Mueller’s charge: A search for justice, or a fishing excursion?

Commentary by James Shott

Back in May, the Department of Justice announced that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein had appointed a special counsel “to oversee the previously-confirmed FBI investigation of Russian government efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election and related matters.”

Rosenstein said he had “determined that it is in the public interest for me to exercise my authority and appoint a special counsel to assume responsibility for this matter,” adding that his decision “is not a finding that crimes have been committed or that any prosecution is warranted. ... What I have determined is that based upon the unique circumstances, the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command.”

Rosenstein chose former Department of Justice official and former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller, III, a man roundly praised by Democrats and Republicans alike. Supportive comments included that he has impeccable credentials, and the knowledge and ability to do the right thing.

However, over recent months some inconvenient truths have arisen.

A special counsel’s or special prosecutor’s job is to investigate known crimes. As Rosenstein said, no actual crime has been identified. Therefore, the Russian involvement in the election that has commanded the attention of the media and Democrats for more than a year is not a criminal case. It is a counter-intelligence case, which does not require a special counsel.

As Mueller began recruiting his team of lawyers to assist in the investigation, it was noted that some of the early ones were donors to Democrat candidates. And to date, as reported by The Washington Post, of the 14 names confirmed by the special counsel’s office, seven of them have “donated a total of $60,787.77 to [Hillary] Clinton and other party candidates.”

William Barr, Attorney General in the George H.W. Bush administration, told the Post, "In my view, prosecutors who make political contributions are identifying fairly strongly with a political party." Can this investigation be objective?

The order creating the special counsel ostensibly is for investigating Russian election involvement. However, it effectively has no limits. Having found nothing pursuable in the Russian intrigue, which was the reason for appointing a special counsel, Mueller has moved on to other topics. He is now looking into matters involving Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn. If/when that one runs its course, another empty space awaits, like President Donald Trump’s business dealings years ago.

It is not unlike bringing a construction company executive to an empty field without a plan to follow, and saying, “build something.” There is no definite end to this process, unless someone somewhere can be indicted, or be persuaded to confess to something.

Critics say that Mueller’s job, and that of prosecutors generally, is to find a crime, and then to find a perpetrator, and it apparently is of little importance what the crime is, or who is responsible for it. Remember the investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton in the Whitewater matter? It ended up being the Monica Lewinski matter. The two were barely related, if at all.

Prosecutors are known for “flipping” witnesses, pressuring them with prosecution for something – anything – to persuade them to tattle on someone – anyone – in order to avoid prosecution. A prosecutor’s job is, after all, to prosecute. No indictment in this matter indicates a failed investigation. Who wants that on their record?

Recently, Mueller impaneled a grand jury, and some think see that as an indication that Mueller is hot on the trail of criminal activity. And that is certainly a distinct possibility. However, another argument says grand juries are routine tools in such investigations, and assist in subpoenaing witnesses and aiding the investigation. Time will tell.

Be that as it may, conservative talk show host Mark Levin, who is a lawyer and president of the Landmark Legal Foundation, has a more threatening scenario. Calling it a “coup,” he said “Let me tell you what's going on here: they want to drag Donald Jr. in front of a grand jury and everybody else who was in that meeting – all eight of them – and see if they can find any contradictions in their testimony." Since there was no crime involved, Levin said the purpose is to “see if they can get somebody on a 'lie.' Perjury."

And now some suggest that Mueller is in breach of the rules and should resign.

The Daily Caller reported that Rep. Trent Franks, R-AZ, said, “Robert Mueller is in ‘clear violation’ of federal law prohibiting a special counsel from having a conflict of interest and therefore must immediately resign as special counsel overseeing the Russia investigation.”

Franks, a senior member of the House Judiciary Committee, said Mueller’s reported friendship with former FBI director James Comey, who first worked under Mueller, leaked information to the press to encourage the appointment of a special counsel. That presents a clear conflict of interest, defined by federal law as: “a personal relationship with any person substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation or prosecution.”

At best we have a bunch of Republicans being investigated by a bunch of Democrats. What could possibly go wrong?

Politics, not qualifications, will decide the Gorsuch nomination

Commentary by James Shott

Senate Democrats are doing the Stanky Legg Two-step in order to dance away from confirming a nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court who is a federal judge provably as devoted to following the U.S. Constitution and the body of federal law as any nominee in many years.

Judge Neil Gorsuch, whose record on the bench of the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals is as nearly perfect as one can hope to achieve, is precisely the type of judge the Founders had in mind when they wrote the Constitution, a man in the mold of the late Antonin Scalia, whose vacancy he has been nominated to fill.

Testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Gorsuch said his law clerks had compiled information about his ten years on the bench of the 10^th Circuit, which covers about 20 percent of the U.S. He has participated in more than 2,700 appeals, 97 percent of those cases were decided unanimously, and he was in the majority 99 percent of the time. How much more mainstream can one be?

His record clearly identifies him as a mainstream appellate judge, as has the American Bar Association, not an ideologue, or someone who plays favorites. Nevertheless, an exercise designed for confirming a qualified person to sit on the nation’s highest court has devolved into a political war.

U.S. law is a system of rules that govern behavior. Rules and laws must be followed and not following laws has penalties. In the U.S. laws are not static; they can be amended or repealed, but they must be amended or repealed through a specific process. However, some people – primarily liberal Americans – believe that this process may be circumvented by the rulings of activist judges when laws get in the way of their inclinations.

Gorsuch’s adherence to the law is the primary objection to his nomination, although some say it is also because the Republican majority in the Senate refused to take up the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland for the seat Gorsuch is now nominated for.

This, too, points to a Democrat anomaly. A principle relating to this situation arose in the U.S. Senate in 1992 when then-Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who was chair of the Judiciary Committee, said on the Senate floor that filling Supreme Court vacancies “that would occur in the full throes of an election year,” must be held to a different standard. Citing “a majority of his predecessors,” Biden said that the president, George H.W. Bush, should delay naming a replacement, which would de-politicize the nomination, at least for a while.

In March of last year, “in the full throes of an election year,” President Barack Obama ignored the advice that Biden, who was then his Vice President, had offered on the matter years before and nominated Judge Garland. The Republican Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., however, liked Biden’s theory, and would not schedule hearings for Garland.

