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Politics

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and President Donald Trump attend a working lunch with ambassadors on the UN Security Council. (Photo: Reuters)

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and President Donald Trump attend a working lunch with ambassadors on the UN Security Council. (Photo: Reuters)

President Donald Trump brought a message of reform and fairness to his first ever appearance before the United Nations (UN). The President is reinvigorating a more-than decade old effort to make the UN more effective in realizing the goals of its Charter

and putting an end to the corruption that has plagued the global body.

“We affirm our commitment to the United Nations reform,” President Trump said. “In recent years, the United Nations has not reached its full potential because of bureaucracy and mismanagement.”

The UN has been a cesspool for corruption, bias and abuse of power. Even after a 2006 reform, the Human Rights Council continued to condemn Israel more than any other state and the global body has moved further away from serving the interests of the U.S. and its allies.

Following the Oil-for-Food scandal — the most-well known instance of corruption in which they profited from billions in Baghdad kickbacks and attempted to cover it up — the UN in 2006 vowed to move toward greater transparency and accountability. Then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon arrived took office in 2007 promising “to restore trust” and supporting for a system-wide audit.

But they never achieved these reforms. President Trump made clear no nation should have to disproportionately pay the UN bills and the U.S. will demand reforms for its money.

“We must ensure that no one… shoulders a disproportionate share of the burden and that’s militarily or financially.”

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said President Trump “has a businessman’s eye for seeing potential and he sees great potential… in the United Nations.”

The United States is the largest provider of financial contributions to the United Nations. In 2015, the U.S. provided 22% of the UN budget and 28% of the peacekeeping budget. Meanwhile, China pays just 8% and Russia pays around 3%. The disparity gives the U.S. great leverage over the UN, which past presidents have been hesitant to use.

Despite his frequent criticisms of the global institution, President Trump’s administration has had some serious success at the U.N. Security Council, particularly on North Korea. They twice  voted unanimously on U.S.-led resolutions imposing the most severe sanctions ever on Pyongyang.

Resolution 2371, the first round of sanctions, cost the rogue regime roughly $1 billion in exports. Last week, the UN Security Council voted unanimously to ban textile exports and capping fuel supplies.

President Trump will meet with world leaders to promote reform, first with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and later French President Emmanuel Macron. Later in the day, he’ll meet with Latin American leaders. On Tuesday, President Trump will give his first address to the UN General Assembly, the highlight of the 4-day summit in his hometown.

President Donald Trump brought a message of

Economy

A view of a house for sale is seen in Los Angeles on February 24, 2010. (Photo: Reuters)

A view of a house for sale is seen in Los Angeles on February 24, 2010. (Photo: Reuters)

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) said Monday the Housing Market Index (HMI) fell slightly to 64 in September, down from a revised 67. The initial August reading was 68 and the two devastating hurricanes in Texas and Florida impacted this month’s report, matching July for the lowest reading this year.

Still, prior to September, home builder confidence has been unusually strong. Housing starts and building permits have not yet reflected that optimism is monthly surveys. That report is due out on Tuesday and is likely to paint a mixed picture due to hurricane impacts.

Worth noting, buyer traffic remained under 50, down 1 to 47 as first-time buyers are staying out of the new home market by increased prices and tight inventory. Six-month sales are down 4 points to 73 and current sales also down 4 points to 70.

The Housing Market Index (HMI) is based on a monthly survey of NAHB members designed to take the pulse of the single-family housing market. The survey asks respondents to rate market conditions for the sale of new homes at the present time and in the next six months as well as the traffic of prospective buyers of new homes.

The HMI is a weighted average of separate diffusion indices for these three key single-family series. The first two series are rated on a scale of Good, Fair and Poor and the last is rated on a scale of High/Very High, Average, and Low/Very Low. A diffusion index is calculated for each series by applying the formula “(Good-Poor+100)/2” to the present and future sales series and “(High/Very High – Low/Very Low + 100)/2” to the traffic series. Each resulting index is then seasonally adjusted and weighted to produce the HMI.

