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Women from across Idaho joined a Zoom call on a Wednesday evening in mid-September. There were teachers. A school board member. One woman who is running for office, and one who ran in 2018. They gathered virtually from their corners of the state to talk about public schools and how they, as members of the Idaho chapter of Mormon Women for Ethical Government, could influence education policy.

The Idaho group began taking shape about five years ago, following the creation of the national nonprofit Mormon Women for Ethical Government. Many of the members are women who faithful to a religion that tends to be culturally conservative and Republican-aligned describe being alarmed by the increasing vitriol and manufactured outrage in Idaho politics.

The women of MWEG are politically diverse, said Jennifer Walker Thomas, co-executive director of the national organization. The group is nonpartisan, with members whose beliefs span the liberal-conservative spectrum. They are stay-at-home mothers, employed outside the home, single, married, they just really run the gamut of what women experience, she said.

Nationally, the MWEG organization is focused on protecting democracy, bipartisan immigration reform, environmental issues and anti-racism efforts. State chapters have leeway in what they choose to work on to further MWEGs mission at the state level, Thomas said.

Like the greater MWEG organization, the Idaho chapter hit its stride when the pandemic pushed gatherings online.

The main MWEG organization has thousands of members who contribute money, volunteer time or advocacy work and who participate in online discussion groups whose rules stress civility and finding common ground.

There are about 250 women affiliated with MWEG who live in Idaho. The Idaho MWEG private discussion group on Facebook had about 200 members as of mid-September.

The organizations membership is open to all women even those who arent part of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as long as you dont mind that most of us are, the membership website says. Members must abide by the groups Six Principles of Peacemaking such as choosing love over hate and demanding great tolerance for people and none for injustice.

Men cannot join, but they can choose to support the group through a Friend of MWEG membership.

There are a lot of women who, six years ago, would have said, Oh, I'm absolutely Republican. But they now no longer necessarily identify as Republican, but they still feel inherently conservative.

Jennifer Walker Thomas, co-executive director of MWEG

Looking for a place to talk about politics with truth and respect

Rebecca Bratsman grew up in a family with mixed political beliefs. That made conversations around the dinner table more interesting and thought-provoking, but they were respectful and fact-based discussions, she said.

At the beginning of the pandemic, it was like people lost their minds, said Bratsman, a 40-year-old writer from Boise who joined MWEG in March 2020.

She was teaching English to students in China when the pandemic hit. As Bratsman witnessed her students living through the early days of the novel coronavirus, the virus was already politicized in the U.S.

It was around the time people were calling it the Chinese flu, and I was like, That is racist. You know that, right? Bratsman said.

She went looking for a forum where she could talk about what was happening in the U.S. and the world. She found the MWEG Facebook group.

I joined the group, and I came in swinging. I was ready to argue, she said, laughing.

But the group has ground rules. One of those rules is that some topics are off-limits same-sex marriage and abortion, for example because they have proven to be incendiary even in a group that strives for rational debate.

Part of the discussion group is to teach women, you have to have boundaries to discuss things, Bratsman said. She has learned to apply those boundaries in her conversations, pausing a heated discussion to say something like, What you said to me is a personal attack, so please rephrase.

Bratsman took on a role for MWEG in helping to inform members about media literacy and misinformation.

Her research and practice over the past two years has helped her to reach across political divides in her own family. Her siblings and friends with differing political beliefs now approach what they read online with more skepticism, sometimes sending her a meme or article with a request to fact-check it with them.

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Idaho MWEG chapter shows up to the Capitol

The state chapter of MWEG has the same political goals as the national organization: protecting democracy and the environment, bipartisan immigration reform and anti-racism efforts.

The chapter encourages its members to participate in the legislative process and contact lawmakers to advocate on the issues that are important to them, their families and their community, Idaho chapter coordinator LaRae Harris Wilson said.

Wilson was among several Idahoans who testified at a hearing in March against a bill to create new reporting requirements for organizations that help refugees.

