A view of a house for sale is seen in Los Angeles on February 24, 2010. (Photo: Reuters)
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) said the House Price Index (HPI) rose 0.7% in August, easily beating the 0.4% median forecast. The previously reported 0.2% increase in July was revised upward to 0.4%.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly price changes from July 2017 to August 2017 ranged from -0.1% in the New England division to +1.4% in the Pacific division. The 12-month changes were all positive, ranging from +5.0% in the Middle Atlantic division to +9.3% in the Pacific division.
A 787 Dreamliner being built for Air India is pictured at South Carolina Boeing final assembly building in North Charleston, South Carolina. (Photo: Reuters)
The U.S. Census Bureau said new durable goods orders increased $5.1 billion, or 2.2% to $238.7 billion in September, easily beating the 1.0% median forecast. With the gain, durables goods order have been up 3 of the last 4 months, including a 2.0% increase in August.
Excluding transportation, so-called core new durable orders gained 0.7%. Excluding defense, new orders increased 2.0%. Transportation equipment, also up three of the last four months, led the increase, $4.0 billion or 5.1% to $81.2 billion.
Shipments of manufactured durable goods in September, up four of the last five months, increased $2.4 billion or 1.0 percent to $240.5 billion. This followed a 0.7% August increase. Transportation equipment, up two of the last three months, led the increase, $1.1 billion or 1.4% to $79.7 billion.
Unfilled orders for manufactured durable goods in September, up following two consecutive monthly decreases, increased $2.8 billion or 0.2% to $1,135.1 billion. This followed a virtually unchanged August decrease. Transportation equipment, also up following two consecutive monthly decreases, led the increase, $1.5 billion or 0.2 percent to $772.1 billion.
Inventories of manufactured durable goods in September, up fourteen of the last fifteen months, increased $2.4 billion or 0.6% to $403.6 billion. This followed a 0.5% August increase. Transportation equipment, up three consecutive months, led the increase, $0.8 billion or 0.7% to $130.8 billion.
Nondefense new orders for capital goods in September increased $4.3 billion or 6.1% to $74.9 billion. Shipments increased $1.7 billion or 2.4% to $73.5 billion. Unfilled orders increased $1.3 billion or 0.2% to $704.8 billion. Inventories increased $1.4 billion or 0.8% to $179.9 billion. Defense new orders for capital goods in September increased $0.5 billion or 4.1% to $11.5 billion. Shipments increased $0.2 billion or 1.7% to $10.6 billion. Unfilled orders increased $0.9 billion or 0.7% to $143.9 billion. Inventories decreased $0.1 billion or 0.3% to $23.4 billion.
Best-selling author Nick Adams, left, and the cover of his new book “The Case Against the Establishment,” right. (Photos: Nick Adams Facebook/Amazon)
The Case Against the Establishment by Nick Adams is a well-deserved, long-overdue thrashing of those who have proven themselves to be “the enemy of the people.” Using a series of recent and current events, Adams exposes how a group of elitists in the political class, academia and Hollywood have launched an all-out assault on the American identity.
Adams, a best-selling author originally from Sydney, Australia, demonstrates a far greater understanding of the Establishment than most native-born American political authors. The book is a well-thought-out guide to understanding the forces behind the effort to transform the traditional “sticks and stones may break my bones” American mentality to one which promotes safe spaces and intolerance.
Readability
All 208 pages are easy to read without sacrificing the quality of content or factual support for the central thesis. There’s a laugh waiting for the reader on nearly every page, while at the same time stressing the seriousness of the discussion.
Adams offers up the kind of humor that gives meaning to the phrase “it’s funny because it’s true,” but it’s delivered with impeccable timing and doesn’t take away from the seriousness of the discussion.
Even as we chuckled taking turns reading passages and paragraphs out loud, it wasn’t at all lost on us that Adams is aiming to start a serious conversation.
America’s roads are disintegrating. The infrastructure desperately needs an overhaul. Millions of people don’t have a job. The national debt is colossal. Our southern border is more porous than a sieve. ISIS wants to kill us. But the real issues for Establishment simpletons are sexism, misogyny, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and, of course, whether men are too masculine.
