Spotlight On America

By Rich Kozlovich

Spotlight on America is a online newsletter highlighting articles that have appeared in America Out Loud, which I had the privilege of writing for and did some podcasts and radio shows in times past.  I stopped because it gets to be a job, and at my age, I really don't want a job.  However, I still consider that to have been a privilege.

Here are the articles they've highlighted this week. 

In spite of the outrageous claims by the Democrats and their lackeys in the media that Trump's destroying the economy, the economy continues to grow, yet the media continues to fuel anxiety.  As the author points states and asks:

A new mental health poll reveals a surprising and sobering truth: Americans are deeply anxious about money, their jobs, and the state of the country. Despite a robust economy and nearly 8 million job openings, 40% of employed Americans say they’re worried about losing their jobs. Business confidence is rising, but individual anxiety is, too. What’s causing this disconnect?........The Power of Fear-Based Messaging.........

Then we have:

Russiagate beats Watergate by a mile, but what about repercussions? - While mainstream media is trying to push other stories ahead of this one, it must be noted that this scandal was exponentially worse than the Watergate robbery, as it was designed to alter the direction of and interfere with the 2016 presidential election. While Nixon was on the way to a landslide victory over George McGovern, Hillary Clinton’s election and electability were in question for nearly a decade beforehand........

I would like to point out personal lives weren't destroyed by the Watergate crowd, and Nixon's only involvement was the later coverup.   There's every indication that Obama was the originator and director for this scandal, and many lives were destroyed by their lawfare illegalities in the process.  Someone needs to be held accountable.  

Is real "hope and change" on the way?  Prof. Pedro Blas González says, Finally, ‘hope and change’ is coming.  The author says:

Is there reason to believe that hope and change are finally coming to America? The underlying political, social, and cultural conditions of late postmodern life and society are morally corrosive and destructive of our capacity to cultivate the moral and spiritual higher ground of personhood. Social political demagogues know this and exploit it for power.  It was Blatant Ill-Will for America and Its People.............The aim of Obama and the globalists who helped place this obscure Marxist ‘community organizer’ in power was to bring the alleged capitalist beast that is America down to its knees, which they accomplished........

Let us not forget that Obama’s rallying cry for hope and change was to ‘fundamentally transform’ America. This meant dismantling American values and traditions piece by piece. Obama, the bourgeois, Marxist Gargantua who mysteriously descended upon America to save its people from oppressors, did just that..........If people can’t live with morality – only with the law – then let us ramp up the investigations.  Americans are paying attention, especially the young..............

The Democrat party is now the unofficial Communist Party of America, running outright communist candidates for government positions nation wide.  Lt. Steve Rogers calls out to the Democrat rank and file to Take your party back from the Communists.  Sounds good, but it ain't gonna happen.  We're no longer talking about the "loyal opposition".  They're the "disloyal opposition" trying to destroy the American identity, culture, economy, and eliminate the Constitution replacing it with the socialist tyranny of one party rule.  That's who the Democrats are at their core now, and that's not going to change.   For that to change would require them to become conservatives.  Don't bet the house on that happening. 

And finally, Is the Genius Act a back door to CBDC and financial control?  Blanquita Cullum asks:

Are your finances at risk under the new Genius Act? I discuss what this regulatory framework for stablecoins really means for your economic security.......Could this be a back-door to Central Bank Digital Currency and loss of financial freedom, or is it a solution for instability...

Truthfully, I haven't the vaguest understanding about bitcoin realities, but what I do believe is this as an opportunity for the government to at some point control buying and selling based on political and/or religious positions, we've already seen some of that with debanking issues around he world.  Is this about safety and stability?  Tyranny is often disguised as a need for safety and stability, and then as it grows it becomes so large and ubiquitous it's too large  and to powerful to do anything about it.  

In One Chart, Everything You Need to Know about America’s Fiscal Mess

Governments' view of the economy can be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. Ff it keeps moving, regulate it.  If it stops moving, subsidize it.  Ronald Reagan

January 2, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Many people mistakenly think that America’s main fiscal problem is annual budget deficits that are now approaching $2 trillion.

It is not good to have so much red ink, to be sure, but the real problem is that the federal government is spending far too much money.

Excessive government is a bad idea whether it is financed by taxes, by borrowing, of by money-printing.

All of which explains why I think my Golden Rule is the key to good fiscal policy. And that means focusing on trend lines.

Speaking of which, here’s a very depressing chart. Using historical data from Biden’s last budget, it shows that the federal budget expanded dramatically during the COVID pandemic, then declined slightly, but never returned to the pre-pandemic trendline.

There are three things to understand about this chart. The first two things matter when looking at the past.

• First, spending was growing too fast before the pandemic.
• Second, spending exploded during the pandemic.

But our final thing to understand is critically important when looking at the future.

• Third, politicians used the pandemic to ratchet upwards the spending trendline.

One member of the U.S. Senate seems to understand that this is the real problem. Here are some excerpts from a column in the Wall Street Journal by Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

Federal spending is out of control. In fiscal 2019, which ran from Oct. 1, 2018, to Sept. 30, 2019, federal outlays totaled $4.447 trillion. In fiscal 2020, federal outlays jumped to $6.554 trillion because of the pandemic spending spree. …Even if you think Covid relief spending levels were appropriate (I don’t), there was no justification for maintaining that level of spending once the pandemic was over. Yet we’ve turned pandemic spending into the new baseline, spending $6.6 trillion…

In a sane world, Covid spending levels would have been an extreme aberration, and we would have already returned to a more reasonable level of spending. …I think most people would agree that if you were able to grow your family budget based on the increase in your family size plus the rate of inflation…

Why not apply that same discipline to the federal budget? …Using 2014 outlays as a base would establish a 2025 budget of $6.2 trillion with a deficit of $700 billion. Using 2019 outlays results in a 2025 budget of $6.5 trillion with a deficit of $1 trillion. …setting baseline spending to one of those budget years isn’t only reasonable but doable.

Needless to say, it warms my heart when anyone endorses spending caps.