Democrats want judges that decide legal issues on whether their decisions fit the passions of the moment or have their preferred impact on the people, and therefore disapprove of the necessity to appoint judges that follow the Constitution and the law.

Minority Leader Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., is upset with Republicans over the Merrick Garland issue, and will therefore not vote to confirm the highly qualified and squeaky-clean Gorsuch.

He spent 20 minutes on the Senate floor urging his fellow Democrats to oppose Trump’s nominee. Gorsuch, he said, “was unable to convince me he would be a mainstream justice who could rule free from the biases of politics and ideology.” And he said that Gorsuch “is someone who almost instinctively favors the powerful over the weak, corporations over Americans,” Schumer said. “He declined to answer question after question with any substance,” he said, referring to Gorsuch’s refusal to express his political beliefs or to prejudge issues that may come before the Court.

Others have equally irrelevant objections:

** Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Cal.: "As U.S. senators, we have an obligation to also examine a nominee's legal approach and ask whether he or she considers the impact of those decisions on our society and the daily lives of our people."

** "I cannot trust that President Trump is acting in the best interest of our country or our democracy and that I cannot support moving forward with his choice for the court," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.

** Virginia Democrat and former vice presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine explained that, “After meeting with Judge Gorsuch and reviewing his testimony and past decisions, I’ve observed that he has repeatedly taken an activist approach to cases involving a woman’s right to make her own decisions about her health.” Kaine clearly does not understand judicial activism.

Senate Democrats threaten a filibuster to prevent a confirmation vote and ending the filibuster requires 60 votes. With 52 Republican senators, that will require the support of eight Democrats, and will be difficult to achieve.

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Following the lead of former Nevada Democrat Harry Reid when he was Majority Leader, Republicans can use the “nuclear option” to allow a simple majority vote to confirm Gorsuch. Majority Leader McConnell has pledged that one way or another, Gorsuch will be confirmed.

DEMOCRATS TRY TO UNDERMINE TRUMP

Consistent in behavior as always the Democrats are demanding an inquiry into Russia-gate, there self-created scandal. I am still waiting for the results of the Democrat investigation into the IRS when this agency was used to hammer Republicans while Obama was still in office. This is one more open attempt by the Democrats to undermine Trump. It will not work. Trump solidified his presence as a World leader today by hosting Netanyahu of Israel. His predecessor made Netanyahu and entourage leave by the back door. Sadly Obama and his holdovers in various governmental agencies will make it tough to govern. I see mass firings in the near future.

We need to learn to appreciate what America’s Founders gave us

Commentary by James Shott

Donald Trump was unofficially declared the winner of the 2016 presidential election early in the morning on November 9, and that victory survived the slow vote counting in some states, and challenges of voting irregularities. And last Monday that victory was finally verified when the electors of the 50 states and the District of Columbia that comprise the Electoral College gathered in their respective districts to officially cast their votes.

The integrity of the Electoral College survived both the illegal and legal efforts of Trump opponents to bribe, intimidate or otherwise persuade Trump electors to not vote for him, with unexpected results: While a few electors did not vote as they were instructed by the voters they represented, the vast majority did as they should have done. And Trump won this contest, too. Of the 538 electors only seven of them did not vote according to the voting in their districts. Five of the “faithless” electors withheld their vote from Hillary Clinton, while only two withheld their vote from Trump.

Democrats and liberals have been crazy since the election, and now want the Electoral College to go the way of those thousands of missing emails from Clinton’s private server, since she won the popular vote by 2.1 percent, but lost the electoral vote. However, the Electoral College did precisely what it was designed to do; it did not “misfire,” as the Clinton camp charges.

The opinions of scholars and other commentators uphold the value of the Electoral College. For example, The Heritage Foundation’s Hans von Spakovsky explains: “In creating the basic architecture of the American government, the Founders struggled to satisfy each state’s demand for greater representation while attempting to balance popular sovereignty against the risk posed to the minority from majoritarian rule.”

In addition to those concerns, “as students of ancient history, the Founders feared the destructive passions of direct democracy, and as recent subjects of an overreaching monarch, they equally feared the rule of an elite unresponsive to the will of the people. The Electoral College was a compromise, neither fully democratic nor aristocratic,” writes Jarrett Stepman, an editor for The Daily Signal.

The University of Buffalo’s James Campbell explains that had the popular vote been the mechanism that chose the president, candidates would have focused their campaigns on the population centers, ignoring the rest of the country. And he further suggests that then voters probably would have behaved differently, too. Many in the less populated areas, for example, might have stayed home, feeling that their vote didn’t matter, effectively disenfranchising them.

California essentially provided Clinton the 2.8 million votes that comprised her popular vote victory. The Electoral College protected the interests of those millions of Americans who do not live in the population centers.

The other side of that argument is that under the Electoral College system, candidates would limit their campaigns to the swing states, producing a similar effect as the popular vote method does. However, swing states change from time to time, whereas population centers do not.

Looking at the final version of the electoral map, Clinton’s strength lay primarily in the coastal areas and a few spots in the middle, while Trump’s support covered a tall and wide swath across the area between the coasts. Clinton’s ballot power came primarily from New York, California and Chicago, the population centers, while the huge area of the country that went for Trump covers primarily small towns/cities and sparsely populated areas, the heartland of America.

And that is the value of the Electoral College system: it protects Americans in flyover country from the tyranny of big city dwellers, who generally have a much different set of values and desires. And remember that the president’s job is to act in the best interests of the entire country, not to satisfy the desires of a voting majority or of the big cities.

What if instead of the football team that scores the most points winning the game, the winner is the team that gained the most yards? That is a similar situation to electing a president: The number of votes – like the number of yards – is not necessarily the most important factor.

So don't do away with the Electoral College, as the spurned Clinton voters want. It provides the balance of national interests the Founders understood was necessary.

One change that makes sense is to stop having electors that must get together in a formal ceremony to vote. Since the results are known when the vote count is done, this step is unnecessary; it serves no useful purpose, costs money, delays the finalizing of the voter’s decision, and provides losing parties an opportunity for harmful mischief, as we witnessed.

And while the aggrieved are creating mischief, they are also building false hopes, which will cause even more grief when their mischief fails to change the results of the election, and generates bad feelings that will endure long after the election is over.

