”

At press time on Tuesday, it had raised nearly $330,000 of its stated goal of $350,000 with roughly 8,500 contributors.

However, a sizable chunk of the money was likely to be returned according to the page itself, which noted that “[d]ue to federal ethics regulations … any donation whose source cannot be determined … may be returned.”

It said additional SEC guidelines regulated any possible conflicts of interest or donations from prohibited sources and that any aggregate donation greater than $390 must be publicly disclosed.

At least 20 of the donations exceeding that amount came from anonymous donors.

Blitzer Whines to Jimmy Kimmel about Press Hostility

Ben Sellers
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‘It’s really an important part of our democracy to have an excellent, world-class news organization like CNN is…’

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Two notorious Trump-bashers teamed up Monday night to blur the lines of fact, fiction and fantasy under the guise of comedy.

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, who has repeatedly led the charge in bringing up questions on impeachment against President Donald Trump, visited “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” to despair over the push-back that left-wing media outlets have faced under the current administration.

“It’s been a very slow news cycle lately—I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Blitzer began glibly.

It was hard to tell from there, however, when the erstwhile White House correspondent’s tongue left his cheek as he proceeded to wax philosophical about the lofty mission of the mainstream news media.

“We want people to watch, obviously, CNN. We want people to know what’s going on. Our job as journalists, as reporters, is to report the news as fairly, as responsibly, as accurately as we possibly can.”

Throwing a charitable bone to critics, Blitzer conceded that CNN has had a sometimes rocky relationship with the truth, perhaps alluding to the resignation of three CNN employees last year over a false story asserting ties between Trump officials and a Russian investment fund.

CNN itself drew criticism for collusion during the 2016 election when it was discovered by Wikileaks that contributor Donna Brazile had given questions to the Hillary Clinton campaign prior to a debate sponsored by the network.

“We know we’re the first draft of history, meaning that occasionally we make a mistake,” Blitzer said, “and if we do, we correct it as soon as possible, but that’s our responsibility.”

Blitzer then quickly pivoted back to scapegoating the Trump administration for the Fifth Estate’s decline in credibility and viewership.

Trump Tweets Smackdown of 'Fraud News CNN'
Trump giving a ‘smackdown’ to CNN /File photo

Trump notably has taken an antagonistic tone with the network.

Early in his presidency, he retweeted a meme that showed him tackling and punching a person with the CNN logo photo-shopped on his head.

More recently, Trump has encouraged crowds at his rallies to heckle perennial partisan attack-dog Jim Acosta and referred to anchor Don Lemon as the “dumbest man on television.”

Blitzer and others in the media have particularly harped on Trump’s rhetoric in referring to members of the press as an “enemy of the people” due to their slanted coverage.

“It’s really an important part of our democracy to have an excellent, world-class news organization like CNN is…. It’s very concerning, very worrisome, that the president of the United States goes after us the way he does,” Blitzer said.

Encouraged by Kimmel—who acknowledged industry bias in his own field when he said in February that talk show hosts were liberal because it required ‘intelligence’—Blitzer then went on record denying Trump’s charge while preaching to the choir:

“Not just me, but all of us serious news organizations, we are not the enemy of the American people. We report the news. It’s part of our democracy. What worries me so much is that when the president says what he says, it gives encouragement to dictators out there around the world to go after a free press, and they say, ‘Look, fake news, disgusting people, we gotta get rid of them.’”

Kimmel chimed in that it was not only journalists at risk.

“Camera guys, audio guys on the scene at a rally in Florida and he’s getting people stirred up, he doesn’t know who’s in that crowd. He doesn’t know what someone might do. It’s truly irresponsible,” Kimmel said, before again blurring the lines between comedy and wish-fulfillment: “We’ve gotta get rid of him, right?”

Blitzer took his cue to play the straight man to Kimmel’s madcap foil: “We have to convince him to stop talking, cause it’s really, really a dangerous situation. It’s an awful situation, and I hope he stops doing it.”