From a practical perspective, Sen. Johnson’s spending cap would bring the future spending burden down closer to the yellow line in the above chart.

Sadly, I expect that Trump will have no interest in that goal.

P.S. As always, the titles of my “everything-you-need-to-know” columns are an exaggeration. I use that literary tool to highlight key facts.

P.P.S. The exact same spending trendline problem exists in the United Kingdom.

Europe’s Economic Woes: Right Description, Wrong Prescription

June 15, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Economic freedom has been declining in the United States in recent decades. But it’s also been declining in Western Europe over the same period.

 

It’s almost as if politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are having a race to see who can do the most damage to prosperity.

Perhaps because they started with more statism, it appears that European politicians are winning. Which means that the European people are losing.

Two months ago, I wrote about the widening gulf between the United States and Europe and shared a chart about a growing wage gap between the U.S. and other major nations.

And that builds upon the two columns I wrote in 2023 (here and here) and the three columns I wrote in 2022 (here, here, and here), all of which show America out-performing Europe.

Today, let’s revisit the issue.

Here are some excerpts from a Washington Post column by Fareed Zakaria. Here’s his comparison of the U.S. and Europe.

In Europe, the talk is all about how Europe has been unable to keep up with the U.S. powerhouse. …In 2008, the United States and the euro-zone economies were roughly the same size. Today, the American economy is nearly twice the size of the euro zone. And it’s not just one measure. Average European income is now 27 percent lower than in the United States, and average wages are 37 percent lower. …The U.S. economy towers above Europe’s these days. The United States’ technology companies dominate the continent.

U.S. banks are far more profitable than European ones. U.S. energy production has created a boom in manufacturing which is luring many European companies to the United States. As one German CEO said to me. “America is an easier place to do business, has fewer regulations, and now has much lower energy costs. How do I rationally invest in Europe?” ……every year 300 billion euros is diverted to overseas markets to find superior investments, most of them in the United States.

I think it’s a gross overstatement for him to call the United States a powerhouse. After all, inflation-adjusted wages and household income numbers in America have been quite dismal.

But Zakaria is correct to say that Europe is in much worse shape.

Where he goes astray is in his proposed solution. He thinks more centralized power in Brussels (the headquarters of the European Union) is the key to faster growth.

The solution to Europe’s woes can be summarized in one line — a deeper, more united, more strategic Europe. But that solution means, inevitably, more power to the European Union.

This is completely backwards. Europe needs more federalism and jurisdictional competition, not more centralization and harmonization.

To be fair, there are plenty of good things about the European Union, particularly the goal of free trade among the member nations.

But the E.U. also is a major source of bad policy, such as carbon protectionism and tax harmonization.

The bottom line is that more power for Brussels means expanding the cost of supranational government in Europe while doing nothing to fix the primary problem of bad policy by national governments.

The New York Times Grades Biden’s Economy on a Curve

June 22, 2024 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Back in February, I debunked a Washington Post story that tried to portray Biden’s economy as being successful merely because the U.S. was out-performing Europe.

 

That’s true, but hardly a big achievement.  More important, that type of analysis won’t be persuasive to voters who are unhappy about sluggish wages and stagnant incomes.

Today’s column is going to review a story in the New York Times that also tries to put a positive spin on the Biden economy by comparing America to other nations.

The authors, Jim Tankersley and Madeleine Ngo, are puzzled that Biden isn’t getting more credit for a an economy that was “juiced” by his so-called stimulus.

Here are some excerpts.

Polls show that Americans continue to favor Mr. Biden’s opponent, former President Donald J. Trump, on economic issues. Often, they indicate that only relatively small slices of the electorate believe Mr. Biden’s policies have helped them or their family financially. …Economists say the relief package…has helped accelerate America’s recovery from the pandemic recession.

The United States has grown and added jobs in a way that no other wealthy nation has experienced after the pandemic. Supporters of Mr. Biden, and the law, say that enhanced growth has helped the president remain better positioned electorally than his counterparts across Europe. …America’s rapid economic growth and low unemployment rate, bolstered by the stimulus, could help explain that divergence. …America’s recovery remains the envy of the wealthy world, far outpacing Europe, Japan, Canada and other allies.

At the risk of repeating myself, bragging that the United States is out-performing nations with even-worse economy policy is not exactly persuasive.

 

Sort of like saying a 10-year old can throw a baseball farther than a 5-year old.

But what is most absurd about the NYT story is the assertion that the United States is enjoying “rapid economic growth.”

In reality, the current expansion is relatively weak. Especially compared to the rapid growth the U.S. enjoyed under Reaganomics.

Given the political orientation of the establishment media, I’m not too surprised that journalists are trying to make Biden’s economy seem successful.

But putting lipstick on a pig is not likely to yield much success.

P.S. If you want an accurate assessment of the pig’s attractiveness, I have an eight-part series on Bidenomics that looks at poverty, subsidies, inflation, protectionism, household income, fiscal policy, red tape, and employment.

Joe Biden's America

By Robin Itzler

Editor's Note:  This is one of the commentaries selected from Robin's weekly newsletter Patriot Neighbors. Any cartoons appearing will have been added by me.  You wish to get the full edition,   E-mail her at PatriotNeighbors@yahoo.com to get on her list, it's free.  RK

This is the Biden Consequence!  Let's take a quick look at the rise in antisemitism and the nation's economic situation. 

Do not think the rise in antisemitism at Columbia University and other colleges is from a small minority and a lot of outside agitators. If you do, you’re wrong! As reported in Gary Bauer’s April 25 American Values:

If you want some idea of how deep the rot at Columbia goes, just look at a recent vote held by the undergraduate student body:

• 77% voted for Columbia University to completely divest from Israel.
• 68% voted to close Columbia’s Tel Aviv Center.
• 65% voted to shut down Columbia’s dual-degree program with Tel Aviv University in Israel.

Throughout the United States, stores are closing, and businesses are laying off employees. If the unemployed person worked in California, the most they can receive in weekly unemployment insurance is $450. This is the same amount California paid in 2004, the last time the state’s Employment Development Department (EDD) had an payment increase.

