Why Not DONALD TRUMP Leading American Eyes Again?

November 23, 2022

The Worst Generation of Political Elites Ever

By William Levin at American Thinker!

At every level of government in the United States, budgets are out of balance and getting worse. Blue states worse than red states — big blue cities worse still.

A close look at New York City, New York state, and the federal government shows the problem is far more perilous than it appears. It is three drunks holding up a lamppost, without the humor.

For the 2023 fiscal year, New York City is projected to collect $73.3 billion in taxes, and spend $101.1 billion. How does it close a $27.8 billion gap? The city receives grants from the state ($16.8 billion) and $9.3 billion from the U.S. Treasury. In other words, without largesse, New York City is bankrupt.

But where does the state get that money? Because, no surprise, it too is bankrupt without federal support — as in, it spends $222 billion, but only collects $135.9 billion. The Treasury — largely funded by red state conservatives — fills the gap with $89.7 billion.  

In total, New York and New York City survive only by receiving federal grants totaling $99 billion annually.

But where does the Treasury get that money? This year, the U.S. will have collected $4.2 trillion and spent $6.0 trillion. Where does that $1.8 trillion come from?  Borrowing and printing. Public debt now totals $30.6 trillion.  Social security and all insurance funds are bankrupt.  In other words, the whole house of cards is exactly that.  

Has it always been like this?

Cast back to 2000, a mere generation ago, to what American finances used to look like. New York was significantly better run and the federal government operated with a balanced budget.

In 2000, New York City spent $36.0 billion, of which $25.1 billion came from taxes and other local revenues and $11.3 billion in funding from the state and the federal government. The City in those days ran a budget surplus, utilizing $2.1 billion in surplus from the prior year.

State spending totaled $79.7 billion versus $222 billion now — and, hard as it is to believe, $500 million was earmarked to pay down state indebtedness.

For that same year, the federal government took in $2.0 trillion and spent $1.8 trillion, yielding a $236 billion surplus.

Public debt totaled $5.7 trillion, or 55% of GDP, versus today’s $30.6 trillion, equal to 121% of GDP.

In other words, in one generation America’s finances have been ruined, at every level of government. From a fiscal point of view, this is undoubtedly America’s worst generation ever. In our brief case study: city spending went from $36.3 billion to $101.1 billion; the state from $79.7 billion to $222 billion; and the federal government from $2.0 trillion to $6.0 trillion — and the ultimate funding source, U.S. public debt, from $5.7 trillion to $30.6 trillion. Among economists it was understood, and widely agreed upon, that public debt should never exceed 70% of GDP.  And yet here we are at 121%, higher than at the peak of WWII, rising rapidly, unsustainably, as far as the eye can see. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts 2052 debt at 185% of GDP.

And make no mistake. No amount of taxation can fix this problem, even leaving aside the ruinous impact of excess taxation on incentives, growth capital, innovation, personal freedom and prosperity. Again it is the numbers that tell the story.

Of New York City’s $73.3 billion in taxes, $15.3 billion is from personal income. You would have to triple income taxes to close the shortfall. For the state, personal income taxes total $67.3 billion, an eEven doubling the tax would not balance the budget. At the federal level, the individual income tax raises $2.0 trillion. So again, it would take a doubling in taxes to balance the budget. That brings total taxes to in excess of 100% of income.

It used to be said that sustained economic growth will cure all. But that is manifestly untrue when 1) every year, at every level of government, deficits require increased borrowing, 2) spending exceeds economic growth, and 3) government policy is relentlessly anti-growth, such as the ruinous U.S. energy program that increases the cost of fossil fuels without any viable replacement.

Since 2000, U.S. GDP has increased from $10.0 trillion to $24.5 trillion, or 2.5x. In the same time period, New York City and New York State spending is up 2.8x and federal spending 3x.  Imagine on top of that, any sustained period of recession and low growth. Add in a major armed conflict or black swan event and the impact jumps from hair-raising to hell-fire calamitous, when even in a period of growth from 2000 to 2022 the federal debt increased an unconscionable 5.4x.

2050 has taken on talismanic significance for the climate change agenda. Far more attention should be paid to restoring U.S. finances by 2050. Bankrupt nations do not keep their promises: economic, social welfare, national security, or environmental. A single generation has wrecked the U.S. financial balance. It will take our very best next generation to make sure our children and their children have a country worth inheriting.