These days some group wants to change virtually everything about America that made it the unqualified success it has been since it was founded.

Stop trying to change it and instead enjoy its abundant benefits.

Cross-posted from Observations

Democrats renew gun control measures for the campaign and beyond

The New York Times sees a renewal of Democrat’s efforts to increase restrictions on guns. The newspaper says that after 20 years of holding back on the gun control initiative, “a string of mass shootings involving high-powered weapons, rising anxiety about domestic terrorism, and killings of and by police officers have emboldened Democrats. They say the shootings are intensifying support for gun control, elevating weapons policy to a top-tier issue, with particularly strong appeal to suburban female voters.”

Democrats, The Times says, will press the case for new restrictions in political races across the country that will include expanded background checks, new limits on gun purchases and increased scrutiny on gun makers and dealers, all of which is buoyed by polls they say show strong support for these measures.

National Rifle Association (NRA) spokeswoman Jennifer Baker said, however, the American public would ultimately reject added gun control because Democrats, while cloaking their gun agenda in the language of “common sense,” really want to go much further. “The political elites and D.C. politicians don’t understand Middle America,” she said. “They don’t understand that voters support the Second Amendment and the individual right to self-protection.” The NRA says Clinton would put an individual’s right to self-defense at risk.

Connecticut Democrat Senator Christopher Murphy agrees that Clinton and other gun control advocates are committed to making the issue a major theme of the campaign, and should she win the November election will continue it in her presidency. “This issue is a core value for Hillary Clinton and it is good politics,” Murphy said. 

Clinton’s running mate, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, also supports the idea that gun control will be a presidential initiative. Kaine has long been an advocate for stricter gun laws, moved by the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007 when he was Virginia’s Governor. The shooting, in which a South Korean student with mental health problems killed 32 students and faculty, prompted Kaine to seek to bar the mentally ill from acquiring guns. 

This idea has merit, but is fraught with potential danger in the hands of liberals, who so often fail to use due care in creating policy, and create as many problems as they solve. Liberals have the bad habit of indulging in what Dr. Thomas Sowell calls “stage-one thinking,” which ignores possible downstream results in order to rush through some “wonderful” idea.

In fact, the 2016 Democrat Party Platform states: “While responsible gun ownership is part of the fabric of many communities, too many families in America have suffered from gun violence. We can respect the rights of responsible gun owners while keeping our communities safe.” 

One of the favored talking points in support of restricting the rights of law abiding citizens to protect themselves and their families, and restrict their use of firearms for sport and recreation is that 30,000 people die in America each year from guns.

For the sake of discussion, let’s accept that 30,000 figure, which – taken all by itself, without context – is shocking. That’s a lot of people. 

However, when context is applied, that number seems substantially less damning. Considered as part of the roughly 320,000,000 total population of the United States, it represents just .0001 percent. That means each American has a one in ten thousand chance of dying from a gunshot each year. And that doesn’t dig down into the details of gun deaths, showing how many are accidents, suicides, or justified shootings.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 20 times more people die from heart disease each year than from guns, and nearly that many die from cancer. More people – 42,700 – die from “intentional self-harm (suicide)” than from gun violence. 

In 2013, according to DrugWarFacts.org, which cites data from the CDC, motor vehicle deaths totaled 35,369, all homicides were 16,121, and in 2014, drug overdoses claimed 47,055 lives. 

Gun deaths do not appear on the list of the top ten causes of death in America. In fact, The Times quotes FBI data showing slightly more than 8,000 gun homicides in 2014, quite a difference from the overhyped 30,000 figure.

Conspicuously missing from the liberal tirade is that guns are inanimate objects, incapable of doing anything on their own. Like such things as hammers, kitchen knives and automobiles, guns are under the control of their user. Is this simple concept too complex for liberals to understand?

Or perhaps it just gets in their way: They know and understand that a disarmed populace is a compliant populace.

The Patriot Post notes, “This year’s [DNC] platform doesn’t even bother to mention the words ‘Second Amendment’ … Drafters opted instead for the meaningless tripe about how ‘gun ownership is a part of the fabric of many communities.’ Fabric can be changed. Rights endowed by our Creator cannot.”

The actions of average Americans tell a story different from Democrats. Townhall.com reports that women obtaining concealed carry permits increased at twice the rate of men from 2012 to 2016. And the Crime Prevention Research Center notes that the murder rate fell by16 percent between 2007 and 2015.

Yet again Democrats are wrong about what Americans think.

Democrat policies have a troubling past and promise a bad future

Commentary by James Shott
 
When Barack Obama took office in January of 2009 the U.S. was emerging from the recession that began in December of 2007. Running 18 months, this was a significant recession, with GDP reaching -8 percent in 2008 and unemployment peaking at 10.0 percent in October 2009, four months after the technical end of the recession.

In February 2009 President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act into law, an $830 billion spending plan that was supposed to keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent. It didn’t.

Truthfully, seven full years later the United States has not fully recovered from the recession, and Obama blamed the recession throughout most of his presidency to cover his tracks on the poor economic recovery. But the severity of the recession wasn’t to blame.

Gross Domestic Product growth has been inconsistent during Obama’s presidency, and averaged slightly above the 2.0 percent range. And while unemployment finally dropped to respectable territory at 4.9 percent in January, that must be considered in light of the fact that it’s only that low because more than 90 million Americans couldn’t find a job to replace the one they once had and left the workforce. When those people are included in the calculation, the unemployment rate at the end of April was 9.3 percent (U-6).

The labor force participation rate is the percentage of working-age persons in an economy who are employed, or are unemployed but looking for a job. Today, according to the Bureau of Labor Standards, the participation rate is 62.8 percent, the lowest since the 1970s.

Contrast Obama’s dreary results with the last recession that lasted at least 16 months. During Ronald Reagan’s first term, the recession began in July 1981 and ended in November 1982. Under Reagan’s policies the unemployment rate fell from a high of 10.8 percent in December 1982 to 7.2 percent in November of 1984 – that’s a 3.6 point improvement in 23 months, a striking difference from the 2007 recession, where unemployment peaked at 10.0 percent and never fell below 8.0 percent in the first 43 months afterward.