In 2004, the average weekly salary in the once-Golden state was $806. In 2023, it was $1,651.  Do you think $450 has the same buying power in 2024 that it had in 2004?

Every state has a different criterion for receiving their highest unemployment payment. For instance, some states pay more if the unemployed person has dependent children. H       ere is what some states pay: 

Minnesota, $890 - Oklahoma, $707 - New Jersey,  $830 - Montana,  $552  -  Colorado,  $781 - New Mexico,  $511 -  Ohio,  $757 - Utah, $391 - Iowa,  $714 - Iowa, $32

Few people expect unemployment benefits to replace their full salary, but it was always expected to restore about 50 percent of an employee’s wages. The situation is insulting in states with low payments when thousands of dollars in monthly freebies are being given to illegal alien invaders!

Denver is running out of money as it pays for all the freebies they are giving illegal alien invaders. What does Democrat Mayor Mike Johnson suggest? Well, we are living in insane times, so Johnson suggests defunding the city’s police department’s budget (reducing it by $8.4 million) and the fire department’s budget (reducing it by $2.5 million)!

This makes complete sense if you understand that Biden’s purpose in opening the southern border to criminals, mentally ill and terrorists is to have these millions register as Democrats! The only thing Biden & Company care about is that they vote Democrat—even if they go around attacking, raping and killing Americans. Denver Mayor Johnston shares how the money taken from police and fire budgets will be spent on ILLEGALS:

“The program also includes access to language instruction, career pathway explorations, industry-recognized credential training and work-based learning opportunities.” 

If we do not take back the White House, Senate, and House in November 2024, all the United States will become California and there’ll be no reason to relocate to a red state.

Three Big Surprises of 2022: Weakened Russia, Weakened China, Weakened American Economy

Michael Barone Dec 23, 2022

2022 was a year full of surprises. Important things didn't work out as many people had expected on just about every point on the political spectrum.

The prime example: Ukraine. When Vladimir Putin's Russian troops invaded on Feb. 24, it looked like an independent Ukraine was toast. Military experts on cable channels said Russia had overwhelming superiority. It would take Kyiv and occupy the whole country.

The Biden administration evidently shared this view, evacuating the U.S. Embassy and offering a plane to rescue the president (and former comedian) Volodymyr Zelensky, who at this point uttered the immortal words, "I need ammunition, not a ride."

The Biden administration, to its credit, adjusted to the unexpected reality and provided Ukraine with vital military and economic aid. This week, Zelensky is visiting Washington voluntarily, not as an exile. And it is Putin who is describing his side's position in Ukraine as "extremely difficult."

The lesson is that morale can trump material. People will prove braver and more resourceful when protecting their freedom and their nation's independence than firepower statistics suggest.........To Read Mroe...

Biggest Job Cuts in Decades Coming?

The following is sponsored content by Stansberry Research. Have you seen the massive number job cuts taking place right now in the tech industry? Money manager Charlie Bilello posted a list recently, and the numbers are stunning:

• Twitter is cutting 50 percent of its workforce (about 3,700 jobs).
• Facebook is cutting 11,000 jobs–its largest round of layoffs ever.
• Snap is cutting 20 percent of its workforce (1,200 jobs).
• Shopify is cutting 10 percent of its workforce (1,000 jobs).
• Netflix cut 450 jobs.
• Microsoft and Salesforce are each cutting 1,000 jobs.
• Robinhood is cutting 31 percent of its workforce.
• Tesla is cutting 10 percent of salaried workers.
• Lyft is cutting 13 percent of its workforce (700 jobs).
• Redfin is cutting 13 percent of its workforce.
• Coinbase is cutting 18 percent of its workforce (1,100 jobs).
• Stripe is cutting 14 percent of its workforce (1,000 jobs).

And in addition to these massive cuts, Bilello says Amazon has announced a hiring freeze, Apple has paused almost all hiring, and Google is reducing new hiring by 50 percent. But here’s the really scary part…According to Bill Bonner, a 73-year-old ultra-successful entrepreneur whose companies employ thousands of people around the world, these layoffs are just getting started and are just the beginning.

• November ends with a bad jobs report December 1, 2022 The jobs report confirms that it will be a rough ride for the Biden administration in the near future.  More

They're Crashing the Economy on Purpose

Katie Pavlich Oct 28, 2022

During a briefing at the White House this week, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked whether President Joe Biden plans to shake up his economic team after the 2022 midterm elections. 

Her response was quite telling and confirmed Biden's tanking of the American economy is calculated and deliberate. Personnel is policy, and Biden has installed people in positions throughout the federal government to radically change the country............To Read More...

My Take - The Plan!  Forced transition to "alternative energy".  An absolute loser, and easily proven to be such yet they continue to force it down everyone's throat.   Fuel prices doubling, and soon some, like diesel fuel and heating fuel, will be restricted and possibly not available.  Pushing electric vehicles, that can't be charged easily, and in California can't be charged at all at times, don't travel far and batteries that cost $20,000 to replace.  They're destroying energy production knowing full well no advanced country can survive without ample, easily accessible and inexpensive energy.  And it's deliberate.

Biden has put absolute socialists in charge of his Council of Economic Advisers.  Leftists who have worked their entire lives to destroy America's economic structure.  Biden even nominated Saule Omarova, a Russian trained communist, as the Comptroller of the Currency, who wanted to have total control of the nation's currency by ending private bank accounts with all deposits go to the federal government, in something she called, FedAccounts, in order to "democratize finance".  She also wanted to bankrupt oil companies in the name of climate change.   That was stopped by the Senate.

So why do I focus on Omarova?  She's the archetype of everyone working for the Biden administration.  

  “When a clown enters a castle, he does not become a king; rather the castle becomes a circus …” — Turkish Proverb

 

As of October 27, 2022

States are Fighting Back Against The Woke Wolves of Wall Street

By Dr. Jay Lehr | Sep 8, 2022 | Business, Economy, Energy, Politics @ America Out Loud

In Joe Biden’s America, sky-high gas prices are not a problem as they are, in fact, a feature of his radical energy policies. He admitted as much when he said crippling gas prices were part of an “incredible transition“ that will make the world “less reliant on fossil fuels when this is over.”

