By • Newsweek
The 2020 election is coming down to the wire and it’s closer than most would acknowledge. The polls say former vice president Joe Biden has a substantial lead over President Donald Trump, but as in 2016, there’s reason to believe the polls are wrong.
Call it a hunch based on more years of covering American politics than I’m comfortable acknowledging, but media-conducted public polls that match candidates head to head have grown increasingly unreliable even as they’ve grown in importance. The more of them there are, the less they can be relied upon, at least for their value in predicting outcomes.
There are many documented reasons for this, including the ways data are manipulated after being collected and the trend away from landlines to cell phones. All that is for later. The important thing for each candidate is how he closes the race, as it is likely to make the difference between victory and defeat.
For Donald Trump:
During the campaign, Trump has learned the truism that those who live by the sword also die by it. In 2016 he made former secretary of state Hillary Clinton‘s character a major issue—some would say the issue—and won. This time the Democrats have made his character the principal issue in their campaign and he’s been on the ropes because of it.
His response, which at times verges on whining, is unbecoming a president. Voters don’t like it. Those who voted for him in 2016 did so because they expected him to take on “the swamp.” He said he knew it would be tough. Maybe he didn’t realize how tough it would be. In the process, however, he’s delivered on many of the other promises he made, something the other swamp dwellers don’t like because it proves things can be changed if you’re willing to fight for them.
To close the campaign, Mr. Trump needs to take the focus off himself and turn it back on the country he promised to “make great again.” It was an effective message then and would be again now. In a recent Gallup survey, 56 percent of the respondents said they were better off now than they were four years ago. That suggests there are plenty of people out there who think the president did a lot of things right even though he’s been investigated, impeached and vilified by the major media more intensely than any president in recent memory—including Richard Nixon.
Instead of talking about Hunter Biden (though there is a lot to talk about), Donald Trump needs to sell the successes of his first term as a reason for the voters to give him a second. Talk about economic growth. Talk about tax cuts, about record employment for Black and Latino Americans, about the creation of millions of new jobs, the manufacturing renaissance, achieving energy independence, criminal justice reform, fighting sex trafficking more aggressively than any previous administration, brokering real deals to help bring peace to the Middle East and keeping America out of new wars.
The pieces are there, Mr. President. You just have to put them together for people. Because if you don’t, no one else will.
For Joe Biden:
The former vice president spent much of the campaign sequestered in his home in Delaware, communicating over the internet and through supporters. As a strategy, it worked. It kept him out of the limelight most of the time and allowed everyone to remain focused on the president, who daily found a way to remind people who didn’t vote for him why they don’t like him.
But being the anti-Trump is not enough to get him across the finish line first. Most late-deciding voters choose to stick with the devil they know rather than taking a chance on the one they don’t—and none of the Democrat’s proposals on taxes, jobs and the economy are compelling enough by themselves to persuade people to switch. Biden has to spend the last week telling people in more detail than he’s as yet put forward just what his presidency would do to bring America back from the COVID lockdown recession. And he has to be the one who does it—to show people he understands what he’s advocating and not just direct potential voters to a website.
This leads to another issue: Biden must address questions about his fitness for office head-on. The Republicans may have started the whisper campaign about his not being up to the job, but it’s seeped into the national conversation. Biden will need to campaign aggressively, out in the open, on his feet, as if it was his first run for U.S. Senate, to put an end to the growing buzz on both sides of the aisle that he’s just a placeholder for his running mate.
Finally, the Democratic nominee must get out in front of the stories about his son Hunter and their alleged corruption. The stories may not be true, but what the elder Biden has said thus far has not carried enough weight with voters still trying to make up their minds.
As Democrats have done with Trump, voters are equating Biden’s lack of candid answers about specific questions with possible guilt. It’s hard to face when it involves a family member, but Biden needs to put the country first—something he and other members of his party have repeatedly and from the start accused the president of failing to do.
If Biden has no doubt his son did nothing wrong, he should announce he will appoint a special counsel—on par with Robert Mueller‘s investigation of President Donald Trump—to investigate and clear up once and for all the questions about Hunter’s business dealings in China, Ukraine and elsewhere. If Biden can’t do all that, the president, who once wrote a book on the art of the “comeback,” will probably have an extra chapter to add to the next edition.
It’s a close election that will decide, more than at any time since 1980, the direction of the nation for decades to come. America will either move to the right or lurch to the left depending on which of the two men on the November ballot makes the better case to the electorate. How each of them finishes the race will likely determine which way the nation will go.
Will the unholy alliance prevail ?
By • DrLarryOnline.com
The events of last week showed us how the new oligarchy will work. The tip-off was the censorship of the New York Post story about the corruption of the Biden family.
As this column presented the findings of the U.S. Senate Committees on the Judiciary and Homeland Security concerning the activities of Hunter Biden and his successful sale of his Vice President father’s influence on behalf of foreign countries for billions of dollars. The Post story presented in convincing detail a collaboration of the Senate Report.
The Tweeter note of this story was taken down by the Alphabet Corporation, which owns Google, and quickly followed by Facebook – both owned by billionaires who have signed on to the Biden campaign.
Social media, in the form of these two companies plus Microsoft, LinkedIn, and several others, have become the major source of new for much of the country and the world. For example, You Tube (also owned by Alphabet) is the primary source of news for 26% of the American population. That is more than any broadcast programming in America.
In order to understand this situation, we will approach its various aspects separately as 1) the basis of this attempt to set the USA on the road to socialism; 2) the National Security crisis which identified the players in this attempt to take over the country; 3) the unholy alliance and how it works; 4) the fallout from the crisis.
1) The basis of this attempt to take over the Government is the familiar problem of contemporary America, namely the wealth gap which now exists. In summary, the 80% of the country’s wealth will soon be controlled by 1% of the population.
The results of this disparity are potentially catastrophic to America because it means that the buying power of the middle class is fast disappearing in an economy which depends (68%) on consumer spending.
Secondly, it means that most of the population will depend on a few billionaires, who will employ most of these individuals.
Thirdly, all that has to be done is for these billionaires to band together in support of the politicians who are indebted to them for their financing and whose votes are therefore controlled by the oligarchs.
There are only three ways to rectify the wealth gap: the (rising water rises all ships – called the Reagan economy – which is also the Trump economy, which has never worked in re-distributing the wealth; give the extra money to the government through taxes, which then distributes it to the 68%, usually through welfare, thus turning independent citizens into an ever expanding welfare class, totally dependent on government.
The third way is a free market re-distribution of wealth. This is a recent movement which is based on a re-definition of capitalism, best exemplified by a new movement called Conscious Capitalism.
2) The National Security crisis which identified the players in this attempt to take over the country
This is the crisis concerning Hunter Biden and his successful sale of his father’s influence to foreign countries and individuals for billions of dollars.
This past week provided a treasure trove of emails and pictures from the younger Biden’s computer hard drive, which clearly identified the work which Hunter Biden was engaged in as well as evidence in his father’s complicit role in this corruption.
Since China was the biggest source of the Biden family take, it is clear that the Democrat nominee is unfit to serve as the Chief Executive of the United States. If true, he is a traitor to his country.
3) The unholy alliance and how it works
The next act in this drama was the withdrawal of the New York Post tweet announcing its story on the Biden’s, soon followed by Facebook. This incident brought to light these firms and the immense power they have accumulated by abusing the federal law exempting them from libel laws.
