Why Republicans have lost so often

Republicans wrote the book on losing. Democrats wrote the book on playing for keeps

Scot Faulkner

Republicans always seem to fight the wrong battle, the wrong way, at the wrong time. Republicans inevitably break ranks at the first sign of trouble. Republicans shoot their wounded, even if the injury is just a cut or sprain.

Democrats never break ranks. Democrats lock arms and deny, dismiss, defy and defend, no matter what. Democrats will always rescue one of their own – no matter the odds, or how gravely wounded, or how despicable or criminal the offense.

The “hot mic” tape of Donald Trump’s boorish “locker room” talk now dominates the 2016 Presidential Campaign, stealing attention away from critically important issues. It’s a safe bet the Democrats, and their media allies, have a stockpile of embarrassing Trump material ready to roll out in the coming weeks.

Trump and his supporters are confronting asymmetrical warfare. His offensive words are considered more damning than any of Hillary Clinton’s actual actions, misdeeds and derelictions of duty.

But then the Democrats have always played dirty. In 1980, Speaker Tip O’Neil withheld a Washington, DC police report on conservative Congressman Bob Bauman’s sexuality for eighteen months, in order to release it five weeks before Election Day. Its timing was designed for maximum damage with minimum recovery time, since Republican voters were more likely to punish immorality.

Democrats want to win at all costs. Democrats want to gain, maintain, and above all expand their power.  Democrats never waiver from these goals. Democrat spokespeople coordinate their talking points and stay on message. They tackle anyone who tries to lift the curtain on truth. They destroy anyone who challenges the liberal Democrat hold on government.

Perhaps the most infamous and extreme example from the Democrat “win at all costs” playbook is covering up Ted Kennedy’s misdeeds. On July 18, 1969, Senator Ted Kennedy killed 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne in a tragic car accident on Chappaquiddick Island near Martha’s Vineyard.

Liberals in politics and media suppressed the incident by ignoring Kennedy’s multiple lies and inconsistencies. Kennedy went on being a liberal icon. The media continued to dismiss and minimize Kopechne’s death, and Kennedy’s countless sexual affairs.

Then, earlier this year, in the propaganda film about Clarence Thomas’ confirmation, Hollywood portrayed Kennedy as a defender of abused women.

The other side of the Democrats’ playbook is character assassination of Republicans. In 2012, they and the media portrayed Mitt Romney as a callous, clueless elitist. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) actually bragged that he had blatantly lied when he accused Romney of not paying taxes, boasting “It worked, didn’t it? Romney lost!”  Honesty, decency and facts never get in the way of a good Democrat attack.

Over the past few months, Democrats have never talked about the substance of leaks that were so damaging to Hillary Clinton. In lock-step, Democrats immediately attacked the veracity of the leaked material, while the Obama Administration blamed the leaks’ source on Russia. By the time the truth of the leaked statements was demonstrated, the media had moved onto to other things.

In 2012, “bin Laden is dead and Detroit is alive” was the mantra that defied the facts. The Benghazi attack was drowned out with the bogus claim that “a video caused a spontaneous protest at the embassy.” Debate “moderator” Candy Crowley did her duty and maintained the lie, by throwing a body block against Mitt Romney in the second Presidential Debate – when she claimed that President Obama had said it was a “terrorist attack,” when he had said no such thing.

“In 2016, America is safer and more prosperous than ever” is another phony Democrat mantra. Every terrorist attack on American soil is stifled or obscured with bogus alternative motives and explanations. Economic reports are “cooked” or spun. Nothing must stand in the way of Obama’s Third Term.

Some Republicans, and many in the conservative media, do their best to counter the Democrat onslaught.  However, they are constantly crippled by numerous Republicans who turn tail and run when the first shots are fired in anger.

During Bill Clinton’s Presidency, Republicans bungled their investigation of Chinese campaign donations to Clinton in exchange for trade concessions and ownership of part of the Port of Los Angeles. That was treason by the Clintons and gross incompetence by the Republicans.

Instead of focusing on this, though, Republicans impeached Clinton on sexual issues and his countless lies. And even then, despite overwhelming evidence, five Republicans voted “not guilty” on perjury and ten voted “not guilty” on obstruction of justice.

Republicans further bungled impeachment by self-immolating over their own sexual affairs, including the resignation of Congressman Bob Livingston on the cusp of his becoming Speaker. Republicans had hoped to shame Clinton into resigning or at least confessing. They forgot that Democrats have no shame; and if they didn’t have double standards, they’d have no standards.

Simply put, too many Republicans are more focused on remaining part of the Washington Establishment, than on cleaning up the festering cesspool. But the 2016 stakes are enormous.

A Clinton Presidency means, for at least a generation, the Supreme Court will be turned over to activist liberal justices who will vivisect the Constitution in the name of reshaping society. It means open borders and open immigration, overwhelming America’s culture with Islamic fundamentalism and welfare for Third World refugees.

A Clinton Presidency means expansion of government spending and regulatory control beyond even Obama’s wildest dreams. If Republicans stand accused of wanting to control what Americans do in the privacy of their bedrooms, Democrats are clearly intent on imposing centralized control over everything Americans do outside their bedrooms.

A Clinton Presidency also means continued disarray in American foreign policy and continued decline in America’s ability to defend itself and its allies. A Clinton Presidency means increasingly bolder confrontations of the West by Radical Islamists, Iran, Russia and China.

A Trump loss will tear the Republican Party apart. Establishment and Faith-based factions will annihilate each other with “I told you so” arguments for Bush or Cruz or Rubio.

Democrats will laugh as they prepare a Texas Castro brother (Julian or Joaquin) to take the presidency in 2024, using the slogan “Time for a Hispanic!” from the same playbook that employed “Time for an African American!” and “Time for a woman!”

It is only a few precious weeks before Americans choose their path. Is there enough time for Republicans to wake-up?

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Clinton staffer caught on camera: I could grab co-worker’s a** and not get fired

Surely by now you’ve heard the indefensible, lewd comments Donald Trump made about actress Arianne Zucker and former “Access Hollywood” co-host Nancy O’Dell back in 2005. The mainstream media is currently crucifying him for it, while hypocritically ignoring Bill Clinton’s past transgressions.

Enter Project Veritas. Clinton staffer Wylie Mao was caught on undercover camera criticizing the campaign’s low bar of conduct, proclaiming that he’d have to grab his co-worker’s ass twice before getting fired:

“I think that the bar of acceptable conduct on this campaign is pretty, pretty, low,” he said. He then turned to a group of women sitting at his table saying, “In order for me to be fired I’d probably have to grab Emma’s ass like twice…”

A journalist for O’Keefe’s group is then seen confronting Wylie outside of a Hillary office.

“I’d just like to ask you a little bit about the sexual conduct going on with the Hillary campaign. Is the bar pretty low?” asked the Project Veritas reporter.

“Sorry guys, can you go inside? Wylie, can you go inside?” said a Hillary campaign staffer.

“Did you say you’d have to grab Emma’s ass twice to get reprimanded?” asked the Project Veritas reporter one last time before Wylie headed inside a Clinton field office without saying anything.

Apparently Democrats joke about casual sexual assault too. They just don’t get lambasted for it.

Mao and another Clinton staffer named Trevor Lafauci also boasted how they could get away with tearing up Republican voter registration forms.

The hypocrisy of this election — and American politics in general — is truly astounding.

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Hillary Clinton: ‘My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders’

“My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders, some time in the future with energy that is as green and sustainable as we can get it, powering growth and opportunity for every person in the hemisphere.”

That was Hillary Clinton in a paid speech to Brazil-based Banco Itau in 2013, now released by WikiLeaks, saying that her dream is the entire Western hemisphere without borders, open trade and a single economy.

In other words, let them eat NAFTA. She really is Marie Clintonette. Clinton’s dream is a de facto end to American sovereignty, where capital continues to flow overseas while hundreds of millions of people who want to move to America would be given a free pass. It is an unbelievable statement from somebody who at that point knew she would be running for president in 2016. A statement, not of U.S. interests, but global interests.

