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Jan. 20 (UPI) -- General Motors announced Friday it will invest $918 million in four of its plants to build its sixth-generation small block V-8 engine and to support electric vehicle production. The Flint Engine Operations plant in Flint, Mich., will get $579 million for new V-8 engine production. GM will invest $216 million in its Bay City, Mich., GPS plant to support Flint engine production. Defiance, Ohio will get a $55 million investment, including $8 million to "support future EV strategies." And in Rochester, N.Y., GM plans to invest $68 million, including $56 million for battery pack cooling lines...

As many have eloquently said before, politics is a circle of money. The politicians provide taxpayer funds to selected private sector businesses, and those corporations fund the political efforts of the politicians. It’s a circle of interests disconnected from the American electorate.In the latest example, the pharmaceutical corporation Pfizer, a multinational who received billions in taxpayer funds for their COVID-19 vaccination and other efforts, now gives a generous $1 million contribution to the Republican Party of Kentucky to expand a new building for the state party. Kentucky is the home state of Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.Nothing to see here, move...

The morning after the city of Louisville endured its ninth and 10th homicide victims of 2023's first 10 days, Mayor Craig Greenberg brought community leaders together at Metro Hall to call for change and reiterate his commitment to solve the growing crisis. "That is simply unacceptable. It's tragic," Greenberg said in a news conference Wednesday morning in downtown Louisville. "These are not just numbers. These are people. Ten lives lost. Ten families who have lost a loved one forever. Hundreds of neighbors who have lost a friend. And we are here today because we are one city, plagued by a...

FRANKFORT In what may be the largest political contribution ever given to a political party in Kentucky, the drug maker Pfizer Inc. gave $1 million last month to the building fund of the Republican Party of Kentucky. A report filed by Republican Party of Kentucky Building Fund last week with the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance listed the $1 million from Pfizer along with five other big corporation contributions in the final quarter of 2022 totalling $1.65 million. That is an extraordinarily large haul for the fund which had raised only $6,000 during the first three quarters of 2022. The...

Many people were surprised when Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie decided to throw his support behind House Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week. In the past, Massie has often been at odds with leaders of his party in Congress, so there was some surprise on Capitol Hill when Massie didn't join the 20 Republicans who voted against Kevin McCarthy for Speaker last week. “I’m almost surprised I didn’t join them," Massie told Spectrum News. "You have your 'never Kevins' I was kind of a 'barely Kevin.'" Instead, he backed McCarthy in all 15 rounds of balloting. That's a major change from...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell chimed in late Friday evening to congratulate now-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy. McCarthy weathered days of opposition, eventually offering enough concessions to secure the votes needed to break the logjam. Most of the conservatives involved seemed to walk away happy, garnering key positions on committees and rule changes that should bring the House back to some level of sanity. For his part, McConnell decided to drop the following message, and I’m officially dead. I cease to be alive. ... Leader McConnell - Congratulations to Speaker McCarthy and the Republican House majority. Senate Republicans look...

Kevin McCarthy revealed he had “dinner” with billionaire Klaus Schwab at the World Economic Forum in 2018 during remarks he made on a panel with Mitch McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, a shipping heiress of Chinese descent. McCarthy attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in 2018, the same year 45th President Donald Trump spoke to the elite group of wealthy businessmen, politicians, and journalists. During a 30-minute panel discussion with Chao, formerly Trump’s Secretary of Transportation, and Kirstjen Nielsen, formerly Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security, McCarthy remarked on having “dinner” with Schwab during the World Economic Forum while describing...

President Biden on Wednesday made an appeal to the value of bipartisanship during a trip to Kentucky, providing a stark split-screen moment with the chaos unfolding in the House back in Washington, D.C. Biden delivered remarks in the shadow of the Brent Spence Bridge, which connects Kentucky and Ohio over the Ohio River, to tout investments from the bipartisan infrastructure law he signed in late 2021 that would improve local traffic and commerce. But the speech was more broadly a nod to the president’s belief in collaboration and reaching across the aisle at a time when Republicans have been unable...

COVINGTON, Ky., Jan 4 (Reuters) - U.S. President Joe Biden and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell made a rare joint appearance on Wednesday at a bridge in Kentucky in a display of bipartisanship that offers a guide to how the White House hopes to govern in months to come.... ...Both veteran politicians have political reasons for appearing together. McConnell wants credit from voters in his home state of Kentucky for the spending project, while Biden wants to highlight the on-the-ground impacts of lawmakers working together. "The country needs to see examples like this," McConnell says of the bipartisanship that led...

"Democrats controlled the House, Senate, and White House and still couldn't get cannabis reform bills passed," Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) complained on Twitter last week. "I would go much further and end the federal war on a plant entirely, but at LEAST let legal business operate as a legal business."Paul was alluding to the the SAFE Banking Act, which would make it easier for state-licensed marijuana businesses to access financial services by removing the threat of civil, criminal, and regulatory penalties against banks that serve them. The bill has broad, bipartisan support because it would simultaneously dial back the war...

