Who Really is Donald Trump?

By Rich Kozlovich

Me and most of my conservative friends really don't like Trump on a personal level.  But we all thought he has the ability to be one of the greatest Presidents in the nation's history, and we believe that because what we want is less government (way less government), less taxes, less spending, the end of deficits and borrowing, start paying off the national debt, less regulations, and a President who will deliver that, and he's promised to be that deliverer .... sort of ... maybe. 

Well, America, we just might have a problem.

I keep wondering at the things Trump is doing and saying.  He's wanting to appoint some really strange people to important offices, like Bobby Kennedy, Jr., who is now, was in the past, and will be in the future a far left nitwit.  

He was the proverbial blind monkey who found a coconut because of his stand against the "vaccines" being forced on society for covid, which weren't real vaccines, since they didn't immunize the patient and didn't prevent transmission, which before this was the decades old definition for a chemical compound to be called a vaccine.   As for covid being a disaster, the only covid disaster was the tyrannous impositions governments all over the world put on their societies, and done so with a lot of lies and propaganda.  But the reality is he's against all vaccinations, so his stand against these covid shots that wasn't a strong moral stance against what was going on standing as a rock in the current.

Kennedy, if confirmed, will have control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and, 'Kennedy has claimed Trump “promised” him “control of the public health agencies" and Trump delusionally claims:

"Kennedy will restore these Agencies to the traditions of Gold Standard Scientific Research, and beacons of Transparency, to end the Chronic Disease epidemic, and to Make America Great and Healthy Again!"  

Now that's pure delusion, and should scare the entire nation. Was this a deal Trump made to get Kennedy to support him?  If it was, it was a bad deal putting him in charge of the nation's health and how the nation grows and eats food in America?  Listen up Donny, that's nuts.    

We're facing a massive nation destroying national debt, and yet I'm reading how Trump wants to eliminate the debt ceiling.  Why?  It's inconvenient, and the arguments for eliminating it are horsepucky, and a failure of leadership.  What happens if you eliminate a debt ceiling in your life, and then spend like a drunker sailor?  You go broke!   Just because the government can print all the money they want to isn't leadership.  It's a failure in leadership, a failure to the taxpayers, and it's blatantly irresponsible.  In his last term he did a lot of good things, but cutting spending and borrowing wasn't among them, and it appears he might not be any good at it this term either.  I'm hoping that's not so.  

At this point I would like to feature this article by my now passed friend Alan Caruba, who discussed the disaster of Lyndon B. Johnson in his 2012 article Poverty Nation and Johnson's “War on Poverty” saying it was a "classic, liberal government program that to this day has not eliminated poverty in America", and goes on to show no matter how much is spent, poverty will always be with us.  That's history, and that history is incontestable. 

The leftist view is that poverty can be eliminated if we just spend more money.   Well that's historically delusional, it's stupid, and it's budget busting.  In short, the amount of spending, ineffectual spending, with lousy returns is massive, and that's so throughout the federal government.  If Trump really wants it all stopped he needs to put a cap on spending and borrowing, and he needs to do it now!

• How To Reduce The Federal Deficit Fast 
• Rand Paul’s annual Festivus report reveals an orgy of government waste
• America’s Unsolvable Spending Crisis: Brace for Impact 
• World is drowning in government debt, U.S. leads the way.
• The Debt This Congress Leaves Behind

But this really takes the cake. Trump wants Canada to become the 51st state, which has generated a lot of CO2 and ink, and since Trudeau has resigned he's putting on the big push, and making big promises saying:

Many people in Canada love being the 51^st state.  The United States can no longer suffer the massive trade deficits and subsidies that Canada needs to stay afloat.  Justin Trudeau knew this, and resigned. If Canada merged with the U.S., there would be no tariffs, taxes would go way down, and they would be totally secure from the threat of the Russian and Chinese Ships that are constantly surrounding them. Together, what a great nation it would be!!

Russian and Chinese ships are surrounding Canada?  Really, I've not read that anywhere else, and everything else he's saying here is... well... odd at best.