In just 18 months, President Biden has transformed America from the world’s top oil and gas producer into a nation once again dependent on other countries. He rejoined the Paris Climate Accord, bowed to environmental extremists by canceling the Keystone Pipeline, and shut down oil and gas lease sales from our vast public lands and waters. It should come as no surprise that gasoline prices have nearly doubled since the day President Biden took office.

But Democrats in Washington are not the only ones waging war on American energy. Liberals in the private sector have proven that they are all too willing to play along. On Wall Street, major investment firms are rating companies based on their adherence to left-wing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) values. Like the social credit scores issued by the Chinese Communist Party, a low ESG score can be devastating, making it virtually impossible for a company to raise capital.

In effect, Wall Street liberals are succeeding where DC liberals have failed: shutting down entire industries that offend their radical values. It is time that we stop underwriting these efforts with taxpayer dollars.

Many states have had enough and are beginning to fight back against the Woke Wolves of Wall Street. West Virginia recently announced that Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, and BlackRock will be banned from doing business with the state as a result of the companies’ pernicious ESG policies that punish the coal industry. All five companies had previously announced that they were drastically cutting investments in new coal projects.

Other states are also rising to the occasion. Already, the New York Times reports that Louisiana and Arkansas have joined West Virginia in pulling more than $700 million out of BlackRock. State treasurers in Utah and Indiana are demanding an end to the insidious practice of ESG. And state attorneys general, led by Mark Brnovich of Arizona and Doug Peterson of Nebraska, are pursuing Wall Street firms for possible antitrust violations and the illegal restraint of trade or commerce. This is a perfect description of the tactics inherent to ESG.

The fact is, the left’s war on energy is both hypocritical and destructive. It’s hypocritical because it’s not really about saving the environment – otherwise, these massive Wall Street financiers wouldn’t be investing billions of dollars in China, the world’s largest polluter. And it’s extraordinarily destructive to American workers, families, and businesses – all of whom depend on affordable, reliable energy to power homes, vehicles, and our entire economy.

Republicans have long been castigated as the party of big business and the country club, but the left’s obsession with offshoring energy jobs hurts America’s working class the hardest. Our federal, state, and local governments should not be bankrolling businesses that hurt America’s backbone.

States with large employee pension funds invested in the stock market would be well advised to reign in massive investment firms that are pushing a radical ESG agenda. State and local governments should entrust their money to managers that don’t work against their citizens’ best interests. States should also pass model legislation developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council requiring government pension fund managers to vote the state’s shares, rather than delegating that authority to Woke Wolf of Wall Street firms.

Every state in the union should follow West Virginia’s example and give Wall Street a simple choice: either serve the interests of our citizens, or take your business elsewhere. Mike Pence, the former United States Vice President, is right in his desire to battle the woke promoters of ESG on Wall Street.

Dr. Jay Lehr

Dr. Jay Lehr is a Senior Policy Analyst with the International Climate Science Coalition and former Science Director of The Heartland Institute. He is an internationally renowned scientist, author, and speaker who has testified before Congress on dozens of occasions on environmental issues and consulted with nearly every agency of the national government and many foreign countries. After graduating from Princeton University at the age of 20 with a degree in Geological Engineering, he received the nation’s first Ph.D. in Groundwater Hydrology from the University of Arizona. He later became executive director of the National Association of Groundwater Scientists and Engineers.

 

A Prosperity Contest: The United States vs. Europe

September 21, 2022 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

Many people are stunned by the data I shared early last year showing that ordinary people in the United States tend to be much richer than their peers in advanced European nations.

Here’s some more evidence, courtesy of the Manhattan Institute’s Chris Pope.

As you can see, the poorest people in America are about equal to the poorest people in Germany, France, Canada, and the United Kingdom, but Americans are ahead of their peers when looking at the top 90 percent of the population.

For the top 70 percent, Americans are comfortably ahead.

But not everybody agrees.

Here’s a tweet from John Burn-Murdoch of the U.K.-based Financial Times. He has a very negative portrayal of the United States (and the United Kingdom).

The tweet from Burn-Murdoch includes a link to an article he wrote.

Here are some excerpts.

…one good way to evaluate which countries are better places to live than others is to ask: is life good for everyone there, or is it only good for rich people? …If you’re a proud Brit or American, you may want to look away now. …Norway is a good place to live, whether you are rich or poor. …The rich in the US are exceptionally rich — the top 10 per cent have the highest top-decile disposable incomes in the world, 50 per cent above their British counterparts. But the bottom decile struggle by with a standard of living that is worse than the poorest in 14 European countries including Slovenia. …transpose Norway’s inequality gradient on to the US, and the poorest decile of Americans would be a further 40 per cent better off while the top decile would remain richer than the top of almost every other country on the planet. …Until those gradients are made less steep, the UK and US will remain poor societies with pockets of rich people.

The United States is a poor society with some very rich people?!?

 

Is that possibly true?

As you might expect, that is utter hogwash. Here’s a chart, based on data from the Paris-based (and left-leaning) Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

It shows “actual individual consumption” in the OECD’s member nations, and people in the United States are far better off than people in any other nations.

Indeed, they have 50 percent more consumption than the average person in other OECD countries.

All you need to know is that Burn-Murdoch took some data about America’s poorest people and wants to mislead readers into thinking it also applies to the general population.

And he doesn’t even show his calculations. For what it’s worth, his numbers are not very consistent with some other data sources that are publicly accessible.

Professor Noah Smith also debunks the FT‘s report.

…when we look at how Americans in the middle of the distribution are doing, we see that America is not a “poor society” at all — in fact, it’s one of the richest on Earth. …the median American has a higher income than the median resident of almost any other country… Some people argue that because European countries buy health care for their citizens via the government — which is not counted in disposable income — that it’s not fair to use disposable income as the comparison measure here. But this isn’t right. The U.S. has a relatively low percentage of out-of-pocket health spending — our employers and our government pick up most of the tab. In fact, when we look at “adjusted disposable income”, which includes the value of government services like health care, we find out that the U.S. comes out even more ahead relative to other countries. …someone at around the 18th percentile of income in America in 2019 — a working-class person on the edge of being considered poor — lived in a household making $21,400 a year. That’s about the same as the median income of households in Japan, and about 84% of the median income of households in the UK. In other words, a working-class American on the edge of poverty makes as much as a middle-class person in some rich countries.

