By • Frontiers of Freedom
Ukraine, the geopolitical plaything de jour of Europe, held its latest presidential elections on March 31, 2019, and April 21, 2019, respectively. In the first round, 62.8% of the eligible voters cast their ballots. The challenger, Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenski, won the first round with 30.24% of the votes. His opponent, President Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko, garnered 15.9% of the votes. In the second round, 61.37% of the eligible voters participated. Zelenski received 73.23%, while Poroshenko ended up with 24.46% of the votes.
By • Red State
If there was any doubt that SpaceX is working behind the curtain to pull strings on Capitol Hill, it’s all but been erased. The sudden groundswell of support in Washington for SpaceX’s policy objectives essentially confirms the effectiveness of Elon Musk’s lobbying campaign. But through the company’s recent political maneuver—purportedly calling in a favor from House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith—SpaceX may have overplayed their hand. If Chairman Smith’s policy positions can be affected by the influence of private firms, is he properly situated as the head of oversight for the Armed Forces?
Over the past few years, Chairman Smith’s cozy relationship with SpaceX has been well documented. In Smith’s 2016 election, SpaceX was the third largest contributor to his campaign, supplying the Representative with an impressive $11,000 in funds. But the gravy train didn’t stop there. The following election cycle, SpaceX stepped up its game, nearly doubling its prior campaign contributions to the soon-to-be Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Throughout the 2018 race, SpaceX contributed a whopping $20,400 to Smith’s campaign. That’s certainly no small fee for Musk’s independent aerospace contracting firm.
There’s solid evidence to suggest that SpaceX’s political expenditures are strategically placed. Out of all the recipients of SpaceX’s 2018 political contributions, Adam Smith ranked as the second-highest beneficiary. SpaceX’s contributions to the future Chairman of the Armed Services Committee were only outpaced by those to Senator Dianne Feinstein, which totaled Continue reading
By Conrad Black • National Review
The crisis of the Democrats is becoming more evident each week. Those of us who have been loudly predicting for years that the Russian-collusion argument would be exposed as a defamatory farce, and that the authors of it would eventually pay for it, are bemused at the fallback position of the Trump-haters: that the distinguished attorney general has whitewashed the president in his summary and his decision that there was no obstruction of justice. One of the most entertaining moments of news-watching in many years came last week, when former national intelligence director James Clapper said it was “scary” and former FBI director Comey said it was “bizarre” to hear Attorney General William Barr say that the Trump campaign had been spied on. It has been obvious for a long time that both these men and former CIA director John Brennan lied under oath on a number of occasions, and Comey’s complaint last week that “court-ordered surveillance” wasn’t spying is going to get a full assessment when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) warrants that were the court authorization in this case, and were obtained on the basis of false campaign smears assembled and paid for by the Clinton campaign, are judicially considered.
Given the proportions of the scam that has been perpetrated, the principal actors, including those just named, deserve commendation for the imperishability of their unctuousness. These people seem still to be oblivious to the fact that lying under oath and producing false FISA applications are serious offenses. And some of the congressional Democrats, such as Congressmen Nadler, Swallwill, and Schiff (the new-millennium version of “Martin, Barton, and Fish,” made infamous by FDR in 1940), seem to think they have a perfect constitutional right to keep the president in the pillory of their spurious investigations indefinitely. The whole edifice of the Trump moral crisis is coming down in shards around the ears of the Clinton and Obama Democrats.
By Christopher Jacobs • The Federalist
Unless you’re a procrastinator, tax filing season officially ended Monday. That milestone means a likely reprise of the political battles from earlier this year about tax refunds and the effects of the Republican Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
Early in the filing season, Democrats argued that smaller refunds for filers demonstrated the legislation’s ineffectiveness. (As of March 29, the Internal Revenue Service has processed $6 billion less in refunds than during last year’s filing season.) Republicans counter that, under the new law, most individuals will have smaller tax liabilities overall, meaning that individuals receiving smaller refunds this spring benefited from fatter paychecks throughout 2018.