Let's understand this, the conservatives of Canada are like America's RINO's only more left.  So, if Canada were to become the 51st state there would be two more leftist Senators, and an untold number of leftist House members.  If the ten provinces of Canada became separate states that would bring in 20 more leftist Senators.   The Congress would be in the hands of anti-American far left lunatics forever.  If people liked the tyranny Trudeau imposed on Canada, they would love the tyranny they, along with their Democrat allies, would be able to impose on America, starting with the end of the First and Second Amendments.  

And Donny thinks that's a good idea? 

After Bankruptcy Then What?

By Rich Kozlovich

On Friday April 5, 2013 Wynton Hall posted an article titled, “BOOMTOWN 2: Taxpayers Have Spent $15 Trillion on 'War on Poverty'.  He starts out saying:

“.....since President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared “war on poverty,” U.S. taxpayers have spent $15 trillion on so-called anti-poverty programs—a figure slightly less than the national debt.”  

Remember, this article was posted in 2013, and all the figures are based on that year, and in ten years we've gone from 15 trillion in debt to just under 35 trillion dollars in debt, and it's climbing at a rate that's startling, and the leadership in both parties is supporting that insanity.

He notes that in 1969, just 2.8 million Americans received food stamps. Today he notes that over 47 million Americans are on food stamps, and some of the biggest supporters of these programs are big business, which he describes as “crony capitalism”.    And now the “U.S. Census Bureau revealed that nearly 50 million Americans live below the federal poverty line. “

When Johnson was president in 1966 the nation had a population of 196,560,338.  By 1969 there were 2, 700,000 recipients on food stamps, presumably mostly families. Which translates to approximately 1.4% of the population.   Let's suppose we had given every family on food stamps a million dollars and said....that's it....we're done....you're on your own now forever.  What would have happened? 

Presumably we would have ended poverty and we would have saved twelve trillion three hundred billion dollars.  

So then the obvious question is this: Where did all of that money go?  

It certainly didn't go to the poor because we haven't any fewer poor than we did then.   So who has the money?  Fifteen trillion dollars is a lot of darn money!  Surely someone has to have it! Don’t they? You just can't hide fifteen trillion dollars without someone noticing! Can you? Surely someone has to have kept records somewhere!  Didn't they?

Whatever happened to all that money there is one thing that is crystal clear. Government money used to end poverty doesn’t work, and with all these programs, many of which are duplications of programs already in existence, all of which we know are abject failures because in 2013 figures, we have 47 million on food stamps representing 1.5% of the population creating a long line of unending government dependents, and it's growing.    

But there's no money, so, what do we do?  We keep borrowing, and printing, calling it "quantitative easing" and no matter the amount of clabber they're spewing out to redefine this practice, it still means printing money with no value.  And we're told we have to keep doing it to keep these failed programs running in order to prevent people from suffering. 

But I keep asking myself:  What happens when we go bankrupt?

Those who promote this stuff keep saying that we can’t go bankrupt and the banks must keep loaning money and the Fed must keep printing whatever money is necessary.  I wonder if they ever read a history book in their lives.  Do they not grasp that it doesn’t work that way!  Do they not grasp the consequences?

Unfortunately many of them do, and all of this is deliberate.  It’s called the Cloward–Piven strategy.  A socialist power grabbing strategy outlined in 1966 by leftist activists Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven.  The goal was to overload the public welfare systems which would then institute a complete breakdown of the financial systems.  This, they reasoned, would install a system of central planning for income distribution at the national level, ending state and local control over welfare and assuring a national income minimum.  All sounding good, except for one thing.  These things have never worked in all of history.   

Countries that tried this collapsed into anarchy because the money wasn't worth anything.  Inflation destroyed the value of the currency and the entire social structure suffered collapse. In many cases these countries were then taken over by radical central planners (socialists, which include fascists and communists) whose only real skill was murdering 100 million of their own innocent citizens during the twentieth century.  And make no mistake about it; these insane leftists still think the same way. As David Horowitz points out, "Inside Every Progressive Is A Totalitarian Screaming To Get Out". 

