By • Newsweek
Former vice president Mike Pence announced Thursday the formation of Advancing American Freedom to promote “the pro-freedom policies of the last four years that created unprecedented prosperity at home and restored respect for America abroad.”
To lead the group, he’s chosen Dr. Paul Teller, a highly regarded former congressional staffer and member of his vice-presidential staff. Teller’s policy chops and conservative contacts are hard to match. Pence has also attracted other conservative heavyweights—like former Heritage Foundation presidents Dr. Ed Feulner and Kay Coles James, Arizona governor Doug Ducey, Ambassador Calista and former House speaker Newt Gingrich, former senior Trump advisers Larry Kudlow and Kellyanne Conway and important organizational leaders like Lisa Nelson, Penny Nance and Marjorie Dannenfelser—to serve on AAF’s advisory board.
If you think this looks like a presidential campaign in all but name, you’re not wrong. Pence says he wants AAF to blend “traditional conservative values with the Make America Great Again policy agenda that propelled the nation to new economic heights, and unprecedented strength and prosperity.” That’s a fancy way of saying “take the best of Trump, jettison the baggage and create an agenda the American people—especially the formerly reliable Republican suburban voters who helped put Joe Biden in office—can embrace.”
It’s a smart formula that relies on addition and multiplication, not subtraction and division. As GOP political consultant Roger Stone used to advise, anything a campaign does that isn’t focused on growing its share of the vote is a waste of time.
The question is whether Pence can pull it off. As a House member, he was a GOP star, perhaps in line to be speaker someday. As Indiana’s governor he was a solid, if not exactly inspiring, chief executive who on the ideas front could never quite outshine his immediate predecessor, Republican Mitch Daniels—who is now president of Purdue University.
Pence has a chance to shine now, to step into the spotlight and show America what he’d do and how he’d inspire voters to embrace conservatism redefined. He could bring back the sunny optimism and hope that defined Reaganism—strong and not defensive but also not obnoxious.
On paper that sounds easy. In real life, it will be hard. The media elite already have their guns out for Biden’s potential 2024 challengers. Look at the hatchet job CBS‘s 60 Minutes just tried to do on Florida GOP governor Ron DeSantis, another possible presidential candidate, by alleging that in exchange for campaign contributions he let the Publix supermarket chain dispense the COVID-19 vaccine. The story landed with a thud—but it’s likely just the first of many drive-bys the media will try.
Let’s face it; the elite media helped put Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in office and have a vested interest in seeing them stay there. That means the knives are out for Pence, DeSantis, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo and any other Republican who wants the nomination. This will make it especially tough for the former vice president as The New York Times, CNN and others try to tie him to the former president.
The challenges Pence faces on his way to the White House are threefold. First, he must separate himself from Trump enough to allow the Never-Trumpers to consider voting for him while not alienating the MAGA movement. Second, he has to come up with a bold agenda for growth and reform that will get the country moving again to counter what the Democrats offer during Biden’s term. Third, Trump has to decide not to run.
Since the third point is out of his control, Pence would do best to concentrate on the other two. The team he’s assembled so far represents a top-tier mix of MAGA conservatives and Reaganites, meaning that when he runs, Pence will be a force to be reckoned with.
By • American Action News
In his inaugural address, President Joe Biden used the word “unity” 11 times to highlight his commitment to bringing the American people together. According to one new poll, it didn’t have much of an effect. His call for a new togetherness to fight what he called “common foes” including resentment, disease, hopelessness, anger, and lawlessness appears to have fallen on deaf ears.
Whatever Biden may have said, most voters, a Rasmussen Reports telephone and online survey of 1,000 likely U.S. voters “think the country has become more divided since Election Day.”
According to the poll, fewer than 1 out of every 5 are “very confident” Mr. Biden will be able to bring Americans together. A majority of those answering the survey – 56 percent – said divisions have increased since the November 2020 election while just 16 percent said they thought the country was “more united.”