During the Reagan recovery the economy posted a robust 4.8 percent annualized growth over 23 quarters, according to economist Stephen Moore in The Daily Signal, and that was more than double the rate during Obama’s tenure.

Where Obama responded to an economic recession with $2 trillion worth of government expansion (more than $1 trillion on health care and $830 million in economic stimulus), Reagan cut marginal income tax rates across the board permanently through the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981: Different approach; different results. Reagan’s results were far better.

When your country is in trouble the president is supposed to put political and ideological goals aside and take actions that help the country recover. Instead Obama, not one to let a crisis go to waste, pursued his manic pledge to “fundamentally transform” the country, doubling down on reckless environmental policies that since September of 2014 have cost 191,000 people in mining industries their jobs, about 30 percent of them in the coal industry, according to CNS News, citing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

That trend will continue if, through some great misfortune, Hillary Clinton gets elected. Recently, Clinton said, “I’m the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

She then visited West Virginia coal country on the campaign trail and faced an out-of-work coal miner who is having trouble taking care of his family because of the Obama administration’s punishing policies on mining and burning coal. She answered his complaint about killing the coal industry by saying that her comment was out of context and that she had a plan to help families and individuals who have been put out of work.

The Huffington Post described that plan: “Hillary Clinton has a $30 billion, 4,300-word plan to retrain coal workers ...”

But there are two problems. First, in her initial statement she clearly promised to kill coal jobs. For a candidate for president to advocate a policy of deliberately targeting a group of jobs that are legal ought to be disqualifying. Furthermore, Clinton said the focus would be retraining those out of work for new jobs. And just what sort of new jobs would there be in this situation and in a state so terribly wracked by Obama-caused economic woes?

Of Clinton’s plan, West Virginia Coal Association Senior Vice President Chris Hamilton told The Huffington Post, “Hillary’s plan is akin to somebody running you over, then offering to pick you up,” he said. “It’s not a plan. It’s a care package.”

Obama’s policies have inflicted great pain on the nation, and Hillary Clinton gives every indication of continuing along a similar line. So much of what liberal Democrats have done and will do is to shove their ideas down our throats, instead of allowing change to evolve naturally. People who live in coal producing states understand quite well the damage such policies cause.

Cross-posted from Observations

Hillary in South Carolina seeking to lock up the black vote

Commentary by James Shott

As the presidential campaigns move to South Carolina, Democrat hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders seek to endear themselves to black voters. Sanders began by having tea with Al Sharpton. How will Hillary proceed?

Following her dramatic loss to Sanders in New Hampshire by a 60 percent to 38 percent margin, she hired a press aide from the Department of Education as her new director of black media to help protect and grow the early double-digit lead she held in South Carolina.

Hillary praises Obama and his presidency, all but promising that she will continue in the same vein if she can win the primary and general elections, and escape legal issues from her disastrous tenure as secretary of state. And since black Americans overwhelmingly support the Democrat Party, this might seem smart.

However, getting broad support from the black community should not be automatic or even very easy for her, given what happened in South Carolina in 2008. There, she was beaten badly by Barack Obama as she gave her all in the attempt to prevent him from becoming the first black President of the United States. Will black voters remember that?

Furthermore, the reality of the negative effects Obama’s presidency has had on the black community gives reason to think that pledging to follow his policies might be a big mistake.

Having noticed how poorly black Americans had faired in Obama’s first term, PBS’s Tavis Smiley told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in 2013, "The data is going to indicate sadly that when the Obama administration is over, black people will have lost ground in every single leading economic indicator category."

In 2014 Newsmax reported that while the national unemployment rate had dropped to 7 percent since Obama took office, the jobless rate for blacks has hardly moved, declining from 12.7 percent in 2009 to 12.5 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Further, the poverty rate for blacks sharply increased in 2014, rising from 12 percent in 2008 to 16.1 percent.

Median income declined by 3.6 percent for white households to $58,000, but fell 10.9 percent to $33,500 for black households, according to Census Bureau reports.

Realizing that things have not improved for black America since then, Smiley repeated his 2013 assessment last month on HuffPost Live: “Sadly – and it pains me to say this – over the last decade, black folk, in the era of Obama, have lost ground in every major economic category." Smiley said black America got "caught up in the symbolism of the Obama presidency," and made two mistakes. They did not accurately evaluate his policies, and they reacted against GOP criticisms of Obama and Republican opposition to his policies.

With these highly negative results for black Americans from the administration of the first black president of the U.S., will Hillary Clinton’s tactic of praising Obama and implying she will follow in his footsteps really work to attract the support of black Americans?

Perhaps it is with this in mind that the Department of Justice has initiated legal action against Ferguson, Missouri in the aftermath of the justified shooting death of Michael Brown in 2014. As reported by The Patriot Post, Ferguson’s City Council voted unanimously to approve the Justice Department’s settlement to reform the city’s “unjust” policing practices — but “subject to certain conditions.”

“The DOJ responded to the city’s request [to alter the agreement] by filing a lawsuit against Ferguson, just in time to agitate the black vote in the southern primaries,” the report noted, adding: “Make no mistake: Timing is everything. The DOJ’s actions will benefit Hillary Clinton throughout the southern primaries, as blacks are reminded once again of injustice. Never mind that Ferguson (and every other city in which Black Lives Matter is fomenting discord) is run by Democrats.”

There are other signs that a Hillary victory might be being engineered behind the scenes, such as in the New Hampshire primary, where despite a massive victory by Bernie Sanders, he and Hillary came away with the same number of delegates.

Last Thursday, the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) PAC endorsed Hillary, saying she had done the most to support the Democrat Party and also to support blacks seeking office. “The partner that the CBC PAC has had over the years to elect Democrats has been Hillary Clinton,” said Rep. Gregory Meeks, New York Democrat and chairman of the CBC PAC. Hillary won the endorsement of 90 percent of the PAC, with no members voting for Sanders and some abstaining.

The CBC PAC endorsement is a definite plus for her, but if black Americans realize that Obama’s policies have worked so dramatically to their detriment, raising the black unemployment rate and pushing more black citizens into poverty, the highly desirable black vote may not accrue to her.