This was the identification of the final players in the unholy alliance. The observation has been made that the takeover by the new oligarchs will be a soft coup d’ tat, this without violence or bloody revolution.
It will be done though automation. With the communications of the entire nation subject to the control of the billionaires, the people cannot communicate except though “Big Brother” as George Orwell predicted in his book 1984 (he may have been off in his timing, but his description of ordinary life was vey revealing).
So, this is the way it works: The billionaires (player #1) unite to supply and direct the press (player #2), use high technology to control all personal communications (player #3), buy a political party (player #4), fund all its candidates ( player #5) which in turn funds the Deep State (player #6) and BINGO! The Socialist America is born.
Most of this scenario has already taken place. The 2016 election was a trial run for the future. They believe the mistakes of 2016 have been analyzed and corrected, they believe. The only obstacle is Donald J. Trump. He should have been one of the oligarchs but instead chose to defy the entire alliance. So they tested their system by using the presss to neutralize him with a hate campaign, use of the bought House to impeach him based on the enlistment of the Deep State to provide false evidence.
They came within one Senate vote of succeeding.
But still he stands – between total power of the unholy alliance and secondary status. He had better beware – if he wins the pending election, He may be walking around with a target on his back.
4) The fallout from the crisis.
a. The FBI held the Hunter Biden evidence for a whole year, including exculpatory evidence which would have proven that the president was innocent prima facie Leads to the probability that the Deep Sate is still active in the FBI.
b. The Justice Department has filed suite against Twitter and Facebook for obstructing justice (The grounds for the lawsuit are not yet public knowledge.)
The table is set by the unholy alliance to take over the country. All that is lacking is a Biden victory in the coming election. The only force standing in the way is Donald J. Trump.Unless we stand with him.
By • American Action news
Joe Biden likes to claim his plan to repeal the Trump tax cuts won’t cause most Americans to see their taxes rise. That’s wrong, say both a famed rapper and a noted anti-tax activist – a position backed up by a newly released study that also projects wages for an average American household will decline if his plan is enacted.
An analysis of the Biden plan released by Grover G. Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform said the passage of Biden’s plan would lead to a top marginal rate of more than 60 percent on many households and small businesses.
This news did not sit well with the rapper 50 Cent – commonly known as “Fitty” – who threw his support to President Donald Trump, saying on Twitter “Yeah, I don’t want to be 20 Cent. 62 percent is a very, very bad idea.”
Under the Biden plan higher earners like the rapper, who was born Curtis James Jackson III, who are New York City residents could see their top rate go as high as 62 percent. “Are you out of ya (expletive deleted) mind?” he said through his social media account.
A separate study by Boston University economics professor Laurence J. Kotlikoff for the non-partisan Goodman Institute looked at the tax and Social Security changes that would occur under the Biden plan found that wages would decrease by $1,000 per year for households with income of $50,000 and by $2,000 per year for a two-earner couple making $100,000. Additionally, because the $400,000 threshold in the former vice president’s plan is not indexed, couples who start out with a modest income in their 20’s could end up “paying the Biden tax by the time they are in their 50’s.”
The Goodman study also found the tax discriminated based on age, with younger entrepreneurs facing “six times the extra burden on retirees with the same income in their 60’s, living off accumulated wealth.”
Biden has vowed to steeply raise personal income taxes and impose an additional 12.4 percent payroll tax (along with a doubling of the capital gains rate to 40 percent). New York has an 8.82 percent income tax and New York City takes another 3.876 percent. Ironically, his plan would have the biggest impact on taxpayers in blue cities and states – his base of support in the upcoming election – because they typically impose a higher tax burden on their residents.
“50 Cent speaks the truth when he says no one should have 62 percent of any dollar they earned taken by government. 50 Cent speaks not just for rappers but for millions of small businessmen and women who would be hit by the high tax rates threatened by Biden and New York,” Norquist said.
Other studies that have looked at the Biden plan, including those from The Tax Foundation, the Tax Policy Center, and Penn/Wharton all projected taxes will rise on all income groups if the Biden plan becomes law.
The lasting influence of the legendary Supreme Court justice
By • The Washington Free Beacon
“Enough to field a baseball team.” That was the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s response when asked how many children he had. And he and his wife Maureen’s nine children have themselves parented, as of this week, 40 grandchildren. How big is the Scalia family? So big that, at the moment, it would not be allowed to hold an in-person gathering in the justice’s home state of New Jersey.
Even that count might not be accurate. Watching Judge Amy Coney Barrett testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee this week, I couldn’t help thinking that the Scalia family is larger than the individuals directly related to him. In both her September 26 remarks at the White House and her October 12 opening statement to the committee, Barrett spoke of the influence Scalia had on her life and identified herself with his approach to the law. “His judicial philosophy was straightforward: A judge must apply the law as written, not as the judge wishes it were,” Barrett told the senators. “Sometimes that approach meant reaching results that he did not like. But as he put it in one of his best-known opinions, that is what it means to say we have a government of laws, not men.”
Whether it was for the students he taught, or the clerks he hired, or the lawyers he mentored, or the readers of his work, Scalia modeled a form of jurisprudence rooted in the text of the Constitution and in the American political tradition. His approach came to be called originalism (in matters of constitutional interpretation) and textualism (in matters of statutory interpretation). But his legacy is far greater than these contributions to legal terminology and methodology. What this son of an Italian immigrant accomplished was nothing less than a revolution in the law—and the promulgation of a distinctly American conservatism that is needed now more than ever.
It was Scalia who was among the first faculty advisers of the Federalist Society, and who addressed the society’s first national gathering in 1982. Along with his colleagues Robert Bork and Laurence Silberman, Scalia stood for the idea that judges should interpret the Constitution and statutes based on their original public meaning. The clarity of his argument, the force of his intellect, and the charm of his conversation enlarged the audience for his views. That audience exploded in size after President Reagan elevated him to the Supreme Court in 1986. Over time, the strength of originalism’s reputation in legal circles became so overpowering that some liberal judges, such as Justice Elena Kagan, felt it necessary to describe themselves, however ironically, as “originalists.”
Scalia pointed to his decision upholding the constitutionality of flag-burning as proof that originalism is not a mask for conservative politics. And there have been plenty of decisions—most recently Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion in Bostock—where self-described originalists and textualists arrived at places conservatives did not expect. But there is nonetheless an integral relationship between originalism and conservatism. What American conservatism seeks to preserve is the institutional and philosophical inheritance of the American Founding. This inheritance is codified in our enabling documents: the Constitution (as amended), the organic laws of the United States (which include the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest Ordinance), and the Federalist Papers. It is through fidelity to these words, as the Founders understood them at the time, that conservatives defend the constitutional structure and the individual freedom it secures.
Originalism has turned out to be more than a legal doctrine. It is the common ground of American conservatism. For years, the right has tried to define a “constitutional conservatism” that would serve as the political analogue to originalism. That project has been overshadowed by the rise of national populism. But it is worth noting that the current president won his office in no small part because he pledged to nominate judges in the mold of Scalia and approved by the Federalist Society. And his most enduring legacy will be his appointments to the federal courts.
It would be difficult to name other Supreme Court justices who have had such a galvanizing effect on American politics—and who continued to play such important roles after their deaths. What accounts for Scalia’s iconic stature? The latest collection of his writings, The Essential Scalia, edited by Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton and Edward Whelan, offers some clues. “Nino loved ideas—thinking about them, talking about them, arguing about them, as well as writing about them,” Justice Kagan writes in her introduction. “That love may explain why he found it so natural to befriend colleagues with whom he often disagreed (yes, like me).” Scalia’s ability to depersonalize intellectual debate was a function of his self-confidence and sense of humor. His convictions were the result of deep reflection. But he was more than happy to defend them, and to explain why you were wrong.