Despite the speculation of what might happen to journalists at a Trump rally, networks were decidedly mute over the aggressive treatment from Antifa and left-wing protestors during a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend, as documented by an NBC camera crew.

Correspondent Cal Perry tweeted footage of the protestors cursing and shoving both media and law enforcement during an Aug. 12 demonstration. The march ostensibly commemorated the year anniversary of the “Unite the Right” event, during which one counter-protestor was hit by a car.

Gun Advocates See Little Help from Sessions & DOJ

Ben Sellers
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0

‘Nobody should hang their hat on starting Second Amendment litigation these days. It’s a losing proposition…’

Sessions’ DOJ Already Pursuing Prosecutions in 4 Cases of Leaking
Jeff Sessions/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) The recent settlement of a case involving the distribution of materials for at-home gun-making has opened the floodgates to questions about the Trump administration’s positions on gun-rights.

The Justice Department reached an agreement last week with the Second Amendment Foundation and Defense Distributed, which filed suit against the State Department in 2015 to challenge government claims that the instructions they provided for creating a plastic gun using a 3-D printer violated federal law.

In 2013, the John Kerry-led State Department sent a letter to Defense Distributed owner Cody Wilson that said the company’s online materials violated the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and threatened legal action.

In a release on its website, Wilson’s co-plaintiff, the Second Amendment Foundation, described ITAR as “a Cold War-era law intended to control exports of military articles.”

Wilson told Liberty Headlines that the settlement was a major victory for both First- and Second-Amendment rights.

“This is a significant thing for the history of the Second Amendment and for the present of American gun culture,” he said. “It affects free and clear access [to online information about firearms]. That’s going to be an essential thing as we go forward.”

SAF also said in its release that the settlement was an important step in having the government recognize that many non-automatic or semi-automatic firearms are not “inherently military.”

“Not only is this a First Amendment victory for free speech, it also is a devastating blow to the gun prohibition lobby,” wrote Alan Gottlieb, SAF founder and executive vice president.

Under its terms, the technical information provided by the plaintiffs will now be regulated by the Commerce Department, which does not impose prior restraint on public speech, Gottlieb said.

After five years, Wilson said, the files for its 3-D models are back online and available to the public for download at defcad.com.

As part of the settlement, the government also will pay back $39,000 in legal and administrative fees, including about $10,000 in State Department registration fees.

Wilson said it covers only a small fraction of the nearly half a million dollars he spent in his defense (about a quarter of which was paid by SAF).

“It’s rare enough just to get dollar 1 from the feds in an action like this, so I can’t really complain,” he said.

Despite the pyrrhic victory for Wilson, Second Amendment advocates continue to puzzle over mixed signals from Jeff Sessions’s Justice Department.

Although Wilson said he hoped the Trump administration might signal a more sympathetic position on gun-rights, he saw no change in how the federal government litigated the case.

The settlement, he said, had more to do with administrative issues than philosophical ones.

“It’s going to become a convenient way to read what happened here—Trump becomes president and we won,” Wilson said. “… That’s all technically true, but I don’t think it’s related.”

Sessions has chosen to press forward on several other appeals in cases initiated by his Obama-era predecessors, Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch.

Among these are decisions involving the rights of citizens with previous nonviolent felony convictions to have their gun-ownership rights restored.

Larry Hatfield, Rickey Kanter and Jorge Medina all face cases where, despite having long ago paid for crimes such as making false statements on a bank loan and mail-order fraud, they continue to be denied gun rights, even for self-defense and hunting.

Other cases being litigated include one involving the sale of a handgun by a licensed Texas dealer to an out-of-state resident and another to determine whether a gun stored in the glove compartment of a locked vehicle violated Massachusetts law.

The cases have met with mixed success in the lower courts, but each could prove an early test of the Supreme Court’s conservative leanings in its next session, following the retirement of “swing” Justice Anthony Kennedy.

The court averted one recent test case by declining to review the decision in Sessions v. Binderup, which ruled that serious misdemeanor crimes in Pennsylvania were not grounds for depriving gun rights.

