By Samuel Hammond • National Review
The ability of businesses to grow rapidly is a one of the most defining and precious features of the American economy. Amazon went from a fledgling online bookstore to an “everything store” and the second-largest employer in the United States in just two decades. Uber emerged from nowhere less than ten years ago to become a dominant transportation option in cities around the world. And earlier this month, Apple became the first U.S. public corporation to reach a $1 trillion valuation — a far cry from its sorry state in 1996, when it looked doomed to fail.
It’s not just the information sector. The United States is home to 64 percent of the world’s billion-dollar privately held companies and a plurality of the world’s billion-dollar startups. Known in the industry as “unicorns,” they cover industries ranging from aerospace to biotechnology, and they are the reason America remains the engine of innovation for the entire world.
Unless Elizabeth Warren gets her way. In a bill unveiled this week, the Massachusetts senator has put forward a proposal that threatens to force America’s unicorns into a corral and domesticate the American economy indefinitely.
Dubbed the “Accountable Capitalism Act,” Warren foresees Continue reading
Nation’s Secrets: Democrats and spy agency bureaucrats squealed with rage after President Trump pulled former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance. Why are they upset? Brennan clearly abused his privileged security clearance by using it for political purposes and profit.
“Mr. Brennan’s lying and recent conduct, characterized by increasingly frenzied commentary, is wholly inconsistent with access to the nation’s most closely held secrets and facilities, the very aim of our adversaries, which is to sow division and chaos,” said White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, reading a statement.
There’s no question that Brennan lied, both to Congress and the American people, more than once and under oath.
And for someone with continued privileged access to the nation’s secrets to call the president “treasonous” merely for speaking to Vladimir Putin isn’t an exercise of freedom of speech — it verges on a threat.
By • Newsweek
There’s been an awful lot of scribble and chatter lately about a recent Gallup survey purporting to show that America, Democrats especially, are becoming more enamored of socialism. Most of the people who’ve had something to say about it though have gotten it wrong. Democrats are not moving to the left in any appreciable way. They’re just moving further away from the center.
Let’s spend a moment discussing why that’s a distinction with a difference. Gallup first asked whether survey participants had a more favorable view of socialism or capitalism in 2010. The results on the GOP side have been consistent throughout, with about three-quarters of Republicans regularly indicating more positive feelings about the free market. Among Democrats, however, there’s been a shift.
Here’s how the polling firm describes it: “For the first time in Gallup’s measurement over the past decade, Democrats have a more positive image of socialism than they do of capitalism. Attitudes toward socialism among Democrats have not changed materially since 2010, with 57% today having a positive view. The major change among Democrats has been a less upbeat attitude toward capitalism, dropping to 47% positive this year—lower than in any of the three previous measures.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now the President for life of the Republic of Turkey, has been throughout his illustrious political career a hypocrite and an Islamic fundamentalist par excellence. Elected mayor of Istanbul in 1994 as a member of the then Welfare Party, he declared: “The mosques are our barracks, the domes are our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers.” Sentenced to ten months in prison and barred from politics until 2003, he became Prime Minister in the same year. Meanwhile, in 2001, he co-founded the Justice and Development Party (in Turkish: Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi). During his first decade as Prime Minister, Erdogan reformed his country economically and laid the foundation for Turkey to become a strong regional power. The Justice and Development Party dominated Parliament passed five reform packages in order to comply with European Union legislation. During his prime ministership between 2003 and 2014, Turkey experienced an average annual growth rate of 7.5%. Foreign investment in Turkey increased from $1.2 billion in 2003, to $20 billion in 2014. He also replaced the old lira with a new lira that until recently held its value. Continue reading
By Nolan Finley • The Detroit News
Our feelings are hurt in the news media. The president of the United States is calling us the Enemy of the People and we don’t like it.
So across the nation today, newspapers are publishing editorials telling Donald Trump, “We are not, you are!” and reminding readers of our own importance.
Let me join them: The free press is not the people’s enemy. It is a vital pillar of our democracy and was assigned by the Founders the role of watch-dogging the nation’s institutions. It’s a mission we usually carry out quite well, even in this era of technological disruptions, changing consumer tastes and eroding resources.