The LDS church and its members are active in support of refugee resettlement efforts.

Wilson described her own experience with those efforts, urging the Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee to consider the bills potential unintended consequences such as religious organizations losing their tax-exempt status.

MWEG wanted the committee to hold the bill, she said.

When we start talking about a presumption that reporting and vetting in refugee resettlement are lacking or inadequate, (that) usually leads to conversations that foment fear and increase anti-refugee sentiment, and we dont want to see that conversation take place again on the Senate floor, Wilson said. So we ask that you hold this bill in committee. We feel like, at best, it would have a chilling effect on community assistance; and, at worst, if enforced as written, it would be government harassment of private charitable organizations.

The bill died in committee after the hearing.

Mormon Women for Ethical Government plans for upcoming legislative session

The next legislative session begins in January, and MWEG will continue to follow bills that relate to refugees and immigration. That is informed by our faith: that we are all children of the same God, Wilson said.

They also will focus on efforts to preserve voter rights and fair elections.

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That will be something we will have our eye on all the time, Wilson said.

One of the chapters roles is to help encircle members in the Gem State, to build supportive relationships within the group, according to Wilson.

That encircling is pretty comforting when youre trying to figure out what to do with your angst, she said.

The women who gathered on Zoom this month were eager to improve education in Idaho, for all students. MWEGs Idaho chapter hosted the hourlong meeting on education because members were hungry for information, Wilson said. This continued to come up over and over again.

One of the members of MWEG is Cindy Wilson, a longtime educator who ran as a Democrat in 2018 for Superintendent of Public Instruction. She was defeated by incumbent Republican Sherri Ybarra.

Wilson got involved with the Idaho chapter of MWEG about a year ago, she said.

Members of MWEG support the doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and that was attractive to her as a member of the LDS church, Wilson explained. The churchs doctrine is not partisan, just like the group, she said.

She believes many of Idahos active LDS women would feel at home in the organization; she hears from women whose experiences and beliefs dont align with the intense polarization that drives politics at the Capitol. Wilson attended an in-person meeting in Boise this summer, and discovered that two MWEG members live in her neighborhood in Meridian.

Wilson saw a role for herself as an educator and advocate for policy that makes education accessible to all Idaho children and young adults.

The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it shall be the duty of the legislature of Idaho, to establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.

Constitution of the State of Idaho

Wilson is a board member of the nonprofit Idaho Children Are Primary and found her work dovetailed with her conversations in MWEG, she said. Thats when I really started getting much more involved in it and aligning with (MWEG) at the state level.

Idaho MWEG members met throughout the legislative session, and some worked to support all-day kindergarten, she said.

The previous year, the chapter penned a letter to state legislators, urging them to accept funds for early childhood education in Idaho.

One of the things that I get excited about is, because we have so many women in the state who could participate in this group, we could be a powerful voice for ethics, for peaceful resolution, for kindness, Wilson said. I want to see this group grow and really become loud advocates against extremism.

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Theyre women. Theyre LDS. And theyre speaking their minds on politics. - Idaho Capital Sun

Texas Gov. Greg Abbotts strategy of busing immigrants to sanctuary cities has been instrumental in turning voters attention to the disaster unfolding at our southern border. But it was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantiss decision to fly 50 immigrants to Marthas Vineyard, Massachusetts, that really drove the border crisis to the forefront of the publics mind in no small part because of the Lefts absurd reactions to it.

While still not quite as critical as the record level of inflation that is crushing families, the border crisis appears to have eclipsed many other concerns, including abortion, which Democrats were convinced would galvanize their base and propel their party to victory in November.

To be sure, the question of abortion is still significant, especially at the state level. However, at least for now, its being upstaged by voters renewed focus on the roughly 7,000 illegal immigrants the Biden administration allows to stream into the country every day.

Naturally, Democrats response has been to find someone else to blame for the crisis theyve created. And who else would they choose besides former President Donald Trump?