Despite a few major victories the Obama era—including 2008’s District of Columbia v. Heller, which challenged a D.C. law banning the possession of firearms, and 2010’s McDonald v. Chicago, determining that the Heller decision applied also to states—few see a definitive resolution to gun-rights issues coming in the pipeline anytime soon.

Wilson said part of him had hoped to see his case make it to the Supreme Court (they ruled against him on one injunction), and he was cautiously optimistic about the changes that Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment (if approved by the Senate) might bring.

However, he added, “Nobody should hang their hat on starting Second Amendment litigation these days. It’s a losing proposition.”

Liberty-Minded Folks Dubious About Kavanaugh on Privacy Rights

Ben Sellers
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0

RAND PAUL: ‘I’m worried about his opinion on the Fourth Amendment…’

Loony Left Sees Apocolypse with Nomination of Kavanaugh
Brett Kavanaugh/IMAGE: YouTube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) As President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh begins the vetting process leading up to his confirmation hearings, not all of his opposition comes from the Left.

Conservative analysts have questioned some of his unorthodox decisions and raised the concern that Kavanaugh—like his Supreme Court predecessor, Anthony Kennedy—could flip on key decisions.

Several have pointed to his dissenting opinion on the Affordable Care Act in Seven-Sky v. Holder.

Kavanaugh asserted that the case lacked standing since the Obamacare individual mandate was, effectively, a tax.

That argument inadvertently provided the framework that Chief Justice John Roberts used to uphold Obamacare in 2012.

Meanwhile, privacy advocates point to a larger concern: Kavanaugh’s record of supporting government data-collection as being consistent with the Fourth Amendment.

Libertarians like the Ron Paul-affiliated Campaign for Liberty have said these decisions show a “need to keep a close eye on the confirmation hearings.”

In 2015, in the wake of whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency’s warrantless surveillance, Kavanaugh joined Chief Judge Merrick Garland and others to deny an emergency petition filed by Judicial Watch founder Larry Klayman over the NSA’s collection of phone-record metadata.

Among the reasons Kavanaugh cited were that the collection of phone records from telecommunications service providers did not constitute a search and that the Fourth Amendment did not prohibit all searches, only unreasonable ones.

Citing a litany of precedents, Kavanaugh stated that “The Fourth Amendment allows governmental searches and seizures without individualized suspicion when the Government demonstrates a sufficient ‘special need’ … that outweighs the intrusion on individual liberty.”

He offered as examples the drug testing of students, roadblocks to detect drunk drivers, border checkpoints and security screening at airports.

“To be sure, sincere and passionate concerns have been raised about the Government’s program,” he added. “Those policy arguments may be addressed by Congress and the Executive. Those institutions possess authority to scale back or put more checks on this program, as they have done to some extent by enacting the USA Freedom Act.”

But last month the Supreme Court ruled that police need a warrant before obtaining cell phone location data about a suspect from telecom companies.

As Politico noted, it was not the first time Kavanaugh gave a wide berth to surveillance efforts.

In 2010’s USA v. Lawrence Maynard, he supported the warrantless use of a GPS tracking device, saying there was no expectation of privacy—though Kavanaugh conceded that tampering with the vehicle may have violated property rights.

The Supreme Court later ruled that such tracking required a warrant, with Justice Antonin Scalia citing Kavanaugh’s latter statement.

In a message to supporters, Norm Singleton, the Campaign for Liberty president, said, “[W]e will pore through more of Judge Kavanaugh’s opinions to help make sure we don’t get another wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Despite the concerns, however, Singleton supported the idea that Kavanaugh’s role was simply to interpret the Fourth Amendment and apply judicial precedent, not to legislate from the bench.

“At the end of the day, we want and need a justice who will adhere to a strict constructionist view of the Constitution,” he wrote.

** MORE FOURTH AMENDMENT COVERAGE at Liberty Headlines **

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Rand Paul/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)

Still, Kavanaugh must convince a majority of Senators to endorse his nomination.

Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky, perhaps the strongest advocate for citizens’ privacy rights in the Senate, has expressed concern about Kavanaugh while at the same time claiming to have “an open mind.”

“I’m worried about his opinion on the Fourth Amendment,” Paul said in Louisville on Monday, the Courier-Journal reported. “Kavanaugh ruled that national security trumps privacy … that worries me.”

Pennsylvania Continues to Hide Full Scale of Alien Voting

Ben Sellers
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0

‘The full extent of noncitizen registration and voting throughout the Commonwealth remains a mystery mostly due to the obstructionist tactics…’

1
Photo by byzantiumbooks (CC)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In most presidential election years, Pennsylvania’s 20 electoral votes make it a pivotal part in any victory strategy.

If President Donald Trump’s narrow victory in Pennsylvania (by approximately 0.7 percent and under 50,000 votes) is any indication, it is a state in which every vote matters.

A new report by the Public Interest Legal Foundation suggests that it is also a state in which an election could be easily stolen.

The report, titled “Steeling the Vote” identified 139 ineligible non-citizen voters in Allegheny County (which encompasses the city of Pittsburgh), who acknowledged being registered to vote since 2006 due to “flaws” in the screening process while applying for a driver’s license.

“According to officials, any person seeking a driver’s license—regardless of his or her immigration documents on the table during the transaction—was erroneously screened for interest in registering to vote,” the report said.

The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation first implemented its expedited voter registration process through the DMV following the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, also known as the “Motor Voter” law.

Of the 139 noncitizen voters identified in Allegheny County, 87 (62 percent) used the PennDOT system to register, and 13 (9 percent) did so through voting drives.

The report said that 27 percent had voted at least once prior to removal from the voter rolls.

It found that 74 (54 percent) of them registered as Democrats, 38 (27 percent) as non-declared and 23 (16 percent) as Republican.

While the foundation looked only at one region, the true scope of the impact on Pennsylvania’s voting integrity could be much greater.

“According to one Philadelphia City Commissioner, the number of noncitizens who entered the voter registration system during the last two decades exceeded 100,000,” the report said, citing Al Schmidt, one of the three-member panel that oversees the city’s elections.

Among the reasons given by noncitizens, some said the questions used to screen citizenship status were confusingly sequenced or given in a language they didn’t fully understand.

Others said they were pressured by PennDOT employees to register, even after expressing their confusion.

Still, others should have raised red flags, the report said.

“Days after the 2008 election, the Allegheny County Election Division received a concerned citizen’s complaint from a person who overheard a coworker ‘bragging’ about his noncitizen wife’s vote for President of the United States.”

Despite assurances from Pennsylvania officials that the glitch had been resolved, the report faulted an ongoing lack of transparency.

“The full extent of noncitizen registration and voting throughout the Commonwealth remains a mystery mostly due to the obstructionist tactics of the Department of State, which refuses to turn over records that might show just how many noncitizens are presently registered to vote,” it said.

Although the sample of the Allegheny County incidents may seem insignificant when considering the impact on a national election, Pennsylvania’s glitches mirror concerns throughout the nation that voter eligibility may not be fully enforced during registration or in the actual polling stations.

**MORE COVERAGE OF VOTE FRAUD at LibertyHeadlines.com**

A number of major metropolitan areas, such as New York City, Chicago and San Francisco, issue noncitizen IDs, some of which are available to all residents and may be used to vote.

Several municipalities even begun allowing noncitizens to vote in municipal elections, further muddying the waters of election integrity.

Following the 2016 election, Trump publicly questioned the validity of Hillary Clinton’s 2.8 million popular vote margin, citing research of the 2012 election from the journal Electoral Studies that non-citizen voting may have impacted U.S. elections.

REPORT: Immigration is Depressing US Teen Employment Numbers

Ben Sellers
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0

‘Whatever the reason, non-work is becoming the norm among teenagers as more and more of them sit idle each summer…’

American Teenagers Compete with Immigrants for Jobs
Photo by Samantha Jade Royds (CC)

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Although Labor Department figures have brought good news on the unemployment front, a recent study says teens’ summer jobs continue to lag.

