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The race for the Republican nomination in Utahs hotly contested 4th Congressional District looks to be a wide-open affair, but former radio host Jay McFarland and former NFL player Burgess Owens have a slight lead on the rest of the field according to a new poll.

The same poll shows Democrat Ben McAdams seems almost certain to fend off an intra-party challenge.

The Utah Political Trends survey from UtahPolicy.com and KUTV 2 News conducted by Y2 Analytics shows McFarland with 31 percent support among likely Republican primary voters, while Owens gets 22 percent.

GOP activist Kathleen Anderson and State Representative Kim Coleman are tied with 17 percent support. Chris Biesinger and Trent Christensen each get 6 percent, while Cindy Thompson sits at 1 percent.

While that 9-point gap may seem like a big lead, the survey has a margin of error +/- 9.3 percentage points, so the race is technically a statistical tie among the top four candidates. McFarland seemingly has a big lead, but given the wide margin of error, any of the top four candidates can lay a partial claim to the status of a frontrunner in the race.

So far, McFarland, Owens and Christensen have qualified for the June primary ballot by gathering signatures while Anderson, Coleman, Biesinger and Thompson are hoping to book a trip to the June primary through next weeks GOP state convention. Depending on the results from the convention, its possible that three, four or five of the seven Republicans in the field will appear on the primary ballot.

The lead in the survey by McFarland and Owens can likely be chalked up to their relatively high name recognition among voters. McFarland was a longtime host of a daytime talk show on local radio while Owens has consistently appeared as a guest on conservative media outlets, primarily Fox News Channel.

McFarlands electoral strength lies mostly with voters in the middle of the ideological center, with 34 percent of moderate Republicans, 31 percent of voters who are middle of the road in their politics and 57 percent of moderate liberals backing him.

Owens, McFarland, Anderson and Coleman are splitting up support from the right-wing of the party. Owens gets 28 percent from strong conservatives, McFarland is supported by 22 percent, Coleman is backed by 21 percent and Anderson gets 20 percent from that group.

Incumbent Democrat Ben McAdams is facing a longshot convention challenge from Daniel Beckstrand next week. If McAdams does not secure the support of at least 60 percent of the delegates at the convention, he would be forced into a primary election.

If Beckstrand does somehow make it to the June primary, the survey suggests McAdams would win in a landslide, with 97 percent of likely primary election voters saying they would cast a ballot for McAdams.

KUTV 2News is partnering with Utah Policy.com and Y2 Analytics and will be providing polling results on a regular basis throughout the election season. You can sign up for UtahPolicy.coms daily email newsletter here.

Link:
Poll suggests Republican race in 4th District looks to be a wide-open contest - KJZZ

Anyone who pays passing attention to politics is probably familiar with former Rahm Emanuels suggestion that you never want a serious crisis to go to waste. Though to my knowledge rarely so explicitly stated before, it surprised no armchair geneticists who have learned how embedded in the DNA of Democrats are desires to control the lives of others.

Unfortunately, too many Republicans are vulnerable to the same. Thats likely why San Antonio Express-News Smart Money columnist Michael Taylor believes a universal basic income (UBI) is imminent.

A UBI is when government sends every citizen a regular cash payment. Mr. Taylor humorously declared Andrew Yang, who campaigned on the issue, the winner of the 2020 democratic presidential nomination, even though he dropped out in February.

Mr. Taylor trips up a bit however in making his case.

The vessel by which he thinks this new strain of welfare will become reality is the direct payment made to some families via the $2 trillion stimulus passed into law to mitigate the financial fallout resulting from the coronavirus-induced shutdowns.

Mr. Taylor asserts that such a cash transfer is a previously untried solution to alleviating the effects of a recession.

To the contrary, Uncle Sam did just that in response to the dot.com bust and the financial crisis. Neither proved effective when judged against the intent of their respective passages, the vast majority having been saved or used for debt reduction instead of being spent.

To be sure, were in a different situation now, with government literally cutting off peoples means of supporting themselves and their families. By the same token, it informs Mr. Taylors prediction. Nevertheless, its depressing that he can imagine the oncoming recession lasting through the summer.

When did faith in a free societys enterprising market system give way to self-fulfilling prophecies of doom? Whats more, why are so many conservatives joining this chorus? Mr. Taylor cites Arkansas senator Tom Cotton, who proposed sending $1,000 to Americans, through either unemployment insurance or tax rebates, for the duration of the crisis.

Coincidentally, one of the more prominent selling points of a UBI is that we live in a world akin to that of the Terminator movie franchise, in which Cyberdine Systems Skynet is going to take over and flood society with Terminators. BOO! ROBOTS!

Mr. Taylor errs again when he attempts to buttress his prediction by citing Alaskas Permanent Fund dividend. As he alludes, this fund is tied to revenue from the states #1 industry, oil and gas. The comparison suffers however, from the same flaws that trip up proponents of socialism: scale and federalism.

Theres a silly meme floating around stating that, while were sending our folks a one-time payment, England and Denmark are paying a certain percentage of their citizens salaries, and Canada is sending their people a couple grand every month. I responded with the numbers 327, 56, 6 and 38.

Those are the populations (in the millions) of those countries, respectively. This is the pertinent bit that seems to elude BernBots.

Alaska is our third-least populous state. Like the Scandanavian countries socialists drool over, their population pales in comparison with the US. This is where we benefit from the federalist system set up by the Founding Fathers. States can enact almost whatever policy they want without foisting their failures on the rest, though the latter are free to mimic successes.

While he teases the reason some conservatives find a UBI appealing, that it would not require giant bureaucracies of the welfare programs it would ideally replace, to label it a small-government idea because of its simplicity is woefully off the mark.

There is nothing small-government about any state program that requires for its existence the taxation of resources, particularly in our convoluted way, from the productive private sector.