What comes across most, though, is the quality of Scalia’s writing. It is clear, direct, witty, lapidary, memorable. Scalia’s opinions and dissents are famous for certain lines—”this wolf comes as a wolf”; “What Is Golf?”—but on second reading it is the way he develops his argument that most impresses. And he always makes a perfect landing. “Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem,” he wrote in Heller (2008). “That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.”
These aren’t judicial decisions. They are essays. And like great literature they will reverberate far into the future. As Antonin Scalia’s extended family, biological and philosophical, continues to grow.
The end of American Constitutional government
By • DrLarryOnline.com
Everybody keeps saying, “This is the most important election in our lifetime, if not in American history.” Is this true? Why do we keep hearing this?
The answer to the question is, Yes. It is truly the most important election at least in our lifetime, perhaps in our history with the exception of the election of 1860, which ignited the Civil War.
The reason for this judgement, however, differs for each side of the debate. Biden supporters assert that President Trump is a failed president, whose continuation in office will threaten the future of America. They follow with a series of accusations which are expressed in the context of what an evil person he is, citing mostly statements or tweets he has made, whether actually or allegedly.
Unfortunately, however, it is rather more difficult to determine the actual positions of the Democrat ticket due to the discrepancy on certain issues between Candidate Biden’s shifting support on key questions, such as, fracking and fossil fuel policies, COVID, economic shut-down, packing the Supreme Court, Chinese military aggression, and other issues, as well as different views put forth by surrogates and the DNC.
All of this casts a shadow over Mr. Biden’s claim that he IS the Democrat Party today. However, there seems to be enough evidence to assert that the following outline is reasonably representative of their platform. The underlying issue, however, concerns the Constitution of the United States of America.
The theory of Constitutional Law which characterizes the liberal movement holds that the language of the Constitution itself was developed in the 18thcentury and should not be taken literally. Rather the Constitution represents the intentions of the Founders and should be adapted to modern problems and issues by following the “spirit” rather than the letter as written.This approach allows the American judiciary — at all levels – to rule according to current political trends. Thus, the actual wording of the Constitution is ignored, and issues are resolved on whatever basis a particular court finds appropriate. The following positions advocated by the Democrats in this election are to be understood in this context: Supreme CourtTo effect these changes in law would require Supreme Court approval, because they would overrule the Constitution and become the law of the land. In order for that to happen, the Court would have to be controlled by liberal justices, which it is not at present. Therefore, the Dems would pass a law expanding the number seats on the Court and then appoint known liberals to fill those seats. This is called “packing the Court”.
Electoral College: If elected, the Dems will seek to eliminate the Electoral College in favor of the majority of the popular vote. In effect, New York and California, as the most populous states, would control the federal government. Middle America would cease to exist as a political force in the nation.
Guns: The Second Amendment to the Constitution provides for the right of Americans to bear arms, i.e. to own weapons. This right would be overturned by the Democrat-controlled government.
Religion: Another restriction imposed by the Constitution is the prohibition of government interference with religion, i.e. freedom of religion. The Dems are of a mind to permit the federal government to discriminate against citizens on the basis of religious beliefs. Two recent examples are the provision in the Affordable Care Act requiring all employers to provide birth control amenities to employees without regard to the religious beliefs of the employer. Another case in point is the accusation that Judges who belong to the Catholic Church are not fit for office, because of the official Catholic teaching that abortion is a sin.
Beyond Constitutional issues, there are several other planks in the Dems’ platform:
Economy: The most significant economic impact of the Democrat agenda is the additional taxes they will assess on the American people. Biden has declared that on his first day in office, he will rescind the Trump Tax, immediately increasing middle class taxes by several hundred dollars, to be followed by a major increase on companies and individuals with incomes and assets (passive income) totaling $300,000 or more. Presumably, this includes retirement funds and other investments which have positive yields.
Foreign policyThe biggest issue in foreign policy is the rapidly mounting evidence that Mr. Biden is guilty of major corruption through billions of dollars advanced from foreign sources, especially China and Russia, to his son, Hunter Biden, and other relatives. This makes him the “Manchurian Candidate”, i.e. an American President controlled by the Chinese Communist party.
Domestic policy – chief concerns in domestic policy are:
a. Abortion — establishment of unlimited abortions at public expense, including the killing of 9th month fetuses for any reason.
b. Law enforcement – support for defunding of police departments in favor of social workers.
c. Energy – commitment to the elimination of fossil fuels by some deadline (varies from 2030 to 2050) with the accompanying loss of millions of jobs, loss of the competition with China – all without any satisfactory substitute technology and based on dubious science.
d. Federal support of Black Lives Matter, Antifa and other Marxist organizations which were responsible for much of the violence, property destruction and murder in 2020.
e. Immigration – re-opening of US border to unregulated immigration and government support for these immigrants through welfare, free medical care and education.
f. Trade – reversion to former trade policies in which US firms paid high tariffs on exported goods and services and charged no tariffs on import from foreign manufacturers.
g. Health care – re-institution of Obamacare with socialized medicine on the horizon, i.e. complete government control of health care, probably through expansion of Medicare.
Summary – The Biden years would thus lead to complete government control of our lives, permanent economic stagnation, permanent low employment, continual expansion of welfare-dependent population, decline of American quality of life and world standing, and ultimately a world dominated by the Chinese Communist Party.
ConclusionThat is why 2020 is the most important election in American history.
Anywhere ideology trumps science, public service, history, art, and entertainment, ruin surely follows.
By • National Review
In the 21st century, hallmark American and international institutions have lost much of their prestige and respect.
Politics and biases explain the lack of public confidence in organizations and institutions such as the World Health Organization, the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Nobel Peace Prize, the Pulitzer Prizes, and the Academy Awards.
The overseers entrusted with preserving these institutions all caved to short-term political pressures. As a result, they have mostly destroyed what they inherited.
The World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is the first person without a medical degree to hold that position. Why? No one really knows.
In the critical first days of the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic, almost every statement issued by Tedros and the WHO about the origins, transmission, prevention, and treatment of the virus was inaccurate. Worse, the announcements predictably reflected the propaganda of the Chinese government.
The bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates was formed in 1987 for two purposes: to ensure that during every presidential campaign, candidates would agree to debate; and to ensure that the debates would be impartial and not favor either major party.
Unfortunately, in 2020, the commission so far has a checkered record on both counts.
Conservatives have argued that the moderators of the first presidential debate and the vice-presidential debate — Chris Wallace of Fox News and Susan Page of USA Today — were systematically asymmetrical in their questioning.
The moderators asked both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence to explain prior controversial quotes and then to reply to critics’ accusations. The moderators did not pose the same sort of gotcha-type “When did you stop beating your wife?” questions to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden or vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
Although the vice-presidential debate was conducted with proper social distancing, along with screens and testing to protect the candidates, the commission abruptly canceled the second live presidential debate for safety’s sake and insisted it be conducted remotely.
Yet White House doctors have cleared Trump, who recently contracted COVID-19, as both medically able to debate and no longer infectious.
The public perception was that a remote debate would favor the frequently teleprompted Biden, who has been largely ensconced in his home during the last six months, and would be less advantageous to Trump, who thrives on live, ad hoc television.