Personally, Mr. Biden is doing better than his calls for national healing. His job approval, based on the averaging of six different national polls, stood at 56 percent – not exactly at traditional “Honeymoon” levels but higher than his immediate predecessor was ever able to achieve.
One way in which Mr. Biden himself may have exacerbated existing divisions has been through his aggressive use of executive orders to repeal or make changes to policies enacted during the presidency of Donald J. Trump.
While most of his predecessors – Republicans and Democrats – used this power sparingly during their initial days in office, Mr. Biden has been on something of a tear, issuing nearly two score and counting in his first weeks on the job. One of them, which rescinds the permitting for the Keystone XL pipeline at an estimated cost of more than 10,000 union jobs, has further inflamed the blue vs. green split in the Democratic Party between industrial workers and environmental activists.
The data indicates Mr. Biden has a tough needle to thread moving forward. The coalition that elected him is held together by very thin wire despite his having won a record-shattering 80 million-plus votes in the last election. Without Mr. Trump to keep progressives and Democrats united against a common enemy, the new president’s need to satisfy the demands of the people who put him in office will repeatedly come into conflict over the remainder of his term.
The Rasmussen Reports survey was conducted after Biden’s inauguration on January 25-26, 2021. The data has a reported sampling error of +/- 3 percentage points at a 95 percent confidence level.
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.
Column: What's behind the Democrats' power play
Democrats are rushing into impeachment despite the knowledge that, given what we know now, the Senate will not remove Donald Trump from office. Why is Nancy Pelosi doing this?
Because she has resigned herself to the argument that impeaching Trump is the way for Democrats to win the presidency and Senate 13 months from now. Pelosi’s bank shot isn’t aimed at Trump’s conviction on the Hill. It’s aimed at his loss at the polls.
American University professor Allan Lichtman best expressed the political logic in a recent op-ed. His “13 keys” model, along with most quantitative forecasts, currently favors Trump’s reelection. Lichtman says impeachment would change that by tarnishing the incumbent with scandal. The facts of the case, and whether the Senate convicts, do not matter.
Impeachment alone would not doom Trump according to Lichtman’s model. What it might do is trigger additional events that would help Democrats. The cumulative effect would be a Republican loss.
The conventional wisdom that impeachment backfired on the Republicans in 1998 has been overturned. Yes, the argument goes, the GOP gave up some House seats. That did not stop them from winning the presidency and both chambers of Congress two years later. Impeachment contributed to “Clinton fatigue.” It boosted the chances of a candidate who promised to restore dignity to the White House. The same could happen in 2020.
Advocates of impeachment say the inquiry, whether an official “proceeding” or not, might damage Trump’s approval rating to such an extent that he will draw forth a significant primary challenger, a third-party candidacy, or both. Nor is political tumult and uncertainty helpful for a global economy roiled by trade war and lack of investment. Recession would make Trump’s downfall even more likely.
If impeachment comes to a vote in the House, Democrats representing Trump districts will be risking their political futures. Pelosi seems willing to take that risk. She knows this knife cuts both ways.
Mitch McConnell says that if the House votes to impeach, the Senate will hold a trial. It won’t just be Democrats Doug Jones (who is in cycle) and Joe Manchin, Jon Tester, and Kyrsten Sinema (who are not) in awkward positions. So will Republicans Susan Collins, Martha McSally, Cory Gardner, and Thom Tillis, all up for reelection. Democratic victory in the Senate is critical for progressives. McConnell is Horatius standing between Elizabeth Warren and structural reform of the Senate, the judiciary, and the U.S. economy.
Pelosi has fixed impeachment on the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky for three reasons. The scandal fits on a television chyron: “Trump pressured Ukraine for dirt on Biden.” The process can be run through her ally Adam Schiff’s Intelligence Committee rather than through the obstreperous Jerry Nadler’s Judiciary. And the national security connection provides cover for the seven moderate freshmen with backgrounds in defense and intelligence agencies.
What makes Ukraine different from the Russia investigation is the simplicity of the alleged wrongdoing. Everyone can read the transcript of the Trump-Zelensky phone call and decide whether its contents warrant impeachment and removal from office in an election year. The Democrats need to move quickly, however, and maintain focus. Otherwise they risk losing the plot.