And thats to say nothing of what French political economist Frederic Bastiat would have called the not seen innovations that never happened due to such confiscation.

Alas, politicians have little incentive to worry about such tradeoffs. They need not be bothered about the negative consequences of putting taxpayer revenue at stake for something that polls well in focus groups. This includes Republicans like Sen. Cotton.

The Wall Street Journal recently reminded readers that conservatives regularly fight an uphill battle against Democrats who define their lives through politics. They have to be more politician-y in order to counter the lefts brazen appeal to peoples base instincts, those that need to be coddled, and assured that their struggles are not their fault, but rather that of The Man.

Moreover, the envy that consumes the left inoculates them from any moral compunction against commandeering the earnings of productive citizens.

The GOP has a handful of principled members for sure, and some whose experience in business no doubt instilled in them an aversion to treating resources willy-nilly, and assuming that government is a benevolent partner.

There are others however, whose background consists of nothing but government, or law, or academia.

Their experience dealing with scarce resources is nearly non-existent. Theyve never had to create value, best their competitors, on a limited budget, under the threat of losing it all. Theyve either ridden piggyback on businesses via lawsuits, or fallen back on taxpayers.

That makes them more susceptible to snake oil like a UBI.

Incidentally, the aforementioned editorial was a salute to Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn on the news of his retirement in 2014. The Journal ran it again in memoriam, as Dr. Coburn succumbed to prostate cancer.

Few elected officials respected the taxpayer more, holding his colleagues feet to the fire regarding their profligate ways. We need more folks like him who have the ability to say one of the simplest words in the English language.

No.

Read this article:
Selling the Republican Soul for a UBI - Foundation for Economic Education

WASHINGTON (NEXSTAR) The Small Business Administration says its run out of money and cannot accept any new applications for a loan program to help small businesses through the coronavirus crisis.

I dont want a small West Virginia business having the door shut on their face because we ran out of money, West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito said of the Paycheck Protection Program.

Capito says small businesses are key to our recovery.

Because this is whats going to really get our economy moving once we get the green light, Capito said.

But Senate Democrats have so far blocked a $250 billion addition to the loan program. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin says the blame lies with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell.

Mitch is not talking and conferring at all with anybody in the Democratic party, and leadership, or any of us that basically want to work with him, Manchin said.

Democrats say they want Republicans to increase funding for others who need immediate help fighting the pandemic.

Were going to have to be thoughtful about how to advance the agenda for families, for workers, for small business and of course for those front line heroes who are out there every day, Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey said.

But House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy says Democrats should take a look at the latest unemployment numbers.

I dont know what more that it takes. You got five million reasons today, you got 22 million reasons for this month, McCarthy said.

McCarthy says Democrats should vote to expand the loan program now and come back to the other issues later. Democrats say theyre willing to compromise if Republicans meet them in the middle.

Read more:
Democrats and Republicans divided on extra Paycheck Protection Program funding - KLBK | KAMC | EverythingLubbock.com

For indispensable reporting on the coronavirus crisis and more, subscribe to Mother Jones' newsletters.

In the middle of March, as millions of people across the country started to practice social distancing measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus, Floridas Spring Breakers did the opposite. Thousands of people, seemingly unfazed by the pandemic, took to the states coastline after the Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, decided not to order the beaches closed.

DeSantis still hasnt enacted statewide stay-at-home orders, garnering plenty of criticism from local leaders and public health officials. The governors resistance probably isnt just about the number of cases of the virus in his state. A new white paper shows that states with Republican governors, along with states with higher number of supporters of President Donald Trump, were slower to adopt social distancing policiesand those delays are likely to produce significant ongoing harm to public health.

The biggest influence in how states acted was not the number of confirmed cases, but rather politics, according to new research by a group of professors at the University of Washington. They focused on five measures taken directly from state government websites: restrictions on gatherings, school closures, restaurant restrictions, non-essential business closures, and stay-at-home orders. Trump initially downplayed the threat of the virus, and numerous surveys have found significant partisan divides in public opinion about the severity of the coronavirus threat, the researchers point out.

Their research showed that states with Republican governors and more Trump voters introduced social distancing policies 2.7 days later than more liberal states. Does a 2.7 day delay matter? the researchers write, concluding: Given the quick doubling time of COVID-19, these delays have the potential to cause a dramatic increase in the peak volume of cases.

See original here:
New Research Shows States With Republican Governors Were Slower to Adopt Social Distancing Policies - Mother Jones

Posted: Mar 30, 2020 / 02:47 PM UTC / Updated: Mar 30, 2020 / 02:47 PM UTC

FRom the office of Claudia Tenney, Republican candidate for NY-22:

Todays action will hopefully be a boost to the people of our region.As a local small business owner and someone who fought hard in Congress to pass middle-class tax cuts, Ive seen first-hand how our workers and small businesses are struggling here in Upstate New York.Speaker Pelosi and the Democrats wrongly tried to leverage the urgency of the passage of this bill by inserting a left wing Democrat wish list of poison pills. Rather than helping our local first responders, workers, businesses and families, they prioritized provisions that would undermine the integrity of our election laws and other left wing pork in the first version of this legislation. Ultimately, the worst provisions were removed. However, $75 million dollars will go to the National Endowment of the Arts and not to hospitals and first responders.Watching our very own representative, Anthony Brindisi, sit silently while Speaker Pelosi tried to derail this much needed aid for a left-wing agenda is not the leadership we deserve and expect.His lack of leadership stands in stark contrast to that of President Trump and his team who continue to work with everyone, regardless of party, to quickly help heal our nation and jumpstart our economy.

Follow this link:
Claudia Tenney, Republican candidate for NY-22, released the following statement on passage of the CARES Act: - WIVT - NewsChannel 34