But who really cares if Donald Trump is using us as a whipping boy to mask his many deficiencies? Presidents have done that before, and often.
Trump may be Continue reading
By Patrick Tucker • Defense One
LAS VEGAS — The Russian military is inside hundreds of thousands of routers owned by Americans and others around the world, a top U.S. cybersecurity official said on Friday. The presence of Russian malware on the routers, first revealed in May, could enable the Kremlin to steal individuals’ data or enlist their devices in a massive attack intended to disrupt global economic activity or target institutions.
On May 27, Justice Department officials asked Americans to reboot their routers to stop the attack. Afterwards, the world largely forgot about it. That’s a mistake, said Rob Joyce, senior advisor to the director of the National Security Agency and the former White House cybersecurity coordinator.
“The Russian malware is still there,” said Joyce.
On May 8, cybersecurity company Talos observed a spike in mostly Ukrainian victims of a new malware attack. Dubbed VPN Filter, the malware used code similar to the BlackEnergy tool that Russian forces have used (in modified form) to attack Ukrainian infrastructure. The U.S. intelligence community believes the culprits are the hackers known as APT 28 or Fancy Bear, Russian military operatives who were behind information attacks against Continue reading
By Terry Jones • Investor’s Business Daily
Cutting Rules: Baseball season is winding down and, as it does, so is another grueling annual event: The U.S. government’s fiscal year. But this year, with just two months to go, something remarkable is happening: Regulations are being slashed at a record rate.
A new report by the American Action Forum (AAF) says that not only is President Trump meeting his deregulation goals, he’s exceeding them — in some cases, by a large amount.
“Collectively, executive agencies subject to regulatory budget remain on pace to double the administration’s overall saving goal,” wrote the AAF’s Dan Bosch. “On an individual basis, 12 of 22 agencies have already met or surpassed their savings target.”
“The Department of Labor enjoys the largest total savings of covered agencies with $417.2 million,” Bosch wrote. “The Department of Health and Human Services comes in second in savings … at Continue reading
Historically, most illusions have existed to disappoint. Western illusions that economic development and increased prosperity would somehow liberalize both politics and the economy in the People’s Republic of China have not fared better. The Sino-optimist in chief President Clinton envisioned in one of his frequent speeches that free enterprise would result in political freedom in the post-Mao China. Wexing almost poetic he predicted that the people “will demand a greater say.” His successor President George W. Bush also opined that China’s WTO entry would bring political benefits by enhancing “more open contacts with the world of freedom.” Not to left behind, self-described “citizen of the world” President Obama saw his mission in delivering rousing speeches about the burgeoning friendship between the two countries without ever developing a coherent China policy.
Initially, the optimism of successive American presidents appeared to be warranted. Mao Zedong, the incorrigible visionary with his belief in world revolution against Western domination and with his disastrous economic and social policies was replaced at the end of the 1970s by the cat and mouse pragmatist Deng Xiaoping. Having encouraged more economic freedom for a starter to his reforms, Deng had to quickly realize the potential political threats to the monopoly of Communist Party of China in the shape of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. He died a disappointed and embittered man, for his reforms failed to change iota the unworkable and rigid political system. After his death, he was followed by two faceless party bureaucrats, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. Their policies consisted of protecting the monopoly of the party, while taking advantage of China’s low cost manufacturing capabilities.
Socialism: Since the Democratic Party took a turn for the worse toward so-called democratic socialism, the party’s leading lights have laid the promises on pretty thick. Free Medicare for all! Guaranteed income! Guaranteed jobs! Subsidized housing! Free college! Universal pre-school! Wow, and all for free.
Well, not exactly. In a devastating piece that appeared on the left-of-center web site Vox (to its credit), Manhattan Institute fellow Brian Riedl went through the simple math of what free actually costs. It’s a lot.
It’s not just the free aspect, but the fact that the democratic socialists have made so many promises that must be paid for that will make it so tough to swallow for most voters.