On a partisan note, it is worth mentioning that the fiscally responsible of 2000 were both Democrats (Clinton) and Republicans (Pataki), while the leadership villains of the past twenty years, with a vast supporting cast, were likewise from both sides of the aisle. The past four presidents have all signed omnibus spending bills; New York state is known for its Democrats (Spitzer, Paterson, Cuomo, Hochul); and the City, blame is on both sides, though Michael Bloomberg was not a bona fide Republican (Bloomberg, De Blasio, Adams). The 1985 and 1987 Gramm-Rudman spending constraint legislation, though a failure as an instrument of fiscal control, is a reminder that Congress in the not-so-distant past embraced at least the symbolic notion of bipartisan balanced budgets.

Looking ahead, the Democrats have embraced ever greater reckless spending, far, far to the left of anything imagined by the Democratic party of twenty years ago. Unless the party moves sharply back to its fiscally responsible roots, that leaves as the only practical hope passing the torch to a new generation of Republicans and with it a coalition capable of pursuing the sustained fiscal rebuilding of America. It is an agenda that will be supported by a broad cross section of Americans, without regard to race or class.

President DeSantis, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

TRUTH WILL OUT ABOUT TODAY’S TEACHERS!

Don’t ever labor under the misapprehension that teacher unions are about education:

A teacher speaks out: Union meeting prioritizes political activismamericanexperiment.org

According to Brenda Lebsack, a California teacher who virtually attended this year’s NEA convention, the union continued to double down on turning public education into training ground for political activism.

The NEA does not want public education to be neutral ground in developing critical thinkers with an emphasis on academic achievement.

Its priorities were apparent, because of the 110 motions discussed and voted on, only four remotely addressed student academic achievement. Those four dealt with student financial literacy and resources for English learners and language acquisition. 

Nearly half of the motions dealt with identity politics, social justice, and ways to promote the goals of the Democratic Party. 

Examples include: 

broad-brushing police as biased and corrupt; mocking the Second Amendment as a societal harm; fighting for preferential treatment for any and all groups considered “marginalized,” especially nonconforming genders and infinite sexual identities; fighting misinformation in the media (that is, any media outlets that do not agree with their views); increasing abortion rights; adding seats to the Supreme Court; and advocating for more queer representation on school boards. 

Article sent by Mark Waldeland …..a retired teacher who knows the ranks. ghr

“Imagine this!”

How Big Tech took over the Democrats

The Sam Bankman-Fried debacle reveals a party in hock to Silicon Valley.

ANDREW ORLOWSKI

23rd November 2022

Imagine this. A shady offshore finance business has pledged $1 billion to get a Republican president elected in 2024. The founder donates to a vast network of conservative activists and publicly promotes causes that they hold dear. He has long-standing Republican Party family connections. He is lionised in Congress. Officials promise regulatory changes that will help his business. The co-founder of the operation is a curiosity, a Chinese-American with no public profile. Then the business goes bankrupt, losing ordinary Americans billions of dollars of their savings. Much of the money simply goes missing and is unaccounted for.

Now imagine how the American media might have reported this affair over the past week or so. You can be sure the word ‘corruption’ would have featured prominently, along with the words ‘deep’ and ‘systemic’. We could be reading excoriating think-pieces on how greed persuaded people to look the other way. No doubt, some Substacks would have speculated on whether an absence of morality was a Republican trait. Yet with the dramatic collapse of FTX earlier this month, this kind of critique has been largely missing. So why might this be?

The answer, of course, is that Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was not a Republican, nor did he donate to conservative causes. He was the second-largest Democratic donor in the 2022 election cycle. He shrewdly talked up the two big secular, liberal religions of climate change and artificial intelligence. He also proclaimed himself to be a vegan.

SBF is well-connected, too. His father helped Elizabeth Warren draft legislation to revise the US tax code in 2016. His mother co-founded the secretive Democratic group Mind the Gap in 2018, which has funneled millions in donations to the Democrats. Mind The Gap ‘operates in a cone of secrecy’ but ‘speaks the language of Silicon Valley’, according to a Vox profile of the organisation. SBF’s brother, Gabe Bankman-Fried, used to work for Civis Analytics, the political data firm backed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, which is behind much of the Democratic Party’s data operation.