Based on this calculation, the HMI can range between 0 and 100.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)

Politics

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn puts Iran 'on notice' during a press conference in response to a missile launch. (Photo: AP)

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn puts Iran ‘on notice’ during a press conference in response to a missile launch. (Photo: AP)

The family of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn launched a legal defense fund on Monday, claiming his legal fees are “well into seven figures.” The move on Monday comes in response to Flynn being a target of the investigation led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

“My brother, Michael, bleeds red, white and blue,” younger brother Joe Flynn told Fox News. “No question about it … and one of the things that is most disturbing for myself and for the rest of our family members is to hear words like ‘traitor’ and to hear words like ‘turncoat.’”

Prior to the appointment of a special counsel, investigators were digging into the relationship between Lt. Gen. Flynn and a Turkish businessman to determine whether it played any role in his decision-making during the brief time he served as President Trump’s national security advisor.

Lt. Gen. Flynn was fired by President Donald Trump after it was revealed he misled Vice President Mike Pence about conservations he had with a Russian ambassador. He was cleared by the FBI of any wrongdoing as it relates to the content of the conversation, but the investigation turned to his firm, Flynn Intel Group.

The family of Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn

Opinion

George Washington presides over the Constitutional Convention, which took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

George Washington presides over the Constitutional Convention, which took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

On this day 230 years ago, 39 delegates replaced the Articles of Confederation with the U.S. Constitution. The Constitutional Convention, which took place from May 25 to September 17, 1787, in Philadelphia, was intended to replace the Articles of Confederation. But the delegates ended up creating a new system of government.

All day, journalists and pundits will pay meaningless lip-service to the founding fathers.

If we truly wanted to honor those who put it all on the line to be free and later to ensure we would be free by codifying inalienable rights for the first time in human history, we should reverse several changes we made to their work of genius. Modern American political leaders aren’t any more “progressive” nor are they any smarter than our founding fathers. Though their hubris has convinced them otherwise, they are in fact more backward and ignorant in their understanding of the nature government.

Many of the changes we’ve made to the U.S. Constitution have eroded, not expanded liberty for the greatest number of citizens.

America was not founded on the principles of democracy, which James Madison lays out in the Federal Papers. A Republic has several major advantages over “pure Democracy,” as James Madison laid out in Federal Paper 10. But for the purpose of this article, we are only going to focus on protection against “factions.”

Factions are what we would describe today as special interest, though they aren’t just big corporations as many erroneously view them to be today. Delegates to the Constitutional Convention meticulously and contentiously debated the methods of electing those who would serve in the U.S. Senate.

To protect against factions and corruption, it was decided members in the upper chamber would be elected by state legislators, who in turn were elected by the people in that particular state. In our not-so infinite wisdom, we amended the U.S. Constitution by passing and ratifying the Seventeenth Amendment.

Progressives argued the need for the amendment was due to the special interest influence on state legislatures, and electoral deadlock. These arguments, which empirical data simply don’t support, were famously made in David Graham Phillips’ 9-part series published in Cosmopolitan entitled, Treason in the Senate.

In fact, neither main arguments had any merit whatsoever and popular senatorial elections led to increased special interest “rent-seeking” behavior and career politicians. From 1915 to 1917, the average tenure in the U.S. Senate was 5.1 years, less than a single term. After the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment, that number exploded.

Why does increased tenure matter? The answer is simple. It cost too much to keep buying a new senator every 6 years.

George Mason University historian Todd Zywicki, quoted in a chapter of the 2013 book Our Virtuous Republic (OVR), explains:

Empirical tests have demonstrated support for the proposition that the movement from direct elections of senators was an attempt to change the institutional structure in which rent-seeking behavior took place. The Seventeenth Amendment increased the average tenure of senators, thereby making available a greater number of special-interest contracts, as well as increasing their durability and value.

Via Our Virtuous Republic (OVR):

In Munn v. Illinois (1877), the Supreme Court shifted away from previous protections of property rights toward their subservience to the “public interest.” Basically, they gave Congress the power to do regulation through legislation. Through regulation, special interest could now purchase a competitive advantage by supporting a candidate.

The snag, however, was in the lack of durability for purchased legislation. Regulation, as a whole, does not provide special interest groups with a lump-sum return. Therefore, a law’s durability dictates the value of regulatory policy. Absent seniority and incumbency, special interest cannot insulate favored laws from reconsideration in a subsequent Congress.

Via Our Virtuous Republic (OVR), Mr. Zywicki elaborates:

If the effectiveness of a legislative act can be guaranteed only until the  next electoral session, the value of legislation to interest groups will decline. As a result, these groups will be unwilling to make substantial investments in purchasing legislation that may be obsolete within a few months or years, or which may require investment of further resources at a later date.