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, for example, claimed last week on MSNBC, "The system is broken, and we know that it was decimated by the last administration, and what were trying to do is fix something that has decades and decades of deterioration."

Decimated by the last administration? Hardly.

National Security Council coordinator John Kirby reiterated Jean-Pierres finger-pointing, blaming Republicans refusal to support the record levels of funding for DHS he claimed are necessary to address the crisis.

"We are working hard to secure the border through trying to invest in advanced capabilities, Kirby said. We asked for record levels of funding for DHS, and unfortunately, there was no Republican support for that. So we're going to keep at this, and we obviously want to certainly encourage more support coming from the Republican side for some of the things that we're trying to do."

The Los Angeles Times editorial board joined the fray last week. It acknowledged the crisis but conveniently ignored the direct effects President Joe Bidens reckless open border policies have had on it. Instead, it attributed it to political posturing.

Citing the callousness of actions taken by Abbott and DeSantis, it wrote: "But it is a humanitarian crisis exacerbated by political posturing, not one caused by an uncontrolled border. Its an emergency that has been created by the lack of goodwill by politicians more interested in their own political viability than the stability of the country and fueled by decades of failure by Congress to tackle comprehensive immigration reform."

The Los Angeles Times is right about one thing: This crisis certainly has been created by a politician who cares more about his own political viability, and his partys, for that matter, than the sovereignty of this country and its laws. But that politician is not Abbott nor DeSantis. Its Biden.

At the very least, its nice to hear Democrats acknowledge that there is, in fact, a crisis at the border. But their efforts to deflect blame and rewrite history are insulting. The Trump administration was able to get the border under control by the time he left office, with the number of immigrants being detained on a daily basis dropping from 5,000 to about 1,200, according to former acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan. Trump implemented policies that worked, including Title 42 and the "Remain in Mexico" policy.

Biden reversed all of these policies, resurrected the failed catch and release protocol, and all but held up a green light welcoming migrants to enter the country. And as a result, more than 2 million illegal immigrants have entered the country since Biden became president.

Now, thanks to Abbott and DeSantis, border towns arent the only ones being forced to carry the consequences of Bidens failures. New York City, Washington, D.C., Chicago, and other liberal enclaves are complaining their shelters are at full capacity and that they dont have the resources necessary to care for large numbers of immigrants. It seems theyre beginning to realize what Republicans have been saying for years: that unchecked illegal immigration is unsustainable.

It just so happens that most Americans agree with the Republican position on immigration. Thats one of the reasons Trump was elected in the first place. And if Democrats refuse to get serious on this issue and instead try to ignore or gaslight their way around it, they will pay for it at the polls.

Elizabeth Stauffer is a contributor totheWashington Examiner andthe Western Journal. Her articles have appeared on many websites, including MSN,RedState,Newsmax, theFederalist, andRealClearPolitics. Follow her onTwitterorLinkedIn.

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Democrats can't blame-shift their way out of the border crisis they created - Washington Examiner

Lars along with many other national and local talk radio hosts across the country are broadcasting live at the Federation for American Immigration Reforms (FAIR) 15th Feet to the Fire radio row; in what has become the largest annual gathering of talk hosts in the country to send a message to Congress and to President Joe Biden that Americas immigration needs to be fixed.

Heres a recap of all the interviews Lars conducted on the second day:

Ben Bergquam What are your carpet shoes all about?

Dale Wilcox, the executive director and general counsel for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, comes on to answer: What chance do the Marthas Vineyard 48 have in court?

If Congress shifts, can we get something meaningful done? To answer, Lars brings on Ira Mehlman, the spokesman and media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR).

Jeff Sessions Are illegal aliens an existential threat to the country? PT 1

Jeff Sessions How should we vet possible legal immigrants? PT 2

Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, spoke with Lars about whats immigration like from the side of processing visa applications.

Whats it like with a ranch on the Arizona and Mexico border? John & Jobeth Ladd are Arizona cattle ranchers, whose property is often the entry point for illegals crossing into the country.