Obama’s buddy Bill Ayers, who’s official title within the leftist Weatherman Underground movement was “National Education Secretary”,  participated in the bombings of the New York City Police Dept., the United States Capitol, and the Pentagon.   He also may have taken part in other bombings that killed innocent people.  His views of the bombing of the Pentagon:   

“Although the bomb that rocked the Pentagon was itsy-bitsy - weighing close to two pounds - it caused 'tens of thousands of dollars' of damage. The operation cost under $500, and no one was killed or even hurt.”

The reality of Bill Ayers is far scarier than is currently depicted.  As National Education Secretary of this radical leftist organization his plans after their victory including the creation of “re-education camps” in the American Southwest, and if that wasn’t adequate in re-ordering society then he felt it might be necessary to eliminate as many as 25 million Americans who won’t go along.

We know this is factual due to information provided by Larry Grathwohl, a Weatherman informant, who saw Ayers order the bombing of the Detroit Police Officers Association building, in spite of the fact that customers -  largely black- in the adjacent Red Barn were sure to be killed.  Ayers view was that it might be necessary for some innocent people to get killed in his quest.  After all, he noted that you can't protect everyone. 

This has been the pattern of all socialists.  What makes me wonder about their sanity is that history shows once one of these leftist regimes take over it isn’t long before one person is in complete charge.  And they accomplish that eliminating their competition within the movement.  Stalin, Mao, Hitler, Castro and all the rest have repeated this pattern.  Are these American promoters of socialism somehow under the impression it would be different with them? 

Unfortunately after the leadership is firmly in the hands of one person the real disaster starts.  They don’t have a clue as to how to run an economy.  As a result agriculture suffers, manufacturing suffers, retail as we know it is eliminated and commodities become scarce, people starve and people die from a lack of proper medical care. 

This brings me back to the thus far unanswered question:  What happens when we go bankrupt?   Answer:  The insane will begin to rule by consent of the ignorant and then millions will die and those who are left will live in dystopia!  That's history, and that history is incontestable.

Has anyone read a history book lately?  If not, I would like to recommend:

• Jonah Goldberg’s, “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change” 
•  Daniel J. Flynn’s, “Intellectual Morons: How Ideology Makes Smart People Fall for Stupid Ideas”
• David Kupelain’s, “The Marketing of Evil: How Radicals, Elitists, and Pseudo-Experts Sell Us Corruption Disguised As Freedom”. 
  

Why Mr. Beast Is Under Fire for Bringing Clean Water to 500,000 Africans

Jon Miltimore November 15, 2023 @ American Institute for Economic Research

James Stephen “Jimmy” Donaldson, better known by his professional moniker “Mr. Beast,” has made a name for himself — and hundreds of millions of dollars for humanitarian causes — by leveraging his social media platform. 

He’s cleaned up our oceans, planted 20 million trees, and fought hunger by feeding needy people in communities across the US. In his latest effort, Mr. Beast built 100 wells in Africa, bringing clean drinking water to an estimated 500,000 people in countries from Kenya to Cameroon to Zimbabwe.

Not everyone is happy with Mr. Beast’s latest campaign, however, or his broader philanthropic efforts. 

One Kenyan politician told CNN Mr. Beast’s well campaign fed the perception that African countries are “dependent on handouts,” while the founder of a charity complained that “a white male figure with a huge platform…gets all of the attention.”

While this might sound simply like sour grapes — and some of it likely is — the criticisms against Mr. Beast are much broader than many might suspect. For years, many have complained that Mr. Beast’s “philanthro-tainment’ strategy — combining philanthropy with online entertainment — is exploitative. 

For example, in February when Mr. Beast partnered with a non-profit organization to provide sight-restoring surgery — procedures Mr. Beast personally paid for — he was accused of “poverty porn.” 

“…it is all in the service of enriching himself,” one person tweeted.

“He cares about poor people and disabled people because they make him money,” another one said. 