The problem of “trustworthiness” for both senators and special interest is easily alleviated through increased seniority. Senior legislators can be “trusted” to scratch each other’s back because they do not want to sabotage legislation they inevitably will sponsor in the future. If they want their agenda items to be considered and passed, they must be trusted to follow through on the quid pro quo.

The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Amendments, which were passed in a logrolling deal, were sold as mechanisms to further the people’s interest. But they’ve done nothing but concentrated power in and around Washington D.C., and created careerism in the now-derelict and unrepresentative U.S. Senate.

The Sixteenth Amendment gave the federal government a power the founders never wanted it to have–the power to tax individuals directly. It wasn’t a way to “punish the rich,” or “make them pay their fair share,” it was just another way to give special interests a competitive advantage and grow the power of the federal government.

OVR explains how these special interest groups rely upon what is referred to as “rational ignorance.” It’s not that most voters are stupid or incapable of making a rational decision. It’s that they make that decision without having all of or accurate information. Rational ignorance is the product of structural distractions imposed upon the electorate by the powerful to distract, and remove the incentive and ability for We the People to study the issues and vote accordingly.

So, year after year, we keep reelecting the same incompetent, corrupt politicians. I for one have no objection to abolishing direct senatorial elections and returning to the system our founders intended. As it turns out, they were smarter than us, after all.

UPDATED: In a follow-up article, we’ll look at the claims made by proponents of the 17th Amendment, including electoral deadlock and pre-Progressive Era corruption. As you might guess, the data simply don’t support either claim. Of course corruption existed. But the 17th Amendment without question made it far worse.

On this day 230 years ago, the

Opinion

President Donald Trump signs an executive order, left, while Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro, right, attends a signing ceremony. (Photos: Reuters/Miraflores Palace/Handout)

President Donald Trump signs an executive order, left, while Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, right, attends a signing ceremony. (Photos: Reuters/Miraflores Palace/Handout)

I periodically list people who have suffered horrible abuse because of despicable actions by government. Many of these unfortunate people — the Dehko family, Carole Hinders, Joseph Rivers, and Thomas Williams — have something in common. They are victims of theft. But they can’t call law enforcement because their money and property was stolen by the government.

Such theft is enabled by “civil asset forfeiture” and we can now add Gerardo Serrano to the list of victims. The Washington Post has the disgusting story of what happened.

On Sept. 21, 2015, Gerardo Serrano was driving from his home in Kentucky to Piedras Negras, Mexico, when his truck was searched by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents at Texas’s Eagle Pass border crossing. After finding a small ammunition clip, the agents took Serrano’s truck from him. Two years later, Customs hasn’t charged Serrano with a crime, and they haven’t given his truck back either.

The bureaucrats could take his truck because Civil asset forfeiture basically gives bureaucrats a license to steal. I’m not joking, though I wish I was.

Customs seized the truck under the laws of civil asset forfeiture, which allow authorities to take cash and property from citizens upon suspicion of criminal wrongdoing. Because it happens under civil law, no criminal conviction — or even criminal charge — is necessary for authorities to take property they believe is connected to a crime.

That’s bad enough. But it gets even worse when you read about what happened to Serrano.

In September 2015, Serrano drove his new Ford F-250 pickup from his home in Kentucky to the Mexico border. He was going to visit a cousin he hadn’t seen in many years. He snapped a few photos with his phone as he drove through the checkpoint, planning to upload them to Facebook, just as he says he had been doing throughout his whole trip, to share the experience with friends and family back home. That’s when the trouble started. One of Serrano’s photos shows two Customs agents looking in his direction, hands held up. According to his lawsuit, the agents objected to his taking photos.

Are these bureaucrats members of some primitive jungle tribe that believes a photograph steals their souls?

That would at least be a semi-rational explanation.

But if you read the rest of the story, they’re apparently petulant jerks (I had other words in mind, but this is a family-friendly site).

