How can top Democrats run the economy with no business skill?

The market news today must be especially worrisome for the field of Democratic presidential candidates. The latest jobs report turned out much better than expected, with 266,000 additional payrolls created, propelling the Dow Jones Industrial Average to its strongest trading session in two months and marking the “best numbers of our lives.”

That, of course, will not stop the rhetoric from the candidates. For all of the talk of the Green New Deal, most of the focus of Democrats is not on the economic health of the middle class. To a certain extent, however, you cannot even blame them. Top tier candidates Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders have no point of reference on what makes the free market work. Moreover, none of the three can claim credit for creating a single private sector job in the last 50 years. Instead, they are ignorant of the processes that create job growth. Our economy is at full employment for the first time in two full decades. Why would the nation jeopardize this for candidates who have close to zero experience in the free market?

Despite platitudes about being “Middle Class Joe,” Biden has never had business leadership. Perhaps the closest thing he holds in private sector experience was his time as a teenage lifeguard, fending off gang leaders named “Corn Pop.” Biden spent a few years working as an attorney before getting elected to the Senate back in 1973. His time as a senator and vice president spanned more than 40 years. While he often touted his poverty relative to many of his political colleagues, Biden owes his current wealth to his time in office, notwithstanding the business schemes of his son.

Warren also has scarce private sector experience, limited to waiting a few tables and some legal work. The senator promises trillion dollar programs like “Medicare for All” and universal free college, which would likely raise taxes on working people and cripple the economy. Indeed, her proposals would translate into a “100 percent recession,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared. Moreover, the language surrounding her government plan for “economic patriotism” is almost Orwellian in its falseness. But I guess it is more understandable coming from someone worth $12 million writing missives from her comfortable $3 million mansion in Cambridge.

Even her first claim to fame, a coauthored 1989 treatise on middle class debt, was derided by Rutgers University professor Philip Shuchman as having serious errors and “repeated instances of scientific misconduct.” The closest thing to a private sector job that Warren could have created would have been an editor to create a revised version of the book, which she herself declined to pen. It remains eminently difficult for Warren to pitch a government plan for an economy that she misjudged for years.

Sanders certainly comes with the least experience in the real world. Never one to hold down a private sector job, he was kicked out of a commune for laziness in 1971. Even counting his time in public service, Sanders had never worked a full time job until he was almost 40 years old. Since then, he has made a career of telling others how to live their lives, serving four terms as the mayor Burlington then almost four decades in Congress.

As I have written before, federal taxpayers have financed Sanders to the tune of more than $4.5 million. The economic plans of the Democratic socialist include tax hikes on everyone making more than $29,000 a year and company owners compelled by the force of government to create worker cooperatives. Tax increases and government control will only destroy what has been built over the last three years. With 3.5 percent unemployment, why would voters choose to mess up what is working?

To these candidates, private money comes from public sector action, not the other way around. None of the factions of the Democrats has offered any proposals that would strengthen the economy, and their government plans would be to the detriment of workers. From Biden and his bridge to back toward a dire economy, to Warren and her grating corporatism, to Sanders and his refusal to admit the Soviet Union experiment did not work, each sorely lack the private sector experience to run the nation.

As we pull into Reaganesque economic good times, the worst thing that Americans can do now is to take the candidates at their own words and jeopardize the compelling job and wage growth. Main Streets across the nation prove that the free market works. Let us allow Democrats to either moderate their message or relegate their socialist ideas to the dustbin of history where they belong. Next time you are willing to discount their lack of business experience, just ask yourself, is it worth losing your job over?

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Lindsey Graham Promises Impeachment Will Die Quickly in Senate

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, made himself clear on Sunday during an interview with Maria Bartiromo on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“The whole process [against President Donald Trump] is illegitimate in the House,” said the senator.

“It’s not just the whistleblower. You don’t want to create a situation where an anonymous person can start impeachment proceedings against the president of the United States. You can’t get a parking ticket based on that anonymous allegation.”

“The hearings were held behind closed doors,” he continued. “The [House] Intel Committee gathered all the facts. The president’s lawyer was never allowed to participate. They asked to call witnesses in the [House] Judiciary Committee. They had one hearing in the committee with four law professors and [after that] [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi said, ‘We’re going to move forward with articles of impeachment.'”

“This is a joke of a process.” “It’s dangerous to the country,” added Graham.

He also said, “This is being driven by [Rep. Adam] Schiff [of California] and [Rep. Jerry] Nadler [of New Jersey], Pelosi — partisan people.”

“I think it’s going to meet a quick end in the Senate,” he also predicted.

Democrats appear to be eyeing a vote on articles of impeachment before Christmas, as The Hill noted — so the House Judiciary Committee “could move as soon as later next week” on sending those articles to the floor for consideration.

Bartiromo asked Graham that if the matter does wind up going a trial in the Senate, “Who are some of the people you are going to want to hear from?” She added, “And will the president get a fair trial? Are you going to demand that people like the whistleblower, Adam Schiff, Alexandra Chalupa [a former DNC contractor and staffer], Fusion GPS — are these some of the people or organizations you’re going to want to question?”