“Doctors/nurses don’t exploit their patient’s dignity for profit.”

‘The Stranglehold of the Profit-Seekers’

The last word is key: profit. 

Profit has become a dirty word over the last century. Ayn Rand explored the growing distaste for profit at length in her classic work Atlas Shrugged, a dystopian novel that depicts a society in which the titans of industry who produce the goods and services of society are viewed with contempt by many — particularly moochers — for pursuing profit. 

James Taggart, a villain in the novel, talks of “breaking up the vicious tyranny of economic power” and setting “men free of the rule of the dollar.”

“We will liberate our culture from the stranglehold of the profit-seekers,” thunders Taggart.

Rand was conscious of the fact that our modern world was turning the idea of profits into a sin, even though economist Adam Smith long ago observed that self-interest is the source of economic prosperity in society. 

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest,” Smith famously wrote in The Wealth of Nations. 

Smith understood that self-interest isn’t just healthy and rational; it’s the economic engine of society. In pursuit of his own desires, the butcher provides an essential service to others, just as the brewer and baker do.

Yet profit is anathema to many today, particularly those who’ve been inundated with social justice tropes at universities. The Marxist notion that profits are mere exploitation has been adopted by many, even by people who likely would never consider themselves Marxists. 

Like the failed businessman in Atlas Shrugged who defends himself by saying “I can proudly say that in all of my life I have never made a profit,” many young people now see profit as synonymous with exploitation. 

“Inspiring people to help others is great, but encouraging young [people] to exploit vulnerable communities for content which they can then profit off of enormously, is the issue,” tweeted the Washington Post’s grievance correspondent Taylor Lorenz.

In other words, the scorn heaped on Mr. Beast stems from the fact that he has accrued an estimated $500 million fortune while pulling off his remarkable humanitarian achievements. 

And it’s worth noting that the criticism he’s received is in notable contrast to the (initial) widespread praise of Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX founder who built an empire singing a song of effective altruism and rejecting the importance of profits.

“It’s okay to do a deal that is moderately bad, in bailing out a place,” SBF said during a 2022 talk with Bloomberg. 

SBF let it be known he wasn’t very concerned about crass profits; he was far more focused on helping others. (A closer inspection of SBF’s private rhetoric and business shows he was far more concerned with making money for himself than he let on.)  

The difference is that Mr. Beast’s humanitarian efforts actually worked, whereas SBF’s “altruistic” efforts failed miserably (and he’s now facing more than 100 years in prison).

This is the real reason Mr. Beast is taking so much heat. He’s showing the power of voluntary action and the miraculous power of the profit motive. This isn’t just a stark contrast to SBF’s altruistic efforts, however. 

‘It’s Embarrassing’

One of the best quotes you’ll find on Mr. Beast’s humanitarian work in Africa comes from Kenyan journalist Ferdinand Omond.

“[I]t’s embarrassing that a YouTuber jetted into Kenya on a charity tour to perform tasks our taxes should have completed ages ago,” said Omond.

These words have to sting, in large part because they ring so true. 

Is this an embarrassment for the Kenyan government, which has long been plagued by inefficiency and corruption? Undoubtedly. But it’s also an embarrassment to every public intellectual who insists profits are evil and that government-led efforts are the solution to poverty, despite their dismal track record.

And it should be pointed out that the Kenyan government is not the only one that has proven utterly inept at fighting poverty. 

In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson famously declared “war” on poverty. Over the next five decades, the average wealth transfer, in real terms, to a low-income family increased from $3,070 per capita (1965) to $34,093 (2016). Economist Vance Gill last year estimated the federal government has spent a total of $25 trillion in its nearly 60-year War on Poverty.

What do we have to show for this fortune in federal spending? 

According to the United States Census, in 1966, the percentage of American families living in poverty was 12.4 percent. Today, according to new data from the US Census, the percentage of Americans living in poverty is … 12.4 percent.