And things could get worse for the nation, and much worse for the black community, as Obama’s policies, which have failed to produce a recovery to the 2007 recession in seven years, have brought the country to the brink of another recession that will undoubtedly produce very unpleasant circumstances for black Americans.

Cross-posted from Observations

Obama's last State of the Union: Just another campaign speech

Commentary by James Shott

President Barack Obama gave his eighth and final State of the Union (SOTU) message last Tuesday night, to a mixed set of reviews. Commentators had noted that a president’s last SOTU generally is predictable and boring. Obama’s final flourish was both predictable in its petulance and arrogance, and boring, because most of it has been said before. And often.

Pledging near the beginning that this one would be short perhaps gave false hope. Going back to Lynden Johnson’s presidency from 1963 to 1969, our presidents’ addresses have averaged right at 50 minutes, and Obama’s speeches have averaged 63 minutes. Only in comparison to Bill Clinton’s average of 75 minutes does this one qualify as short, running just under 59 minutes. At 29 minutes, Richard Nixon’s 1972 address holds the record for the shortest.

Perhaps it is due to his 12-year stint as a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School that the address was an hour-long lecture, one part of which dealt with the tone of current political discourse and contained an uncommon admission of failure. “It's one of the few regrets of my presidency – that the rancor and suspicion between the parties has gotten worse instead of better,” he said. “I have no doubt a president with the gifts of Lincoln or Roosevelt might have better bridged the divide...” That is no doubt true, as it is a commonly and broadly held opinion that Obama is the most divisive president in recent memory, or perhaps ever, and he has done nothing to calm the raging political waters in seven years.

Complaining that there has been precious little progress in Congress, he noted: “Democracy grinds to a halt without a willingness to compromise…” But compromise depends upon the details of the issue. Sometimes, compromise is simply not possible if it means one side abandoning fundamental principles. If one party demands the other party sacrifice their right hand, for example, the other party cannot be blamed for refusing to compromise by giving up two or three fingers. This is the nature of the compromise Obama and the Democrats slam Republicans for not indulging in, as they routinely demand things that even acquiescent Republicans cannot accept.

Burnishing his accomplishments, Obama said we have “a growing economy, shrinking deficits, bustling industry and booming energy production.” He also said that the U.S. is in the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. Typically, this is the most non-specific and favorable part of the story, and there is much there deserving of clarification. Many jobs have, indeed, been created and the unemployment rate (U-3) is in good territory, but that is due to millions of Americans having stopped looking for work because they couldn’t find a job in the Obama economy. The Workforce Participation rate is at its lowest point in 35 years.

Wages have stagnated during Obama’s tenure, personal debt has increased by about $1 trillion, and fewer Americans are buying homes. And then there is the national debt, which has increased substantially under Obama. He took office in January of fiscal year 2009, with a national debt of nearly $12 trillion. In fiscal 2015 that figure stood at more than $18 trillion. Fiscal 2016 will end September 30 of this year, and it is likely that by that time the national debt will be $20 trillion.

All the while GDP limps along at rates ranging from a low of minus 2.8 percent in 2009 to 2.4 percent in 2014, never rising above 2.5 percent. GDP finally began approaching respectable levels in 2015, fully six years after Obama took office. Not much to brag about there.

Obama said it is a hallmark of his economy that today more Americans work in the solar industry than in the coal industry. But at what cost? He gave well over a billion dollars of taxpayer money in subsidies to a few solar firms that not long thereafter went bankrupt, and the administration’s harsh and unwarranted attacks on the coal industry put tens of thousands out of work and closed several coal-fired electric generation plants well before natural changes in energy production would have more gradually and less chaotically replaced coal with other methods.

In West Virginia, the loss of income from the Coal Severance Tax and Income Tax collections from out-of-work coal miners and workers in support industries have seriously damaged the state’s economy, and Kentucky and Virginia also have suffered job losses and economic harm, all without a sympathetic tear from the president.

Each year as the State of the Union address grows near there is talk of doing away with it, because it no longer has a valid purpose. “What’s tiresome is the hoopla about a speech that hardly anybody watches, and that, as a general rule, contains nothing new,” stated Yale law professor Stephen Carter. The SOTU originally was intended for the president to report to Congress on the condition of the nation, but also allowed the President to outline his legislative agenda.

Ah, but those were the good old days. More recently it has devolved into a grand political opportunity, as Obama so well demonstrated.


Cross-posted from Observations

As humanity evolves, technological advances improve our lives

Commentary by James Shott

As humans and technology evolve, new ideas, products and improving processes make our lives fuller and easier. We once listened to music on plastic platters. Even as the quality of records improved, progress brought about the reel-to-reel tape machine. That was a great development, but then someone came up with the 8-track tape player, which eventually gave way to the cassette player, and then audio on tape was surpassed by a new technological creation, the compact disc. And now that, too, is about to become old news.

As the years, decades, and centuries pass, human beings evolve in their ability to develop ideas and create devices that improve the quality of their lives.

In 1593, Galileo Galilei invented the first device to measure temperature variations, a rudimentary water thermoscope. In 1612, the Italian inventor Santorio Santorio put a numerical scale on his thermoscope. While neither of these new instruments was very accurate, they represented progress.

In 1654, Ferdinand II, the Grand Duke of Tuscany invented the first enclosed liquid-in-a-glass thermometer, and replaced water with alcohol as the medium to measure temperature changes. This instrument, too, was inaccurate and used no standardized scale, but represented a step forward.

Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit invented the first modern thermometer, the mercury thermometer with a standardized scale, in 1714. Thermometers continued to evolve since that time, becoming more accurate and more versatile along the way, measuring the temperatures of air and liquids. For most of those 300 years they utilized a liquid to measure temperature, but today digital technology has become the standard.

From their land-bound home, humans learned how to move through the air and into outer space, and now digital thermometers measure temperatures on Earth from satellites orbiting many miles above the planet. For 37 years satellite-based instruments have provided the world's most accurate and unbiased temperature data.

And space-based measurements are free from coverage gaps and “siting problems,” conditions that plague land-based instruments. A study authored by Anthony Watts and Evan Jones of surfacestations.org, John Nielsen-Gammon of Texas A&M, and John R. Christy of the University of Alabama, Huntsville, show the problems inherent in land-based thermometers that do not affect space-based measurements.