Susan Page is currently writing a biography of Trump’s chief antagonist, House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.). The designated moderator of the now-canceled second president debate, Steve Scully of C-SPAN, once interned for Vice President Joe Biden.All Our Opinion in Your Inbox
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The Nobel Peace Prize has been subject to criticism over the years for failing to adequately recognize either diplomatic or humanitarian achievement.
Yasser Arafat of the Palestine Liberation Organization won the prize in 1994, despite conducting lethal terrorist operations. He allegedly gave the final order to execute U.S. Ambassador to Sudan Cleo Noel and two other diplomats in 1973.
In 2009, the Nobel Peace Prize went to President Barack Obama, despite the fact that Obama had only been president for eight months when the prize was announced. Many felt the award was a political statement — aimed at empowering Obama and criticizing the policies of his then-unpopular predecessor, George W. Bush.
Much later, Geir Lundestad, the longtime director of the Nobel Institute, confessed that the prize committee had indeed hoped the award would strengthen Obama’s future agendas and wasn’t really in recognition of anything he had actually done.
“Even many of Obama’s supporters believed that the prize was a mistake,” Lundestad lamented in his memoir. “In that sense the committee didn’t achieve what it had hoped for.”
Earlier this year, New York Times reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her work on the 1619 Project. She has argued that 1619, the year African slaves first arrived on North American soil, and not 1776 marked the real founding of America.
Almost immediately, distinguished American historians cited factual errors and general incoherence in the 1619 Project — especially Hannah-Jones’s claim that the United States was created to promote and protect slavery.
Facing a storm of criticism, Hannah-Jones falsely countered that she had never advanced a revisionist date of American’s “real” founding. Yet even the New York Times — without explanation — erased from its own website Hannah-Jones’s earlier description of 1619 as “our true founding.”
The annual Academy Awards were once among the most watched events in America. In 2020, however, Oscar viewership crashed to its lowest level in history, due in large part to backlash against the left-wing politicking, sermonizing, and virtue-signaling of award winners.
Recently, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which oversees the Oscars, announced that it will adopt racial, gender, and sexual identity quotas for nominees — refuting the ancient idea of “art for art’s sake”
Such ideology has also infected, and thus tarnished, the Grammy and Emmy awards, and left-wing virtue-signaling has also become part of the NFL and the NBA.59
The lesson in all these debacles is that anywhere ideology trumps science, public service, history, art, and entertainment, ruin surely follows.
Generations before Facebook or Twitter, Tocqueville warned that censoring the press would endanger the survival of freedom and democracy in America.
By • The Federalist
With the recent suppression of a New York Post story damaging to Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, many Americans have finally had enough of the one-sided censorious behavior of tech giants. Less than three weeks before one the most contentious and fraught elections in American history, Facebook and Twitter users were alarmed when it became clear they were prevented from sharing the Post’s article detailing the sordid dealings of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter.
Both citizens and lawmakers justifiably fear the enormous influence wielded by entities like Facebook, Google, and Twitter; the rise of an unchecked tech-tyranny where one side of the political aisle has its views promoted while the other side has its views punished. Nearly two centuries ago, the author of one of the most penetrating insights on American life shared similar fears of what would happen should a free press remain free in name only.
Traveling across America in the 1830s, young French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville saw a nation filled with both promise and peril. Amidst boundless opportunities, an economically vibrant workforce, and an ever-increasing equalization of conditions, the potential for tyranny lurked underneath an otherwise promising future. Tocqueville feared some of the forces at work in the young republic could lead to despotism.
To prevent this future, Tocqueville sung the praises of two essential safeguards: a free press connected with freedom of association. Armed with these two weapons, Tocqueville argues the United States can help prevent a tyranny of the majority as well as the chilling and repressive effects of a nascent soft despotism. Yet, of the two, Tocqueville’s principal solution for America is a free press.
Unfortunately, as Tocqueville noted — and we’ve now witnessed — the free press he prescribes functions as a double-edged sword. To be sure, the press and modern media can help cultivate liberty. It can do a marvelous job of keeping the people informed of politics, sustaining their activity in local government, and helping to make their voices heard. In doing so, it can help train the populace in the necessary exercise of freedom. Liberty, after all, is like a muscle: if it is not used regularly it will atrophy.
On the contrary, an unhealthy, ill-functioning press can create problems rather than prevent them. If the press or powerful media organs can influence such a vast number of people at once; if there isn’t enough volume granted to dissenting voices; if the levers of media and press control are too tightly concentrated, a deadly homogenization of the American mind may occur.
When this happens, the former sovereignty of the people is transformed into something both helplessly docile and malevolent — worse, something deadly to liberty. These were the stakes back during the time of Andrew Jackson. Today, the situation is all the more dire.
In “Democracy in America,” Tocqueville writes Americans should strive to be continually “making liberty emerge from within the democratic society in which God makes us live.” One of the most effective avenues to pursuing this is to give some degree of local administrative power to bodies of private citizens such as would be found in newspapers, periodicals, or pamphlets — and today’s social media platforms.
A free press made up of numerous varied newspapers fulfilled this role in 19th-century America. In the 21st century, websites and social media should — hypothetically — join traditional print publications to prevent the dangers of the tyranny of the majority. When operating fairly and nobly, they provide a way for every voice to be heard.
Of course, a free press and media aren’t just useful vehicles for spreading ideas or forming associations, but for ensuring that new associations can connect their ideas over large distances. Furthermore, in a free nation, the press can and should help to disperse power — not concentrate it within itself. The answer to ideas some citizens disagree with is not to stifle, curtail, or limit such speech, it is to encourage more of it.
Beyond this, protecting freedom of the press is vitally important because it can often serve as an individual’s best or only means of appeal. Tocqueville writes:
A citizen who is oppressed has therefore only one means of defending himself; it is to address himself to the whole nation, and if it is deaf to him, to humanity; he has only one means to do it, it is the press. Thus liberty of the press is infinitely more precious among democratic nations than among all others; it alone cures most of the evils that equality can produce. Equality isolates and weakens men; but the press places beside each one of them a very powerful weapon, which the weakest and most isolated can use.
As Tocqueville observes in “Democracy in America,” opening and running an American newspaper in the 19th century was both relatively inexpensive and unregulated. As such, this meant a truly free press was an accessible weapon available to the common man to beat back the tyranny of the majority and the homogenization of the mind.
Thousands of newspapers operating throughout the country and representing various individuals, associations, and interests, was both a way of protecting divergent opinions as well as checking against the rise of despotic or tyrannical forces. In the current climate of Big Tech censorship, men and women of all political stripes should be asking themselves if this can be said of America any longer.
A healthy and truly free press is one of the mechanisms that can help prevent the public from being manipulated into having one set of “approved” opinions. Freedom of the press, says Tocqueville, does not just hold important influence over the success or failure of political parties, it makes its power felt “over all of the opinions of men”; not only that, it modifies both the laws and the mores of a society.
Indeed, if laws can affect the mores of a society, and the mores of society can affect the laws, something that can simultaneously change both is a weapon capable of either awe-inspiring good or tremendous evil. Tocqueville argues a free press has the power to do just that.
What happens if this power is used to stifle speech rather than spread it? The result, unfortunately, is not good for any polity featuring democratic institutions. As University of Oklahoma professor Donald J. Maletz puts it: “Tocqueville associates democracy with freedom of the press as a matter of principle.” As one goes, so goes the other. Forebodingly, Tocqueville calls the issue of how to handle a free press “the greatest problem of modern societies.”
