The Georgia House approved a $27.2 billion state budget for fiscal year 2022 on Friday, representing a 5.2% increase in spending over the current fiscal year’s original budget.
The proposal restores funding for education and other reductions lawmakers made to protect state coffers amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The House plan also increases spending on health care and behavioral health and adds funding for new state positions and raises.
The House approved the measure, 136-31.
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The purges began shortly after the revolution. For all its haste and ill-preparedness, the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, led by the perpetually temperamental Vladimir Lenin and fueled by a fierce devotion to Marxism, quickly gave rise to the vast and unimaginably harsh Soviet labor camp system that would come to be known as the “gulag.” As the leader of the newly established Russian Soviet Republic, Lenin wasted no time in ordering the establishment of decrees calling for the severe punishment of anyone deemed a “class enemy” to the new Soviet Republic.
From the perspective of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, class enemies were those who had opposed the Marxist Bolshevik Revolution and often consisted of individuals the Bolsheviks contemptuously regarded as privileged in their social class. These so-called class enemies, a term which eventually became synonymous with the “bourgeoisie,” ostensibly posed a threat to the proletariat-ruled, Marxist utopia Lenin was promising to the masses.
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Dr. Anthony Fauci said Thursday that the U.S. should not relax restrictions that have been put in place to slow the spread of coronavirus until new infections are under 10,000 per day, a number that is about 85% lower than current case levels.
Fauci said that the case levels may have to be “considerably less” than 10,000 per day for him to support rolling back mask and social distancing mandates in place in many U.S. cities and states.
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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Friday that President Joe Biden will have a press conference by the end of March.
“As all of you know, the president takes questions several times a week,” Psaki said during the White House press briefing. “He took questions actually twice yesterday, which is an opportunity for the people covering the White House to ask him about whatever news is happening on any given day.”
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A Democratic county lawmaker in Buffalo said Thursday the three women who have accused Gov. Andrew Cuomo of sexual misconduct are motivated by politics, according to video footage obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The lawmaker, Jeanne Vinal, said during a legislature meeting she was going to vote against two county resolutions calling for independent investigations of allegations against Cuomo, saying to do so would be akin to jumping “on a bandwagon of the way they did in the Central Park Five.”
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In a blistering statement Friday, former President Donald Trump blasted Joe Biden for the “spiraling tsunami” at the border, placing the blame for the dramatic surge in illegal immigration squarely on Biden’s “disastrous leadership.”
“Our border is now totally out of control thanks to the disastrous leadership of Joe Biden,” Trump said in his statement. “Our great Border Patrol and ICE agents have been disrespected, demeaned, and mocked by the Biden Administration. A mass incursion into the country by people who should not be here is happening on an hourly basis, getting worse by the minute.”
The former president warned that the new administration’s lax policies at the border—allowing criminals and Covid-positive migrants into the country— will have dangerous consequences for the nation.
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On Tuesday, governors Greg Abbott (R-Texas) and Tate Reeves (R-Miss.) announced they would be lifting their statewide mask-wearing mandates, business capacity limitations, and various other COVID-19-related restrictions. “COVID still exists,” Abbott said, “but it is clear from the recoveries, from the vaccinations, from the reduced hospitalizations, and from the safe practices that Texans are using that state mandates are no longer needed.”
Texans and Mississippians might be forgiven for wondering why their governors did not earlier follow the courageous path of Governor Kristi Noem (R-S.D.), who has garnered national headlines for her stubborn refusal to enact various mask-wearing mandates and other lockdown orders. But still: Better late than never.
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Federal prosecutors have “quietly dismissed” 34 of 90 cases stemming from the violent riots in downtown Portland last summer, and many more federal charges are expected to be dismissed soon, KGW8 reported this week. Cases being dismissed include felony charges such as assaults on federal officers, court records show.
According to KGW, more than half of the dropped charges were “dismissed with prejudice,” which means the case can’t be brought back to court. And at least 11 of the dismissed cases were reportedly dropped on or after the inauguration of Mr. Biden.
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A Mississippi judge has ordered a new election in an alderman race after finding 79% of absentee ballots were invalid and evidence of fraud and criminal activity.
Judge Jeff Weill on Monday said that 66 of 84 absentee ballots cast in the June runoff for a city of Aberdeen alderman seat were invalid and should never have been counted. He also said he found evidence of fraud and criminal activity in how absentee ballots were handled, how votes were counted and the actions by some at the polling place, according to WCBI-TV, a CBS affiliate.
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Members of the Georgia State Senate Friday passed SB 200, which would, if enacted into law, protect businesses and churches against government shutdowns during a COVID-19-like pandemic or other health emergency. Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan (R-Cumming) emailed a press release Friday and said this bill “provides businesses and churches with common-sense protections against government shutdowns.”
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