That’s right. Since 1964, despite tens of trillions of dollars in spending at the federal level alone, the poverty rate in America has not budged; it has merely bobbed around the same level since the Beatles arrived in the British Invasion. 

Some could argue that poverty in America could be much worse if we hadn’t spent $25 trillion fighting it, but this ignores an inconvenient truth. In the two decades before the War on Poverty, poverty had fallen from 32.1 percent to 12.4 percent.

All of this helps explain why Mr. Beast is being attacked despite all the good work he is doing.

Milton Friedman famously said that one of the biggest mistakes humans make “is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.”

The results of Mr. Beast’s philanthropy, which is all voluntary and profit-driven, surpass government-led efforts by miles. And that’s what his critics can’t handle. 

READ MORE 

Tags:  Leadership, International, Entrepreneurship, Art and Culture  

Jon Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Get notified of new articles from Jon Miltimore and AIER. SUBSCRIBE

 

The War On Poverty Hasn’t Just Failed, It’s Failed Abysmally

July 17, 2023 By Vince Coyner

Recently the Supreme Court put an end to Joe Biden’s efforts to give erstwhile college students almost a trillion dollars in “debt relief,” although the Biden administration is trying again. That’s a lot of money… But that’s actually a tiny fraction of the money the government has wasted on redistribution, aka social programs, over the last six decades.

Next year, the United States will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the War on Poverty, which President Lyndon B. Johnson initiated in 1964. The War’s programs initially started on a modest scale but have expanded almost parabolically since. By the War’s 50th anniversary, the government had spent more than $22 trillion on various welfare and redistribution programs.

A decade later, it spends $1 trillion a year on said programs, not including various “targeted” expenditures under Social Security or Medicare, which make the true total simply unknowable. To put that in perspective, $1 trillion is greater than the GDP of 194 of the world’s 213 countries......To Read More...

My Take - Twenty two trillion dollars and there are still poor people in America?  You have to ask, where in the world did all that money go?  It certainly didn't go to the poor. 

The Failure of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society

October 1, 2021 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

When asked to list the worst presidents of the 20th century, Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Richard Nixon belong on the list.  But this Reason video with Amity Shlaes shows why Lyndon Johnson also is among the worst of the worst. 

You should watch every second of the video, but if you don’t have 33 minutes to spare, here’s a helpful summary.

Johnson declared war on poverty, jacked up federal spending on education, and pushed massive new entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, which promised to deliver high-quality, low-cost health care to the nation’s elderly and poor. …But did the Great Society achieve its goals of eradicating poverty, sheltering the homeless, and helping all citizens participate more fully in the American Dream? In Great Society: A New History, Amity Shlaes argues that Lyndon Johnson’s bold makeover of the government was a massive failure.

Massive failure may be an understatement.  LBJ’s two big entitlement programs, Medicare and Medicaid, are the biggest reason why America will suffer a future fiscal crisis.

And his so-called War on Poverty was a disaster for both taxpayers and poor people.  How much of a disaster?  Let’s augment Amity’s analysis with these excerpts from Jason Riley’s column in the Wall Street Journal.

Entitlement programs were dramatically expanded in the 1960s in the service of a war on poverty, yet poverty fell at a slower rate after the Great Society initiatives were implemented, and overall dependency on the government for food, shelter and other basic necessities increased. …

Liberals pitch these social programs in the name of helping underprivileged minority groups and reducing inequality, but the lesson of the 1960s is that government relief can put in place incentives that have the opposite effect. Between 1940 and 1960 the percentage of black families living in poverty declined by 40 points…

No welfare program has ever come close to replicating that rate of black advancement… Moreover, what we experienced in the wake of the Great Society interventions was slower progress or outright retrogression. Black labor-force participation rates fell, black unemployment rates rose, and the black nuclear family disintegrated. In 1960 fewer than 25% of black children were being raised by a single mother; within four decades, it was more than half. …

The welfare state is often discussed in relation to its effect on racial and ethnic minorities, yet crime, single parenting and drug abuse also increased among poor whites in the aftermath of the Great Society. When the government indulges and subsidizes counterproductive behavior, we tend to get more of it.