By and large, Republicans have the better argument. Even the liberal Tax Policy Center concedes that most households will benefit from the tax legislation. Under their estimates, more than four in five tax filing units (80.4 percent) received a net tax cut, with fewer than one in twenty (4.8 percent) paying a net tax increase. (About 15 percent of households won’t see a major change, one way or the other.) As a result, most families with smaller refunds received larger net pay during the year, due to smaller tax withholding in their paychecks every month.
But the political back-and-forth misses the bigger point: Continue reading
By Harris Alic • Washington Free Beacon
Small business owners are pushing back against Democratic mischaracterizations of President Donald Trump’s signature Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
More than a year after the legislation went into effect—slashing personal and corporate tax rates across the board—the focus has shifted from worker bonuses and wage increases to shrinking tax refunds. The latter, resulting from a decrease in the level of taxes paid throughout the year and changes to the Internal Revenue Service’s withholding formula, has increasingly become fodder for Democrats eager to portray the cuts as a “scam” to benefit the wealthy.
In reality, the issue is more complicated, as Alfredo Ortiz, the president of the Jobs Creator Network (JCN), told the Washington Free Beacon. Ortiz’s group, which represents a diverse coalition of small businesses and bills itself “as the voice of Main Street,” has been working to educate voters on the benefits of the tax cuts ahead of the April 15 IRS filing deadline. JCN believes that if Democrats are allowed to win the debate over tax refunds, it will make it easier for the party to eventually push for a full repeal of the Trump tax cuts at a later date.
By Warren Henry • The Federalist
After almost two weeks of critical media coverage of Joe Biden’s handsy history, poll after poll indicates most Democrats do not care. The latest Quinnipiac poll—of California, no less—has the yet-to-announce Biden easily leading Bernie Sanders and favorite daughter Kamala Harris. This poll also has Harris performing better among white liberals than nonwhite voters.
These findings are mostly news to the progressive elites at the top of Democratic politics and the establishment media. The data suggesting the Democratic Party is an upstairs/downstairs coalition in which a small faction of disproportionately white progressives dominate a more diverse rank-and-file has been piling up in studies by More in Common, Pew, and Gallup. In recent days, some in the media have finally begun to notice.
At The New York Times, resident propellerheads Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy find that “[t]oday’s Democratic Party is increasingly perceived as dominated by its ‘woke’ left wing. But the views of Democrats on social media often bear little resemblance to those of the wider Democratic electorate.” They add: “The outspoken group of Democratic-leaning voters on social media is outnumbered, roughly 2 to 1, by the more moderate, more diverse and less educated group of Democrats who typically don’t post political content online.”
Cohn and Quealy report that approximately a quarter of Democrats are progressive ideologues; only a tenth might identify as democratic socialists. “The rest of the party is easy to miss,” they write. “Not only is it less active on social media, but it is also under-represented in the well-educated, urban enclaves where journalists roam.” Continue reading
By Christopher Jacobs • The Federalist
In talking about his single-payer bill, which he reintroduced in the Senate on Wednesday, Sen. Bernie Sanders often claims that “I want to end the international embarrassment of the United States of America being the only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people as a right and not a privilege.”
But his legislation would do no such thing. Understanding why demonstrates the inherent drawbacks of his government-centered approach to health policy.
Section 201(a) illustrates the catch in Sanders’ bill, and his philosophy. That section states that “individuals enrolled for benefits under this Act are entitled to have payment made…to an eligible provider” for a list of covered services. Note the wording: Sanders’ bill doesn’t guarantee access to care. Instead, it merely guarantees that people will have their care covered—if they can access it. But in government-run systems, finding access to care often proves no easy feat.
In our own country, low reimbursement rates in many state Medicaid programs can make finding doctors difficult. One 2011 study found that two-thirds of specialist physicians would not accept Medicaid patients, whereas only 11 percent of patients with Continue reading
By Newt Gingrich • Fox News
The collusion lie will go down in history as one of the strangest distortions of reality to dominate the American political scene. For more than two years, the national establishment and news media were fixated on a “truth” that turned out to be false.
