Seeking only publicity: New Bloomberg lawsuit to try an resuscitate their universal background check initiative

Three plaintiffs in Nevada are trying to resuscitate the universal background check initiative that barely passed last fall.  Yet, this lawsuit has virtually no chance of succeeding.  It is merely a lame publicity stunt by the Bloomberg people.  Nevada Attorney General Adam Laxalt explained the reason pretty simply:

And for these private transfers or sales, Nevada state law specifically requires that the background check must be performed by the FBI, not through Nevada’s Central Repository.  We understand that the choice to have the Act require that the check be run by the FBI and not through Nevada’s Central Repository was deliberate and specifically influenced by the intent of the Act’s proponents to avoid a state fiscal impact that could have made initiative less attractive to voters.

The initiative won by less than 0.8 percentage points, and it is quite probable if they had to campaign that this initiative would have had substantial costs, it very likely would have lost.  In addition, the state of Nevada has already asked the FBI twice during the Obama administration, not just the one time that is indicated.  Nevada has already offered to contact a third time, but the lawsuit wants the state to convince the FBI to spend money that the Bloomberg people who drafted this initiative purposely didn’t try to have spent by the state.  It is a stupid lawsuit that is just done to get the type of publicity.

Unfortunately, much of the news coverage is missing these points.

In The Hill: Background checks on Truck rentals? "The best way for New York to enhance public safety? More guns"

In a new op-ed in The Hill I discuss the debate over what will stop attacks with vehicles, such as the one this week in New York City.  With an attack that had been planned for over a year, the notion that you are going to be able to keep a killer like Sayfullo Saipov from renting a vehicle just isn't serious.  Here is the beginning of my piece.

On terrorism, we often are fighting the last war. And sometimes the supposed solutions have nothing to do with preventing future attacks. They just give the appearance that politicians are doing something. 

The terror attack on Tuesday in New York City left eight dead and eleven injured after a rental truck was used to plow down people on a bike path. We are just fortunate that the killer ran into a school bus and was unable to continue his plan to hit more pedestrians on the Brooklyn Bridge. 

The NYPD immediately pointed out that it had repeatedly instructed the 148 truck rental businesses in the area on how to identify suspicious customers. 

But the businesses faced an impossible task. Politically correct politicians want businesses to screen for dangerous people, but those same politicians would be the first to object to anything that remotely smacks of racial profiling. 

Take Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D-N.Y.) public address a few hours after the attack. He avoided mentioning anything that might usefully identify such an attacker, saying only that those who target New York oppose “freedom and democracy.” He refused to mention radical Islam. And he implicitly criticized President Trump for wanting to screen people from countries where we have trouble even confirming a person’s identity. 

This might be only the first successful mass killing with a vehicle in the US, but it is more common in other countries. Muslims only account for six percent of Europe’s population, but they are responsible for over 80 percent of vehicle attacks in Europe since 2000. Twenty-four percent of the people in the world are Muslims, but they carry out 78 percent of the world’s vehicular terror attacks. 

Telling truck or car rental companies to screen for suspicious people isn’t a serious counter-terror measure. Even an explicit criminal background check wouldn't have stopped the killer, Sayfullo Saipov, from renting a car. Are rental companies supposed to succeed where these checks would fail? 

In any case, why stop at just rental companies? Saipov already had a car. Even if he didn’t have a car or a truck, couldn’t he buy one? Saipov just needed enough money to put down the initial deposit. It’s not as though he was planning on being around to make the payments. This guy pretty clearly wanted to commit “suicide by cop.” Flashing his pellet gun at the police, he must have known that they’d have no choice but to shoot. 

What happens if someone like Saipov buys a truck from a private individual? Are we going to have so-called universal background checks on private transfers of vehicles between individuals? It’d be a lot of trouble and expense, and it wouldn't save lives.
Cuomo and Mayor Bill De Blasio’s solution to these attacks is “more police 

everywhere.” Police are extremely important, but they can’t guard every inch of New York City and be instantly present to stop an attack. There are just too many targets, not to mention too many crowded sidewalks and bike paths. 

Cuomo, De Blasio and many others even used the truck attack to push more gun control laws. Nicholas Kristof, a columnist at the New York Times, talked about an assault weapon ban. Cuomo and De Blasio lauded New York’s gun control laws. But with the killer planning the attack, politicians need to realize that stopping determined killers from getting weapons is an almost impossible task. 

The question is what do we do when we can’t stop killers from getting weapons. . . .

The rest of the piece is available here.

Democrat Ralph Northam has no problem with shocking ad showing Gillespie supporter running down minority kids

The video is available here to watch.

There is too much division in America these days, and politicians have in many cases worked to exacerbate those divisions. But this Dem campaign ad in the Virginia Gubernatorial election is particularly disappointing. Unfortunately, when questioned about it, the Democrat Gubernatorial candidate's campaign had no problems with this add. From the Washington Post:

. . . A Northam campaign spokeswoman expressed no misgivings about the Latino Victory Fund ad. 

“Independent groups are denouncing Ed Gillespie because he has run the most divisive, fear mongering campaign in modern history,” said Ofirah Yheskel. “It is not shocking that communities of color are scared of what his Trump-like policy positions mean for them.” . . .

Senator Chuck Schumer's views on corporate tax cuts, what a difference a year makes

From The Hill newspaper in April 2016:

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday said he is interested in working with other lawmakers to see if an agreement on international tax reform can be reached as soon as this year. 

“I’m game to do it because I think it’s really important for American competitiveness,” he said at a Senate Finance Committee hearing on business tax reform. . . .

Now he says: 

“The cut in the corporate rate would hardly help the everyday American worker. This is trickle-down. Our Republican colleagues don’t really talk about trickle-down, because they know most of America doesn’t believe in it. Our corporations are flush with cash already. They’re flush with cash. Giving them more cash? ”

Daily Caller: The "definitive timeline" for Fusion GPS investigations into Trump

The Daily Caller has a very useful timeline available here.

Oct. 2015: It was reported late Friday that the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website funded by GOP mega-donor Paul Singer, hired Fusion GPS to investigate Trump. Free Beacon’s editor said Friday that the research was standard opposition research and that it was not tied to the dossier work that would follow several months later. It is not clear what, if anything, Singer knew about Free Beacon’s hiring of Fusion. The hedge fund manager was Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s biggest backer.
Feb. 20, 2016: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush drops from the Republican primary.
March: Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie, the law firm for the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee. Perkins Coie general counsel revealed this week that Fusion offered to continue Trump opposition research it had started while working for a Republican candidate.
March 15: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio drops from the Republican primary after losing to Trump in his home state.
April: Perkins Coie, using money from the Clinton campaign and DNC, hires Fusion GPS. Marc Elias, a Perkins Coie partner and general counsel for both the campaign and DNC, would serve as the bagman.
That month, Federal Election Commission records show that the Clinton campaign paid Perkins Coie a total of $150,000 for legal services. The DNC paid the firm around $107,000. It is unclear how much of that went to Fusion GPS. Both the campaign and DNC would pay Perkins Coie hundreds of thousands more dollars throughout the campaign.
May: Free Beacon ends its contract with Fusion.
May 3-4: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz drops out of the Republican primary on May 3. Ohio Gov. John Kasich drops out of the next day, leaving Trump as the only GOP candidate.
June: Fusion GPS hires former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele and his London-based firm, Orbis Business Intelligence, to investigate Trump’s ties to Russia. Steele discloses this in court filings earlier this year as part of a lawsuit he faces over the dossier. Steele said he worked for Fusion GPS from June through November. . . .

Read the rest of the timeline here.  It is very well worth reading.