PA Bill Number: HB2235
Title: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ...
Description: Providing for regulation of the meat packing and food processing industry by creating facility health and safety committees in the workplace; ... ...
Last Action: Referred to LABOR AND INDUSTRY
Last Action Date: Apr 25, 2024
Cruz wants Oregon militia to "stand down," and Obama to back off on gun control :: 01/05/2016
BOONE, Iowa – Sen. Ted Cruz called on armed militia members who have taken over a federal building in Oregon to give up peacefully, denouncing their tactics.
“Every one of us has the constitutional right to protest, to speak our minds, but we don’t have the constitutional right to use force and violence and to threaten force and violence on others,” Cruz told reporters in the parking lot of a Christian book store in Boone, Iowa. “So it is our hope that the protesters there will stand down peaceably, that there will not be a violent confrontation…. There is no right to engage in violence against other Americans.”
Cruz said his prayers are with everyone involved in the Oregon standoff, “especially those in law enforcement that are risking their lives.”
Boone was the first stop on Cruz’s six-day, 28-stop Iowa bus tour. It was a brisk 25 degrees in the parking lot where he spoke with dozens of journalists, and considerably warmer inside the store, packed with 150 or so Iowans.
Cruz also weighed in on White House plans to tighten rules on gun sales by unlicensed dealers in the wake of the latest mass shootings. He’s not surprised, just disappointed.
Obama reportedly plans to issue an executive order requiring some unlicensed gun dealers — including those who make regular sales online — to get licenses, and to conduct background checks on buyers. And he’ll make that a major focus of next week’s annual State of the Union address.
“The word that Oresident Obama is once again going to abuse his power to try to seize our guns sadly surprises nobody. This is a president who for seven years has abused his constitutional authority,” Cruz said, adding that “it’s entirely backwards. We don’t beat the bad guys by taking away our guns. We beat the bad guys by using our guns. And whatever President Obama attempts to do, abusing his power on the Second Amendment, you can rest assured that on Jan. 20th, 2017, if I am elected president I will rescind every single illegal and unconstitutional executive order Barack Obama has entered.”
Cruz was much less specific on the tensions that erupted this weekend between Saudi Arabia and Iran. On Saturday the Saudis, close U.S. allies, executed a Shiite cleric who had led protests against the regime. That triggered attacks on the Saudi embassy in Tehran. The crisis has quickly escalated, with diplomatic ties severed and threats on both sides. The State Department condemned the execution and called for steps to ease tensions between the region’s major powers.
“It is unfortunate to see the situations in the Middle East enflaming even more,” Cruz said. He blamed Obama for the crisis.
“Much of this is the result of America continuing to recede from leadership in the world and especially the Middle East.… We see the tensions between Shiites and Sunnis. That’s a battle that has waged for over 1500 years. We’re not going to resolve that internecine religious conflict. Our focus needs to be on protecting the national security interests of the United States of America,” he said, without elaborating.
U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa, a Republican hardliner on immigration who supports Cruz, emerged from the senator’s “Cruzin’ to Caucus” tour bus and introduced him to the crowd inside.
The crowd included local GOP voters and also volunteers such as Helen Kerwin of Glen Rose, Texas, who is spending a week in Des Moines making calls for the campaign.
“He’s the first politician that’s not a politician,” she said. “I’m seeing him take on both Republicans and Democrats.”
Steven Johnson, 60, a semi-retired Ames resident who spent his career with the state transportation department, turned out to see Cruz because “he’s my guy.”
Obamacare has pushed his monthly insurance premiums up $400, he said, and that’s a top priority in a Cruz administration. “The things that interest me, he’s going to take care of,” Johnson said.
Johnson described himself as a Reagan Democrat who shifted to the GOP and hasn’t looked back. He shrugged off complaints that Cruz, like Obama, would enter the Oval Office without executive experience or even much to show for a brief Senate career.
“Obama’s been an effective leader,” but in the wrong direction, he said. “Cruz can be just as effective, but for the vast majority who still care about this country.”