Due to its non-institutional nature, a free press is unique in its role in helping prevent tyranny because it exists apart from the governmental arena. Separations of power and varied institutions are not enough to prevent tyranny if all interests involved are the same — you need associations or organizations outside of government as well.
Ultimately, the freedom of the press may well be the final bulwark of liberty against a rising tide of corruption. By Tocqueville’s reasoning, once the press ceases to be free, it’s hard for any society wishing to regain freedom for its citizens to do so, as the best avenues for opposition will be closed. Because of this reality, those who love liberty and value an open society must guard against any censorship of the press.
Tocqueville acknowledges in “Democracy in America” that an unfettered press can create problems, and is only so virtuous because it prevents more problems than it creates. Even so, Tocqueville goes on to powerfully proclaim one cannot be “moderate” in support of a free press. For Tocqueville, there’s no sustainable or workable “middle ground” when it comes to press censorship.
To “reap the inestimable advantages” brought by the freedom of the press, society must learn how to handle its potential pitfalls. This much is clear, however: liberty starts to evaporate the moment powerful entities within society start to censor its press or suppress the work of reporters and writers.
As historian Thomas G. West points out, James Madison saw free speech as a natural, retained right, not a privilege created by the government. West puts it in clear terms:
There is an absolute right to freedom of speech, just as there is an absolute or inalienable right to liberty in general. … For the founders, speech is simply a part of the overall natural right to liberty, which it is the main job of government to secure.
Indeed, the 1780 Massachusetts Declaration of Rights went so far as to say: “The liberty of the press is essential to the security of freedom in a state: it ought not, therefore to be restrained.”
In her analysis of “Democracy in America,” the University of Notre Dame’s Catherine Zuckert believes Tocqueville saw freedom of speech as an “essential part of liberal democracy.” She’s right. Tocqueville warned stifling press freedom, even a little, will lead to a chilling silence, and society will find itself “under the feet of a despot.”
The publication of Thomas Paine’s “Common Sense” shows the power of a free press during turbulent times. Paine’s pamphlet, which sold around 100,000 copies in 1776, is called by historian Grant S. Wood “the most incendiary and popular pamphlet of the entire revolutionary era.” It is an exemplary case of a political tract in layman’s language that shaped the future of a continent — all made possible by the press.
Freedom of the press, when combined with associations, acts as an incentivization to participate and be active in politics. For Tocqueville, the relationship between newspapers and free associations is symbiotic and correlative: “newspapers make associations, and associations make newspapers.”
Properly functioning and free, the press can encourage debate instead of hindering it. It can foster statesmanship instead of leading to the rise of despots. The exchange of ideas and the proliferation of the best new civic and societal notions can be a chief tool in preserving the essential balance between liberty and virtue in America.
While the left’s current stranglehold on corporate media is formidable, Tocqueville would at least be partially hopeful that the rise of conservative voices on the internet, new media, and outlets like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter will at put up a fight to uphold liberty — that is, as long as they aren’t silenced in turn by the very platforms that are supposed to aid in the spread of ideas.
The “press” may look a lot different than in 1831, but it remains pivotal in the struggle to preserve freedom. Until enough Americans unite their voices and demand that tech giants like Facebook and Twitter stop their oppressive censorship of the very press and media outlets essential to the health of our republic, things will only get worse, and Tocqueville’s worst nightmares will inch closer to becoming reality.
By • American Action news
Former Vice President Joe Biden has taken to social media to push back against claims his economic plan will lead to a tax hike on American taxpayers. “Let me be clear,” he tweeted on October 7, “A Biden-Harris Administration won’t increase taxes a dime on anyone making less than $400,000 per year.”
At first blush, that seems to be a lie. One of Biden’s core commitments to the voters has been his and Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ promise to repeal “on day one” the 2017 law that lowered marginal income tax rates on individuals and corporations. If that happens then the amount paid in income taxes will go up on everyone who pays them, not just the “wealthiest Americans” as Biden and Harris like to suggest.
The reforms to the U.S. tax code that made up the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provided a financial boost to all Americans, even those that do not pay income taxes, because of the resulting increase in economic activity and job creation.
The numbers show the tax cuts worked as intended. The average American kept more than $1,250 of what they’d earned than previously possible while the average family of four saw household income increase by $2,000. According to data compiled by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, taxpayers with incomes of between $50,000 and $100,000 saw a reduction in their annual levies twice as large as those with incomes of over $1 million.
Biden’s attack on the affluent, a tactic used by Democrats any time the economy turns sour as it has because of the coronavirus lockdowns, is calculated to win votes in November. His economic plan does not include income tax hikes for those making less than $400,000 per year – which conflicts with his promise to repeal what he calls the Trump tax cuts in their entirety – but does include several hikes in what the middle class will have to pay if his proposal becomes law.
“The most notable tax increase he has advanced is to restore in full the excise tax associated with the Obamacare individual mandate. Virtually all families who paid this tax (before it was zeroed out by the Trump tax cut) made far less than $400,000 per year,” says the Center for a Free Economy’s Ryan Ellis.
Ellis is one of several tax policy experts to conclude Biden’s plan includes tax hikes on middle America. Groups from the left, right, and center including the liberal Tax Policy Center, the Tax Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and a model budget analysis produced by Penn Wharton all said taxes would go up across all income levels if the Democrat’s proposal became law.
Coming or going, it seems the former vice president is not being totally candid with the voters about what his plan would do. The Trump tax cuts will not be completely repealed, something left-wing followers of Bernie Sanders and AOC might find disappointing. The middle-class GOP voters Biden and Harris are trying to woo into their column will not like hearing they’ll be paying more to the government while potentially getting less from it.
Biden is right on one thing though. It won’t be “one, thin dime” taxpayers will be shelling out if his plan passes; it will be a lot more.
By • National Review
It gets worse. For weeks, Joe Biden has refused to answer whether he intends to blow up the United States Supreme Court on the preposterous grounds that, if he does, journalists will write about it. Now, he adds that voters “don’t deserve” to know his position. This transmutes an untenable position into a downright nefarious one.
Biden’s defenders have been trying to draw some equivalency between the threat of his “packing” (read: destroying) the Supreme Court and the Republicans’ push to appoint Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ginsburg. In and of itself, this is ridiculous: The Republicans are in control of the White House and the Senate, and, in acting now, are using a process that has been in place since 1789 and echoing a norm that has obtained throughout American history. But the equivalence also fails on its own terms, in that neither President Trump nor any of the 53 Republican senators are keeping any secrets about their plans. Trump has been open about his nomination from the start; so have the 51 Republicans who intend to vote yes; so has Susan Collins, who intends to vote no; and so has Lisa Murkowski, who opposes the process but says that she may vote yes if it comes to the floor. There is no parity here. One party is going about the business of government with the branches that it presently controls; the other party is threatening to smash those branches up.
Biden’s stance essentially inverts the way the American system is supposed to work. Going into the election, the Democrats’ position is that it would be unseemly for candidates for our electedbranches to answer questions about what they will do, but that it is imperative that candidates for the judicial branch be expected to say ahead of time how they intend to rule in major cases. Why is Biden, who knows better, indulging this? I suspect it is because he knows full well that what is being proposed by his party is monstrous and so hopes to sidestep it entirely.