In some ways, this national psychosis is reminiscent of the popular madness that would run through medieval societies from time to time. Think of the flagellants going from city to city beating themselves to exorcise their sins. Think of the madness that surrounded Friar Girolamo Savonarola when he ruled Florence from 1494 to 1498.
In our own country, think of the hysteria of the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692 and 1693, when more than 200 people were accused of witchcraft. Fourteen women and five men were found guilty and hanged. A sixth man was pressed to death with stones.
On Oct. 30, 1938, Orson Welles terrified millions of Americans with Continue reading
By Eric Boehm • Reason
Given the choice of no longer paying to support unions they didn’t want to join in the first place, lots of public sector workers took it.
Two of the largest public sector unions in the country lost more than 210,000 so-called “agency fee members” in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court ruling that said unions could no longer force non-members to pay partial dues. That case, Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, effectively freed public workers from having to make “fair share” payments—usually totaling about 70 to 80 percent of full union dues—in lieu of joining a union as a full-fledged member.
Now, annual reports filed with the federal Department of Labor show that the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) lost 98 percent of it’s agency fee-paying members during the past year. Another large public sector union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), lost 94 percent of their agency fee-paying members.
Even though unions were preparing for a mass exodus in the wake of the Janus ruling, the numbers are staggering. In 2017, AFSCME reported having Continue reading
By the Editors • National Review
In the past two weeks, two different airports have blocked Chick-fil-A from the premises. First, the city council of San Antonio banned the chain because, in the words of councilman Robert Trevino, “everyone should feel welcome when they walk through our airport.” Then, two weeks later, a New York Democratic assemblyman, Sean Ryan, announced that the Buffalo airport food vendor was prohibiting Chick-fil-A from operating in its food court. Ryan was explicit about the reason, declaring in a statement that “the views of Chick-fil-A do not represent our state or the Western New York community.”
The immediate justification for the bans was a ThinkProgress allegation that the Chick-fil-A foundation supported “groups with a record of anti-LGBTQ” discrimination.” ThinkProgress was resurrecting a 2012 controversy over Chick-fil-A contributions to an affiliated foundation that gave grants to conservative Christian groups, including groups that opposed same-sex marriage, and over comments by Chick-fil-A president Dan Cathy supporting the traditional, biblical definition of marriage. There was no allegation that Chick-fil-A discriminated against gay customers or gay employees.
In 2012, a wave of Democratic city officials, including the mayors of Boston and San Francisco, threatened to block Chick-fil-A from opening restaurants in their cities, and Chick-fil-A’s customers responded with Continue reading
By • Real Clear Energy
While cold weather, as a new AAA study reveals, can reduce the range of electric vehicles by roughly 40 percent, the prospect of being frozen out of its windfall from Washington kicked the industry’s lobbying team into overdrive this winter.
For more than a decade, you, the American taxpayer, have been responsible for funding that windfall through a federal tax credit of up to $7,500 for every luxury electric car sold in the country. Currently capped at 200,000 units per manufacturer, electric vehicle buyers were the beneficiaries of $4.7 billion between 2011 and 2017; absent a repeal, the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) projects that figure to total $7.5 billion between FY2018 and FY2022 alone. The Manhattan Institute, meanwhile, estimates that the elimination of electric car subsidies could save taxpayers $20 billion.
Only compounding the ever-growing cost to the American people, NERA Economic Consulting’s September study determined that in the No Cap Limit scenario sought by lobbyists for titans like Tesla and General Motors – both of whom have already hit the aforementioned 200,000 per-manufacturer threshold – “total personal income of all U.S. households decreases by $7 billion in 2020 and $12 billion in 2035” on top off “higher total electricity costs” for ratepayers. Overall, NERA concludes that between 2020 and 2035, the net present value reduction in personal income of all U.S. households would swell to a staggering $95 billion. Continue reading
By John McCormack • National Review
In Tuesday’s Wisconsin supreme-court election, conservatives appear to have scored a shocking upset victory. With only a handful of precincts left to report, conservative-backed Brian Hagedorn leads liberal-backed Lisa Neubauer by nearly 6,000 votes out of 1.2 million cast, according to unofficial results.