In this speech, Clinton revealed what she really thinks about the critical issue increasing U.S. participation in trade deals once she’s talking with the corporate interests involved: “I think we have to have a concerted plan to increase trade already under the current circumstances… There is so much more we can do, there is a lot of low hanging fruit but businesses on both sides have to make it a priority and it’s not for governments to do but governments can either make it easy or make it hard and we have to resist, protectionism, other kinds of barriers to market access and to trade and I would like to see this get much more attention and be not just a policy for a year under president X or president Y but a consistent one.”

Got that, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan? Clinton doesn’t think the U.S. has outsourced enough industrial production, jobs and wealth to foreign economies. She wants to double down on trade, end borders and finish off what’s left of the U.S. economy.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Comparison of 1980 and 2016: Carter-Reagan versus Clinton-Trump

A CBS News poll from mid-September found that 55 percent of Americans want “big changes,” while 43 percent want “some changes”; just two percent think things are fine the way they are. We need hardly add the  observation: If 98 percent of the voters are favoring “change,” it will be hard for this not to be a “change” election.

Then the CBS poll asked: Which candidate can be trusted to change Washington? The answer: 47 percent trust Trump to do it, 20 percent trust Clinton to do it.  In other words, Trump owns the “change” issue by a whopping 27-point margin. In a “change” year, that’s the stuff of landslides—as was 1980.

So today, when I see the polls showing Trump behind, I just smile: If the voters mean it when they say that they want change, well, then, they will get change—whether or not the pollsters can see it coming.

Meanwhile, the larger context of the times back then argued strongly for change—drastic change. At home, we were suffering from severe inflation and rising unemployment. At the same time, abroad, the Carter administration suffered the daily indignity of the Iranian hostage crisis.  And elsewhere, Carter haplessly confronted the strategic challenges of the Soviet-aided communist victory in Nicaragua and the Russians’ outright invasion of Afghanistan.

So it was little wonder that, according to a Gallup poll, satisfaction with the condition of the country hit a rock-bottom 12 percent in the summer of 1979, and it stayed down in the teens all through 1980.

Yet for all that dissatisfaction, for almost the whole of 1980, it was no certainty that the voters would choose Reagan over Carter. After all, much like Trump today, Reagan was loathed by the media, and that depressed his numbers—or so we thought.

The Media vs. Republicans: The Song Remains the Same

Moreover, back then, there was no alternative media, and so what we now think of as the Main Stream Media was just…the media. You know, as in the broadcast networks, The New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. These outlets might not seem that important today—it’s perfectly possible to get all the news one wants without ever visiting a legacy site, and the LA Times is one of many newspapers to have gone through bankruptcy—and yet in those days, the longstanding media outlets were seemingly all-powerful.

So on every morning at Reagan campaign HQ, top people had already read a hard-copy version of The New York Times or The Washington Post; a little later, the same people would receive the clips—a thick batch of photocopies of news articles mailed or faxed from around the country. And at 6:30 pm, and again at 7 pm, everything would stop, because we all had to see how the campaign was playing on the nightly newscasts, which in those days were watched by most of the country.

Of course, we usually gritted our teeth as we watched, because the TV reporters, like the print reporters, despised Reagan; almost all of them regarded him as a crazy, maybe even senile, cowboy who would get us not only into a depression, but also into World War Three. (Carter, in their mind, was a well-intentioned failure; that was hardly a ringing endorsement, to be sure, but in the journalistic mind, Carter’s weakness paled compared to Reagan’s menace.)

So with Reagan being savaged every morning and every evening, it wasn’t surprising that our polling was dismal.  A Gallup Poll from early January, for example, showed Carter leading Reagan by a nearly two-to-one margin, 62 percent to 33 percent.

That was the paradox: The American people knew that things were going badly, but the media kept insisting that there was no alternative other than to vote for Carter.

Four More Years?  Really??

Meanwhile, back in 1980, the big issue was the condition of the country. On July 17, in his acceptance speech to the Republican national convention in Detroit, Reagan finally had his opportunity to speak to the bulk of the American electorate, unfiltered by the media. And in the course of making his overall case for change, he deftly jabbed at Carter:

    Can anyone look at the record of this administration and say, “Well done?” Can anyone compare the state of our economy when the Carter Administration took office with where we are today and say, “Keep up the good work?” Can anyone look at our reduced standing in the world today and say, “Let’s have four more years of this?”

Thus with the whole country watching, Reagan framed the key issue: Carter equaled “more of the same”; Reagan equaled “change.”

For his part, Carter had no new ideas for the future; he was truly the more-of-the-same candidate.  In addition, he didn’t have much of a record to run on, and he knew that, too.  So his plan, instead, was to demolish Reagan—just as Hillary today is attempting to demolish Trump.  In his August 14, 1980 acceptance speech to the Democratic national convention in New York, Carter ripped into his challenger and all Republicans:

    In their fantasy America, all problems have simple solutions—simple and wrong.  It’s a make-believe world, a world of good guys and bad guys, where some politicians shoot first and ask questions later.  No hard choices, no sacrifice, no tough decisions—it sounds too good to be true, and it is.

For a while, this strategy of ripping up Reagan appeared to be working. Gallup records that in early August, Carter was ahead of Reagan by sixteen points, 45:29. For purposes of comparison, we can note that on August 9 of this year, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, Clinton was ten points ahead of Trump.

Yet back in 1980, for all the reasons noted, the country wanted change. And so by mid-August, Reagan had pulled to within a single point of Carter, and the two candidates stayed neck-and-neck all through September.

So if we might skip ahead 36 years, that’s almost exactly where we are today: According to the RealClearPolitics average, as of October 10, Clinton is 4.5 points ahead of Trump in the four-way race. So we might recall: Clinton is almost exactly where Carter was at this time, 36 years ago.

The last Gallup poll of the 1980 campaign showed Reagan up three points, 47:44; although as noted earlier, he ended up winning by ten points. To put that another way, although Gallup called the election correctly, it was still off by seven points—and that’s something to keep in mind as the 2016 election nears.

Indeed, we can all step back and ask: This November, will the country vote to renew its commitment to the sort of laxity that enables foreign terrorists to enter the country, even as others take to the streets to loot and burn? If the voters do reward chaos, it will contradict all historical precedent.

That’s the challenge to Hillary: Like Carter before her, she knows better than to run on overt “four more years” agenda, and so, instead, she figures that she must knock Trump out of the box with negative attacks—and coordinate her barrage, of course, with the MSM.

And in defense of her tactics, we might ask: What else can she do? She is trying, of course, to run on the Obama record—offering her presidency, in effect, as his third term. But does that really seem like a winning message?

However, she can’t run on her record, because, as Trump says to great effect, her 30 years in public life about to “all talk, no action.”

And she can’t run on Bill Clinton’s record for many reasons, starting with the fact the trade deals he championed are now in disrepute, and ending, as we have seen, with the sudden re-emergence of his own past sexual indiscretions—and have we mentioned the Clinton Foundation?

Finally, she can’t run on the Democratic platform published in Philadelphia; that was the most left-wing major-party platform in history—does she really want to get into a discussion of open borders in a time such as this?

No, not a one of those options are attractive for her. Thus she is left with just one last option—attack.

So now our comparison of 1980 and 2016 must end—we have to let the election play out. Quite possibly, just as was the lone Carter-Reagan presidential debate in ‘80, the next Clinton-Trump debate, to be held on October 19, will be decisive. Yes, Trump is behind, but as we have seen, in a “change” year, if the challenger can make himself seem acceptable to undecided voters, then the tide of change will sweep him into the White House.

And we also know this: Since Hillary can’t run on her record, can’t run on her vision for the future, and certainly can’t run on her own personal probity, then, like Carter before her, she has only one choice: Attack. That’s what she did Sunday night in St. Louis, that’s what all her campaign surrogates are doing and will be doing, and, of course, that’s what the MSM is and will be doing.

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THE LIBERAL MEDIA’S PERPETUAL SMEAR CAMPAIGN

Today’s news is dominated by claims that years ago, Donald Trump made crude comments about women, or inappropriately touched women, or intruded into a women’s dressing room, and so on. Gone from the campaign are such issues as the economy, Obamacare, national security and immigration. As Election Day approaches, the news is all Trump scandals, all the time.