Watts, the lead author of the study, explained: “The majority of weather stations used by NOAA [the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration] to detect climate change temperature signal have been compromised by encroachment of artificial surfaces like concrete, asphalt, and heat sources like air conditioner exhausts.” He added: “We also see evidence of this same sort of siting problem around the world at many other official weather stations, suggesting that the same upward bias on trend also manifests itself in the global temperature record.”

The study notes that there are two subsets of weather stations, those that are well sited, and not affected by extraneous effects, and those that are poorly sited, and are affected by extraneous effects. The well sited stations produce readings markedly cooler than those corrupted by extraneous effects, and the study suggests that the results of the well sited stations – the truest measure of environmental temperature – are adjusted upward to more closely match the results of the poorly sited stations, resulting in temperature readings higher than true readings.

Put into plain English, many land-based measurement stations are corrupted by elements that are not a part of the Earth’s natural temperature, and they skew the results upward. Real-world temperatures measured by satellites are consistently cooler than those projected by climate computer model simulations because they are not affected by concrete, asphalt and other things that collect and produce heat that are not a part of the Earth’s natural environmental temperature.

And what the satellite-based instruments reveal is stunning. There has been no warming at or in the:
    •    South Pole for 37 years
    •    Southern hemisphere for 19 years, 10 months
    •    Tropics for 19 years, 3 months
    •    Tropical oceans for 22 years, 11 months
    •    North Pole for 13 years, 10 months
    •    Australia for 18 years, 1 month
    •    U.S.A. for 18 years (49 states)
    •    Globally for 18 years, 6 months

These readings plainly show that contrary to global warming scare stories in the media, the world has not warmed as the models projected. However, warming advocates choose to ignore these measurements, and the reason why is simple: Without a scary story of future catastrophe to promote, they lose power and they lose money, the power to control the masses being the more important.

The worldwide effort to fight climate change is not about fighting climate change; it is about control. But twenty-first century technology provides evidence that is devastating to the global warming narrative. 

The simple truth is that some years are warmer than others; and some years are cooler. Warming and cooling periods may lasts a few to several years or many decades. Our climate is not static and has never been.

Contrary to the warming advocates’ story, satellite-based measurements show that the industrial revolution that set loose the development of so many things that make our lives better has not caused the planet to heat up.

With science, the media and government conspiring to subject people to ideological control over unproven climate change, that progress will be impeded, and the entire world will suffer.

Cross-posted from Observations

Ominous omnibus: There are many problems with the spending bill

Commentary by James Shott

Last Friday Congress passed the omnibus spending bill, avoiding a government shutdown when current funding expired at 12:01 a.m. on Dec. 23. At 2,009 pages it spent a dazzling $1.149 trillion, and like most legislation it had some good features and some less-than-desirable features.

It was described as far-reaching legislation funding the government until next October, passing tax breaks for businesses and low-income families, reauthorizing programs to compensate and provide health care for first responders and survivors of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and a cybersecurity measure that could help businesses cooperate more closely with the government and each other in fighting online threats.

The bill easily cleared both chambers, first in the House, which passed it 316-113, followed by the Senate in a 65-33 vote. President Barack Obama signed the measure.

Republicans, who hold majorities in both houses – 54 percent in the House and nearly 57 percent in the Senate – supported the bill by a significant majority in the House, but in in the Senate only about one-third voted for the bill.

Despite the Republican majority in both houses, the GOP managed only a few real victories, while the minority party won big, according to most analyses.

Republicans gained the lifting of a 40-year ban on oil exports, prohibiting funding to bail out the insurance companies in the Obamacare health insurance program, and preventing the IRS from regulating political speech.

However, they were unable to restrict the Syrian refugee program, end funding for Obama’s executive actions on immigration, defund Planned Parenthood, defund sanctuary cities, or restrain EPA over-regulation of ponds and streams, and coal-burning power plants.

Perhaps the most noteworthy provision in the bill is the one that could allow more than a quarter-million temporary guest workers into the country, an increase from the previous federal cap of 66,000 on H-2B visas for low-skilled foreign workers seeking blue-collar jobs in the U.S. This is a significant change to immigration law, and it has conservatives dismayed. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, told The Daily Signal, “It came out of nowhere, completely out of nowhere,” the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus said, “[and] everyone was shocked there was a change and no one had talked about it.”

Conservatives are displeased that the Republicans were unable to remove so many troublesome provisions that they should strongly oppose, and also with the very process that created the bill and brought it to a vote.

Critics of the bill and its passage complained that the rank-and-file members of the House were not included in negotiations. Congressional leaders assembled the bill in smoke-filled back rooms and did not release the text of the 2,009-page bill until 2 a.m. last Wednesday, and the separate 233-page tax-extenders bill was released just before midnight.

Prior to the vote Heritage Action for America chief executive Michael A. Needham said the package represents the most sweeping changes to tax policy since 2012. “In fewer than 48 hours, lawmakers will likely be asked to vote on two massive bills that were negotiated behind closed doors over the past several weeks,” he said.

After the vote Republican presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky explained his “no” vote to a New York radio station: “It was over a trillion dollars, it was all lumped together, 2,242 pages, nobody read it, so frankly my biggest complaint is that I have no idea what kind of things they stuck in the bill.” “I voted against it because I won’t vote for these enormous bills that no one has a chance to read,” Paul continued. “[T]his is not a way to run government. It’s a part of the reason why government is broke." And broken, he might have added.

Rep. Raul Labrador, R-Idaho, who voted against the spending bill, said Republicans voted for the bill in part to support House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-WI, who had just taken that position and they were hopeful he would be more inclusive with rank and file members than his predecessor, former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

“There were a lot of people who didn’t want to vote for this, but they were giving him a vote out of good faith,” he said. At the same time, many also were worried that Ryan had given Democrats too many policy concessions in the bill, a feeling now confirmed. “The Democrats unfortunately just learned that they can mistreat him like they mistreated Boehner, which is a really bad thing,” Labrador said.

What the Framers designed as an efficient and transparent system of lawmaking now operates in the gutter. These days, bills often reflect dishonorable characteristics like this bill had:
    •    Created in secrecy
    •    Hundreds or thousands of pages long
    •    Voted on without time to be properly considered
    •    Amendments not permitted
    •    Contain elements unrelated to the purpose of the bill
    •    Are approved for political expediency, rather than by broad support

Too many bills are designed not to produce needed and broadly supported laws, but to enact politically useful and narrowly focused measures that benefit some at the expense of the others.