Speed is essential if Ukraine is to avoid the fate of other supposedly Trump-destroying scandals that collapsed from either a dearth of outrage or internal contradictions. Stormy, Avenatti, Omarosa, Scaramucci, Cohen have all gone the way of the dodo. The Russia investigation was too confusing, its results too murky, its special counsel too confused to end or cause lasting damage to Trump.
For Ukraine to be different, the Democrats must uncover evidence that will convince independents and some Republicans the president abused his office. That hasn’t happened yet. Already there are signs of overreach: the attempt to rope in William Barr and Mike Pompeo, tenuous arguments that the Zelensky call somehow broke the law, and calls for canceling Rudy Giuliani’s media appearances and for shutting down the president’s Twitter feed. Pelosi is moving quickly under the assumption that the longer the process takes, the more opportunities Trump will have to wriggle out of this vise, and the more Democrats will become distracted and dissolute.
“How can I lose?” asked Paul Newman’s character Fast Eddie in The Hustler. Pelosi might ask the same question as she enters her own high-stakes tournament. Eddie thought he had a pretty good bank shot, too.
Average retirement account would lose $20,000 to tax
A financial transaction tax, though popular with 2020 Democrats, would raise little revenue and substantially shrink the U.S. economy, a recently released report concludes.
A transaction tax takes a percentage from financial trades, such as the sale or purchase of stocks, bonds, or derivatives. The United States levies an extremely small charge on each transaction to fund the Securities and Exchange Commission. A number of Democrats would like to bring a full-fledged financial transaction tax (FTT) back for the first time since 1965.
The idea’s most vocal proponent is presidential contender Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) who has introduced a plan to charge a 0.5 percent fee on financial transactions. Sanders has made the tax “on Wall Street” a central revenue source to pay for his exorbitant spending proposals.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) introduced her own FTT proposal in 2015, Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) wants one to pay for expanding Medicare, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg has also said that he is “interested in” implementing an FTT. Congressional Democrats have supported the idea outside of the campaign trail. Sen. Brian Schatz (D., Hawaii) has his own0.1 percent proposed FTT — the bill has more than 200 co-sponsors in the House, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.).
These Democrats and others cite several justifications for an FTT. The tax is aimed at “Wall Street,” a preferred target of populist liberals—at least in principle, that means it also falls more heavily on those who hold a lot of wealth in investments. Additionally, such a tax would impose major restrictions on so-called high-frequency trading, which involves computer-run trades at fractions of a penny—profits that could be wiped out by the tax.
“This Wall Street speculation fee, also known as a financial transaction tax, will raise substantial revenue from wealthy investors that can be used to make public colleges and universities tuition free and substantially reduce student debt,” a brief from Sanders’s office reads. “It will also reduce speculation and high-frequency trading that is destabilizing financial markets. During the financial crisis, Wall Street received the largest taxpayer bailout in the history of the world. Now it is Wall Street’s turn to rebuild the disappearing middle class.”
The scope of the tax, however, would extend beyond the confines of Manhattan, according to a report from the Center for Capital Market Competitiveness, an affiliate of the Chamber of Commerce. The report argues that FTTs shrink the economy and hurt every-day Americans, not just Wall Street fat cats.
“Main Street will pay for the tax, not Wall Street,” the report argues. “The real burden [of an FTT] will be on ordinary investors, such as retirees, pension holders, and those saving for college.”
Much like a sales tax, the costs of a financial transaction tax would be passed on to consumers, who would pay more for each trade. Taxing transactions does not just drive up costs for the ultra-wealthy, but the 6 in 10 American households that own some kind of investment. Increased costs would have substantial effects on American savings. Under the Sanders plan, for example, the report estimates that a typical retirement investor will end up losing about $20,000 on average from his IRA.
These direct effects are arguably less significant than the overall effect that an FTT would have on the financial side of the economy. As multiple Democrats have acknowledged, the goal of an FTT would be to crack down on complicated financial instruments, such as high-frequency trades, to reduce what they perceive as dangerous market instability.