Some will say–I may have said–that Republican primary voters asked for it by nominating a man with obvious personal vulnerabilities, instead of a more upright (and more electable) Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Ted Cruz or whoever.

But what’s a Republican to do? Last cycle, we nominated the ultimate Boy Scout: Mitt Romney. Whatever you think of Romney from a policy perspective, he is as admirable a man as you will ever meet. To find a presidential candidate of better moral character, you probably have to go back to Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Romney never said a rude word about a woman in his life.

So what happened? Did Romney and the GOP get credit in the press for the candidates’s outstanding character? No. Romney, who helped to create tens of thousands of jobs at Bain Capital, was denounced as a “vulture capitalist” and blamed, absurdly, for one woman’s developing cancer. The Washington Post made a front page story of the fact that 50 years earlier, when he was in high school, he and others had cut a classmate’s hair. Oh, and Romney was a racist, too. Does anyone remember why? I don’t.

The cycle before that, GOP voters nominated John McCain. McCain is a great patriot, a man of extraordinary character and courage who survived years of torture and abuse as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. Did the liberal media give Republicans credit for nominating such a hero? No. The New York Times, to its everlasting shame, peddled a false rumor that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist. (Bill Clinton would have done that before breakfast.) It also berated McCain for failing to release his medical records–which, actually, he did, unlike Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.

The Left’s permanent smear campaign against conservatives doesn’t just extend to Republican presidential candidates. Recall how the Democrat/media complex treated the Tea Party. Prominent House Democrats lied, disgracefully: they claimed, falsely, that Tea Party activists at a protest in Washington had hurled racial insults at black Democrats like John Lewis. The press ate it up. They printed the Democrats’ lies as facts, and to this day reporters and editors have never corrected the libel, even though a $100,000 prize to anyone who could substantiate the Democrats’ lies went unclaimed.

What’s the point? I’m not really sure. I certainly am not in favor of nominating candidates of poor or marginal character. But the hypocrisy of the liberal media is galling. In this election cycle, lewd comments made decades ago are apparently of earth-shattering importance. Really? Where was that standard when Bill Clinton was running for office? Or John Kennedy? Or Lyndon Johnson? And how about Barack Obama and Joe Biden? Has anyone actually investigated to see what they might have said about women over the last thirty years?

What is the point of nominating someone of extraordinary moral stature, like Mitt Romney, if the political press will not only unanimously refuse to acknowledge the fact, but worse, join in a campaign of deception to smear Romney in the eyes of voters?

These days there is lots of gnashing of teeth over the decline of our political culture. And it surely has declined, as manifested in the current presidential campaign. But one must ask, why has that happened? It seems to me that the media’s permanent smear campaign against the Republican Party, waged cycle after cycle regardless of the actual merits of Republican nominees, is the largest part of the answer.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Republican voters, evangelicals rally around Trump as Congressmen cower

In the midst of a major battle, you do not abandon your post.

That is the message Republican voters, evangelical leaders and conservatives have for Republican establishment leaders in Washington, D.C. who were tripping over themselves to abandon Donald Trump in the wake of the embarrassing decade-old hot mic video of him bragging about his sexual exploits and coming on to married women.

A flash poll by Politico/Morning Consult found what anybody who remembers the failed Bill Clinton impeachment effort, wherein he lied under oath about having sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, which is that nobody actually cares about the sexual exploits of rich and powerful men.

74 percent of Republican voters in the poll said they thought that party officials should stand by Trump despite the video revelations. Just 13 percent said they should abandon him. In the meantime, a coalition of prominent evangelical Christian leaders rallied behind Trump, including Tony Perkins, Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell, Jr., who appeared willing to look past Trump’s past indiscretions.

Perkins told BuzzFeed News in an email: “My personal support for Donald Trump has never been based upon shared values, it is based upon shared concerns about issues such as: justices on the Supreme Court that ignore the constitution, America’s continued vulnerability to Islamic terrorists and the systematic attack on religious liberty that we’ve seen in the last 7 1/2 years.”

Republicans and conservatives rallying around Trump came after a miasma of elected Republican leaders in Congress dumped support for Trump: Sen. John Thune (R-N.D.) called for Trump to withdraw from the race, along with Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) and many others. My own local Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) threw Trump under the bus.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) refused to support Trump. House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) cancelled a scheduled event with Trump in Wisconsin.

Oh sure, they say they want Republican Indiana Governor Mike Pence to somehow step in, ignoring the fact that it’s basically impossible for anybody but Trump to appear on every state’s ballot, meaning, as noted by national radio host Mark Levin on Monday, that it would result in Republicans and Pence losing in a “massive landslide.”

Apparently, they’d rather lose the White House for four to eight years to Hillary Clinton — and all the consequences that come with that — than to keep fighting. Even as their own voters are rallying to Trump.

Apparently these “leaders” have no idea what animates their own followers. Ryan was booed by some at his event, with some Trump supporters chanting “shame, shame” after the event as he left the stage. Trump campaign manager Kelly Ann Conway chastised Ryan on CBS This Morning on Sunday, saying, “Speaker Ryan of course took to the stage in Wisconsin at his event and faced some boos from the crowd because those who were expecting to see Donald Trump tell us that many of us don’t want to support him and we’re going to take the case directly to their voter.”

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I’m a young African-American and I’m voting Trump



I IDENTIFY myself as the colour red. Which means I’m looking forward to Friday, January 20, 2017.

If you don’t know what day that is I will fill you in. That is the day Mr Trump will be sworn in as our president for the next four years. So for all of us who have put in time volunteering, researching our facts, and preparing mentally for that day, we will be very proud to say where we stood from day one.

My name is ShoMore I. DeNiro, I am a 23-year-old African-American woman and I proudly support Donald Trump.

Over the weekend there was a lot of focus on Mr Trump’s comments about women while he was recording a TV program in 2005. As a woman I don’t like his very vulgar comments at all, but it was a private conversation over 10 years ago, and I know this is just locker room talk for some men.

Nobody should be surprised that Trump said this, he has no filter at times, but I still agree with everything he says politically. In fact former President Bill Clinton has done worse while he was President and lied under oath. So no this latest news doesn’t change my vote for Donald Trump at all.

I reside in Canfield, Ohio, which is part of the Youngstown area. If you are familiar with this area, then you would know how “blue” this state can be. Being a Trump supporter in this area is tough, especially if you are African-American. I go to a college that is predominantly African-American.

I wear my “Trump/Pence Make America Great Again” shirt proudly! I know what will be great for our country.
ShoMore (left) isn’t afraid to be a loud and proud Trump supporter.

People have the tendency to ask why? What is wrong with you? How can you vote for him and you’re black? Why not? Nothing is wrong with me. I am voting for him because I am African-American!

I come from two strong working American parents who have strongly installed in my mind that nothing is for free, especially if you want to go somewhere and be great!

Here are my main for reasons for voting for Trump in a countdown.

4. DONALD TRUMP IS FOR THE WORKING AMERICAN

That includes me and so many others that I know. We want our jobs back. We want a fulltime job with great benefits. Being a young adult this is important. We spend so many years going to school to get that extra education to master our soon to be career. For what? Not to find one?

3. HE IS A BUSINESSMAN

The man has over 500 companies! He knows how to make something great. Who else can receive money from their father and actually turn it into way more than what they received? To the point where he could pay it back and nothing was lost. He understands what would be a great loss, and what wouldn’t be. He has done business with so many different countries. I am positive he will do well for Americans.

2. HE HAS RAISED A STRONG AND INTELLIGENT BUSINESS WOMAN

As a young lady this should empower women. Young girls are always saying they want to be a princess, but wouldn’t you want to be a young woman with goals you have achieved? You do not have to wear big puffy dresses to be great. Ivanka has a family and still works hard and shows true dedication. She motivates a lot of young women and girls out here.

1. DONALD TRUMP IS REAL

He is tough, bold, and cannot be bought! I cannot say that for the other former presidents and candidates. President Obama and his wife are support a lady who in 2008 they said was not fit to be president! Now they want the us to vote for her?

Donald Trump stands for what he says and doesn’t back down. To African-Americans he said, “What do you have to lose?”. Absolutely nothing! So many blacks complain about not being able to find a job, being laid off, or even the first to be fired on jobs. They say that their children are not getting a great education in their schools. Yet, they want to elect another democrat?