Thesis
The central thesis is predicated on the belief that “the Establishment is the enemy of the people,” and it has “launched an unprecedented onslaught of hate and hypocrisy–single-minded of purpose: to destroy President Trump’s efforts to make America great again.”
To carry out this plan, they create constructs and boundaries of acceptable behavior to limit freedom of thought, itself.
‘Hate speech’ is no more than a nifty label given by Establishment dimwits to words they don’t like and to verbally communicated ideologies with which they disagree.
Relevance
Is it relevant?
We began reading the book as Richard Spencer was gearing up to speak at the University of Florida (UF), an event two of us who reviewed this book attended. Contrary to “production news” reports, it was a deeply disturbing display of a fundamental lack of understanding and support for the First Amendment. Students and Antifa protestors chased Fox News down the street, shouted down Spencer and violently assaulted those they even suspected of disagreeing with them.
Adams, offering one example of indoctrination and degradation after another, put these prescient words to paper months before the event.
Instilling in young adults the importance of debate, civil disobedience, the First Amendment, and fighting the status quo is a tremendously important responsibility. These are principles of freedom. Standing up for your beliefs and pushing against injustice is a cornerstone of American ideals.
Pundit’s Perspective
There’s only one recommendation for this one: Pick it up! We give it 4.5 stars.
Christopher Steele, the former MI6 agent who set-up Orbis Business Intelligence and compiled a dossier on Donald Trump, in London where he has spoken to the media for the first time on Tuesday March 7, 2017. (Photo: AP)
The Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) paid for the opposition research resulting in the discredited dossier meant to tie Donald Trump to Russia. The Washington Post published a bombshell report Tuesday making what many suspected official: Clinton campaign and other top Democratic officials have been lying for months.
The report–which consequently comes as a judge is set to rule on a request to make the information public by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif.–also notes that the Clinton campaign and the DNC funded Fusion GPS for the material through the end of October 2016, only days before Election Day.
Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson refused to answer questions during a closed-door interviews with members of congressional committees. The document was originally opposition research for unknown political rivals, widely believed to be initially funded by donors connected to Jeb Bush.
Simpson, a former journalist at The Wall Street Journal, hired Christopher Steele, a former MI-6 British Intelligence Officer, who almost exclusively used sources linked to the Kremlin and Russian President Vladimir Putin, which Democrats widely circulated knowing it contained discredited information.
Marc E. Elias of Perkins Coie, a lawyer representing the Clinton campaign and the DNC, retained Fusion GPS in April 2016. When the Republican donor stopped paying for the research, Mr. Elias, acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign and the DNC paid for the dirt to continue.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, had been probing whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) under fired director James Comey agreed to pay Mr. Steele. Further, Chairman Grassley had sought to find out if the FBI used the debunked document as justification to conduct surveillance on members of the Trump campaign.
The Clinton campaign paid Perkins Coie $5.6 million in legal fees from June 2015 to December 2016, according to campaign finance records, and the DNC paid the firm $3.6 million in “legal and compliance consulting’’ since Nov. 2015 — though it’s impossible to tell from the filings how much of that work was for other legal matters and how much of it related to Fusion GPS.
The dossier was published by Buzzfeed News in January, a move that was widely criticized in journalistic circles.
Mr. Simpson also previously gave a 10-hour interview to the Senate Judiciary Committee. As People’s Pundit Daily (PPD) reported, Mr. Simpson again refused to answer lawmakers’ questions.
He and his lawyer Josh Levy provided thousands of “disrespectful” records to the committee, being that most were blank or press clippings. He also wanted an assurance the transcript would be kept “confidential,” and only made public after they reviewed it for accuracy and redactions were made.
Dr. Kelli Ward, left, a former Arizona Republican state senator, speaks with a supporter of President Donald J. Trump on August 2, 2016, while Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., right, attends a meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 9, 2016. (Photos: AP)
Dr. Kelli Ward responded to the decision by Jeff Flake not to seek reelection in 2018, an announcement he made on the floor of the U.S. Senate Tuesday. The announcement came only days after talk radio host Laura Ingraham and Breitbart News Executive Chairman and former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon campaign for Dr. Ward in Phoenix.
“Arizona voters are the big winner in @JeffFlake’s decision to not seek reelection,” she tweeted. “They deserve a strong, conservative in the Senate who supports @POTUS & the ‘America First’ agenda. Our campaign proudly offers an optimistic path forward for Arizona & America.”