Cleverly, Bankman-Fried subscribes to the self-indulgent online cult of ‘effective altruism’, in which devotees outdo each other with claims of how moral they are – or would be, if only they were wealthier. Effective altruists say they are in favour of making money, which can then be donated to good causes. Professor Kathleen Stock describes the ‘movement’ as the ‘new woke’, beloved of ‘robotic tech bros’. These modern-day Pharisees don’t hide their good intentions under a bushel. Instead, they berate everyone else for not having the right priorities.

Yet as SBF admitted in an exchange of messages with a fellow devotee and journalist last week, it was all a sham. Effective altruism was a cosplay outfit that Bankman-Fried could slip into with ease. It was ‘this dumb game we woke Westerners play where we say all the right shibboleths and so everyone likes us’, he admitted.

On the surface, the fall of SBF is a familiar tale. A flood of funny money persuaded the political and administrative class to look the other way to FTX’s obvious shortcomings. But there is rather more to it than greed.

It has been over a decade since Joel Kotkin identified just how much the Democratic Party had changed during the Obama era. By 2012, the Democrats had become an alliance of tech elites and finance, he wrote. The party came to represent both Google and Goldman Sachs.

Although Bankman-Fried was neither a tech genius nor a financial wizard, he had the appeal of both, so long as one didn’t look too closely. He had the appearance of a dishevelled tech nerd and he carried Silicon Valley’s imprimatur. He was backed by leading financial investors from Softbank to Sequoia Capital. FTX was ‘Goldilocks perfect’, in the words of Sequoia partner Michelle Bailhe. And one suspects he must have initially made his backers a lot of money from the mysterious new alchemy of crypto finance.

Even Eric Schmidt, once a leading sceptic of crypto, was beginning to be won over. Before the crypto crash in May, Schmidt told the media he had dabbled in cryptocurrency. He also praised ‘Web3’, the latest crypto trend. When Schmidt changes his mind on something like crypto, it’s difficult for Democrats to disagree. And so an area of tech / finance that was once seen as akin to a digital Wild West quickly became something serious politicians could be seen to get involved in.

That the Democratic Party now takes its cues from the tech elite has created a broader political problem. Silicon Valley’s concerns are wholly at odds with those of ordinary working-class and middle-class Americans. Giant tech platforms like Amazon and Google create the illusion of competition, while exploiting their unique monopoly of information to manipulate both supply and demand. The tech elite’s obsession with climate change has led to exorbitant energy prices that destroy ordinary people’s jobs. Big Tech’s monopolisation of the economy and politics ought to be fertile ground for a populist pushback. Indeed, this is exactly the kind of set-up the Democratic Party would have opposed in the 20th century. Today’s Democrats seem incapable of doing so.

Back in 1935, when toy company Parker Brothers first acquired the rights to the Landlord’s Game – the predecessor to Monopoly – it made a number of changes. The new Monopoly was less explicitly anti-capitalist than the original 1904 version. It was also given new character tokens, all of which were now in metal for the first time. However, one of the character tokens it made sure to retain was the top hat, representing the top-hatted banker – a recognisable cipher for greed and indifference in Depression-era America. Perhaps the ‘crypto slob’ – a mop-headed millennial burnishing his climate-change credentials – ought to be this century’s equivalent.

Andrew Orlowski is a weekly columnist at the Telegraph. Visit his website here. Follow him on Twitter: @AndrewOrlowski.

Donald Trump….AMERICA NEEDS YOU!

November 23, 2022

The Worst Generation of Political Elites Ever

By William Levin at American Thinker:

At every level of government in the United States, budgets are out of balance and getting worse. Blue states worse than red states — big blue cities worse still.

A close look at New York City, New York state, and the federal government shows the problem is far more perilous than it appears. It is three drunks holding up a lamppost, without the humor.

For the 2023 fiscal year, New York City is projected to collect $73.3 billion in taxes, and spend $101.1 billion. How does it close a $27.8 billion gap? The city receives grants from the state ($16.8 billion) and $9.3 billion from the U.S. Treasury. In other words, without largesse, New York City is bankrupt.