People thought what he said was harsh, but it’s what Americans need to hear. He’s not going to back down, because someone doesn’t like what he says.

It is so sad that people actually still vote for a liar and a manipulator. To be truthfully honest, when it comes to the negative feedback the Hillary supporters are the worst.
Donald Trump campaigning in Ohio in August. Picture: Angelo Merendino/Getty Images/AFP

Not too long ago my friends and I from Student for Trump got together and did a quiet protest when former President Bill Clinton was in town. We received the finger multiple times, were told they didn’t like us (even though they knew nothing about us), and that we were uneducated. Which is quite absurd. We are very educated. That is mainly the reason that we will vote for Trump, because we have done our research and we support what he believes in.

I’ve had incidents where a girl and I almost got ran over at the Youngstown McDonald’s after leaving Trump’s Foreign Policy Event. Why? Because we were for Mr Trump.

People ask me “are you fine with him building that wall?” Hecks yes! I would even help. That wall is to protect us Americans. Secure our safety not only for us, but for our friends, and families.

If everyone would just listen and stop being so biased for a second, they would see that Trump is doing absolutely nothing but trying to keep us safe. He wants to bring back the values and morals we use to have in our country.

When he says, “Make America Great Again” that means with our education. One time America was at the top with education, now it has sunk. He is also discussing our jobs. We use to have jobs here and the unemployment rate wasn’t where it is now. Most importantly he wants to bring security to families. Which means taking jobs off our enemies, and building that wall!

This is a great election and I am so proud to be volunteering for this campaign and meeting wonderful people who are just as passionate about politics and our country as I am. I hope that on November 8, 2016 everyone has done their research completely. I am the colour red and I want to help by voting Donald Trump to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

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Hillary lied in debate about not bragging, laughing about getting child rapist off the hook

It is one thing for a politician to lie, it is completely different for Hillary Clinton to lie to the face of the rape victim she laughed at repeatedly. During the town hall style second presidential debate, Kathy Shelton who was raped at the age of 12 sat in the audience as Clinton pretended the mid-1980s tape of her laughing about the securing the release of Shelton’s rapist in 1975 did not exist. Unfortunately for Clinton, it does exist. And it is the reason many females cannot accept her as our leader, let alone the entire nation’s.

During the second presidential debate Trump brought up crippling stories regarding the Clintons, particularly discussing Hillary Clintons aforementioned tape where she is heard laughing about Shelton’s rape case, Clintons response, “Well, first, let me start by saying that so much of what he’s just said is not right.”

But Trump is right, and we have known that for two years.

In June of 2014, the Washington Free Beacon unearthed an interview between reported Roy Reed and Clinton captured on tape and available through the Special Collections Department of the University of Arkansas Libraries. The tape clearly has Clinton bragging about the case, blocking evidence and laughing about her defendant’s crime, at one point she jokes, “I had him take a polygraph, which he passed, which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs.” Her laughter is audible.

Clinton admitted that she believed her client committed the crime and vigorously defended him anyway. As a lawyer this is Clinton’s job, what is disgraceful is lying to the country in front of the victim, mocking her plight, and then continually acting as an advocate for women’s protection.

However, Kathy Shelton is no longer that 12-year-old girl and she made her position on Clinton very strong.

On Oct. 9, 2016 Shelton’s tweets spoke volumes about Clinton. Shelton wrote, “I don’t care if Trump said gross things. I care that Hillary Clinton lied, terrorized, & mocked me, defending my rapist,” “Hillary Clinton is a cold-hearted liar. The lies she told about me, 12 yr old rape victim, traumatized me nearly as much as the rape itself,” and “No little girl should suffer violent rape like I did… But no grown woman should attack that little girl like Hillary Clinton did.”

Most devastatingly, she called for the support and justice she did not receive when she was 12, tweeting, “At 12 I was one of the first women Hillary Clinton destroyed, but I wasn’t the last. Please put an end to this woman’s career of abusing us.”

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Words Versus Deeds

Donald Trump’s gutter talk about women shows yet again that he is bad news. The problem is that Hillary Clinton is far worse.

Women have a right to be offended by Trump’s words. But women have suffered a far worse fate from Secretary Clinton’s and President Obama’s actions. Pulling American troops out of Iraq, despite military advice to the contrary, led to the sudden rise of ISIS and their seizing of many women and young girls as sex slaves.

A message from one of these women urged the bombing of ISIS. She said she would rather be dead than live the life of a sex slave. Some women who tried to commit suicide and failed have been tortured for trying.

Meanwhile, President Obama tried to downplay ISIS with flippant words, by calling them the junior varsity. His half-hearted, foot-dragging military response has allowed ISIS to parade before the world as triumphant conquerors, appealing to disgruntled people in Western countries to carry out terrorist attacks in support of their cause.

That is a lot worse than some stupid and gross words by Donald Trump, which even he has had to repudiate. Make no mistake about it. Neither party has a good candidate for President. The choice is between bad and disastrous.

Are women more in danger from Trump’s words or Hillary’s actions? Are Americans in general more in danger from Trump’s shallowness on issues or Hillary’s ruthless grabs for money and power – a track record that goes all the way back to the days when Bill Clinton was governor of Arkansas?

Mrs. Clinton’s own announced agenda attacks the very foundation of American Constitutional government, on which Americans' own freedom depends. She has already said that she will appoint Supreme Court justices who will specifically overturn a recent Supreme Court decision, “Citizens United versus FEC.”

That decision said that both corporations and labor unions have freedom of speech, including the right to contribute money toward political campaigns.

Hillary Clinton’s determination to pick judicial appointees on the basis of their willingness to overturn that decision is a more brazen extension of the political left’s other attempts to stifle the free speech of those who oppose their agenda.

Demands that various advocacy organizations reveal the names of all their donors are an obvious attempt to scare off those donors, with harassment by everyone from vandals to rioters to the Internal Revenue Service and other government bureaucrats.

Without the right to free speech, none of the other rights is safe. Government officials can get away with all sorts of abuses, if others are not free to talk about those abuses.

Despite Hillary Clinton’s claims to be a champion for black people, her political agenda threatens the education of black children, the employment of black adults and the physical safety of black communities.

Mrs. Clinton is on the side of the teachers' unions that want to stop the expansion of charter schools, even though these are among the very few places where black children can get a quality education to prepare them for a better future. Here, as with other issues, her public statements are contradicted by her actions.

No law has done more damage to the employment prospects of young blacks than the federal minimum wage law. But nothing is easier, or more popular, than for some politician to raise the minimum wage – despite the fact that unemployment rates among black young people have skyrocketed to several times what they were before.

You don’t get any wage at all when you are unemployed. And if you are young and unemployed, you don’t get any job experience to help you rise up the ladder, when you don’t get on the ladder.

As for safety in the black community, Hillary Clinton has allied herself with those who demonize the police. The net result has been a sharp increase in the number of blacks killed by other blacks, as criminal elements take control of the streets when the police are not allowed to. Do you choose a President by talk – or by actions and consequences?

SOURCE

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It Wasn't Donald Trump Who...

It wasn't Donald Trump who for personal convenience as secretary of state flouted the rules and long-established procedures, taking the unprecedented step of evading the official secure government email system in favor of a private email server for government business, including classified information. And it wasn't Donald who then had the server scrubbed, destroying thousands of messages that were not only government property, but evidence, and then couldn't provide a credible reasons for any of it.

It wasn't Donald Trump whose possible-criminal situation caused untold irregularities in the operation of the State Department, the FBI and the Justice Department. Those included a "chance" meeting on an airport tarmac between the prime suspect's husband and the attorney general of the United States, putting dozens of public servants in the position to destroy their credibility and trustworthiness to save a presidential candidate's backside.

It wasn't Donald Trump whose vast experience in government in the U.S. Senate and the State Department resulted in neglecting dozens of requests for increased security prior to the terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. That attack resulted in the death of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other brave Americans. And it wasn't Trump who then blamed an obscure Internet video for a clear terrorist attack, resulting in jailing the video's producer.

And it wasn't Donald Trump whose frequent profanity-laced tirades insulted and denigrated Secret Service agents and White House staffers.