Biden’s defenders have been trying to draw some equivalency between the threat of his “packing” (read: destroying) the Supreme Court and the Republicans’ push to appoint Amy Coney Barrett to replace Justice Ginsburg. In and of itself, this is ridiculous: The Republicans are in control of the White House and the Senate, and, in acting now, are using a process that has been in place since 1789 and echoing a norm that has obtained throughout American history. But the equivalence also fails on its own terms, in that neither President Trump nor any of the 53 Republican senators are keeping any secrets about their plans. Trump has been open about his nomination from the start; so have the 51 Republicans who intend to vote yes; so has Susan Collins, who intends to vote no; and so has Lisa Murkowski, who opposes the process but says that she may vote yes if it comes to the floor. There is no parity here. One party is going about the business of government with the branches that it presently controls; the other party is threatening to smash those branches up.
Biden’s stance essentially inverts the way the American system is supposed to work. Going into the election, the Democrats’ position is that it would be unseemly for candidates for our electedbranches to answer questions about what they will do, but that it is imperative that candidates for the judicial branch be expected to say ahead of time how they intend to rule in major cases. Why is Biden, who knows better, indulging this? I suspect it is because he knows full well that what is being proposed by his party is monstrous and so hopes to sidestep it entirely.
Biden’s argument in this clip is unequivocal. He agrees that the idea of “packing the Supreme Court” is an outrageous “power grab.” He suggests that it takes people of courage to stand up to their own party when it begins to flirt with such outrageous propositions. And, most important of all, it is clear from this clip that there is nothing “different” about this debate in 2020 than there was back in 2005. By his own terms, Biden agrees with FDR that the Court was “thwarting” the government’s agenda. By his own terms, he is aware that that government had won in a landslide. And yet, despite this, he understands that the planned remedy was disgraceful. FDR, Biden says, was “corrupted by power in my view,” and his “court packing” plan served as a good reminder of how “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” What was necessary — what Biden explicitly wanted “entered into the record” — was that “statesman” stand against “political exigency.”
A good example of such a statesman, Biden said, was . . . well, Joe Biden.
Where is that man today?
By • Newsweek
America is a divided country. Some believe in its exceptionalism and that it has been and remains a force for global good. Others think a political and cultural overhaul that rejects our founding principles is long overdue. The rest of us are, it seems, caught in the middle.
Most Americans would willingly acknowledge our faults after they are pointed out. No one of any matter is, for example, still defending slavery. A sensible position, it would seem, since the issue was settled by war and constitutional amendment more than 150 years ago. Yet some want to reopen that wound and talk of securing reparations for the descendants of those once held in bondage—an idea most people seem to reject no matter what they might tell the pollsters.
Another place where American values are in tension with contemporary thinking is the annual observance of Columbus Day. It used to be that this holiday marked the “discovery” of America. In my youth, kids would debate with all the intensity they could muster whether it was Columbus or the Vikings who were the first Europeans to reach North America. That there were already people here was of little import, lost in a bevy of ethnic pride.
In 2020 Columbus Day is a trigger for social justice warriors who see it as a celebration of the massacre of indigenous people by white, empire-building Europeans. That kind of grievance-based analysis, which fuels the rage in inner-city Portland and Seattle, ignores completely the benefits to humankind that came about as a result of Columbus’ discovery.
Columbus’ accomplishments are worthy of celebration because they culminated in the founding of the United States. The explorer was, in a way, the first to emigrate to what became America even if he did not settle here permanently.
Many who followed Columbus were following commercial interests. Others came seeking the freedom to worship the Creator as they saw fit and not as a monarch dictated. Others wanted a chance to start anew, perhaps with a new name and identity. More than a few were brought here without their consent as commercial property rather than people, something we must never forget. Yet, when taken together, all of them contributed to making the United States the greatest, freest, most prosperous country mankind has ever known.
Rather than abolish Columbus Day, let us add to its meaning. Let’s make it the holiday that celebrates the accomplishments immigrants have made and continue to make for America and the world.
Think of the honorable men and men and women who have added to this nation’s economic, cultural, scientific, political, diplomatic, artistic and commercial achievements. What would America be if it had not offered a new start to the likes of Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Andrew Grove, Vinod Khosla, Elon Musk and Mother Cabrini—just to name a few.
What was true in 1720, 1820, and 1920 remains true today. The people immigrating to the United States come because the ability to increase their living standards in their home country is blocked by religious, economic, geographic, political, linguistic, ethnic or other artificial barriers they cannot overcome. The only way for them to escape the cultural and economic poverty in which they live is to escape to America.
Immigrants contribute mightily to the greatness that is America. Before Trump’s election, almost 350 out of every 100,000 immigrants created a new business every month, according to the Kauffman Foundation, an entrepreneurship and education research group.
Let’s welcome those who follow the rules with open arms, and applaud their courage. Who among us would leave behind everything we had known for a new life in another nation? Only the bravest. Yet, to a cabal of idiots out to prove a point, America is just a flawed concept that cannot be redeemed, and the country we have today was stolen from the people already here, starting when Columbus stepped off the Santa Maria. It is a severely distorted, one-sided view of history peddled by those who call Monday “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”
Immigrants have made the United States a stronger, richer, healthier and better place. To honor them on Columbus Day is to keep alive the idea of America as a “shining city on a hill” beckoning to all who seek a better life. Use the holiday to honor them and their courage in seeking a better life, if not for themselves, then for their children and grandchildren.
Dear Mr. President and Director Navarro,
We write in support of the Administration prioritizing incentives for onshoring certain manufacturing, including pharmaceutical products and ingredients. As you well know, about 72 percent of pharmaceutical ingredients supplying the United States are not manufactured here. That is an alarming percentage, especially considering we are fighting a global pandemic.
For decades, American manufacturing has been disincentivized and pushed overseas. The Trump administration pledged to bring the supply chain and everything that it entails, including jobs and security, back to the United States. That is why President Trump made the tactical move to invoke the Defense Production Act, typically a wartime move, to bring the pharmaceutical supply chain home.
One tangible step the Administration has taken to secure our drug supply chain is early approval of a loan to Eastman Kodak to manufacture key pharmaceutical ingredients in Upstate New York. This move included some controversy, after some alleged that Kodak executives made improper stock transactions in advance of the loan announcement. But now that an internal investigation has cleared the company of wrongdoing, it is imperative that we stay the course and bring pharmaceutical manufacturing home from places like China, that are often at odds with American national security.
The Trump administration should be encouraging any capable American company to move its manufacturing back to the United States. Making America a compelling place to do business and also having robust trade relations with nations of goodwill is smart, but policies must change, and American companies must be incentivized and encouraged to take that step. The Trump administration has the opportunity to revamp American manufacturing – I hope you both follow through.
Thank you for your thoughtful consideration.
Sincerely,
George C. Landrith
President and CEO
Frontiers of Freedom
James L. Martin
Founder/Chairman
60 Plus Association
Judson Phillips
Founder
Tea Party Nation
Richard Manning
President
Americans for Limited Government
Andrew Langer
President
Institute for Liberty
Seton Motley
President
Less Government
Chuck Muth
President
Counsel on Government Relations
Rick Trader
Founder, Producer & Co-host
Conservative Commandos Radio Show
Saulius “Saul” Anuzis
President
60 Plus Association
John Cooper
President
Defending America Foundation
Susan Taylor
President
Strengthening America for All
Scott Johnson
President
The Last Best Hope on Earth Institute
Nicholas Willis
President
Americans for Liberty & Security
Martha Boneta
President
Vote America First
Kerri (Houston) Toloczko
President
Tacita Strategies
By • American Action News
In its first-of-its-kind “whole-of-DHS” Homeland Threat Assessment (HTA) report, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) provides a comprehensive look at the major domestic threats to the American homeland. Among them, it cites: Cyber, Foreign Influence Activity, Economic Security, Terrorism, Transnational Criminal Organization, Illegal Immigration, and Natural Disasters.