Those agents waved him over to the side of the road, on the U.S. side of the border, and demanded he hand over his phone. Serrano said “no.” Customs declined to say whether there’s a prohibition on photography at border crossings. …one of the agents unlocked Serrano’s door, unbuckled his seat belt, and yanked him out of the car. “I know I didn’t do anything wrong,” Serrano told The Post. “So I say ‘listen, you can’t yank me out like that, I’m an American, you can’t do that to me.’”The agent took his phone, and demanded Serrano give him the passcode. Serrano recalls he told the agent to “go get a warrant.”By this time, other agents had started searching his truck. “I said, ‘Hey listen I have rights, you’re violating my rights, you’re not supposed to do that kind of stuff,’” Serrano recounted. …“I’m sick of hearing about your rights,” the agent said, according to Serrano’s lawsuit. “You have no rights here.”Eventually, one of the agents searching the truck found an ammunition clip containing five .380-caliber bullets and yelled “we got him!,” according to the lawsuit. …Serrano had planned to take his pistol on the trip, but he left it home at the strong urging of his cousin, who explained the potential consequences of bringing it to Mexico. But he didn’t realize the extra ammunition clip, containing five .380 caliber rounds, was still in the center console of his truck.

The bureaucrats must have been trained in Venezuela.

At the crossing, the CBP agents put Serrano in handcuffs and continued to ask him to give up the passcode. “You go get that warrant,” Serrano says he told them. “I’ll wait for you in jail.” Serrano didn’t believe that any judge would grant a warrant to search a phone for taking pictures at the border. …The agents eventually placed Serrano in a locked cell without food, water or a toilet, Serrano says. Periodically someone would come in and ask for the passcode to his phone, he says. He refused every time.

The good news is that Mr. Serrano won, sort of.

Serrano says that after three hours, the agents told him he was free to go, returned his phone and said he wasn’t being arrested or charged with any crime. Serrano says he was elated.

The bad news is that the bureaucrats stole his truck.

But then, the agents handed him a document informing him that Customs was taking his truck and the ammunition clip. Those items were “subject of legally becoming the property of the Federal Government (forfeiture),” according to the document, because Serrano had failed to disclose the presence of the clip, making the truck a “conveyance of illegal exportation.” …Several weeks later he received a formal forfeiture notice from Customs, informing him that the government believed his truck was being used to transport “arms or munitions of war.” The notice gave him a number of options to pursue if he wanted his truck back.

Here’s the part that only be described as adding insult to injury.

One of the options was to make an “offer in compromise” — send Customs a check, and if they deemed the amount to be high enough, they would return his truck to him. “That’s like a shakedown,” Serrano said.

Fortunately, the great folks at the Institute for Justice are helping him challenge this horrific example of theft by government.

By the way, you may be thinking Serrano is some sort of thug, maybe a gang member from MS-13? I’ve had some defenders of civil asset forfeiture claim that the program is justifiable because it gives law enforcement leeway to go after bad guys that they can identify with their “sixth sense.” Was Serrano a bad guy who was nailed, albeit using a bad law?

Um…, not exactly.

Serrano is originally from Chicago but he’s lived on a farm in Kentucky for 20 years. A lifelong Republican, he unsuccessfully ran for a seat in Kentucky’s House of Representatives in 2014 on an explicitly pro-Second Amendment platform. He describes himself as a civil libertarian, and has a concealed carry permit for a Sig Sauer .380 pistol he carries for self-defense. “I believe in freedom,” he said in an interview with The Washington Post. “That’s what made this country great, is our freedom, our liberty.”

Serrano sounds like a great American. If he’s an immigrant, I want more just like him.

He understands what’s really doing on.

“It’s like there’s a war going on and they want to make war with my Bill of Rights,” he said. “How do they get away with this? How could this happen?”

For what it’s worth, I hope Senator Rand Paul (who is willing to fight for liberty) place a “hold” on all nominations to the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security until and unless the government returns Serrano’s truck and compensates him for mistreatment.

Let’s close with some additional excerpts from the column that explain the injustice of civil asset forfeiture.

Many Americans haven’t heard of civil asset forfeiture, the legal provision that grants police the authority to seize cash and property from people not charged with a crime. The practice doesn’t follow the traditional American concept of “innocent until proven guilty.” If police suspect that you acquired something as a result of illegal activity, or even if it is connected to illegal activity, they can take it from you. If you want to get it back, the onus is on you to prove you got it legally. Once property is seized and forfeited, in most states and at the federal level police can either keep it for themselves or sell it at auction to raise money for the department. Critics say this creates a perverse profit motive. …said Robert Johnson, Serrano’s attorney. “That’s an open invitation to abuse.” The practice is widespread. In 2014, for instance, federal law enforcement officers alone took more than $5 billion worth of cash and property from people — more than the total amount of reported burglary losses that year. After public outcry, the Obama administration put in place a number of restrictions on forfeiture that made it harder, in some cases, for authorities to take property without a criminal conviction. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently reversed those restrictions.