But that was a long time ago, and since all of that was a long time ago, it probably isn't relevant that it also wasn't Donald Trump who worked for the congressional committee investigating the Watergate cover-up many years ago, and was fired for lying.

It was Donald Trump who took some money from his father, invested it in businesses and created hotels, casinos, golf courses and television shows. Some of his creations didn't work out, as is not uncommon in the world of business. Luminaries such as Henry Ford, Walt Disney, F.W. Woolworth, Albert Einstein and Bill Gates also sometimes failed.

It was Donald Trump who claimed business losses of nearly a billion dollars on tax returns many years ago, probably cancelling an equal amount of income over several years, using provisions in the tax code to reduce taxable income, just as most every American who pays taxes does through deductions for such things as dependents, mortgage interest and charitable giving.

For taking legal tax deductions Trump has attracted mountains of criticism from his betters, who somehow twist this into meaning he doesn't care about the country, or the military and dozens of other things. But the thousands of people who work in his businesses do pay taxes, and that is significant.

And, yes, it was Donald Trump who managed to anger his primary opponents and many Americans with his petulant personal attacks against those who opposed and challenged him. His crass manner leaves much to be desired, and his locker room vulgarity, spoken in private 11 years ago, justifiably repulsed anyone not blinded by partisanship. But if some rapper had used those same words as lyrics, it'd be #1 on Billboard.

Apparently, it's a more serious offense to say things that offend someone than to put national interests at risk, to lose $6 billion of State Department funds and generally fail to competently run the agency you've been entrusted to run, and then go on to make millions giving $250,000 secret-content speeches to Wall Street banks that you publicly criticize. By virtue of merely having been elected a U.S. senator and appointed as a cabinet secretary, you are thus qualified to be president, even if the "best" you did in those positions was inconsequential or, too often, harmful.

Strangely, people are more offended by Trump's words than Hillary's vicious attacks on her hubby's numerous sexual victims and conquests, her position on coal mining and the Supreme Court, and her comments supporting open borders, spoken in a private $250,000 speech.

Trump is a crass bully with an authoritarian streak. Clinton's hubris already put national security at risk, and she will continue Obama's dangerous, destructive, and unconstitutional policies. Thus is our choice.

SOURCE

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Trump Will Win the National Battle for Legitimacy

BY DAVID P. GOLDMAN (Whom I have always found to be an unusually insightful commentator -- JR)

The referee should have stopped it in the tenth. Punching at will, Donald Trump said, "Hillary used the power of her office to make $250 million. Why not put some money in? You made a lot of it while you were secretary of State? Why aren't you putting money into your own campaign? Just curious." Reeling and against the ropes, Clinton gasped that she supported ... the Second Amendment. It was a brilliant rhetorical device: under the rubric of campaign financing, Trump slipped in an allegation that Clinton corruptly enriched herself by using the power of her office for personal gain--and Clinton didn't even respond. That's a win by a knockout.

That's the decisive issue of the campaign: the corrupt machinations of a ruling elite that considers itself above the law, and the rage of the American people against the oligarchical ruling class that has pulled the ladder up behind it. Trump's bombshell below Clinton's waterline came at the end of the debate, well prepared by jabs at Clinton's erased emails and Bill's rapes. Trump used the "J" word--that is, jail. That was perhaps the evening's most important moment. This is not an election fought over competing policies but a struggle for legitimacy. A very large portion of the electorate (how large a portion we will discover next month) believes that its government is no longer legitimate, and that it has become the instrument of an entrenched rent-seeking oligarchy.

By and large, I agree with this reading. "America's economy is corrupt, cartelized and anti-competitive," I wrote in August. It is typical of rent-seeking that Lockheed Martin's stock price has tripled during the past three years, and payment to its top management team has risen from $12 million a year to over $60 million a year, while Lockheed Martin's F-35 languishes in cost overruns and deployment delays. Produce a lemon and get rich: that's Washington. It is not a trivial matter, or unrepresentative of our national condition, that the FBI director who declined to prosecute Mrs. Clinton for mishandling of classified material just returned to government from a stint at Lockheed Martin, where he was paid $6 million for a single year's service. I don't know whether FBI Director Comey is corrupt. But it looks and smells terrible.

That's why it was so important for Trump to talk about jail time for his opponent. If things had not gotten to the point where former top officials well might belong in jail, Trump wouldn't be there in the first place. The Republican voters chose a reckless, independently wealthy, vulgar, rough-edged outsider precisely because they believe that the system is corrupt. They are right to so believe; if the voters knew a tenth of what I know about it, they would march on Washington with pitchforks.

Panicky GOP Leaders Should Come Home after Trump Wins Debate #2
The whole weekend news cycle centered around Trump's potty-mouth tape, which will count for exactly nothing in the final tally. No-one who has followed Donald Trump in public media for the past thirty years expected anything less from the great vulgarian. We are stuck with Trump precisely because the Republican establishment imploded over Iraq and the economy.

I assumed that Trump's diffidence during the first debate amounted to profiling his opponent. No-one would remember what was said in the first debate come the general election, and Trump appeared to be probing and watching Clinton's responses. This time he has bloodied her. Whether there is more to come--a thermonuclear revelation of some kind--I have no idea. But given Trump's experience in the entertainment business, we can assume that the really nasty stuff will come out later.

Whoever wins, a very large part of the electorate--perhaps more than a third--will believe that the government lacks legitimacy. We have not had circumstances like this since the Civil War. If Trump loses, his voters will blame a corrupt oligarchy and its allied media for electing a criminal to the White House; if Clinton loses, the minority constituencies of the Democratic Party will respond as if the Klu Klux Klan had taken over Washington. There has never been anything like this in the past century and a half of American history, and it is thankless to predict the outcome. Nonetheless I will: Trump will crush it. Clinton, the major media, the pollsters, and the mainstream Republican Party have badly misread the insurrectionist mood of the electorate.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Mary Matalin: ‘We Have a Republican Nominee Who Has a Private Conversation about Sex He’s Not Getting and the Party Abandons Him’

The Donks and their media servants are trying to make mountains out of a molehill

Republican strategist Mary Matalin said during a roundtable discussion Sunday on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” that the Democratic Party stood behind President Bill Clinton during his sex scandal with a White House intern but the Republican Party is abandoning GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump for a “private conversation about sex he’s not getting.”

“So here we have -- this is a difference between the parties. We have a Democrat who acts with his intern in the White House and the party rallies around him. We have a Republican nominee who has a private conversation about sex he's not getting and the party abandons him,” said Matalin, referring to President Bill Clinton and Trump, respectively.

ABC News political analyst Matthew Dowd said Trump’s brand was “seriously damaged” by videotaped remarks he made in 2005 that surfaced over the weekend, where Trump is heard bragging about kissing and groping women.

Dowd compared it to the aftermath of golfer Tiger Woods when news came out about Woods’ marital infidelity.

“This is Hurricane Donald this weekend as a category 5 when you look at this, and I think we're going to look at the aftermath of this. I was thinking about the effect that this could have. To me this is akin to Tiger Woods in the Escalade hitting the fire hydrant in 2009. And ever since that, point his career was basically careened,” Dowd said.

When asked what Trump can do, Matalin said, “Well, he can do more of what he's been doing, but I disagree with that, and I would say something similar that we have seen in our 200 years is New Hampshire, 1992, Monica Lewinsky in the White House.

“So here we have -- this is a difference between the parties. We have a Democrat who acts with his intern in the White House and the party rallies around him. We have a Republican nominee who has a private conversation about sex he's not getting and the party abandons him,” she said.

“But that's what I'm talking about. What's unprecedented here is not just the tape it's the reaction over the last 48 hours,” host George Stephanopoulos said.

“Well, it says something about the party. It says something good about the party. It says something that is aggravating to conservatives out there of how the party does not stick with their nominee. He wasn't my first, second or 16th choice, but he's the guy,” Matalin said.

“Well, I think this tells you a couple things. One is a terrible thing. I can't defend it and do not plan to. But I'm not sure that -- I would have a little different view than Matt because unlike Tiger Woods there are big tidal forces underneath this debate. This election, ultimately, is not about Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, both who have huge negatives,” Republican strategist Alex Castellanos said.