Mark Morgan, the former Chief Operating Officer and acting Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, speaks with speaks Lars to answer: How do we get people to see the immigration problems when the white house cant?

Tom Homan, the Former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) tells Lars how we could fix the 3 border loopholes?

The post [Day 2] Feet To The Fire Recap appeared first on The Lars Larson Show.

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[Day 2] Feet To The Fire Recap - 550 KTSA

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About the author: Glenn Hubbard is theRussell L. Carson professor of economics and finance at Columbia University and author of The Wall and the Bridge, published this year by Yale University Press. He was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush.

The decision by the Biden administration to forgive substantial amounts of federal student loans gave progressives heartburn as being insufficiently generous. Conservatives, for their part, decried both the budget cost and the actions distributional consequences and continued reverberances. Economists have weighed in with concerns about fairness (beneficiaries having attended college versus many taxpayers who did not), moral hazard (the prospect of forgiveness may increase demand for non-economic college choices), and inflation (from additions to aggregate demand in an economy already bearing the inflationary consequences of excess demand). These concerns are valid, but they belie a bigger economic and political problem.

The student-loan debt-relief blunder isnt a one-off, but the most recent riff from a policy approach that fails both at articulating an economic narrative and understanding the economys workings. A successful economic policy both closes the loop of the narrative of the problem it is trying to solve and takes into account market response. Failing to do so is to lose the thread and face unintended, if straightforward-to-anticipate, market consequences.

The student-loan-forgiveness action lost the thread. The underlying economic narrative is the opportunity value in education in raising skills for Americans in the contemporary economy. That narrative could well be associated with a supply-side expansion of that opportunity for more Americans, or through new support for training. The administrations blunderbuss does neither. Instead, it effects a redistribution for previous recipients of educational services and uncertainty about the likelihood of future such redistributions.

On Monday, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Biden administrations plan will cost $400 billion over 10 years. That amount is about one and one-half times the 10-year budget cost of a significant federal block grant to states proposed by Amy Ganz, Austan Goolsbee, Melissa Kearney, and me. The grant would target community colleges, which are essential institutions in developing skills. It would improve access to community college and students rate of completion once enrolled. We estimated that such a block grant could close the completion gap between two-year college students aged 18 to 24 and their peers at four-year institutions by 2030. In that time it would also increase the share of Americans aged 25 to 64 with a college degree or other high-quality credential to the level equivalent to the share of jobs reflecting advanced skills. Such a supply-oriented initiative embodies fairness, while avoiding windfalls according to whether one saved for or debt-financed a college education.

Student loan forgiveness also abstracts from how underlying higher education markets work. Loan forgiveness and the prospect of it in the future raise the demand for college, raising the price of a college education, all else equal. (The block-grant approach to community-college reform, by contrast, would not. Neither did the land-grant colleges historically.) Economists have warned for decades that some forms of financial aid to students raise tuition costs, dampening their effectiveness in raising the quantity of educational services. Addressing the legitimate concerns about the costs of higher education requires a broader approach than simply raising demand.

The recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act offers another example of losing the economic thread. The new law has little to do with combatting inflation. That narrative is better centered on resolving supply-chain dislocations and reducing excess demand from loose fiscal and monetary policy. Instead, the act focuses on many spending initiatives of the earlier and failed Build Back Better Act, including various tax-based subsidies to green initiatives for alternative energy and its uses. But a policy narrative for climate change should center on the underlying externality (an unpriced social cost of carbon) via imposing a carbon price through a tax or cap-and-trade system, as well as support for basic research on alternatives to fossil fuels and associated technologies. The Inflation Reduction Acts approach to climate policy isnt just indirect, in the form of subsidies, it also raises policy concerns about corporate welfare. While the externality-and-research approach allows markets and innovation to adjust over time, and emphasis on generous subsidies alone, say for electric vehicles, could lead to excess demand for key minerals, with little policy focuseconomic or geopoliticalon their supply.