Arizona voters are the big winner in @JeffFlake‘s decision to not seek reelection. They deserve a strong, conservative in the Senate 1/2
The original NeverTrumper had little-to-no chance to beat back the primary challenge by Dr. Ward. Recent polling shows Dr. Ward crushing the incumbent by roughly 25 points, ironically carrying the Hispanic vote.
A recent JMC Analytics Poll of 500 registered Republican voters found only 22% said they wanted to nominate Sen. Flake, who 66% of Arizona Republicans view unfavorably. Only 22% viewed him favorably, compared to 43% who held a favorable view of Dr. Ward. With 23% saying they have no opinion and 11% saying they’ve never heard of the state senator, she had a lot of room to grow.
Conservative talk radio hosts Sean Hannity and Ingraham have both endorsed Dr. Ward. President Donald Trump tweeted support for her campaign in mid-August. The President said it was “great” to see Dr. Ward running against Sen. Flake.
Meanwhile, Sen. Flake will serve out the remainder of his term, leaving his actions from this point forward unaccountable to the voters he insinuated were bigoted and misguided.
Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., on Capitol Hill in Washington on March 9, 2016. (Photo: AP)
Senator Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., announced on the floor of the U.S. Senate that he will not run for reelection in a speech that criticized President Donald Trump and voters. He will serve out the remainder of his term, leaving his actions from this point forward unaccountable to the voters he insinuated were bigoted and misguided.
“To that end, I’m announcing today that my service in the Senate will conclude at the end of my term in early January 2019,” he said. “It is clear at this moment that a traditional conservative, who believes in limited government and free markets, who is devoted to free trade, who is pro-immigration, has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican Party, the party that has so long defined itself by its belief in those things.”
“It is also clear to me for the moment that we have given in or given up on the core principles in favor of a more viscerally satisfied anger and resentment.”
The original NeverTrumper had little-to-no chance at winning his party’s nomination for the 2018 midterm elections against Dr. Kelli Ward. Recent polling shows Dr. Ward crushing the incumbent by roughly 25 points, ironically carrying the Hispanic vote.
In July, a Morning Consult Poll ranking senators by popularity found Arizona Senators John McCain and Flake behind only Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kty., as having the highest disapproval ratings in their state.
While Establishment Republicans claimed he was the best chance to keep the seat under the party’s control, the People’s Pundit has repeatedly pushed back on that argument.
“Senator Flake barely won his seat and greatly underperformed the Republican nominee,” said PPD’s pollsters Richard Baris. “You cannot win when only a third of your party in the seat has a favorable opinion of you.”
Dr. Ward sent out a series of tweets in response to the announcement.
Arizona voters are the big winner in @JeffFlake's decision to not seek reelection. They deserve a strong, conservative in the Senate 1/2
Former President George W. Bush speaks at a forum sponsored by the George W. Bush Institute in New York, Thursday, Oct. 19, 2017. (Photo: AP)
Back in 2013, I did an assessment of economic policy changes that occurred during the Clinton Administration.
The bottom line was that the overall burden of government declined by a semi-significant amount. Which presumably helps to explain why the economy enjoyed good growth and job creation in the 1990s, especially in the last half of the decade when most of the pro-growth reforms were enacted.
The chart I prepared has been very helpful when speaking to audiences about what actually happened during the Clinton years, so I decided to do the same thing for other presidents.
Now it’s time to look at the record of George W. Bush. It’s not a pretty picture.
I think the TARP bailout was the low point of the Bush years, though he also deserves criticism for big spending hikes, especially the rapid rise of domestic spending, additional red tape, special-interest trade taxes, and more centralization of education.
On the plus side, there was a good tax cut in 2003–though the 2001 version was mostly Keynesian and thus didn’t help growth–as well as some targeted trade liberalization. Unfortunately, those good reforms were swamped by bad policy.
As has been the case for other presidents, my calculations are based solely on policy changes. Presidents don’t get credit or blame for policies they endorsed or opposed. So when fans of President Bush tell me he was better on policy than his record indicates, I shrug my shoulders (just like I don’t particularly care when Republicans on Capitol Hill tell me that Clinton’s good record was because of the post-1994 GOP Congress).