Unfortunately, the majority of media has only focused on one subset of one of those threat categories – White Supremacists. Right-wing extremism is a serious and growing danger, as highlighted today by the FBI’s arrest of several “militia members” for plotting to kidnap Michigan’s Governor.
However, the media ignores the DHS report’s concerns that this threat is also being exacerbated and fuelled by the violent racial chaos incited by the radical Left.
By exclusively and selectively highlighting one clause, in one line, in the 25-page report, the media made it appear this was the only threat in the entire report. Instead, it is only one part of a large range of domestic threats the report covers. More importantly, the media totally ignores DHS report’s concern over how recent anti-police and racial rioting may fuel and provide cover for violence in these other groups.
In context, the report states that “Ideologically motivated lone offenders and small groups pose the most likely terrorist threat to the Homeland, with Domestic Violent Extremists presenting the most persistent and lethal threat.”
It then goes on to note that, “Among DVEs [Domestic Violent Extremists], racially and ethnically motivated violent extremists—specifically white supremacist extremists (WSEs)—will remain the most persistent and lethal threat in the Homeland.”
The HTA continues by saying, “Spikes in other DVE threats probably will depend on political or social issues that often mobilize other ideological actors to violence, such as immigration, environmental, and police-related policy issues.”
This means that domestic extremists other than White Supremacists – such as Leftist environmental or pro-immigrant and anti-police extremists, could pose a greater threat, depending on circumstances.
To support its assessment on WSEs, DHS focuses on life-threatening homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) attacks in the U.S. in 2018 and 2019 – a fairly limited timeframe and crime definition. Excluded from this are violent, yet, not immediately “life-threatening” incidents such as riots.
Of these past two years, the report says, “2019 was the most lethal year for domestic violent extremism in the United States since the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995.” According to the DHS data, Violent Extremists conducted 16 attacks, killing 48 people. Of those, “WSEs conducted half of all lethal attacks (8 of 16), resulting in the majority of deaths (39 of 48).”
While all killings are tragic, these numbers are far less dramatic considering that over 500 people have been murdered on the streets of Chicago so far this year.
Still, the threat is real, and should not be ignored.
What should also not be ignored are the next bullets in the report about how “Other racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists [other than White Supremacists] could seek to exploit concerns about social injustice issues to incite violence and exploit otherwise peaceful protests movements.”
This appears to refer to how the current wave of violent, unchecked Leftist BLM/Antifa racial and anti-police protests and riots are encouraging and inciting others to violence as well, while also being pushed by foreign state actors.
The HTA states:
ANOTHER MOTIVATING FORCE BEHIND DOMESTIC TERRORISM THAT ALSO POSES A THREAT TO THE HOMELAND IS ANTI-GOVERNMENT/ANTI-AUTHORITY VIOLENT EXTREMISM.
Yes, DHS rightly notes that a subgroup of American extremists, White Supremacists, pose a significant threat of lethal attacks in the U.S., but they are far from the only threat, as the media has portrayed.
Meanwhile, the media ignores DHS concerns about the significant role that current Leftist-incited chaos, rioting, and violence are playing in increasing all these threats.
The issue driving the populist revolt has disappeared in 2020
By • The Washington Free Beacon
It is a sign of the times that immigration has not been mentioned in three hours of debate between the presidential tickets. A review of the transcripts of both the presidential and vice-presidential encounters finds no questions asked nor answers proffered about an issue that until only recently defined much of our politics and distinguished our two parties. Needless to say, both moderators wanted to know where the candidates stand on climate change, which routinely drifts toward the bottom of any list of public priorities.
Why the omission? It is tempting to say that immigration did not come up because the elites who manage the presidential debates are uncomfortable with the topic, are worried that the issue favors Republican border hawks, and are more interested in subjects relevant to their cultural coterie. But it is also true that presidential debates tend to focus on current events and pressing challenges, and that immigration just does not seem as great a concern today as the coronavirus, the economy, race relations and civil unrest, and California brushfires.
The apparent irrelevance of immigration and border security to the election might also be attributed to the achievements of the Trump administration. But these achievements are partial, tenuous, and dependent on events and relationships and court decisions. And they are easily reversed. What should worry the president is that the somnolence on the border deprives him of the very issue that propelled his rise to power, and that drove the populist revolt against the Washington establishment whose offshoots included the Ron Paul candidacies, the Tea Party, and Republican victories in 2014 and 2016. Immigration is next only to the economy and to the courts as a place where the president can contrast his record and agenda with Biden’s and appeal to national solidarity and historical tradition. His parlous electoral status may be related to the fact that immigration is not much of a factor in this most unusual campaign.
There is no gainsaying immigration’s importance to the Trump presidency. It was immigration that triggered the grassroots rebellion against the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, and against congressional supporters of amnesty for illegal immigrants, culminating in Trump’s 2016 primary victory. Immigration became the touchstone of Trump’s campaign on day one and served as the cudgel by which he defeated Jeb Bush and other Republicans for whom the Bush-Obama approach to legalization was correct. The border wall was not only a rallying cry but also a symbol of how a Trump presidency would privilege American citizens above all else. And Trump fused immigration to economics, by opposing H-1B visas; to crime, by highlighting gang activity; and to national security, by enacting his travel ban against countries that sponsor terrorism.
When Kamala Harris offhandedly mentioned the travel ban during the vice-presidential debate, it almost seemed like an anachronism, so far removed are we from the world of January 2017. The coronavirus imposed its own sort of prohibition. It radically interrupted the mechanisms of globalization, including the flow of labor. Global air travel plunged, and so did apprehensions along the southwest border. The virus ushered in a condition of emergency, in which the Trump administration tightened visa and asylum procedures.
The pandemic accelerated an ongoing trend. The growth in the illegal immigrant population appears to have stopped abruptly during the 2008 global financial crisis and has trended slightly downward since. The composition of that population has also changed, from able-bodied men seeking work to women, children, and the impaired fleeing gangs and state collapse. Border crossers are less likely to be Mexican and more likely to be from Central America or Asia. The Trump administration’s wide-ranging actions, in particular its Migration Protection Protocols, further discouraged unauthorized entry. By 2019, according to the Brookings Institution, the net increase of immigrants in the U.S. population was at its lowest level in years. (And, it might be added, the best job market in half a century was producing income gains across the population.) There is every reason to expect that the combined effects of the pandemic, the lockdowns, and executive orders will keep the number of migrants low.
But for how long? Harris attacked Trump for his “Muslim ban,” but she did not say on stage what the Biden administration would do about it. For answers, one has to turn to the Biden-Harris campaign website. There, the Democrats write that they would “rescind the un-American travel and refugee bans, also referred to as ‘Muslim bans.'” They would “end Trump’s detrimental asylum policies,” including the Migrant Protection Protocols. They would reverse the public charge rule, which makes it harder for welfare beneficiaries to become permanent residents. They would halt construction of the border wall and “direct federal resources to smart border enforcement efforts, like investments in improving screening infrastructure at our ports of entry.” They would reinstate the DACA protections for illegal immigrants brought here as children, and for their parents. And Biden and Harris would “create a roadmap to citizenship,” not permanent legal residency, for the remaining millions of illegal immigrants “who register, are up-to-date on their taxes, and pass a background check.”