This process is yet one more sign of the devolving nature of our country. If America is to survive, good government must be restored.



Cross-posted from Observations

Things confirmed and learned at the first Democrat candidate debate

Most people seem to think Hillary Clinton won the first Democrat debate, and she did put forth a good showing, even if the atmosphere and comments from her opponents were decidedly soft and friendly. The other debaters did not challenge the top-rated candidate.

However, fans of Bernie Sanders disagree, believing the Vermont senator was the best of the five. Sanders is the only candidate who admits to being a socialist, a “democratic socialist” to be precise, although he found little opposition to his socialist views from the rest of the group, illustrating that the entire Democrat field shares his affection for socialist dogma.

Reviewing the comments during the debate it was confirmed – if, indeed, there was ever any question – that the Democrat Party is the party of exchanging free stuff for votes, their largess made possible by those of us who pay taxes. There was so little disagreement among the debaters that some observers think that the other four candidates have realized that Clinton will be the nominee, and they seemed to be campaigning not for the nomination, but for a position in the Clinton2 administration.

The “party of diversity” is far less diverse than the Republicans, who have 1 woman, 1 black man, 2 candidates of Cuban descent, 1 of Asian descent, some older candidates and some young candidates. The Democrats, the party of people who are around 70 years old, have 1 older white woman and 2 older white men, and two middle-aged white guys.

Based on questions, comments and crowd response, Democrats do not object to Clinton putting national security at risk by shunning the government email communications system employees are expected to use in favor of her own private system for official government communications. In order to defend the former Secretary of State one must ignore that her decision to do so was “inconsistent with long-established policies and practices under the Federal Records Act and NARA regulations governing all federal agencies,” according to congressional testimony of Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives. To the Democrats, it is merely a distraction from the business of getting Clinton the nomination.

Reports say that “journalists” in the pressroom exploded in applause and laughter when Sanders said the American people are sick and tired of hearing about the “damned emails!”

It was confirmed that the Democrat candidates and audience members believe the deaths of four Americans in the Benghazi assault are not important. It’s old news; just another distraction. Apparently those of us who think Benghazi is important, or ISIS, or the economy, the national debt, or the millions of potential workers driven out of the workforce by the lousy job market created by the slowest recovery in 80 years are clearly on the wrong track. Climate change, gun control and giving away free stuff are clearly at the top of their agenda. They seem not to understand that nothing is free.

They all think pretty much alike, and believe that any diversion from the “party line” is wrong, whereas the Republican candidates have divergent views about important issues. Their diversity causes a great deal of consternation and disagreement among GOP supporters and conservatives, but reflects the sense of our Founding Fathers that robust debate of contrary ideas is a foundational principal of good government.

Sanders scored points with the statement that the United States “should not be the country that has … more wealth and income inequality than any other country.” Factcheck.org found, however, that the U.S. ranks 42nd in income inequality, according to the World Bank, and placed 16th out of 46 nations in the share of wealth held by the richest one percent of the nation’s citizens. Sanders’ vision of a socialist utopia cannot stand up against the glare of facts.

Clinton gave an interesting answer to the question, “Which enemy that you’ve made during your political career are you most proud of?” In addition to the NRA, the drug companies, the health insurance companies, and the Iranians, she said that the Republicans were her proudest enemy. Interesting that she compares insurance companies, drug companies, the NRA and Republicans to the Iranians.

Jim Webb, by contrast – the former Marine Corps First Lieutenant and Navy Secretary – said he was most proud of having dispatched “the enemy soldier that threw the grenade that wounded me” during the Viet Nam War. While killing that enemy soldier, Webb saved a fellow Marine, and won the Navy Cross. Clearly, his answer wasn’t as appropriate as Clinton’s.

She told viewers that what separates her from being a third term of the Obama presidency is that she is a woman, and mentioned being a woman as a good reason to elect her more than once during the debate. Remembering what happened after the manic drive to elect the first African-American president, we should be very wary of electing someone president because that person is a woman.

That is especially true of one who thinks she deserves to be elected, and cites her gender as the only reason she won’t be a continuation of the disastrous Obama presidency.

American media abandons objectivity in order to target Republicans

California Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy on the Sean Hannity show on Fox News: “Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee. A select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustable (sic). But no one would have known that any of that had happened had we not fought to make that happen.”

Her defenders jumped at the opportunity to interpret that statement to mean that the Republicans held the hearings expressly for the purpose of bringing Mrs. Clinton down, an allegation that became instantly popular with the left-leaning media. Mr. McCarthy’s artless statement certainly may be read to support such an assertion, but that statement can also be interpreted in other ways. However, let’s not forget that the Select Committee was formed in May of 2014, well before Ms. Clinton appeared as an  “unbeatable” candidate.

If you read for meaning, rather than opportunity, you will notice that he also said that the hearings have shown her to be “untrustable,” a result not of Republican desires, but of Mrs. Clinton’s willful behavior that the hearings have brought to light. Her falling numbers resulted from examining her flawed performance.

Objective observers understand the Benghazi probe’s purpose is nothing other than trying to get to the bottom of a deadly foreign policy and security blunder by the Obama administration and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

To review, on September 11, 2012 Ambassador Chris Stevens was in Benghazi, Libya, not at the embassy in Tripoli. An armed attack on the American Consulate there occurred and ultimately resulted in the death of Ambassador Stevens, Foreign Service Officer Sean Smith, and CIA contractors Tyron Woods and Glen Doherty.

The initial explanation from the Obama administration was that the attack was the result of a demonstration spawned by an Internet video, a position the administration maintained for days after the attack.

CBS News initially reported that a Libyan Interior Ministry official in Benghazi said that an angry mob had gathered outside the consulate to protest a video made in the U.S. that was offensive to Muslims, and stormed the consulate after the U.S. troops who responded to the mob’s appearance fired rounds into the air to try and disperse the crowd. CBS later reported that U.S. officials said the attack was not an out-of-control demonstration, but a well-executed assault.