I’ll close by noting something else that was misleading in the FT report. Burn-Murdoch compares Norway to the U.S. and U.K., but that nation’s oil wealth makes it very unrepresentative.

Since the report concludes by endorsing more redistribution, it would be more honest and appropriate to compare American living standards to the performance of Europe’s other welfare states.

But Burn-Murdoch did not do that because his already flimsy case would look even weaker.

Also, note that he did not highlight Switzerland. After all, it is richer than Norway, even though it does not enjoy abundant natural resources.

I suspect that’s because Switzerland is a libertarian-oriented nation with a comparatively small welfare state. In other words, it’s a role model for good policy, whereas the reporter seems interested in promoting dirigisme.

P.S. Speaking of libertarians, the Burn-Murcoch story in the Financial Times begins with this passage.

Where would you rather live? A society where the rich are extraordinarily rich and the poor are very poor, or one where the rich are merely very well off but even those on the lowest incomes also enjoy a decent standard of living? For all but the most ardent free-market libertarians, the answer would be the latter.

At the risk of stating the obvious, libertarians want a society with the smallest-possible government. Limiting coercion (the non-aggression principle) is the main motive.

Libertarians will view the resulting distribution of income as just, but they also will point out that freer societies do a much better job of generating broadly shared prosperity than government-dominated societies.

The bottom line is that Burn-Murdoch is either extraordinarily ignorant about libertarianism or he suffers from Nancy MacLean levels of bad faith and dishonesty.

Rep. Andy Barr: Democrats Have Failed on the Economy, Crime, and the Border

Editor's Note:  This post was one of twelve I linked as a singular post.  However Blogger decided that post met some "Community Standard" that offended them and "un-published" it.  So I'm posting them all separately and the cartoon will be the Cartoon of the Day.  RK

 

By Melanie Arter | August 22, 2022 | 11:53am EDT 

 

Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) on Sunday predicted that Republicans will win the upcoming midterm elections by a “landslide” because “Joe Biden has done such a poor job and congressional Democrats have failed the American people on the economy, crime, and the border.”  “We have a positive agenda. We have a commitment to America, and we're going to get back to basics,” Barr told NBC’s “Meet the Press” when asked what the Republican plan is to deal with inflation other than not supporting Biden’s policies...............Rep. Andy Barr: Democrats Have Failed on the Economy, Crime, and the Border

 

Exclusive — Ship of Fools: 62 Percent of Biden Officials Who Handle Economic Policy Have Zero Years Business Experience Per Report

Matthew Boyle 13 Jul 2022

An explosive new analysis published by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity reveals that Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration has very few business-oriented officials in the administration and that the vast majority of people handling economic policy for the United States government under Biden have no business experience whatsoever.

The 15-page report, authored by economist Steve Moore and the Committee to Unleash Prosperity‘s executive director Jon Decker, was provided to Breitbart News exclusively ahead of its public release. The headline of the report is: “Not Ready for Prime Time Players: Majority of Biden Appointees have Zero Years of Business Experience.” The report analyzes the backgrounds of the “top 68 officials in the Biden administration, starting with the president himself, and including cabinet members, regulatory officials, and White House advisers.”

In the executive summary, the authors detail some key findings in the report. First and foremost, 62 percent of Biden’s top political appointees and staffers “who deal with economic policy, regulation, commerce, energy and finance have virtually no business experience.”

What’s more, only one out of eight Biden officials has what the authors deem “extensive business experience,” and the average level of business experience across the Biden administration is about 2.4 years. The median years of business experience among Biden’s top appointees is zero, since so few have any experience in the private sector, and the “vast majority of the Biden economic/commerce team members are professional politicians, lawyers, community organizers, lobbyists, or government employees.”............To Read More.....

• Biden's top 68 appointees have just 2.4 years of business experience, analysis finds - including 62 percent of officials who have 'virtually NO private sector experience' on their work records - The report found that 62 percent of Biden appointees who deal directly with business matters - economic policy, regulation, commerce, energy and finance, have 'virtually no business experience.' Only one in 8 were found to have 'extensive' business experience and their average business experience was 2.4 years.  'These highest level people who are in charge of kind of keeping our economy on track of haven't got the experience to deal with, you know, the logistics of managing $22 trillion economy,' Moore told DailyMail.com in an interview. 'You have basically lawyers and university professors and community activists that don't have any experience with managing a big operation or steering the economy in the right direction.' ..........
• Breitbart News Daily Podcast Ep. 177: Study Explains Biden Administration’s Economic Incompetence; Guest: Stephen Moore - Host Alex Marlow opens today’s Breitbart News Daily podcast with a preview of the likely pointless summit President Biden is holding in Saudi Arabia. Then, Alex delves into the latest frightening inflation data, the prospect of a global food shortage, and the possibility of the Monkeypox getting out of control before the Biden administration comes up with a coherent policy on it. Alex also reports on Massachusetts Sen. Liz Warren’s latest abortion hysteria, another crime story involving a man who recently had a beard but now thinks he’s a woman, the renewed push for mask mandates, and why New York City stinks both literally and figuratively. Our guest today is economist Stephen Moore, who conducted a study revealing that only 62 percent of the Biden administration officials who handle economic policy have actual business experience........
• The Problem of Policymaker Ignorance - “Policymakers are forever in search of causal knowledge and powers – to both know enough and be capable of bringing about specific states of social affairs – that no mortal can possess.” ~ Scott Scheall
• Fed Must Act Now to Stop Runaway Inflation - “Fed Chair Jerome Powell promised more than six months ago that the Fed would ‘use our tools to make sure that higher inflation does not become entrenched.’ Its actions, however, indicate otherwise.”......... 
• Consumer Sentiment Remained Near Record Lows in Early July - “Consumer sentiment ticked up in early July but remains near record lows and consistent with prior recessions. Inflation is a driver of weakening consumer attitudes and contributing to elevated risks. The outlook is highly uncertain.” ~ Robert Hughes 
• Five Negative Consequences of Price Ceilings - “The public often supports price ceilings – support that would surely disappear if the public understood the basic economics of this harmful government intervention.” 
• Real Retail Sales Decline for the Third Time in Four Months - “Real retail sales fell in June and the recent trend is essentially flat. Threats to the economy are intensifying. Caution is warranted.” ~ Robert Hughes 
• Manufacturing Output Falls for a Second Consecutive Month in June -  “Industrial output fell in June, led by declines in manufacturing. Production issues, price pressures, and an intensifying Fed tightening cycle remain risks. Caution is warranted.” ~ Robert Hughes