“Donald Trump, should be -- some of the things he said and done, if he hadn't done those, he might be 10 points ahead,” Castellanos said.

“What are those big tidal forces? This country is headed in the wrong direction. The ISIS JV team has turned into an NBA pro team. The economy is stagnant and people's lives feel like they're being wasted. Guess what, they're voting for change,” Castellanos added.

“First of all, this isn't just words. This isn't boys will be boys. This is somebody celebrating sexual predation, right. And in the 1990s, as Mary just mentioned, the Republicans went out of their way saying that a sexual predator shouldn't be in the White House,” Dowd said.

“And he was reelected,” Castellanos said about Bill Clinton.

“Wait a second. I'm talking about hypocrisy, hypocrisy, and now in 2016, Republicans are making the argument -- some Republicans are making the argument that it's OK to put a sexual predator back in the White House,” Dowd said.

“Sexual predator? Big talker. Locker room talker,” Matalin said.

SOURCE

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An Independent Voter Explains How "The Trump Tape" Scandal 'Changed' His Mind

While the mainstream media does its best to make "The Trump Tapes" the biggest thing since, well the last thing they thought would 'kill' Trump, it appears that Republican voters (not the politicians themselves) are indifferent and unsurprised.

Of course, the lifelong Democrets, Washington establishmentarians, and Hillary sycophants are also indifferent and unsurprised: their vote is known from day one.

Which leaves The Independents, such as Zero Hedge reader LetThemEatRand, who earlier opined:

"This whole thing has pretty much taken me off the fence of deciding whether to vote 3rd party or stay home.  Seeing the incredible push by all of the DC power-brokers to have Trump withdraw over this has convinced me that it's not an act.  TPTB really are scared of him and desperately want Hillary to win.

That's good enough to convince me to vote for Trump.  I wonder if any others like me who didn't really buy the hype had a similar reaction.  I would guess yes"

SOURCE

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Taxpayers Face Penalties That Discourage Work

News about taxes are almost never good. Here’s more bad news. Many Americans sacrifice far more to the federal government than they realize. Seniors who see their nominal incomes rise, for example, can suffer a loss of Social Security benefits that exceeds the explicit taxes they pay on any extra income. This new finding—laid out in great detail and announced last month by Boston University economist Laurence Kotlikoff and his colleagues—has major consequences for the incentive to work. If more seniors understood how such penalties operated, many would stop trying to raise their incomes, according to Independent Institute Senior Fellow John C. Goodman.

A senior making $85,000 who increases her income to $86,000, for example, could see her annual Medicare Part B premiums increase by a whopping $534.40, Goodman explains. The reason? Medicare premiums were never indexed to inflation. Thus, the penalty hits more people than was originally intended. Social Security benefits and earnings suffer a similar problem. Kotlikoff and company have derived a new statistic—called the lifetime net marginal tax rate—that factors in the loss related to future taxes and future entitlement benefits. At the worst extreme, Goodman writes, “workers can lose 95 cents out of each dollar they earn just in the current year.”

It goes without saying that entitlement penalties inflict great harm on seniors’ pocketbooks. Ironically, such disincentives to earning extra income also harm the public purse. “If we abolished the [Social Security] earnings penalty, the government would probably be a net winner,” Goodman writes. “Seniors would work more and earn more, and the other taxes they pay would more than make up for any short-term revenue loss.”

SOURCE

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The sad truth about constitutions

In the United States of America (though not in many other countries) it is difficult to amend the formal, written Constitution. No doubt that difficulty helps to explain why such great efforts have always been made not to amend it but to reinterpret its unchanged provisions, in many cases to such a great extent that its plain meaning has been turned completely on its head (e.g., authority to regulate interstate commerce ultimately becoming a limitless grant of congressional power to regulate practically everything). Notice also the immense attention given to presidential appointments to the Supreme Court. If the justices did only what a Buchanan-type court is supposed to do, their identities would scarcely matter. Yet, because the High Court has increasingly become a law-making body in its own right, its membership may matter a great deal and therefore incite tremendous political controversy and conflict. Hardly anything illustrates better the degree to which the constitutional and normal-political levels are not separate and apart, but essentially one and the same.

The longing for fundamental, semi-permanent constitutional constraints has a long history, and Buchanan’s contributions only capped those of many previous deep jurisprudential thinkers. But, alas, people in their daily grasping for power and pelf cannot be kept penned within such institutional fences. They and their political representatives will—as they have throughout U.S. history—leap over or burst through such would-be containments. Constitutional constraints have been especially flimsy during times of national emergency. I have written about this aspect of the matter since the early 1980s; my book Crisis and Leviathan, among many other works, deals with it at considerable length.

This relationship might occur to someone walking along in the shallow water of a sandy beach. Often one puts his feet down on a seemingly solid surface. Yet, as soon as a wave washes over the area, the sand slips from beneath one’s feet, and one must take steps to keep from being undermined and upset in the surf. Likewise, a constitution may seem to provide a solid, durable foundation for the conduct of workaday political affairs, but the sensation is misleading. As soon as a real or imagined crisis occurs, the constitution’s seemingly solid foundation is washed away, and political actors take new steps to gain their objectives unconstrained by any stronger or more enduring restraints. Indeed, many such opportunists understand this relation well and prepare themselves to exploit a crisis to the maximum when one conveniently comes along—another matter on which I have written repeatedly.

In his parable of the wise and foolish builders, recounted in the Book of Matthew, chap. 7, Jesus refers to “a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” The parable might well be applied also in the field of constitutional political economy. Constitutions have inspired much hope among political philosophers and ordinary people. Sad to say, they have never held the potential to restrain the leviathan that many people expected or hoped they would hold. It is very hard to restrain determined political actors with mere parchment barriers. Indeed, it is pretty much impossible. Unless the constitution is soundly framed and written in the hearts of many influential people in society, it has little capacity to restrain people’s political grasping and folly.

SOURCE

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Government Smacks Job Seekers with One-Two Punch

Finding a job in California is difficult but government makes it tougher still, according to Jobs For Californians: Strategies to Ease Occupational Licensing Barriers, a new report from the state’s Little Hoover Commission. “One out of every five Californians must receive permission from the government to work,” Commission Chair and former assemblyman Pedro Nava explains, down from one in 20 sixty years ago. This government barrier wields particular impact on those educated and trained outside of California, on veterans and on military spouses.

In California, the report notes, manicurists must complete at least 400 hours of classwork and training then take written and practical exams offered only in the cities of Fairfield and Glendale. The licensing board assigns the dates and if candidates can’t make it that day, “their candidacy is terminated, they lose their application fee and they must begin the application process all over again.”

As Nava explains, “when government limits the supply of providers, the cost of services goes up,” and those of “limited means” have a harder time accessing those services. Therefore “occupational licensing hurts those at the bottom of the economic ladder twice,” by imposing “significant costs on them should they try to enter a licensed occupation” and by “pricing the services provided by licensed professionals out of reach.” As Jobs for Californians explains, it’s actually worse.

Occupational regulations amount to “rent-seeking,” an attempt to gain influence “without contributing to productivity.” The licensing rules “serve to keep competitors out of the industry.” The rules also keep government employees in highly paid but essentially useless jobs. That is why, as the report notes, “when the Legislature eliminated the Board of Barbering and Cosmetology in 1997, Senator Richard Polanco resurrected it with legislation in 2002.” This board, one of the largest in the country, now boasts 94 employees and a budget of more than $17 million. Taxpayers should count that as pure waste.

“Getting government out of the way of people finding good jobs is a bipartisan issue,” Pedro Nava told Adam Ashton of the Sacramento Bee. Good luck with that. On all fronts, California legislators want to keep government in the way.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Harry Reid's petty politics block giving sick 'right to try' treatments

"If they saw what it does to somebody who was a healthy mom with a good career and great friends, and then all of a sudden this different path you can’t come back from, they would all say, 'what can I do to help?'"

That’s what Trickett Wendler, a mother of three young children, told a Milwaukee-based news station in February 2015, roughly a month before she succumbed to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS. Also called "Lou Gehrig's disease," after the legendary New York Yankees first baseman, ALS is a terrible, debilitating neurological disease that cuts short the lives of those it ravages. Sadly, there is no cure.