We are careening directly into an abyss of war, pain and misery, and our leaders are thunderously applauding as it happens. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy came to Washington this week because he wanted more money, and our politicians in Washington definitely did not disappoint him. Even though we had already given Ukraine far more money than the rest of the world combined, our politicians agreed to give him another colossal mountain of cash. On some level, we all have to respect Zelenskyy’s skills as a con man. Even though he has banned the main opposition party in Ukraine, and even...

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said former President Donald Trump‘s influence is waning, reiterating his blame towards his political foe for GOP shortcomings in the midterms. Mr. McConnell, who has had an increasingly strained relationship with Mr. Trump since the 2021 Capitol riot, said Mr. Trump helped cast voters an unappealing image of the Republican Party that broke the trust of the electorate. “We lost support that we needed among independents and moderate Republicans, primarily related to the view they had of us as a party — largely made by the former president — that we were sort of nasty...

Former President Trump has a significantly higher favorable rating than Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) a recent Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll found.The survey provided a list of high profile figures across the board in politics and found Trump standing at the top in terms of favorability, garnering 46 percent.That is higher than every other figure featured on the list, which includes President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and more. McConnell’s favorable figures are toward the bottom half of the list, garnering a 25 percent favorable rating — 21 points lower...

Rep. Thomas Massie took a shot at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on social media before skipping his speech on Capitol Hill, joining other Republicans in an apparent boycott of the wartime leader’s address. “I’m in DC but I will not be attending the speech of the Ukrainian lobbyist,” Massie (R-Ky.) wrote in a Twitter post Wednesday, minutes before the Ukrainian leader thanked lawmakers for providing US military aid to Ukraine. “It is not charity. Charity would be given freely. The American taxpayers have been conscripted into making welfare payments to this foreign government,” Massie said of the billions of dollars...

“In the beginning, I thought there were two or three rogue employees who were orchestrating this cover-up of the Hunter Biden laptop story, but now we know the FBI had a division of at least 80 agents. We also know the FBI paid Twitter over $3 million dollars for their time,” Comer says. “The FBI was never granted the authority to create some kind of disinformation task force,” Comer says. “This is an agency that is out of control…We need to halt all funding with the FBI until they come forward and explain to Congress exactly what they were doing.”...

Conservatives are often disappointed when Republicans tell us one thing at home when they’re running for office and do quite the opposite as soon as they cross the Potomac. It doesn’t take a long memory to remember that Republicans campaigned on “repealing Obama­care.” These Republicans came home to campaign and loudly proclaimed: “Give us a Republican House!” Conservatives stepped up and made it so. But the GOP candidates came back and pleaded: “No, we can’t repeal Obamacare unless you give us a Republican Senate.” So, conservative activists gave Republicans the Senate. To which the Republican Congress opined, “We’re close, this...

OPINION: You have to give the Democrats credit. You can count on them to do the politically smart thing even in defeat. This is why they’ve made a deal with Senate Republicans to pass a $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill to keep the government funded for the next fiscal year now rather than wait for the Republicans to take over the House of Representatives in January. What’s not clear is why Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and his GOP Senate colleagues are going along. Depending on whose version of the story you’re hearing — one says congressional Republicans were cut...

OUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Police charged a 26-year-old man with murder after a former Eastern High School student was killed in a wrong way crash on Hurstbourne Parkway over the weekend. According to Alicia Smiley, a spokeswoman for the Louisville Metro Police Department, Porfirio Cruz Hernandez is charged with murder, wanton endangerment, driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and operating a motor vehicle without a valid operator's license. As of Monday afternoon, Hernandez remained hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. The crash took place around 4 a.m. Sunday at the intersection of South Hurstbourne Parkway and Fegenbush Lane. Police said...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) is endorsing the Electoral Count Reform Act as necessary to save the Electoral College, saying on Monday the system needs to be reformed so it will not be abolished. Paul said in an op-ed in The Louisville Courier-Journal that recent elections have shown flaws in Congress’s role with the Electoral College, leaving the vice president’s role in counting the votes ambiguous and allowing one member of the House and Senate to object to counting a state’s votes. He said both political parties have exploited these issues to cause “political theater.” “In 2021, the theater act went...

Sen. Thom Tillis’ (R-NC) amnesty push is dead. That might be the best political Christmas gift in years—it’s undoubtedly the best news coming from the Hill in a long time. Tillis was working with Democrat defector Krysten Sinema (I-AZ) to get millions of illegal aliens on the citizenship track. You all know the details of the poison pill stipulation in the bill. The first 2 million Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients would be able to sponsor their extended family members when they’ve completed the process. It didn’t secure the border or remove the issue from the table. It just...