These instruments mostly serve vital functions greasing the wheels of the economy, according to the center’s report. An FTT would erase the razor-thin margins on which market makers operate, and severely constrain other forms of arbitrage. They would also reduce the use of vital risk-management tools, like many derivatives and futures contracts.
An FTT, the report argues, would thus serve to substantially slow the economy. Trade volume would fall; consumer good prices would rise; municipal bonds would generate less revenue for infrastructure; the cost of credit would increase, making mortgages more expensive—in turn exacerbating the homelessness crisis, depressing young home-ownership, and reducing family formation.
Obviously, each of these effects may not be massive—the U.S. economy grew substantially even during the 50-year period when we had an FTT. But, the new report argues, the experience of other nations indicates that the costs to the economy would substantially outweigh any benefit.
For example, they cite an economic analysis of a proposed 0.1 percent transaction tax in the EU—the authors found that “such a tax would lower GDP by 1.76 percent while raising revenue of only 0.08% percent of GDP.” Sweden’s 1 percent FTT caused a 5.3 percent drop in the Swedish market—meaning a 0.5 percent FTT, as Sanders proposes, would analogously cut nearly $800 billion from U.S. market capitalization. The evidence runs the other way, too: In the year following the repeal of the U.S. transaction tax, New York Stock Exchange trade volume increased by 33 percent.
All of this is why many countries—including Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Portugal, Italy, Denmark, Japan, Austria, and France—have eliminated such transaction taxes.
“Bad ideas have a habit of coming around again. The U.S., like many other nations, experimented with an FTT and wisely got rid of it. Yet each generation seems to be tempted by the false promise of a painless revenue stream,” the report said. “It would be wise to pay attention to the wisdom of experience and again avoid this false temptation. After all, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
By • Newsweek
By now a lot of professional Democrats—campaign consultants, party leaders and the like—are probably wishing they’d never heard the term “big, blue wave.” It set expectations so high for the next election that almost any outcome short of a total rout of the GOP will go into the record books as a disappointment.
If the parties fight to a draw—GOP ends up in control on both sides of the Capitol with a diminished majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and better numbers than it currently enjoys in the U.S. Senate, and the number of Republican governors and GOP-led state legislative chambers does not change appreciably (which is how things would probably turn out were the election held today)—then the Democrats will have been seen to have suffered a major defeat.
Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and other leading Democrats had hoped to nationalize the election by making it a referendum on President Donald Trump’s first two years in office. They may still get the opportunity to do that—Trump, as the events on the U.S. border with Mexico reminds us, is often his own worst enemy. Nevertheless, most of the news is good as the economy has roared back to life and Continue reading
by Michael Bastasch • Daily Caller
Sen. Tim Kaine conveniently left out Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s ties to a Russian state-owned energy company when attacking his Republican opponent at Tuesday night’s debate.
“It is clear he has business dealings with Russia and is very connected to Putin,” Kaine said of Republican nominee Donald Trump’s business dealings, according to the debate transcript. “The Trump campaign management team had to be fired a month or so ago because of those shadowy connections.”
Kaine repeatedly attacked Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Mike Pence for calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “better leader than president Obama.” Continue reading
Enthusiasm, Ground game, Undecideds, Indicators, Issues
by Fred Barnes
November 5, 2012
Mitt Romney will win. The tie in the polls goes to the challenger. Here’s why:
Enthusiasm. It matters enormously, and it’s disproportionately on the Republican side, in good measure because of an intense desire to defeat President Obama. True, enthusiasm doesn’t guarantee an edge in turnout, but it’s certainly a key indicator. “In these final days, turnout is driven by intensity,” says Republican pollster Ed Goeas. The nearly half the electorate that strongly disapproves of Obama’s performance in office “will need little else other than the opportunity to vote against President Obama to motivate them to go to their polling place.” Goeas conducts the bipartisan Battleground Poll along with Democrat Celinda Lake. Continue reading