The Inflation Reduction Acts health care provisions offer yet another example. The Inflation Reduction Act and the Affordable Care Act define health policy goals as access by expanding subsidies for health insurance. In doing so they also lose the thread. The economic policy narrative in health policy is to improve value and efficiency in the provision of health care. That narrative in health policy calls for market reforms in health care and insurance and for reform going beyond greater subsidies to demand. From the Massachusetts health care reform through the Affordable Care Act and its extensions, subsidies boost demand and the well-being of individuals who are newly receiving access. But those measures also raise the costsabsent supply-side reformsof health insurance and health care for many individuals.

These deficiencies both in present economic policies and their conception leave an opportunity for a new framework with a clear narrative and an understanding of markets. Key components include ways to help more Americas bridge the gap between traditional skills and those needed in the contemporary economy, support for basic and applied research to drive innovation and its diffusion, immigration reform that balances needs for additional talent with concerns for opportunities for lower-skilled Americans, health-care reform that improves the working of markets for both care and insurance, examination of the governance of technology to balance privacy concerns and innovation, and a concerted program to attack the rising cost of living not by fiat or price regulation, but by tackling policy-induced inefficiency in markets for housing, education, and health care.

Such an approach maintains the threadclosing the loop, not leaving a loose end to pull.

Guest commentaries like this one are written by authors outside the Barrons and MarketWatch newsroom. They reflect the perspective and opinions of the authors. Submit commentary proposals and other feedback toideas@barrons.com.

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Biden's Student Loan Policy Has Lost the Thread - Barron's

Cardinal Sean OMalley called Friday for immigration policy reform and said Catholic Charities of Boston is ready to help after nearly 50 migrants from Venezuela were flown by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to Marthas Vineyard without notice two days earlier.

Our common humanity is the lens through which our response to immigrants and refugees must be judged, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Boston said in a statement. Pope Francis has made the plight of immigrants and refugees a constant theme of his pontificate. The Holy Fathers witness, in word and deed, has been based on understanding immigrants and refugees as pilgrims forced by socio-economic conditions, human rights abuses, and the climate crisis to leave their homes in search of safety, security and stability for themselves and their families.

On Friday, the Venezuelan immigrants traveled from Marthas Vineyard to Joint Base Cape Cod in Bourne, which Governor Charlie Bakers office said was being offered as temporary shelter for them.

OMalley thanked Baker for providing housing for the migrants. The cardinal said immigration policy is a longstanding moral, political, and legal issue that the state and the nation have delayed too long in resolving.

This week the humanity and vulnerability which immigrants and refugees share has come home to us in Massachusetts, he said. The Venezuelan refugees have come from a situation of enormous oppression and suffering in their own country.

In response, he said, the citizens of Marthas Vineyard have shown us all how common humanity motivates generosity and effective kindness. I commend young and old for their example and effective response.

OMalley said Catholic Charities of Boston had notified him that the organization is ready to work with government officials in helping immigrants who come to Massachusetts.

Not only Venezuelans, but Haitians and other Latin Americans are caught up in the crushing emergency of the U.S. southern border, he said. When non-profit agencies can partner with civil authorities, people at risk will find welcome, support and space to organize their lives.

OMalley has a long history of ministering to immigrants and advocating for reforms.

In 2017, in response to executive orders from then-president Donald Trump that clamped down on refugee resettlement and immigration, OMalley sent a letter to parishes stressing the churchs support for immigrants and refugees and calling on Catholics to heed Pope Franciss warnings against the globalization of indifference.

In 2014, OMalley led a delegation of nine American bishops to Nogales, Ariz., on the US/Mexico border, where the cardinal told the Globe that defending immigrant rights is another pro-life issue, indicating that it is a vital concern involving the churchs teaching on the sacredness of human life.

Immigrant rights have become a major policy area for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, where OMalley continues to be a leading voice on the issue.

Jeremy C. Fox can be reached at jeremy.fox@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jeremycfox.

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Cardinal OMalley calls for immigration reform, offers help to displaced migrants - The Boston Globe