Riedl looked at the 10-year costs of all the various promises made by Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other self-described democratic socialists. He was as generous as could be in his estimates, often accepting the democratic socialists’ cost estimate even when it was patently and absurdly too low. It’s quite a laundry-list of promises with enormous costs: “Free college” ($807 billion); Social Security expansion ($188 billion); single-payer health care ($32 trillion); guaranteed jobs at $15 per hour plus benefits ($6.8 trillion); infrastructure ($1 trillion); student loan debt forgiveness ($1.4 trillion).
As it is, current federal estimates expect Continue reading
By Ilya Feoktistov • The Federalist
Shortly after President Trump’s inauguration, a group of public school history teachers in the posh Boston suburb of Newton pledged to reject the “call for objectivity” in the classroom, bully conservative students for their beliefs, and serve as “liberal propagandist[s]” for the cause of social justice.
This informal pact was made in an exchange of emails among history teachers at Newton North High School, part of a very rich but academically mediocre public school district with an annual budget of $200 million, a median home price of almost half a million, and a median household income of more than $120,000. Read the entire email exchange here.
I obtained the emails under a Massachusetts public records law after one of those teachers arranged, earlier this year, for an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel organization to show Palestinian propaganda films at Newton North. This stunt earned the Newton Public Schools district a rebuke from the New England branch of the Anti-Defamation League and from Boston’s Jewish Community Relations Council. But, as the teachers’ emails reveal, Jew-hatred is not the only specter haunting the history department at Newton North.
The Teachers Conspire to Hide Extreme Prejudice Continue reading
By • Newsweek
My father, who would have been 79 this week, was an enthusiastic Trump supporter. He died in October 2016, and, not being a resident of Chicago was unable to participate in the fall election, but in the primary earlier that year he voted for him proudly.
He was not a man to keep his opinions to himself. The prospect of a Trump presidency excited him, as he would tell anyone who would listen because it presented the best chance in some time to get the folks in Washington in line.
That, I suspect, is what a lot of people who voted for Trump believed. What he and they forget is that the Washington establishment—the poly-partisan conglomeration of policymakers, bureaucrats, professional thinkers, journalists, lobbyists, lackeys and other denizens of what the president and his supporters refer to as “The Swamp”—was not going to go down quietly. They can and will fight back against any real effort at reform, not because they believe it is good policy to do so (though they may truly believe that to be the case) but because it is in their inherent financial, social, and professional interests to do so.
Let’s stipulate for purposes of this column that the president is as awful as many of his detractors make him out to be. That he is deliberately divisive. That his tweets offend. That he is as arrogant as the essayists who write think pieces in journals devoted to social commentary make him out to be. Does that mean he’s also wrong about everything?
I submit the answer to that is “No.” Look around you. The economy, which was flat on its back during the entire Obama presidency, is once again roaring. Rather than celebrate that fact through, let’s say, enterprise reporting at the major cable news networks on the subject of “America Back to Work—How and Why Did It Happen?” we’re told at best the good news won’t last.
Does this reflect a liberal bias in the media? Yes, I suspect, but add to that the antipathy most reporters on the national beat and in the national spotlight seem to have for Trump. It is as though they propped him up during the early part of the primaries hoping he would lead the Republican Party down the pathway to implosion, ensuring the election of Hillary Rodham Clinton and at least another four years of progressive policies that were, among other things, destroying middle America.
Oops. That didn’t exactly work out as planned and so, possibly as repentance, the folks who congregate in the White House briefing room and their colleagues beyond are doing all they can to discredit him. The president helps, of course, giving them more than enough material to work with, but can anyone honestly deny they’ve taken the traditional adversarial position to extremes never seen in this country?
It’s a safe bet that the Trump supporters who read this will agree, while those opposed to the president personally will probably think I should be locked up somewhere. But there are those in the middle, those who don’t like him but generally approve of the direction in which things are headed and who really do still consider both sides of any equation.
They aren’t sure, one way or the other. And they’re right to be confused. Trump uses his Twitter feed and his rallies and statements to establish a narrative. The media, writ large, use their interaction with the American people to set another. Mainstream media is clearly opposed, from an editorial standpoint and in some reportage, to the president personally.