I simply want to show where policy improved and where it deteriorated when various presidents were in office. Other people can argue about the degree to which those presidents deserve credit or blame.
In the case of Bush, for what it’s worth, I think he does deserve blame. None of the bad laws I listed were enacted over his veto.
Incidentally, I was torn by how to handle monetary policy. The artificially low interest rates of the mid-2000s contributed to the housing bubble and subsequent financial meltdown. Should I have blamed Bush for that because of his Federal Reserve appointments?
On a related note, the affordable lending mandates of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were made more onerous during the Bush years, thus exacerbating perverse incentives in the financial sector to make unwise loans. Was that Bush’s fault, or were those regulations unavoidable because of legislation that was enacted before Bush became President?
Ultimately, I decided to omit any reference to the Fed, as well as Fannie and Freddie. But I double-weighted TARP, both because it was awful economic policy and because that was a way of partially dinging Bush for his acquiescence to bad monetary and housing policy.
If there’s a lesson to learn from this analysis of Bush policy, it is that party labels don’t necessarily have any meaning. The economy suffers just as much if a Republican expands the burden of government as it does when the same thing happens under a Democrat.
P.S. I haven’t decided whether to replicate this exercise for pre-World War II presidents. If I do, Calvin Coolidge and Grover Cleveland presumably would look very good.
A production line employee works at the AMES Companies shovel manufacturing factory in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, U.S. on June 29, 2017. (Photo: Reuters)
The Fifth District Survey of Manufacturing Activity by the Richmond Federal Reserve remained strong in October and wages hit the highest level in roughly 17 years. While the composite index dropped as a result of a decline from 22 to 9 in the shipments index, it remained positive across all components, indicating continued growth.
The wage index increased from 17 to 24, the highest level since May of 2000.
Manufacturing firms remained optimistic about growth in the next six months. Most expectations indexes rose, with the exception of employment and average workweek, which both remained positive and were well above current values.
District manufacturing firms reported that prices grew in October, although at a slightly lower rate than during September. They expect price growth to accelerate in the coming six months.
The regional manufacturing report comes after the Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey and Empire State Manufacturing Survey both put out extremely positive data.
In the former, employment gained 24 points to 30.6, is the highest level ever recorded in the 48 years the Philadelphia Federal Reserve has conducted the Manufacturing Business Outlook Survey. The Empire State Manufacturing Survey, a regional gauge of factory activity by the New York Federal Reserve, surged to the highest level in more than 3 years in October.
Jacinda Ardern, 37, will become the nation’s youngest leader since 1856.
Most politicians are feckless creatures driven by their insecurities to say anything and everything in hopes of getting elected. And, once in power, they will do or say anything and everything in hopes of getting reelected. “Public choice” theory explains how these conventional politicians behave.
But not all politicians fit in that box. There are also evil politicians in the world. Maduro in Venezuela would be a prime example, and you can add the dictators of North Korea, Cuba, and other hellholes to that list.
There are even a few admirable politicians, though that’s a very limited list.
But there’s also another category, at least in my mind. These are the ones who behave conventionally but say things that are really blur the line between foolish and despicable. For lack of a better phrase, these are the morally blind officials.
Another example would be Michael Higgins, the President of Ireland, who urged a return to “collective values” and condemned the “Celtic Tiger” era for being too individualistic and selfish – even though that was the period when the people of Ireland enjoyed both rapid income growth and huge improvement in quality-of-life measures ranging from central heating to infant mortality.
Now I have another politician who belongs in this special category.
The new Prime Minster of New Zealand just demonstrated her profound ignorance of world history and New Zealand history by declaring that capitalism is “a blatant failure.”
New Zealand’s new prime minister called capitalism a “blatant failure”, before citing levels of homelessness and low wages as evidence that “the market has failed” her country’s poor. Jacinda Ardern, who is to become the nation’s youngest leader since 1856, said measures used to gauge economic success “have to change” to take into account “people’s ability to actually have a meaningful life”. …Ms Ardern has pledged her government will increase the minimum wage, write child poverty reduction targets into law, and build thousands of affordable homes. …The Labour leader said her government would judge economic success on more than measures such as GDP.