White House: Frustrated Americans Should Remember That Gas Prices Are Even Higher in Other Countries

Charlie Spiering 6 Jun 2022

The White House on Monday reminded Americans frustrated with record-high gas prices that the cost of fuel was even higher in foreign countries. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre responded to questions about high gas prices during the daily briefing by noting it was “really important” that people understood that prices were higher across the globe.

She noted that gas prices in the European Union were $8.15 a gallon, prices in Germany were $8.88 a gallon, and prices in Canada were $6.23 a gallon. “This is a global challenge, this is something that everyone is feeling across the globe,” she said, arguing that gas prices had risen as a result of Russian President Vladimir Putin invading Ukraine.............To Read More....

My Take - This wasn't a global challenge until Biden took office and filled his administration with leftist misfits working to destroy America.  What does the price of gasoline around the world have to do with the price of gasoline here?  There's starvation in places in the world.  Should we then accept food shortages to be like them?  There's serious health issues around the world.  Should we abandon our health care to match them?   They answer yes by their actions.  

The price of energy, and in this case gasoline, is the beginning of wisdom.

•  More than 8 in 10 Americans say the economy is ‘poor or not so good’ under Biden 
•  Progressive America is the Twilight Zone
•  Democrat senator says it doesn't matter — to her -- how high gas prices are
•  Janet Yellen Expects Inflation to Remain High, Shrugs Off Effects of Biden Spending Spree
• The madness of slow Joe: Sun king edition
• Face it, Joe, You Were Never Supposed to Be President. You were just supposed to play him on TV.
• Biden EPA Nominee Demands U.S. Pay 'Climate Reparations'

What amazes me is polls show Biden still has over 35% of the population saying he's doing a good job.  Another reason I've not believed in polls for over 25 years. 

Gimmicky Public Policy from Japan

December 27, 2021 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

It’s hard to be optimistic about Japan’s economic future, in large part because the burden of government is expanding thanks to an aging population and a tax-and-transfer entitlement system.

 

Maintaining that approach is a recipe for ever-higher taxes (especially since Japan already has record levels of debt).

And Japanese politicians definitely have been grabbing more money, enabled to a considerable extent by a money-grabbing value-added tax.

To make matters worse, the country’s economy has not enjoyed much growth ever since a bubble burst about thirty years ago.

Sadly, the current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, doesn’t seem to have any sensible ideas for his country.

Instead, as reported by Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno in the New York Times, he’s latched on to a very silly proposal.

Japan’s prime minister…wants…to…Give…employees a substantial raise. The reasoning is simple. Wage growth has been stagnant for decades in Japan, the wealth gap is widening and the quickest fix is nudging people…to pay their employees more. Higher wages, the thinking goes, will jump-start consumer spending and lift Japan’s sputtering economy. …the prime minister is calling on employers to increase pay as much as 4 percent in 2022. Companies that comply will be allowed to increase their overall corporate tax deductions by up to 40 percent. …Mr. Kishida said…Increasing pay “is not a cost,” he added. “It’s an investment in the future.”

Kishida’s scheme is a bizarre mix of industrial policy and Keynesian economics.

He wants a special loophole in the tax code, but only if companies jump through certain hoops.

All based on the flawed notion that consumer spending drives the economy (it’s actually the economy that drives consumer spending).

Unsurprisingly, the private sector isn’t very impressed by the prime minister’s approach.

Business groups, union leaders and others have questioned the feasibility… That businesses would resist increasing wages even when essentially paid to do so shows just how intractable the problem is. Years of weak growth…have left companies little room to raise prices. …The reaction to the wage proposal is an inauspicious sign for Mr. Kishida, who took office two months ago promising to…put Japan’s economy back on track through a “new capitalism.”

Kishida’s “new capitalism” sounds even worse than some of the gimmicky ideas that have been pushed on the right in the United States (reform conservatism, common-good capitalism, nationalist conservatism, and compassionate conservatism).

From an economic perspective, he needs to learn that sustained higher wages are only possible if there’s more productivity, which translates into more income for both companies and workers.

And that’s not a description of what we find in Japan.

…there is the issue of unprofitability. For nearly a decade, a majority of Japanese businesses have been unprofitable — around 65 percent in 2019, the lowest figure since 2010. They have been kept afloat by cheap money underwritten by the Bank of Japan, but no profits mean no corporate tax liability, so those businesses would not be eligible for Mr. Kishida’s incentives.

The bottom line is that Japan’s political elite has been marching steadily in the wrong direction, and they never seem to learn from previous mistakes.

The government has long tried to find something, anything, to stimulate the economy and push up prices. It has pumped money into financial markets and made borrowing nearly free. But it’s been to little avail…the Japanese government has turned to even larger amounts of stimulus, showering consumers with cash handouts and companies with zero-interest loans. …In 2013, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe introduced a similar plan, with little success. Today, average wages remain stuck at around $2,800 a month, about the same level as two decades ago.

P.S. Part of the problem is that Japanese politicians may be listening to terrible advice from left-leaning bureaucracies such as the International Monetary Fund and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

P.P.S. Here’s another example of a foolish gimmick by Japanese politicians.