Graham said that there are “two ways to do this. In the trial you can have the president present a defense to prove, in fact, that maybe the [county of] Ukraine was interfering in our election. The Russians stole the emails, not the Ukraine — but there’s articles suggesting Ukrainian officials met with Democratic operatives in 2016.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” he went on, “but here’s what I’m going to do with the trial. I’m going to try to get this over as quickly as possible, listen to … the House case, let them present their case, and if there’s nothing new and dramatic, I would be ready to vote and we can do all this other stuff through congressional oversight.”

“So, are you saying you’re not going to have people come down and testify?” Bartiromo asked in a follow-up.

Graham replied, “I am saying that I’m going to end this as quickly as I can for the good of the country. When 51 of us say we’ve heard enough, the trial is going to end. The president’s going to be acquitted. He may want to call Schiff. He may want to call Hunter Biden. He may want to call Joe Biden. But here’s my advice to the president. If the Senate is ready to vote and ready to acquit you, you should celebrate that — and we can look at this other stuff outside of impeachment.”

“Impeachment is tearing the country apart. I don’t want to give it any more credibility than it deserves.”

Later on in the interview, Graham also said, “Because I’m not going to participate in things I think will destroy the country. I’m not going to call a bunch of House members to come to the Senate as part of oversight. Now, if you’re a House member and you participated, you’re not subject — you’re not above the law, but we’re not going to turn the Senate into a circus, and I would tell Schiff what you’re doing is very dangerous for separation of powers here.”

He added, “Adam Schiff is doing a lot of damage to the country and he needs to stop. Mueller spent two years and $25 million looking at Trump. This whole Ukrainian stuff is a joke. They got the money [meaning the military aid]. They got the meeting with the president. They didn’t investigate Joe Biden or Hunter Biden.”

“There is no ‘there’ there.”

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"Chevron deference" (deference to the bureaucracy) is a joke in the era of the swamp

Cleta Mitchell is an excellent attorney who has been retained by FreedomWorks organizations for nearly a decade. She makes an excellent argument for overturning “the Supreme Court’s 1984 decision in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. National Resources Defense Council, in which the court articulated a principle that federal agency decisions should receive deference in federal litigation because of the ‘expertise’ of the federal agency in matters involving the agency. Known popularly as Chevron deference, it presupposes that the agency and its employees are not only experts, but are philosophically neutral in the discharge of their duties.”

Cleta continues; “What we’ve seen during the Rep. Adam Schiff hearings is that ‘experts’ in federal agencies exhibit bias and political philosophies of their own. They are not neutral.”

Cleta knows from years of being involved with federal agencies that bureaucrats crave and cherish the compulsory powers of government: “It isn’t just that these people form the backbone of the resistance to President Trump. The reality is that no conservative, smaller government, pro-America president will ever be allowed success by these partisans who command and control the direction, actions, and decisions of the federal government.”

“If we learn nothing else from the impeachment inquiry, it should be abundantly clear that the federal workforce is a political party of its own, and does not deserve judicial deference of any kind.”

Most definitely, the Supreme Court should reconsider Chevron deference, and will hopefully reverse that decision.

Unfortunately, what Cleta has stated not only applies to State Department employees, but to all employees of federal agencies. Cleta opined that “the federal workforce is a political party of its own.” A more accurate assessment would be that the federal workforce is a major component of the Democratic party, and both the bureaucrats and the Democrats continuously promote more government. The federal government has more than four hundred agencies and nearly 2 million employees. The vast majority of the employees philosophically and politically support more government. In return the federal employees receive good salaries, job security, and excellent retirement and healthcare benefits.

The bureaucrats have a favorite saying when talking about their relationship with politicians: “We be here, when you be gone.” In other words, bureaucrats are safe, secure, and satisfied in their jobs; politicians are normally seeking higher political positions and power.

Then add all the multitude of state and local government employees with similar philosophies and perks, and you increase the power of the Democrats enormously. This is a major reason for more government regulations, incompetent management, and increasing government debt.

Cleta is absolutely correct. The Supreme Court must reverse the Chevron decision. And “We the People” need to reduce the size and power of the federal, state, and many local governments, which is much more difficult than convincing the Supreme Court.

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Good news about the media

While the Trump Economy is working great for most people, one industry hasn't been enjoying the boom: the media. According to Business Insider, the media industry is continuing to cut jobs this year.

The media industry continued to execute cuts in December and November as Gannett, Highsnobiety, and the CBC reduced headcounts. The cuts followed large rounds of layoffs earlier in the year from companies including BuzzFeed, Verizon, and Vice Media.

The massive cuts this year represent a recent trend in media that has seen upstart companies and newspapers alike shrinking and disappearing.

It's not just print media that's not feeling the love. Buzzfeed experienced layoffs this year. An attempt to relaunch Gawker failed. HuffPost laid off 13 in its video department. ThinkProgress shut down in September.

Even television media is experiencing a slow bleed. NBCUniversal laid off 70 employees in two rounds in August and September.

In September, NBCUniversal announced that it would be laying off 45 more employees from E!, Oxygen, Bravo, and other properties, according to MediaPost.

In August, E! announced that as part of its decision to move it's "E! News" show from LA to New York, it would be laying off 20 to 25 LA employees, Variety reports.

CNN also let go about 100 employees in the spring as part of a "corporate restructuring" effort.

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