Every sentence of the above passage is spot on. Including the last two sentences. The Obama Administration actually took a small step in the right direction, but that was reversed in a terrible move by Trump’s Attorney General.

And here are some excerpts from a column published by CapX.

…asset forfeiture lets government agents seize Americans’ assets (cash, but also cars and even houses) on the mere suspicion that they were involved in a crime. Asset forfeiture is intended to deprive criminals of their ill-gotten gains, but frequently enables police to take the property of Americans who remain innocent in the eyes of the law. …Asset forfeiture primarily targets the poor. Most forfeitures are for small amounts: in 2012, the Institute for Justice, a libertarian law firm that has focused heavily on asset forfeiture, analyzed forfeiture in 10 states and found that the median value of assets seized ranged from $451 (Minnesota) to $2,048 (Utah). Given that law enforcement routinely takes everything they find in a forfeiture case, these small values suggest the relative poverty of the victims. The procedural hurdles for challenging asset forfeiture also mean that poor people are less able to get their money back. The average forfeiture challenge requires four weekdays in court; missing four days of work can be a prohibitive expense for Americans living paycheck to paycheck. …Asset forfeiture is especially dangerous for the unbanked, because police and federal agents consider high amounts of cash to be suspect. …Asset forfeiture functions as a regressive tax, which reduces low-income Americans’ economic mobility. A family that sees their savings wiped out has to start again from the bottom. A person whose cash rent payment is seized may turn to payday loans or the black market, or simply be evicted—none of which are conducive to upward mobility.

Civil asset forfeiture is reprehensible.

The fact that poor people are disproportionately harmed is awful (and pervasive in parts of the criminal justice system).

Civil asset forfeiture basically gives government a license

Policy

Protestors at the Sacramento Convention Center show support for the state's single-payer healthcare legislation. (Photo: AP)

Protestors at the Sacramento Convention Center show support for the state’s single-payer healthcare legislation. (Photo: AP)

In a strange way, I admire Bernie Sanders. He openly embraces big government. Back during the 2016 campaign, I frequently observed that the difference between the Vermont Senator and Hillary Clinton is that he wanted America to become Greece at a much faster rate.

Well, he just installed a turbo-charged engine and stepped on the accelerator. He’s proposed a single-payer healthcare scheme that is being called “Medicare for all.”

According to Sanders and other advocates, the government’s health system is a good role model: People pay a tax while working and they get health care when they’re old. But there’s a not-so-slight problem with that approach. For every dollar that Medicare recipients paid to the program, taxpayers are financing three dollars of spending.

That approach is workable, though only in the short run for Medicare. But it won’t work if government is paying for everyone’s health care.

So even Bernie admits that a tax increase will be necessary. And not just any tax hike. He’s proposing the biggest tax hike in the history of the United States. Heck, it’s the biggest tax hike in world history. Here are some of the frightening details, as reported by the Washington Post.

The Medicare for All legislation backed by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and 16 Senate Democrats does not include details on how it might be paid for. …Sanders’s Senate office released a white paper on possible ways to pay for the legislation.

He starts with a giant payroll tax of 11.5 percent on top of the 15.3 percent payroll tax that already exists.

The taxes themselves would fall on both employers and employees. Sanders floats the idea of a 7.5 percent tax on employers… Another tax, of 4 percent, would hit individuals.

To understand what this means, just contemplate the disastrous impact of ObamaCare on the job market.

Sanders also has a big class-warfare tax hike.

The next big slice of funding: higher tax rates on the very wealthy. Income…$250,000…higher…would be hit harder, on an upward sliding scale, ending at a 52 percent tax on income over $10 million.

By the way, imposing a tax is the easy part. Collecting revenue will be a much harder task, especially since Sanders wants to take the very successful experiment of the 1980s and run it in reverse. He also wants a big levy on banks (foreign financial institutions are probably praying for that outcome), an extra layer of tax on American companies competing in world markets (foreign corporations are cheering for that one), along with a huge boost in the death tax and the imposition of a wealth tax (lawyers and accountants doubtlessly are licking their chops).