What’s depressing is that Biden wants to replicate LBJ’s mistakes. His new entitlements will mean slower growth and more dependency.

P.S. Amity Shlaes also has done great work to highlight the achievements of one of America’s best presidents.

To Understand Why Racism Isn't the Problem, Look to South Africa's Pilanesberg Park

Will Alexander Apr 02, 2021 @ Townhall.com

“One father is more than a hundred schoolmasters.” – 17th Century English Proverb.

Years ago, South Africa’s Pilanesberg Park had big trouble. Tons of it. Someone went on a killing spree of its prized white rhinos. Thirty-nine of the 5-ton ungulates were mysteriously turning up dead around the park. That was 10 percent of the park’s endangered rhino population. The killers had to be stopped, so park rangers turned into homicide detectives. Who did it?  Poachers, perhaps? No. It couldn’t have been. The dead rhinos didn’t have bullet holes, and their horns were still intact. Who, then?

A break came in the case when staff saw a video of young elephants terrorizing tourists.  Others witnessed elephants taunting and bullying rhinos for hours.  After tracking the herds, chronicling their behavior, and developing rap sheets on the most aggressive ones, rangers found their killers: gangs of teen male elephants................Why?

The problem went back two decades. Kruger National Park, half the size of Switzerland, was dangerously overpopulated with elephants.  Adult males were too big to relocate, so the excruciating decision was made to shoot them and move the children and some of their mothers to other parks.

But what seemed like a good idea at the time severely disrupted the delicate balance of life in elephant society. It triggered a disaster. Young elephant herds, deprived of adult male leadership, were forced into an extremely destabilized childhood that turned deadly in their teens.

“Like juvenile delinquents from urban jungles, they’ve grown up without role models,” said journalist Bob Simon, who reported on the story for 60 Minutes in 1999.

 “What’s different is they don’t have a father,” said Dyk. “I think everyone needs a role model, and these elephants that left the herd had no role model and had no idea of what appropriate elephant behavior was.”

Something else triggered the aggressive behavior: the biochemistry in male elephants called musth.  During musth, male elephants secrete a hormone-rich substance from glands on the sides of their foreheads and they walk around dribbling urine.  They become sexually hyperactive, unpredictable, and possessed by the urge to dominate their peers.

“There’s no more dangerous animal on Earth, than a bull elephant in musth,”.............Without a father to “curb their youthful exuberance,” said Simon, the Pilanesberg elephants’ sexual development became premature.  They entered into musth too soon, and it left them “pumped up with testosterone; stressed out with sexual anxiety and looking for a fight.”............Something similar happened inside America’s urban jungles.  Gangs of angry young black males – without fathers or role models to teach them appropriate behavior – are wreaking havoc in their neighborhoods.

In 2005, blacks were the victims of 805,000 non-fatal violent crimes and about 8,000 murders, a 2007 DOJ study found.  In one-to-one murders, 93 percent of the perpetrators were black – mostly young and mostly male. In 2018, blacks were overrepresented among those arrested for violent crime, according to a January 2021 DOJ study.  All this was before George Floyd’s death, an event used to dignify deviancy.............

After some masterful detective work by the likes of Sowell, Walter Williams, Larry Elder, Bob Woodson, Shelby Steele and others, the perpetrator was found.  It was the perverse incentives created by Lyndon Johnson’s “War On Poverty” programs. What seemed like a good idea at the time severely disrupted the delicate balance of life in black urban society.  It triggered a disaster..............Young blacks, deprived of adult male leadership, were brought up into a severely destabilized childhood that turned destructive in their teens, and they grew up into troublemakers.

So, I have an idea for the Obamas, Oprah, Sharpton, LeBron, and all the BLMs of the world who have strong connections to troubled neighborhoods.  Instead of blaming “white folks” for problems that are impossible for them to solve, concentrate your immense wealth and influence to create a movement that would infuse these neighborhoods with adult males who can “kick butt” and establish a new hierarchy..........To Read More....