The New York Times reported: "American and European officials said that while many details about the attack remained unclear, the assailants seemed organized, well trained and heavily armed, and they appeared to have at least some level of advance planning." 

Suspicions arose because while a video could have spurred a demonstration, the attack that followed was clearly mounted by a military-type organized group, not a group of upset demonstrators. 

To decide if this investigation is legitimate, all one must do is ask and honestly answer some questions about the Benghazi attack. 

Does Congress have constitutional oversight responsibility to look into executive branch actions such as why Ambassador Stevens was in Benghazi at a time of increasing tensions and when an organized attack by a military-like force occurred?

Should the American people know why repeated requests from Ambassador Stevens for increased security in Benghazi prior to the assault were rejected, to know who rejected those requests, and why? 

And, who made the decision to not dispatch military units to try to help the beleaguered consulate on the basis of there not being time for them to get there when no one knew how long the assault would last? 

This legitimate and appropriate investigation produced a lot of evidence about Mrs. Clinton’s performance, and her disregard of the rules about email – including using her own email system for government emails – that every Secretary of State and other Cabinet secretaries have followed since Al Gore invented the Internet that put classified information at risk. These issues have raised numerous legitimate doubts about her fitness to be president.

Yet the media seems unconcerned with these contemptuous breaches of rules and protocol, and the failure to protect classified, perhaps top secret, information. 

Meanwhile, Rep. McCarthy, the Majority Leader who was expected to succeed Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, following his announced resignation, unexpectedly declined the position. The media went wild, trumpeting the chaos in the GOP, and somewhere along the way someone suggested that Rep. McCarthy and a female representative were having an affair.

Both he and she denied it, and no evidence – let alone proof – has been produced. Nevertheless, the subject remains a part of the story about Rep. McCarthy stepping aside.

On Fox News’ “Media Buzz” last Sunday, a panel of journalists all said it is proper for this to be part of the ongoing story, despite there being no evidence that it is true. Since viewers/readers can find references to this alleged affair on the Internet, the reasoning goes, the media are therefore obligated to cite it.

By that reasoning, any allegation made by anyone about any public figure should become part of every story about or involving that person. This is the confused state of journalism today.

Message to the media: You factually report; we’ll decide.

Finding the way to Democrat and Republican nominees for president

We are currently knee-deep in political primary season, as the two major political parties and voters analyze and reduce the list of hopeful candidates to the eventual nominees. Most will probably agree that this particular cycle is a bit unusual, as one side has a candidate who expected a coronation, but instead sees her numbers falling dramatically in the face of a strong challenge, and a long list of candidates on the other side is being dominated not by an experienced familiar face, but by an outspoken and blunt outsider to the political process.

Businessman Donald Trump continues to lead the large Republican pack, defying the predictions of many political pundits who said he was a flash in the pan, and the former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton finds self-described “democratic socialist” and political independent Sen. Bernie Sanders nipping at her heels among Democrats.

Mr. Trump’s shoot from the lip style is heavy on bluster and self-confidence, but light on substance. Mrs. Clinton relies on comments in defense of her indefensible use of a private email server that are truly silly. "Looking back,” she said, “it would have been probably, you know, smarter to have used two devices" for her emails, as if you can’t access more than one email account on any “device,” and ignoring the server issue altogether.

And then there is Bernie Sanders. The Vermont independent is proposing an array of socialist programs, the cost of which that would likely be the largest spending program in American history, dwarfing the gargantuan spending spree of Barack Obama., who pushed the national debt up by more than $5 trillion in his less-than seven years in office, a debt that now totals more than $18 trillion. That enormous number has been growing for many years, and is something that neither Democrats nor Republicans in the White House and Congress have treated as a serious problem for far too long.

Sen. Sanders proposes to spend another $18 trillion over 10 years, including an estimated $15 trillion for a government-run single-payer health-care program covering every American, as well as more money to rebuild roads and bridges, make college tuition free, and expand Social Security. That ought to strike fear into everyone, and it has done just that even for many Democrats.

It will come as no surprise that the preferred way of financing this absurd plan is raising taxes, perhaps including a hike in payroll taxes on employers and workers. These tax increases, Sen. Sanders believes, will bring in only $6.5 trillion over the 10-year period, if it all goes as he plans. Maybe he doesn’t realize that when you raise taxes on an activity, you get less of it, and therefore less in tax collections than might be assumed.

Liberal Democrats and other socialist-leaning folks love giveaways like free tuition and healthcare, and seem either immune to, or not to care about, the negative impact on society so long as it helps them in the next election. But there are important negatives in this plan that threaten America’s future.

The marriage rate has plummeted since 1980 and out-of-wedlock childbirth has soared, weakening the most dependable stabilizer of society in history, the traditional family, consisting of a mother, a father and their children. A 2013 report noted that fewer than half of American households now contain a traditional nuclear family; that 40 percent of children are now born into households without a father; and non-married cohabitation is seven times higher than it was in 1970. Another report showed that 40.7 percent of all children born in 2012 were out-of-wedlock births.

The liberal/socialist tendency to support dependency actually encourages these dangerous behaviors by subsidizing non-familial living conditions, such as increasing welfare payments for having additional children, and cutting support payments in some cases when unmarried women get married and bring a man into the home. The message: Don’t get married; you will lose subsidies if you do.

The more people that live off the government, the fewer people will be working and funding the government and its destructive subsidies through tax payments. The system is simply economically unsustainable at the level Sen. Sanders proposes, and even at the current level damages the individual self-reliance that built and sustains the American idea.

So, Bernie Sanders expects this foolhardy plan to propel him to the Democrat nomination and to eventual victory over whichever of the Republicans survives this crazy primary process.

For socialists/liberals, more is never enough. Their problem is that, as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher famously said, “at some point you run out of other people’s money,” the mother’s milk of socialism. They are handcuffed by what economist Dr. Thomas Sowell calls “stage-one thinking,” which involves grabbing onto an idea to solve a problem without projecting its consequences a few steps down the road. Failure generally ensues.

At this point Democrats must choose between the proudly socialist Sanders and the somewhat less socialistic Clinton. The Republicans have a broad and deep field, some who have proven they know how to run a government, create jobs, cut taxes, and grow their state’s economy. That mindset is what we need now.