This hasn’t escaped people’s attention. This week, an IPSOS poll of adults nationwide found 48 percent agreeing with the statement “Most news outlets have a liberal bias.” Only 19 percent said they didn’t. In the same survey, 43 percent said, “The mainstream media treats President Trump unfairly.” 39 percent said it didn’t, which, to be as precise as possible, is a tricky question to answer because it turns on how people define “unfairly.”
The problem, if there is one, is that not enough people allow their skepticism of the way Trump is treated and their awareness of media bias to process the way they perceive the news. Instead of looking for a more complete and thorough analysis, liberals and conservatives alike seek out news sources that confirm their bias. That’s not healthy for the democratic process.
My father, who came from nothing, worked hard for most of his life in pursuit of the American Dream. I like to think he achieved it. And he resented greatly those who suggested he ought to feel guilty somehow that he’d made it while others didn’t. He was a wise man, something I wish I’d been more cognizant of when he was still alive. He could see through the distortions, largely by thinking for himself. I sincerely hope that’s not a trait that’s not becoming uncommon. If it is, the next president, Republican or Democrat, will continue to fail in the face of mindless polarization, fed and watered by those who write the national narrative.
Fake News: Newspaper fact checkers were once a rarity. Now they’re in a position to determine what people can read online, despite their own checkered past. So, who keeps the fact checkers honest?
In the past, fact checkers tended to focus mainly on debunking urban myths or clearly false claims made by political leaders. But lately, fact checkers have appointed themselves as arbiters of the credibility of news outlets. And now, giant tech companies like Google and Facebook have enlisted these “experts” to weed out “fake news.”
If a fact-checking outfit deems a story not entirely true, for example, Facebook can limit its reach on its News Feed. Google now includes a “fact check” box on its main search results page to help “people make more informed judgments.”
Washington D.C. – Frontiers of Freedom President George Landrith issued the following statement on the U.S. Postal Service’s latest losses, deteriorating service and the Administration’s opportunity to transform the agency:
This week, the U.S. Postal Service released its financial report for the third quarter of the 2018 fiscal year, which detailed yet another troubling loss of $1.5 billion. Following years of concern around the U.S. Postal Service’s financial woes, their latest loss adds to the $65 billion lost in the past decade and increases the need for reforms.
The need for a taxpayer-funded bailout is growing by the day in order to save the U.S. Postal Service from the financial cliff. This federal agency’s roots extend beyond the founding of the country and the organization is still relied upon for reliable letter mail delivery service across the country. Each quarter that produces greater debt only adds further doubt about USPS’ ability to survive such financial disaster without a bailout. Continue reading
By • CagleCartoons
Everyone’s still talking about the dramatic tumble in the price of Facebook stock which, if the estimates are reliable, had left its founder – Mark Zuckerberg – more than $10 billion poorer than he was at the start of the month.
It’s a big loss to be sure, but not as potentially significant as the one experienced at Tesla, the electric car company founded by Elon Musk. The price Tesla stock has dropped over 21 percent since the middle of June, and could spend the rest of the summer on a roller coaster ride that leaves investors dizzy.
It not only investors who should be cautious. The U.S. government has partnered, may partner, or is thinking about partnering with Musk on projects financed by tax breaks and tax dollars. That translates to our money, and we’re right to expect Uncle Sam to take good care of it.
Change: A just-released IBD/TIPP Poll shows big gains in key sentiment indicators. Given the pervasive negativity in the media these days, you might doubt these positive polling numbers. If so, have you looked at the economy lately?
When it comes to President Trump and the national mood, something seems to have happened in recent weeks, as shown by our IBD/TIPP Poll of 900 people taken from July 26 to August 2. Keep in mind that anything over 50 is optimistic; under 50, pessimistic.
Start with our Presidential Leadership Index, which jumped 3.2% in August to 45.7, the highest level since President Trump’s first full month in office.
Equally important, the Direction of the Country Index, which gauges how Americans feel about our nation’s current course, surged 13% to 50.1 in August. That’s the highest level since 2005.