P.P.P.S. And let’s not forget that Japan may win a prize for the strangest example of regulation.

 

Don’t Ask About Empty Shelves, Our Leaders are Too Busy Saving the World

Daniel Greenfield November 25, 2021 @ Sultan Knish Blog

While the supply chain crisis left American store shelves bare, Biden went to a UN climate conference to save the world. Saving the world is a whole lot easier than stocking shelves. Ask any teenager.

Saving the world used to be the preoccupation of dilettante intellectuals who could solve all of the problems of the world in their heads, but couldn’t handle the simplest life tasks. The rise of socialism has reduced much of the world to the same grandiose incompetence. The western world has been put into the hands of men and women who can’t get anything done, but promise to change the world.

Like the Soviet Union and other Communist countries, we have become a nation of moral crusaders and misery where goods shortages are papered over with wars against intangible social problems. Public officials no longer solve problems, like ivory tower academics they delve into root causes and produce theories explaining why the problems can’t be solved without changing society and humanity.

It’s as if you invited a plumber to fix your toilet only to lectured about the history of plumbing in ancient Egypt, gender roles, and social expectation while your toilet goes on flooding the floor.

While Democrats go down the rabbit hole of root causes, their cities are overrun with crime and human waste, prices for everything skyrocket, and some goods can no longer be had at any price. Confronted with this reality, they build walls of words, seizing on talking points to convince the public that the problems don’t exist or that they’re actually symptoms of deep social problems going back centuries even though they only date back to last week. Either approach frees them from having to solve them.

Do elites turn socialist as they become more incompetent or do they become more incompetent as they embrace socialism? The chicken and the egg problem that made even formerly prosperous Eastern European and Latin American countries into miserable failed states, that divided the two Koreas between booming industry and mass hunger, is arriving in America with much the same outcome.

American bureaucracy is bigger than ever. The growth of administrators in every field outpaces that of ordinary workers, clients, and products produced. No single decree from a scowling boss in Moscow turned a booming nation of individualists into a timid managerial state with endless rules that apply to every facet of work and everyday life. It was the slow accumulation of individual inertia, cultural safetyism, and crises, real and manufactured, that fossilized into a state of permanent administration.

The hunger of the administrative state for more power and the natural insecurities of its wards gave us everything from the welfare state to universal masking. The shutdowns and mandates of the pandemic are only the latest inevitable development from a system that reacts to every crisis with collective panics that transfer power from the public to unelected bureaucrats. Whatever the details of a crisis, its primary function is to generate more regulations and more overseers to see everyone follows them.

None of these regulations do anything except generate more insecurity and seize more power. Each succeeding generation views unrestricted freedom as an increasingly alien condition. A generation terrified of the Second Amendment birthed a generation terrified of the First Amendment. Each set of restrictions is deemed insufficient by the frightened generation that is raised under their rule.

If you think today’s college students are snowflakes, wait until the children who were raised to fear their own parents as sources of infection and to wear masks everywhere finally come of age.

It’s no great challenge to convince a society of frightened people that the end of the world is near.

Call it the ice age, global warming, climate change, or whatever panic brand replaces them when the marketers and pollsters decide that the current term is insufficiently triggering: to people who have been taught to be afraid of everything the end of the world is an entirely plausible scenario.

Environmentalism, like every root cause crisis, tells us to be afraid of ourselves. The terror of our words, our faces, our thoughts, and our possessions has always haunted the Left. Where visionaries saw possibilities, socialism has only seen threats. Its promises to save the world don’t spring from a place of courage, but of fear of others and of the inability of its acolytes to come to grips with real life.

Those who can, do. And those who can’t, warn others that doing anything is the root of all evil.

What else could such a worldview bring forth other than the incompetence, corruption, and tyranny that we see all around us. Problems become power grabs and so there’s no incentive to solve them, only to make them worse. Leftist ideology rationalizes most problems as inherently unsolvable in the short term, only in some long term utopian eventuality that reboots all of human society around its ideals.

Problems like empty store shelves or crime in the streets are ultimately caused by capitalism, individualism, the nuclear family, and the existence of humanity. There’s no solving them without addressing root causes like human nature, civilization, and the survival instinct. Like the USSR, the goal posts for solving even the most mundane problems get moved all the way into infinity.

This arrangement is quite convenient for the bureaucracies, public and private, from which leftist systems and ideologies draw their power. It frees teachers not to teach, companies not to innovate, and officials not to solve problems even as they organize moral crusades against the end of the world.

The true purpose of bureaucracy is always to eliminate competition. The chaos of individualism is collectively managed by stultifying regulations whose goal isn’t fixing problems, but preventing surprises. The administrative state can accept the deaths of millions as long as it follows the rules. That’s why all the administrators who forced nursing homes to accept coronavirus infected patients were never held responsible for the mass deaths that resulted from their horrifying decisions.

Most were even rewarded.

The pandemic shutdowns weren’t motivated by fear of infections, but of unscheduled and uncontrolled infections. The administrative state doesn’t mind people dying, as long as they decide who dies.

And who lives.

World leaders fleeing problems at home to talk global warming at the UN’s COP26 are leaving behind real challenges that they’ve given up trying to solve and are saving the world. What makes leaders like Biden or Boris Johnson, Merkel or Trudeau, who have badly screwed up the prosaic problems they were tasked with believe that they can change the climate when they can’t do much smaller things?

Western leaders no longer tackle real problems that can be solved, only imaginary ones that can’t. Like their socialist forebears they define an overwhelming problem, economic classes, systemic racism, or climate change, and then spend all their time at seminars on how to best tackle its root causes. The solution invariably involves moving money around in ways that favor them and their power base.

This brand of messianic workshopped Communism is even worse than the original because actual Communist regimes at least cared about production while wealthy western leftists outsource production to third world countries so they can spend more time fighting systemic racism or the weather.

Our shortages may be currently less severe than those of a proper Communist dictatorship, but our leaders are even more detached from the basic responsibility of elected officials which is not to “safeguard democracy”, but to justify their work to the system and the people who elected them.