The liberal Neubauer called for a recount, which a losing candidate may do — if she pays for it herself — when the margin is less than one percentage point. (Taxpayers pick up the tab at margins less than 0.25 points.) But a lead of 6,000 votes would almost certainly be insurmountable in a recount, assuming there were no unusually large tabulation errors Tuesday night, as there was in a 2011 supreme-court election in the state.
Hagedorn’s likely victory comes as a surprise to many. There wasn’t any public polling, but one Republican GOP operative in Wisconsin tells National Review that private polling in the closing weeks showed Hagedorn trailing by mid-to-high single digits. Continue reading
By Dan McLaughlin • National Review
The latest enthusiasm from progressive pundits and activists for replacing the American system of self-government is to abolish the Electoral College and choose presidents by national popular vote. As with all such enthusiasms — expanding the Supreme Court, abolishing the filibuster and the Senate itself, lowering the voting age to 16, letting convicted felons and illegal aliens vote, adding D.C. and Puerto Rico as states, automatic voter registration, abolishing voter ID, etc. — the scarcely concealed argument is that changing the rules will help Democrats and progressives win more.
Also as with all such enthusiasms, Democratic presidential contenders have been unable to resist its siren song. Multiple prominent Democratic senators, including Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.), Minority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.), and Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, are introducing a proposal this week in the Senate to make it happen, the second such proposal by Senate Democrats this month. As radical an idea as this is, its support in high places demands to be taken seriously.
The Electoral College has been with us since the Founding, and in its present form since the election of 1804. Some of the reasons for its creation may be obsolete now, and the original concept of the electors themselves as important actors in the presidential selection process has long since left us. But the fundamental system of electing presidents by 50 simultaneous statewide elections (plus D.C.) rather than a raw national popular vote has long served America well. It isn’t going anywhere, and it shouldn’t.
Uniting the States of America
What would American politics look like without the Electoral College? Changing our current system would unsettle so many of the assumptions and incentives that drive presidential politics that the outcomes could easily be unpredictable. But first, consider the immediate changes. Continue reading
By Kevin Cochrane • Washington Times
“Democratic Socialism,” preached by Sen. Bernie Sanders and others, seems like a pretty good dream. The problem is, it is just that — a dream.
Imagine a nation where higher education is free for everyone and nobody pays a dime for superior health care. Of course, the money has to come from somewhere, so you also have to imagine having blinding high income taxes and even a confiscatory wealth tax on people that own nice things — or at least things that are nicer than what others have.
Before looking at the financial details (something most supporters are loathe to do), let’s have a peek at the hypocrisy behind the plan. Who really wants free college and free health care? Obviously, if they were truly free we’d all want them, but, we know they aren’t free and somebody has to pay the bill. But, nobody likes paying bills, so who really wants this free largess?
When it comes to free higher education the answer is pretty easy even if you don’t have a college degree. A recent Bankrate poll found free higher education was supported by 77 percent of people under the age of 30. No big surprise there — college students want free college. But what about free universal health care? In this case I’d expect support from the opposite age demographic, but it turns out again that it’s the young and healthy that also want Continue reading
By Charles Hurt • Washington Times
The job of newspapers was once to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Today, that job seems to be to give voice to liars and shout down the truth.
You really cannot blame Democrat voters in America for fleeing in droves the fetid airwaves of MSNBC and CNN, which have suffered a collapse in ratings last week as viewers learned they have been steadily and spectacularly lied to for the past two years by the so-called “mainstream” media about the so-called Russian collusion “story.”
Examples abound of pundits and reporters from once-respected newspapers and cable “news” outlets leveling outlandish charges about this twisted fantasy of collusion between President Trump and the Kremlin. Equally alarming are the endless examples of these same “news” outlets airing and publishing outright lies told by politicians hellbent on destroying Mr. Trump.
It is a sad fact in our broken world: politicians lie. The whole point of the so-called “Fourth Estate” — that unofficial, quasi-fourth branch of government — is to Continue reading