In short, a President Biden would return immigration policy to the status quo before Trump. With this difference: Biden, unlike Obama, would be dealing with a Democratic Party whose left wing has been radicalized and includes prominent officials who support such extreme measures as decriminalizing border crossing and abolishing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Senator Harris herself has called for “restructuring” ICE (and for abolishing private health insurance, banning fracking, and imposing universal background checks for gun purchases through administrative fiat). The leftward drift of the Democrats makes immigration politics more fraught, and more polarizing. Having learned nothing from the Trump phenomenon, Biden and Harris are eager to reinstate the exact policies that gave birth to it.ADVERTISING
The failure to control the border and to think politically, rather than economically, about immigration was part of a larger failure. Republican and Democratic elites neither recognized nor acknowledged that the globalized world of the 21st century, while beneficial to them, carried costs for large parts of the population far greater than they had assumed. It is therefore ironic that a pandemic originating in China, which America treated for too long as a “responsible stakeholder” rather than a revisionist great power, has overwhelmed practically every issue but the economy in the final month of the election.
If the Trump campaign fails to raise the question of immigration, the Democratic establishment that stands to gain from the public’s judgment of the president’s coronavirus response will happily ignore it. But they will not be able to avoid immigration forever. Or the furies it unleashes.
By • The Washington Free Beacon
A New Jersey postal worker was arrested Wednesday for dumping almost a hundred mail-in ballots into dumpsters in multiple towns.
The Justice Department charged Nicholas Beauchene, a 26-year-old mail carrier with “one count of delay, secretion, or detention of mail and one count of obstruction of mail” for discarding approximately 1,875 pieces of mail on his route. The discarded mail included “99 general election ballots” and was recovered from dumpsters in two different New Jersey townships.
Beauchene faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for delay of mail and six months in prison and a $5,000 fine for obstruction of mail. And with weeks left until Election Day, problems with mail-in ballots are flaring up in other parts of New Jersey and across the country, intensifying concerns about errors and fraud affecting results in November.
On Monday, almost 7,000 voters in Teaneck, N.J., received misprinted mail-in ballots that swapped their congressional district’s race for a neighboring one, rendering the ballots useless. Bergen County election officials are working to rectify the mistakes and say they will only count corrected ballots that will soon be sent out. They recommended voters shred the misprinted ballots.
These are just the latest problems in the Garden State regarding the efficacy and authenticity of mail-in voting, as elected leaders were charged with fraud in a special election in Paterson this summer. A judge eventually nullified the entire process, ruling that a new vote would take place in November.
New Jersey is also not the only state making news this week for its mishandling of mail-in ballots. Over the weekend in Virginia, mail collection boxes in three different localities were broken into. Virginia election officials announced the break-ins Monday.
“Six outdoor mail collection boxes were broken into sometime between Saturday afternoon and this morning,” Virginia officials said in a statement. “At this time, the United States Postal Service is investigating. Neither the Department nor USPS has any information about whether any election mail was contained in the boxes.”
Officials urged voters to contact USPS if they dropped mail into the boxes between Saturday afternoon and Monday morning.ADVERTISING
Mail-in ballots are also the subject of various legal battles around the country as Election Day nears.
The Nevada Republican Party asked federal law enforcement to investigate a Culinary Union chapter for illegally tampering with mailboxes while canvassing for Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Republicans are also challenging election officials in Minnesota and Michigan for saying they would allow ballots to be counted past Election Day even if they are not postmarked.
Joseph Biden is the Manchurian candidate
By • DrLarryOnline.com
In the 1962 movie, The Manchurian Candidate, the plot depicts a complicated plot by which the chosen candidate of the Communist enemy of the United States is to be elected President of the United States of America. This candidate will be compelled to execute every instruction of the Communists because he is the victim of numerous threats of blackmail and assassination by his controllers.
The publication of the 87 page document entitled “Hunter Biden, Burisma, and Corruption: The Impact on U.S. Government Policy and Related Concerns U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs U.S. Senate Committee on Finance Majority Staff Report” (See Hunter Biden, Burisma and Corruption) on September 23, 2020 indicates that Joseph Biden would find himself in the same position as The Manchurian Candidate.
While this report has been ignored by the press and therefore the entire electorate as a partisan attack on the Democratic nominee, the information it contains is too detailed and specific, including names, dates, connections, and even checks with exact amounts to the penny, to be written off as fictional. It is precisely the type of detailed accusation which has always been lacking in the Democrats’ “Russian conspiracy” accusations against President Trump.
So, what are these accusations? The report traces the history of Robert Hunter Biden’s association with literally dozens of foreign countries with the effect of controlling billions of dollars supplied by Ukrainian, Chinese and other foreign sources and personally receiving millions of dollars, which he shared with his Uncle James Biden (Joe’s brother) and James’ wife Sara.
The most famous of Hunter Biden’s deals was his appointment to the Board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company owned by a notorious oligarch named Mykola Zlochevsky. The only known asset the younger Biden seems to have brought to the energy company’s Board was his relationship with the sitting Vice President, who had just been given the responsibility of directing all U.S. Ukrainian policy.
Hunter’s vehicle for this deal was Rosemont Seneca Partners, a $2.4 billion private equity firm. The firm was owned by three partners, Biden, John Kerry’s stepson, Christopher Heinz, and Heinz’s college roommate, Devon Archer, who was the Managing Partner in the firm. Biden and Archer joined the Burisma Board and Heinz left the firm in 2015.
There are interesting facts surrounding this appointment. On April 14, 2014, Managing Partner of Rosemount Seneca Partners Archer met with Vice President Joe Biden. Five days later, Biden flew to the Ukraine. The Report continues,
“The day after (Biden’s) visit, on April 22, Archer joined the board of Burisma. Six days later, on April 28, British officials seized $23 million from the London bank accounts of Burisma’s owner, Mykola Zlochevsky. Fourteen days later, on May 12, Hunter Biden joined the Board of Burisma, and over the course of the next several years, Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were paid millions of dollars from a corrupt Ukrainian oligarch for their participation on the board.” (p. 3)
The rest of the story is even more complicated and appalling. But most of all, the connections of the Bidens with China are important. The actions of the former Vice President are well known to the public. The inter-connections between the Bidens and U.S actions are not well known. To quote again from the Report :
Conclusions
1.The USA is currently in a contest with Communist China which will determine the fate of the world for at least the rest of this century. Already the Chinese have obtained enough technological knowledge from America’s leading-edge companies to challenge us in what is becoming a new weapons race. Much of this technology transfer was facilitated by America’s foreign policy which was motivated by globalism and facilitated by digitalization.
2.We now have a new administration which is dedicated to reversing that posture and acknowledging the competition. How that competition avoids a war down the road is based on the potential of one of these countries so overwhelming the other that that nation withdraws from the contest. This is the strategy that won the last Cold War. Any softening of our intent at this stage will lead to certain defeat.
3.Giving control of the federal government to the Democrat Party, led by a man who is not only sympathetic to our enemy but is subject to blackmail and intimidation by that enemy is to commit national suicide.
4.The charges made by the Senate committees must be thoroughly investigated and appropriate actions taken. There is simply too much smoke for there not to be a fire.
If all this makes you unutterably saddened as an American, you are not alone.