With Biden, America skipped past Lenin and Stalin to go right to the Brezhnev era with senescent apparatchiks overseeing the decline of a country and an economy they don’t actually understand.

America’s elites, bad or good, used to understand how things actually worked. And then they became the products of Ivy League institutions which traded practical skills for abstract theories. Our elites have learned how to lie to us and to rob us, and tell us it’s for our own good, and how to retreat into academic theories to avoid dealing with reality. They’ve learned how to manipulate the artificial systems of bureaucracy and its abstract rule sets, but know next to nothing about the real world.

They’re happy to save the world. Just don’t ask them where the beef is.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

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About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a journalist investigating Islamic terrorism and the Left. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center

 

The Last COP-Out

COP-Out-26 illustrates to the realists of China, Russia, India and Brazil that the West has lost its marbles

By Viv Forbes ——Bio and Archives--October 28, 2021

Cover Story | 3 Comments | Reader Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us

 

For 26 futile years, the net-zero maniacs have wasted fuel, energy and taxpayer’s money to bite the hands that provide their food, energy, welfare and public sector jobs.

Led by EU and AUKUS dreamers, they destroy reliable energy from coal, oil, nuclear, gas and hydro while forcing us to subsidize net-negative dreams like solar, wind, wave-power, CCUS, hot rocks, pumped hydro and hydrogen. All such speculative ventures should be funded by speculators, not taxpayers.

COP-Out-26 illustrates to the realists of China, Russia, India and Brazil that the West has lost its marbles and is in terminal decline. For Scott Morrison to surrender Australia to these green wolves betrays an army of miners, farmers, truckies and workers in primary, secondary and tertiary industries that support him and his Canberra pack. .....

China loves Net-Zero, using its growing coal power to manufacture the wind turbines, solar panels, electric engines and rare earth batteries for the Woke-World.......To Read More....

 

China’s Vaunted Belt and Road Initiative Is Not Going as Planned

Milton Ezrati October October 26, 2021

China’s leadership in Beijing must feel as though the world of finance has ganged up on them. Especially since they spent so many years sitting atop a rapidly growing economy with strong national finances, recent setbacks must have shocked them.

First came the news that property developer Evergrande could not manage its debt obligations. And with it clear that this matter would not resolve itself and strong signs that Evergrande is not alone, China’s financial system has suddenly come under threat. Now it appears that things are not going as smoothly as expected in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Especially because the client states working with China may fail to meet their debt obligations, the project has added considerably to Beijing’s financial headaches.

The BRI was supposed to enhance China’s global influence and stature. Through it, Beijing approached poorer countries with offers to help them realize needed infrastructure projects—roads, bridges, ports, and the like. Beijing offered loans to pay for the work and tied the monies to the use of Chinese firms, mostly state owned, for construction and management once the project was completed. Sometimes the People’s Liberation Army took a role. If for some reason the client state could not meet its financial obligations, the Chinese firms involved in the project would take ownership. Beijing’s foreign minister described the initiative as “the largest international cooperation platform in the world today.” It certainly benefits China, giving Beijing influence elsewhere in the world and Chinese firms profitable deals while getting the client state to pay for it.

Deals grew rapidly after the BRI began in 2013. Today, there are some 13,427 projects, according to research done by a group called AidData at the College of William and Mary. Almost half of these are in Africa, but they also extend through East Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. These efforts are supported by the equivalent of $813 billion in loans. Some 400 of these projects, valued at $8.3 billion, involve the Chinese military. For a while it looked as though the initiative would serve its purpose well. It still may, but problems have arisen.

Increasingly, nations invited in by Beijing are balking at the debt involved. Malaysia is a standout, only because Beijing denied that nation trade deals presumably as punishment for refusing a Belt and Road offer. .............To Read More....

Do Not Submit, Your Kids Will Thank You For It

By David McGrath | Sep 22, 2021 | Lifestyle, Politics

It is tough to take stock of just how disastrous the Joe Biden presidency has been. I thought about it all weekend. Wrote a little bit. I spoke to some of my veteran friends, all of whom are still steaming from the botched Afghanistan withdrawal that happened just weeks ago. Thirteen families had to bury their babies because of the wildly incompetent decision-making of Joe Biden and his administration. It’s hard not to be outraged. That is not even the half of it. We have a southern border that is wide open right now, and we are being invaded by illegal immigrants from as many as seven different countries. The mayor of Del Rio, Texas, has publicly stated that the White House has stopped taking his calls.

Last Friday, the White House dumped some news that the airstrike that allegedly killed the planners of an imminent suicide attack on Kabul airport killed an aid worker, and a family of nine. We murdered nine non-combatant Afghan citizens—no accountability, no firings, and not a word of sorrow from this administration. 

If that’s not enough we are heading full-speed towards an economic meltdown. A recession even. We have no budget for fiscal year 2022, and do not expect one to come anytime soon. The federal government is likely headed towards a shutdown here in the next three weeks.

Have you tried shopping lately? Notice how the shelves are much less stocked than usual? The supply chains have completely fallen off a cliff due to staffing issues and rising cost pressures.......

 Joe Biden and company will continue to destroy every facet of this country. He was selected and put into that position for a reason: To fundamentally destroy our way of life and transform the country. Every fundamental institution we rely on must be destroyed. Hence the demoralization and remaking of the United States Military with woke troopers who will fight the establishment’s enemies, not necessarily America’s enemies. Hence the destruction and utter humiliation of America’s Police Departments throughout our great country. The police need to be brought to their knees and remade to their police who will arrest establishment enemies, not real criminals who burn cities, loot businesses, and even murder other Americans. The Marxists now own just about every institution—Hollywood, academics, big business, tech, and of course, the entire National Security apparatus...........

Joe Biden is simply a conduit. A man so lost and demented, he hasn’t the slightest idea what he’s saying and what he’s signing. He is the perfect trojan horse for the Marxists. Hence his installation. Even when he was lucid, Biden was agreeable, even sort of dense. The type of political animal who would do anything to get along, and line his own pockets. The man you see speaking now is a hollowed-out husk, an empty suit. So now what?.......To Read More.....