Wendler knew her time would be cut short, but she bravely fought for every breath, for her loving husband and children. "At this point in time," she said, "I know I’m drawing closer to the end."

Recently, the Senate was presented with the opportunity to help those like Trickett Wendler.

The Trickett Wendler Right to Try Act would allow patients with terminal illnesses to try investigational treatments when no other options are available. The bipartisan legislation, which offers a hope to terminally ill patients and families, is championed by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) blocked the legislation from receiving a vote.

Supposedly, Reid had procedural disagreements. He complained that it didn’t receive a committee hearing. In fact, right to try was the subject of a September 22 hearing in the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which is chaired by Johnson.

Yet Reid’s objection was also grounded in disgusting partisan politics. Not only did he falsely claim that right to try wasn’t heard in committee, Reid also had the audacity to complain about Senate Republicans not rubber-stamping President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee.

But on right to try — as is often the case — Congress is lagging behind the states.

Thirty-two states have passed right to try laws. The list includes traditionally Republican states like Alabama and Texas, the Democratic strongholds of Oregon and Illinois, as well as purple states like New Hampshire and Nevada. Even California’s Democratic governor signed right to try legislation into law in late-September.

The Food and Drug Administration’s approval process for experimental drugs and treatments is a long and costly process, and terminally ill patients simply don’t have time to wait on bureaucracy disguised as “consumer protection.”

It’s true that the FDA does allow clinical trials for some experimental drugs and treatments that are going through the approval process, but only three percent of terminally ill patients participate in these trials.

The Trickett Wendler Right to Try Act keeps the federal government from prohibiting the production and prescription of experimental drugs that have cleared the first phase of the FDA approval process. In addition to protecting patients under treatment, the bill clears manufacturers and prescribers from any potential liability.

Right to try may not be the answer for all those who are terminally ill, but the glimmer of hope it offers by cutting through FDA bureaucracy simply can’t be understated. As Wendler’s daughter, Tealyn, recently said, "We don't have time and we don't have years to wait."

"It feels like you're stuck like the government is in charge of your life," the 12-year-old explained, "and they haven't been in your shoes either."

Just days before her death, Trickett Wendler offered a glimpse of what it’s like to be in her shoes:

"It’s gotten really scary, especially at night. Sometimes I'll wake up gasping for air, so I think I’m getting close — so I wanted you to know. I hope my story has a lasting impression that helps others because I pray to God that this disease never happens to them because ALS doesn’t care who you are."

Trickett Wendler’s words matter more than mine ever will. I hope Harry Reid will learn about her story and stop putting petty partisan politics ahead of good public policy.

SOURCE

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Obamacare Rate Hikes: Incompetence or Sabotage?

By Newt Gingrich

Most Americans have seen the headlines about skyrocketing health-care premiums and insurers fleeing the individual marketplace—but few people understand why these things are happening. When you learn the story behind the trends, however, it’s hard not to wonder whether the Obama administration is deliberately sabotaging Obamacare.

The idea seems absurd until you examine how badly CMS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has administered a critical part of the law, the so-called premium stabilization programs. These programs were supposed to help the individual marketplace adjust to Obamacare’s new rules, and prevent the market from entering a “death spiral” of increasing premiums and fewer choices.

In other words, these were very important programs to get right. Unfortunately, the administration has botched almost all of them.

The Temporary Risk Corridors program, for example, was supposed to insulate insurers from the uncertainty they faced when setting rates in this new, unpredictable market. Insurers who set their premiums too low would have most of their losses subsidized by insurers who set them too high.

Repeatedly, CMS assured us that this program would be budget-neutral. Then, it suggested that taxpayer dollars could cover any deficits. Congress reacted to this bait-and-switch by inserting language into the appropriations bill expressly forbidding CMS from using taxpayer money for this purpose – essentially requiring CMS to live by its word.

Sure enough, the program ended 2014 with $2.5 billion more in insurer claims than in insurer collections. By law, CMS is required to pay the entirety of these claims to insurers, so it announced last month that the entire 2015 insurer collection will be used to pay off the 2014 balance with no money allocated for 2015 insurer losses. That means the 2016 insurer collection – the final year of the program -- will almost certainly fall short of paying what CMS owes to cover insurers’ losses in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

Unfortunately, that means that the deficit will most likely be passed along to us, the American people, in the form of large increases in premiums. Of course, this is precisely the result the program was designed to avoid.

This lack of payment from the Temporary Risk Corridors program had a ripple effect that caused a different premium stabilization program to become deadly to many small insurers.

The Permanent Risk Adjustment program was created to reduce insurers’ incentives to take health status into account when enrolling individuals. The program makes an assessment of the health status of each insurer’s customer pool, and plans with healthier populations pay into the program while those with sicker populations receive money from it.

This sounds simple enough, but in practice it hasn’t been so easy. Larger, more established insurers with more developed specialty networks tend to attract much sicker customers than smaller ones. So smaller, less established insurers end up with relatively very large required payments under the program.

This should have been anticipated and manageable by these smaller insurers. However, when taken in combination with massive risk corridor shortfalls (insurers only received 12.6 percent of their claims in 2014), the risk adjustment program ended up impacting them much more than they anticipated.

These losses drove many of these smaller insurers off the exchanges.

The ultimate result is fewer plans to choose from in the individual marketplace. Residents of roughly one-third of the counties in the United States have only one insurance option on the exchanges. And again, this is precisely the result the program was supposed to prevent.

Finally, the Temporary Reinsurance Program was designed to reduce and stabilize premiums in the individual marketplace. Insurers were required to cut their premiums in the individual marketplace from 2014 through 2016 in anticipation of receiving reinsurance payouts to make up for any losses. Those payouts were to be financed through a fee on all payers -- individual, small group, large group, union plans, and self-insured – in order to subsidize the losses insurers were likely to face in the individual marketplace.

The program was also designed to be budget-neutral, with one added wrinkle. Out of the $25 billion that was supposed to be collected during the three-year life of the program, $5 billion was to be deposited in the U.S. Treasury to pay for an unrelated program.

Perhaps predictably, however, CMS did a poor job of assessing and collecting the funds. Only $9.7 billion of the required $12 billion was collected for 2014 (about 20 percent short). Only $6.4 billion of the required $8 billion was collected for 2015 (again, about 20 percent short).

The total collection for 2016 enrollment has not yet been completed, but the formula CMS used to determine how much insurers would have to contribute to the reinsurance fund seems to have been based on the same faulty formula that caused the 2014 and 2015 collections to come up 20 percent short.

It is tempting to blame this under-collection on incompetence—except for one significant detail. CMS issued its final rules for 2016 enrollment in March of 2015, several months after it had collected the vast majority of the 2014 funds. Officials knew the formula they were using was wrong, but stuck with it for the 2016 collections anyway, guaranteeing failure.

As a result, not only have insurers received less money than budgeted to recoup the losses they sustained from lowering their premiums, but the U.S. Treasury has only received $500 million of the $5 billion it is owed.

Assuming the 2016 collection falls 20 percent short again, CMS will owe about $8.5 billion to insurers and the U.S. Treasury combined, with only about $4 billion available to pay it.

Again, this means American taxpayers will bear the burden, either in the form of more debt to be paid for with higher taxes, or in higher insurance premiums to make up for the losses.

In short, all three of the premium stabilization programs that were supposed to make Obamacare workable were administered by CMS in a way that helped drive insurers from the  individual market and caused premiums to increase dramatically—at the risk of being repetitive, the exact opposite of these programs’ purpose.

Whether intentional or not, the conclusion is inescapable: President Obama’s Department of Health & Human Services has pushed the individual market into a death spiral.  Insurers are fleeing the marketplace and premiums are expected to spike dramatically (the average proposed increase for 2017 is 24 percent).

So as Hillary Clinton and other Democrats propose more big government health-care as solutions to the crisis that big government health-care created, ask yourself if this was their intent all along.

SOURCE

There is a  new  lot of postings by Chris Brand just up -- mainly on racial matters

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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Obama’s New Death Tax Threatens Family Farms and Businesses

Rep. Warren Davidson

We all knew President Barack Obama’s lame-duck presidency would be bad, but for the millions of Americans who work at family farms and businesses, it’s about to get a lot worse.