But where does the state get that money? Because, no surprise, it too is bankrupt without federal support — as in, it spends $222 billion, but only collects $135.9 billion. The Treasury — largely funded by red state conservatives — fills the gap with $89.7 billion.  

In total, New York and New York City survive only by receiving federal grants totaling $99 billion annually.

But where does the Treasury get that money? This year, the U.S. will have collected $4.2 trillion and spent $6.0 trillion. Where does that $1.8 trillion come from?  Borrowing and printing. Public debt now totals $30.6 trillion.  Social security and all insurance funds are bankrupt.  In other words, the whole house of cards is exactly that.  

Has it always been like this?

Cast back to 2000, a mere generation ago, to what American finances used to look like. New York was significantly better run and the federal government operated with a balanced budget.

In 2000, New York City spent $36.0 billion, of which $25.1 billion came from taxes and other local revenues and $11.3 billion in funding from the state and the federal government. The City in those days ran a budget surplus, utilizing $2.1 billion in surplus from the prior year.

State spending totaled $79.7 billion versus $222 billion now — and, hard as it is to believe, $500 million was earmarked to pay down state indebtedness.

For that same year, the federal government took in $2.0 trillion and spent $1.8 trillion, yielding a $236 billion surplus.

Public debt totaled $5.7 trillion, or 55% of GDP, versus today’s $30.6 trillion, equal to 121% of GDP.

In other words, in one generation America’s finances have been ruined, at every level of government. From a fiscal point of view, this is undoubtedly America’s worst generation ever. In our brief case study: city spending went from $36.3 billion to $101.1 billion; the state from $79.7 billion to $222 billion; and the federal government from $2.0 trillion to $6.0 trillion — and the ultimate funding source, U.S. public debt, from $5.7 trillion to $30.6 trillion. Among economists it was understood, and widely agreed upon, that public debt should never exceed 70% of GDP.  And yet here we are at 121%, higher than at the peak of WWII, rising rapidly, unsustainably, as far as the eye can see. The Congressional Budget Office forecasts 2052 debt at 185% of GDP.

And make no mistake. No amount of taxation can fix this problem, even leaving aside the ruinous impact of excess taxation on incentives, growth capital, innovation, personal freedom and prosperity. Again it is the numbers that tell the story.

Of New York City’s $73.3 billion in taxes, $15.3 billion is from personal income. You would have to triple income taxes to close the shortfall. For the state, personal income taxes total $67.3 billion, an eEven doubling the tax would not balance the budget. At the federal level, the individual income tax raises $2.0 trillion. So again, it would take a doubling in taxes to balance the budget. That brings total taxes to in excess of 100% of income.

It used to be said that sustained economic growth will cure all. But that is manifestly untrue when 1) every year, at every level of government, deficits require increased borrowing, 2) spending exceeds economic growth, and 3) government policy is relentlessly anti-growth, such as the ruinous U.S. energy program that increases the cost of fossil fuels without any viable replacement.

Since 2000, U.S. GDP has increased from $10.0 trillion to $24.5 trillion, or 2.5x. In the same time period, New York City and New York State spending is up 2.8x and federal spending 3x.  Imagine on top of that, any sustained period of recession and low growth. Add in a major armed conflict or black swan event and the impact jumps from hair-raising to hell-fire calamitous, when even in a period of growth from 2000 to 2022 the federal debt increased an unconscionable 5.4x.

2050 has taken on talismanic significance for the climate change agenda. Far more attention should be paid to restoring U.S. finances by 2050. Bankrupt nations do not keep their promises: economic, social welfare, national security, or environmental. A single generation has wrecked the U.S. financial balance. It will take our very best next generation to make sure our children and their children have a country worth inheriting.

On a partisan note, it is worth mentioning that the fiscally responsible of 2000 were both Democrats (Clinton) and Republicans (Pataki), while the leadership villains of the past twenty years, with a vast supporting cast, were likewise from both sides of the aisle. The past four presidents have all signed omnibus spending bills; New York state is known for its Democrats (Spitzer, Paterson, Cuomo, Hochul); and the City, blame is on both sides, though Michael Bloomberg was not a bona fide Republican (Bloomberg, De Blasio, Adams). The 1985 and 1987 Gramm-Rudman spending constraint legislation, though a failure as an instrument of fiscal control, is a reminder that Congress in the not-so-distant past embraced at least the symbolic notion of bipartisan balanced budgets.