Statistics for May and June have included the lowest unemployment rate in 18 years, plummeting jobless rates for black and Hispanic Americans, and a record number leaving their jobs for new employment.

However, a report from the Center for Immigration Studies, using data from the Census Bureau’s Current Population Surveys, projected that the number of U.S.-born teens in the workforce would rise by only about 1 percent over 2017.

It expected only about 42 percent of teens to be in the workforce this summer, down about 20 percent from two decades ago.

CIS said increasing immigration numbers play a large role as adult workers compete with adolescents or unskilled and temporary labor.

“Perhaps it is due to a willingness by immigrants to work for less or put up with more unpleasant working conditions” the report said. “It may also be due to immigrants’ more effective social networks for finding employment. Whatever the reason, non-work is becoming the norm among teenagers as more and more of them sit idle each summer.”

It noted similar declines across the board for black, white and Hispanic teens, as well as in comparisons of immigrant and U.S.-born teens.

However, it also found an inverse correlation between states’ immigration rates and teen employment, suggesting that the two were connected.

**MORE COVERAGE OF THE US ECONOMY at LibertyHeadlines.com**

The report from CIS also spoke extensively on the importance of work experience during teen years as it related to future employment experiences and wages.

“The impact of high school work experience on future economic attainment is significant eight years after terminating schooling,” it said. “Teens employed in high school earn more than teens who did not work in the first year after graduation, with wage differences tending to increase over time.”

Calif. City to Create Socialist ‘Utopia’ with $500 Handouts

Ben Sellers
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0

‘I spend most of time thinking about how to combat income inequality through the guaranteed income…’

Calif. City to Create Socialist 'Utopia' with $500 Handouts
Chris Hughes/IMAGE: CNBC via YouTube

(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) A consortium of Silicon Valley progressives, led by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, is piloting a program to give free money to residents of Stockton, California.

The Stockton Economic Empowerment Demonstration will team with the city, 80 miles east of San Francisco, to distribute $500 a month for 18 months to 100 residents with no strings attached.

Organizers of said they hoped to provide “an unprecedented opportunity to radically reimagine our social safety net and reinvent the 21st century Social Contract.”

Originally announced in October by Stockton’s 27-year-old mayor, Michael Tubbs, the experiment has garnered increasing attention through recent stories from national outlets like CNN and The New York Times, which likened it to Sir Thomas More’s 16th-century work Utopia.

Despite its proximity to the wealthy Bay Area, where property values are among the most inflated in the world, Stockton faced hard economic times when the housing bubble burst, resulting in a foreclosure crisis that (along with poor fiscal management and unrestrained spending) led the city to declare bankruptcy in 2012.

According to the SEED website, “Stockton is in many ways a microcosm of the United States. [M]ajor shifts in the economy such as persistent wage stagnation and rising inequality have made it increasingly difficult for hardworking people to make ends meet.”

The SEED initiative is slated to begin in 2019 and will be evaluated by researchers from the University of Tennessee and the University of Pennsylvania.

The program is privately funded through a $1-million grant from the Economic Security Project.

Among its co-chairs is Hughes, a former Harvard roommate of Mark Zuckerberg and one of Facebook’s five original co-founders.

Hughes’s past progressive projects include helping direct digital initiatives for the Obama campaign and a four-year stint as publisher/editor of The New Republic, which he helped steward into insolvency before selling it off in February 2016.

In a profile on the site Medium.com, Hughes said, “I spend most of time thinking about how to combat income inequality through the guaranteed income.”

With broad support from tech industry tycoons such as Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, California Democrats added the Universal Basic Income to their official party platform in March.

But while private funding could help get it off the ground, Hughes acknowledged in an interview with UBI advocate Irv Garfinkel that the true aim may be to establish the ultimate government entitlement.

“[T]he real utility of the concept is to set a very aggressive goal like Social Security for all,” he said. “The big goal is useful because it makes other policies seem modest in comparison—Food stamps, SSI, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and so on.”

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