[brid video=”171996″ player=”2077″ title=”New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern Capitalism Has Failed”]
Is she unaware that horrible material deprivation in countries such as China and India only fell after those nations opened themselves to some economic liberalization?
She reminds me of Pope Francis, who has a knee-jerk view that capitalism is bad. I’ve explained why those views are wrong, though I’d first recommend reading what Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell wrote on the matter.
By the way, I don’t know enough to comment on homelessness and child poverty in New Zealand, but if their welfare state is anything like the mess in the United States, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the government is actually subsidizing destitution and dependency.
But even if that’s not the case, Ms. Ardern is condemning capitalism because it doesn’t solve every problem in society. That might be a fair assertion, except the alternatives to capitalism have never solved any problem. Indeed, the various forms of statism are the cause of much misery around the world.
For what it’s worth, I would not be agitated if she simply had made a conventional left-of-center argument about being willing to accept less growth to get additional redistribution because the benefits of capitalism aren’t “equally shared,” or something like that. That’s the standard equity-vs-efficiency debate. But she apparently doesn’t have the depth or knowledge for that discussion.
The bottom line is that New Zealand is now governed by a politician who doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. That doesn’t mean she’ll be any worse than the standard elected official, but I’m not overflowing with optimism that New Zealand will continue to be ranked near the top by Economic Freedom of the World.
By the way, I appeared on New Zealand TV earlier this month while in the country for a speech. But we talked about America’s top politician rather than what’s happening in Kiwi-land.
P.S. Obama came close to joining the morally blind club when he suggested we could learn from communism. And Bernie Sanders deserves to be in that club, but may belong in an even worse category.
President Donald Trump awards retired Army Captain Gary “Mike” Rose the Medal of Honor, reserved for men and women who fought “valiantly” in the line of duty. (Photo: SS)
President Donald Trump at the White House on Monday awarded retired Army Captain Gary “Mike” Rose the Medal of Honor 47 years after he saved lives on a secret mission in Laos. Then a sergeant, the injured hero ran through gunfire to treat more than 50 soldiers who were fighting the North Vietnamese, carrying wounded men with one arm and returning fire on the enemy with his other.
He didn’t sleep for days but all 16 American soldiers deployed with him made it home.
Mr. Rose, now 69, served as a medic in the Military Assistance Command Studies and Observations Group, an elite division assigned to the 46th Special Forces Company headquartered in Thailand. “Operation Tailwind” in September 1970 was so secret that he never spoke about it to anyone for more than 4 decades -– including the people he served with.
“When we left MAG SOC, the unit did not exist,” Captain Rose said. “If anyone asked me, I was going to be a mail clerk during the Vietnam War.”
The unit included Americans, Vietnamese and indigenous paramilitary personnel known as the Montagnards.
“This medal and the presidential citation, it honors what the [Vietnam-era veteran] had done,” Mr. Rose told reporters on Friday. “They were asked to do a very difficult thing and they did it. They fought hard and, unfortunately, many didn’t make it back. This honors them. We stand up for them and are a focal point in that honor.”
On Sept. 11, 1970, they were sent deep into enemy territory. As soon as they made contact, the fighting was fierce and two Americans and two Montagnards were wounded. Mr. Rose didn’t hesitated. At one point during the extraction of troops in the hot LZ (landing zone), one of the helicopters crashed to the ground, injuring several personnel on board and killing one.
Those injured were pulled to safety by none other than then-Sergeant Rose. Due to his heroism, only 3 men died during the 4 days of nearly constant heavy gunfire. Rose had already earned the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest award for valor.
In 1998, CNN and Time ran reports claiming Captain Rose and the soldiers in Operation Tailwind were in Laos to capture American defectors and used deadly Sarin nerve gas. However, a U.S. Pentagon investigation outright dismissed the report, saying the mission was collecting intelligence on the logistics of the North Vietnamese army, disrupting and destroying supply lines.
In 2016, the U.S. Congress passed legislation authorizing the Medal of Honor for Rose, waiving the five-year time limit.
Captain Rose enlisted in April 1967. In 1968, he completed his training as an 18-Delta (Special Forces medic) and was assigned to the 7th Special Forces Group before being reassigned to the 46th Special Forces Company.
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