Looking ahead, the Democrats have embraced ever greater reckless spending, far, far to the left of anything imagined by the Democratic party of twenty years ago. Unless the party moves sharply back to its fiscally responsible roots, that leaves as the only practical hope passing the torch to a new generation of Republicans and with it a coalition capable of pursuing the sustained fiscal rebuilding of America. It is an agenda that will be supported by a broad cross section of Americans, without regard to race or class.

President DeSantis, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

“Congress over the next two years will be where sweeping goes to die”.

Antitrust in the Hands of Biden’s Pen and Phone

COMMENTARY

By Robert H. Bork Jr.

November 22, 2022

The White House is urging the Senate to use the coming lame duck session to pass Amy Klobuchar’s Big Tech antitrust bill, described by the Minnesota senator and adoring commentators alike as “sweeping.”

And it is sweeping.

With its mandate for tech companies to be fully “interoperable,” the Klobuchar bill would sweep the private data of American consumers, businesses, and government into the hands of hundreds of foreign companies. It would sweep the executives of large social media companies further into the thrall of progressivism by giving regulators the ability to threaten them with death-penalty fines over vague transgressions. And it would sweep non-tech companies, from banks to grocers, into its severe regulatory purview as these businesses grow in equity value and digital subscribers.

In the razor-thin balance of the coming 118^th Congress, however, the path to passage for “sweeping” legislation will be treacherous and narrow. To borrow a phrase, Congress over the next two years will be where sweeping goes to die.

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Business leaders might be tempted to believe, then, that they’ve dodged a bullet. After all, where else can antitrust policy go?

In most administrations, antitrust doesn’t have to go anywhere. It usually steams along like an ocean liner, navigating by the North Star of consumer welfare. But in the Biden administration, antitrust is a cigarette boat meant to propel us to a progressive world where business is dominated by government. Biden, and his Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, have shown time and again a determination to use antitrust enforcement as an excuse to regulate most of the economy, as well as to shift blame for inflation or wage stagnation from administration policy to evil, monopolistic corporations.

Early in his administration, President Biden kicked off his antitrust agenda by issuing 72 orders to a dozen agencies to find cause for antitrust actions against industries ranging from agriculture to pharmaceuticals, to manufacturing. President Biden, armed with a pen (for executive orders) and a phone (to browbeat civil servants), can be expected to double down on his 72 orders over the next two years.

In this new political environment, Lina Khan will play the leading role as the administration’s chief enforcer of the new antitrust regime. Khan upends long-standing convictions, such as holding vertical mergers to be benign. She launches investigations and lawsuits that may go nowhere in the courts for now – until Khan finds the right judge – but serve the purpose of keeping business in the thrall of progressive Washington.

Under Khan, for example, the FTC has hit Amazon with a blizzard of civil subpoenas and repeated demands for senior Amazon leaders to subject themselves to investigative hearings. Amazon voiced objections quietly shared by many companies targeted by the FTC. Amazon accused FTC of seeking testimony on “an open-ended list of topics” on which Amazon leaders have “no unique knowledge” in a way that “is grossly unreasonable, unduly burdensome, and calculated to serve no purpose than to harass Amazon’s highest-ranking executives and disrupt its business operations.”

Such meritless harassment of business may seem pointless. But harassing business has a point – to keep executives on a short lease held by progressive government. If Khan succeeds in cowing a giant like Amazon, she can dominate everyone else.

To increase her leverage over business, Khan weaponized an agency famous for its bipartisan, internal culture of debate. The FTC is now a one-woman show. FTC has long been famous for its spirit of debate and intellectual ferment. All significant decision-making has been brought under the control of the Office of the Chair. Policies long subject to notice and comment are altered or rescinded with little or no internal or external input.

FTC experts were once highly prized as speakers at economic and business forums. These interactions informed business on how to conform to regulations and gave real-world insights to regulators. One of Khan’s first acts was to forbid FTC staff from attending outside events.

FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson says: “Under Chair Khan, morale has plummeted, and we have seen an exodus of experienced lawyers and economists. The FTC may take a generation to recover from this loss of institutional knowledge.” FTC employees for years responded to Office of Personnel Management surveys by giving it the highest ratings. That same survey now gives the FTC, and Chair Khan, the lowest marks among government agencies for lacking “high standards of honesty and integrity.”

What’s behind these impulses? In a word: power. Commissioner Wilson describes these policies as being driven by a toxic mix of Marxism and critical legal theory. The FTC majority, she writes, sees law the way Karl Marx described it – not as a neutral arbiter, but as a weaponized instrument of raw political power.

Despite the gridlock in Congress, American businesses face a long, grueling two years.

Robert H. Bork Jr. is president of the Antitrust Education Alliance. 

“Do you get the feeling that you’ve been had?”

November 22, 2022

Have the Democrats Destroyed Our Election System?

By D. Parker at American Thinker:

Is there any point in voting if we can’t trust the system — or whether the liberty-denier Democrats will abide by the rule of law or basic decency?

Do you get the feeling that you’ve been had?

That terrible sick-in-your-stomach sensation when scam artists laugh and you realize they’ve done it again?  When all of our hopes for the conservation of liberty have been destroyed by the same type of schemes that we all should have seen coming a mile away?

How does a party trying to destroy our constitutional republic for two years with poll after poll screaming that we are on the wrong track avoid a humiliating defeat at the ballot box?

How does a party steeped in the worst aspects of fascism and socialism in a collectivist witch’s brew even have a chance after everyone has seen what they are at their core?

What did they offer?  More of the same only worse, and we were supposed to believe Gen Z and everyone else couldn’t wait to get all their ballots in?

You get the feeling that the illegitimate Left is verging between trying to hide their malicious merriment at ‘winning’ again and coming out with a ‘what are you going to do about it’ moment.

The liberty deniers of ‘the nation’ seems to be on the verge of the latter with a screed titled: “Democrats, Time to Go Big.”  Starting out with the fact that even they can’t believe they did so well:

Amazingly, Democrats survived 2022, retaining control of the Senate, and barely losing the House. With inflation and crime up, Biden unpopular, the vast majority saying the country is on the wrong track, and the history of voters’ punishing the president’s party in midterm elections, Republicans found it easy to peddle their “red wave” predictions. Among Democrats, fusillades from the perennial circular firing squad began long before Election Day. And yet, Democrats enjoyed the best midterm results for a presidential party since George Bush’s Republicans in 2002 in the wake of 9/11.

The author even admits that the fascist far Left was running on fumes, with nothing to offer:

Democrats did not offer a coherent argument about the economy or inflation, nor an answer to Republican race-baiting on crime… CNN’s exit polls suggest that the three-fourths of the electorate that considered the economy not good or poor voted strongly Republican.

It’s pretty revealing when even the nation’s socialist media openly admits that the far Left shouldn’t have ‘won’ anything. Curiously, they didn’t gloat about mail-in election harvesting, chain-of-custody-free drop boxes, and ballot counting that is probably still dragging on (we’re guessing that abacuses are difficult to master).

America’s Losing Its Christianity! THAT’S THE MAIN PROBLEM!

NOVEMBER 22, 2022 BY STEVEN HAYWARD at Power Line:

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: THE NEW “NEW RIGHT”

For all of my life it seems there has always been a “new right” in view. “New right” has been used since the 1950s at least, and the “new right” of the 1970s looks distinctly old today. The new “new right” today is, as frequently mentioned here, “national conservatism.” Hence worth taking in the summary overview of my old boss Christopher DeMuth, writing in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend:

Today we are in a new era of conservative discontent. The national conservatives are at the ramparts against the new status quo of woke progressivism in government, the military, business, education, culture and media. Many of them are also dismissive of the conservatism of Buckley & Co. and Ronald Reagan and their legacy of journals, think tanks and policy doctrines that became a settled Washington establishment by the 2000s and 2010s.

In their view, that establishment was complicit in progressivism’s political ascent. American conservatism became unduly attached to libertarian individualism, unfettered markets and free trade as ends in themselves—which helped set the stage for anything-goes cultural corruption, the decline of community, family and religion, and the rise of global corporations and institutions that decimated the American heartland.

Read the whole thing if you have a WSJ subscription.