As Heritage Foundation tax expert Curtis Dubay wrote at The Daily Signal, Obama is trying to sneak in a tax hike in his twilight days. His Treasury Department unveiled midnight regulations that effectively would increase the death tax to 30 or 40 percent.

If Obama channeled his desire and creativity in raising taxes into cutting spending, we probably would have a budget surplus by now.

In this case, the president’s creativity involves tinkering with well-established “valuation discounts” that families use to calculate their death tax liability.

These valuation discounts are one reason family businesses have been able to accurately calculate the burden of the estate tax—popularly known as the death tax—so the business or farm itself can be passed from generation to generation.

If these valuation discounts didn’t exist, then every time an owner died, a business essentially would have to overvalue itself, and thus be subject to a higher effective tax bill than the law intends. Farms especially are affected by this issue, and the estate tax generally, because it is a lot harder to sell off 40 percent of your farm than 40 percent of stocks or other assets.

If that’s not too much of a burden, imagine being a partial owner of one of these farms.

If you own one-tenth of your grandfather’s farm, you don’t have enough say in the future of the business to decide whether you want to sell off the farm or pay the 40 percent tax to keep it.

Such partial owners are faced with a choice: Either sell off your share for much less than it is worth or pay the government 40 percent of its value. For family-owned businesses, built with the blood, sweat, and tears of ancestors, this is an immoral choice for the government to force on people.

This issue affects workers, too. In cutting costs and selling assets to pay the IRS, many family businesses facing a tragic death and an ensuing death tax are forced to downsize.

For the economy as a whole, this means that millions of people who work for small businesses could lose their jobs, just because the Internal Revenue Service wants an added piece of the action if a business owner dies.

What’s good for the economy is when businesses grow and innovate. They shouldn’t have to plan to liquidate their assets to pay the IRS bill whenever an owner dies.

Democrats are floating a plan for a 65 percent death tax in order to “level the playing field.” This is no more than socialist planning by elites to confiscate property from hardworking Americans to pay for failed government programs and spending that won’t improve standards of living.

For the mega-rich who have enough money to structure their assets, this works just fine. For hardworking Americans who put everything they own into creating jobs and building their business, this is not an option.

Regardless of the bad economics behind the death tax, the Obama administration is going about it in the wrong way.

Deciding tax policy is a power enumerated solely for Congress. This is something that should be decided in the open with a robust public debate. The Founding Fathers believed this too, which is why they gave Congress, and the House in particular (the “people’s House”), the power to initiate tax laws.

If Congress doesn’t do anything, this will mean an even greater increase of out-of-control executive authority.

That is why I introduced legislation, the Protect Family Farms and Businesses Act, to halt the Obama administration’s backdoor tax increase. It would prohibit the administration’s new rule, or any like it, from going into effect.

The bill already has more than 20 co-sponsors and the support of more than 100 organizations.

Too much is on the line for too many for Congress to stand idle. The jobs of millions of Americans are at stake.

SOURCE

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Stopping Another Obamacare Bailout

When President Barack Obama made his case to the American people for Obamacare, he promised that it would both lower health insurance premiums and not add to the national debt.

Neither has been true.

One way Obamacare has been adding to the deficit is through illegal bailouts of insurance companies operating Obamacare plans through the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Government Accountability Office highlighted one bailout scheme last week when it released a report finding that since 2014, HHS has been illegally sending billions of “reinsurance” fees to insurance companies instead of sending those dollars to the United States Treasury where they belong.

But that isn’t the only way the Obama administration is plotting to illegally funnel your money to insurance companies.

A separate “risk corridor” program also promised Obamacare insurance companies a safety net if their customers used an unexpectedly high amount of health care. The way it was supposed to work was that those plans with low medical costs would pay into a fund and plans with high medical costs would take out of the fund. In theory, the fund was supposed to be deficit neutral.

But in reality far more plans experienced higher costs than they anticipated, leaving HHS with billions in claims from insurance companies but no way to pay them. The Obama administration has asked Congress to appropriate money to bail out these insurance companies, but Congress has rightly refused.

So now HHS is getting creative. On Sept. 9, HHS issued a memorandum addressing suits filed by insurance companies in federal court demanding risk corridor payments. HHS wrote that, “as in all cases where there is litigation risk, we are open to discussing resolution of those claims,” and that “we are willing to begin such discussions at any time.”

This language appears to suggest that HHS may be trying to illegally funnel money to Obamacare insurers through the Department of Justice’s Judgment Fund. In other words, since Congress has not appropriated money for nonbudget neutral risk corridor payments, HHS will just invite insurance companies to sue, and then the DOJ can pay the bill instead.

Last week, Sens. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.; Ben Sasse, R-Neb.; John Barrasso, R-Wyo.; and I wrote a letter to the DOJ and HHS to make sure that doesn’t happen. Our letter notes that the Congressional Research Service has already found that the Judgment Fund may not be used to settle risk corridor claims and asks HHS to identify how it plans to pay the risk corridor settlements mentioned in their Sept. 9 letter.

SOURCE

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A Taxing Situation

What would you think of an individual or a company that earned a pre-tax profit of $29.9 million in one year, paid nothing in taxes and still received a $3.5 million refund?

Am I speaking of Donald Trump? No, it is The New York Times Company. Forbes magazine studied the newspaper’s 2014 annual report, in which the company explained: “The effective tax rate for 2014 was favorably affected by approximately $21.1 million for the reversal of reserves for uncertain tax positions due to the lapse of applicable statutes of limitations.”

In other words the Times took advantage of tax laws that only good tax attorneys understand and in doing so was no different than Donald Trump. The Times, which obtained Trump’s supposedly confidential tax returns, made a big deal out of the Republican presidential candidate’s use of loopholes to avoid paying taxes.

Democrats are trying to make this part of their “fair share” scenario when, in fact, they are making the argument Republicans have been making for years for tax reform, which Trump has promised to do if he’s elected president.

The federal government is taking in record amounts of tax revenue, but is approaching a $20 trillion debt. The problem, noted Ronald Reagan, is not that the American people are taxed too little, but that their government spends too much.

No one is saying that Trump’s deductions were illegal, but that doesn’t matter to Democrats. As a Wall Street Journal editorial noted on Monday, “The left is committed to defeating Mr. Trump by whatever means possible, as many believe this end justifies any means, much as progressives have justified the Edward Snowden leaks despite the damage to national security.”

Leaking sealed or private documents is not a new strategy for Democrats. When Barack Obama was a candidate in the Democratic Senate primary in Illinois, the sealed divorce papers of his opponent, Jack Ryan, were shamelessly used to help defeat the “family values” Republican. Had that dirty trick not been used, Obama might never have been a senator, much less president.

Does anyone expect an IRS or Justice Department investigation into who leaked Trump’s tax records? Unlikely. FBI Director James Comey’s refusal to recommend prosecution of Hillary Clinton for her deliberate mishandling of classified information seems to prove that the Obama administration is little more than an arm of her presidential campaign.

The left’s narrative — stated and implied — is that everything government does is good, and so it is only right that taxpayers pay increasing amounts of taxes no matter how irresponsible government is in spending them. In this thinking, government has replaced God and taxes have replaced the collection plate, which at least amasses voluntary contributions.

Politicians mostly like the tax code the way it is because they can tweak it in exchange for campaign contributions from lobbyists. For the rest of us, the tax code is a foreign language impossible for most to understand. Even the IRS doesn’t fully understand it. If you call the IRS for advice and the advice they give you is wrong, you can still be subject to penalties and interest.

Republicans in high tax states and at the federal level should use the left’s “smoking gun” on Trump’s taxes as a weapon to demand tax reform. Flat and fair taxes have been suggested. Anything is better than the current system. Real tax reform would ensure that Trump paid some taxes, though they would likely be lower for him than for everyone else who pays them.

After that, maybe the conversation can shift to the real problem: government spending.

SOURCE

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated),  a Coral reef compendium and an IQ compendium. (Both updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten. I also put up occasional updates on my Personal blog and each day I gather together my most substantial current writings on A WESTERN HEART.

Email me  here (Hotmail address). My Home Pages are here (Academic) or  here (Pictorial) or  here  (Personal)

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