Sanders imagines a tax on financial institutions worth more than $50 billion, a one-time tax on offshore profits — an idea that is continually floated then sunk in tax reform negotiations — a higher estate tax (topping out at 55 percent), and a 1 percent wealth tax on the richest 0.1 percent of households.

That’s all the tax hikes listed in the Washington Post story, but Sanders also has some additional material on his office website.

A huge increase in the double taxation of dividends and capital gains, particularly when you consider that personal tax rates will be much higher.

…end the special tax break for capital gains and dividends on household income above $250,000, treating this income the same as income earned from working.

A restriction on itemized deductions.

…itemized deductions would be capped at 28 percent for households making over $250,000. In other words, for every dollar in tax deduction a high-income household could save at most 28 cents.

For what it’s worth, I don’t like the state and local tax deduction and the charitable deduction, and I also don’t like preferences for housing.

But I want to eliminate such distortions only if the revenue is used to finance lower tax rates, not to finance bigger government.

That being said, let’s get back to our list. Sanders has a special tax targeting small business.

…ensure that all business income of high-income people would be subject to the existing 3.8 percent tax to fund Medicare, either through the net investment income tax or the additional Medicare tax on earned income.

Last but not least, he wants to skim $112 billion over 10 years from corporations by manipulating accounting rules.

…eliminate the “last-in, first-out” (LIFO) accounting method.

The bottom line is that Sanders, in one fell swoop, would saddle America with a European-sized government. And that would mean European-level taxes. The only thing that’s missing is he didn’t propose a value-added tax.

Though I’m sure that would get added to the mix since the huge increase in the government’s fiscal burden would retard growth. And since that would mean sluggish revenue, politicians would seek another way to extract more money from the economy’s productive sector.

Bernie Sanders proposed a single-payer healthcare scheme

Polls

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., hugs his wife Jane O’Meara Sanders, during the inaugural luncheon in honor of President Donald Trump at the Statuary Hall in the Capitol, Friday, Jan. 20, 2017, in Washington. (Photo: AP)

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., hugs his wife Jane O’Meara Sanders, during the inaugural luncheon in honor of President Donald Trump at the Statuary Hall in the Capitol, Friday, Jan. 20, 2017, in Washington. (Photo: AP)

Bernie Sanders introduced a Medicare for all socialized healthcare bill, but most voters don’t even believe their getting what’s coming to them now.

A new Rasmussen Reports survey finds 52% of Likely U.S. Voters are at least Not Very Confident that the Medicare system will pay them all promised benefits in their lifetime, including 16% who are Not At All Confident. Forty-three percent (43%) are at least somewhat confident that the Medicare system will pay them all promised benefits in their lifetime, including 15% who are Very Confident.

The self-described socialist from Vermont lacked specifics about how much it would cost, how he would pay for it and how he would expand an already struggling services sector to ensure coverage. Americans are going to need those concerns addressed and not too many of them support Sen. Sanders’ likely proposal.

When asked how to keep Medicare solvent, only 33% overall support raising taxes, while an equal number say they would rather raise the eligibility age for future generations. Another 9% flat-out support cutting promised benefits. Overall, 42% support conservative proposals compared to 33% who support the traditional liberal solution–more government, more taxes.

Forty-two percent (425) of Democrats say they’d support raising taxes juxtaposed to just 23% of Republicans to 32% of unaffiliated voters. Forty-three percent (43%) of Republicans support raising the eligibility age, while 31% of Democrats and 24% of unaffiliated voters agree.

Unsurprisingly, voters 65 and older, who are eligible for Medicare, are much less likely to support (4%) cutting promised benefits and are more likely (41%) than younger voters to support raising the eligibility age for future generations. They are also the most likely to believe they’ll receive all their promised benefits.

Voters aged 40 to 64 are the least likely to say that raising the eligibility age is the best way to fix the system.

The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on September 12-13, 2017, by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

Bernie Sanders this week introduced a Medicare

Science

Cassini program manager at JPL, Earl Maize, left, and spacecraft operations team manager for the Cassini mission at Saturn, Julie Webster, right, embrace after the Cassini spacecraft plunged into Saturn, Friday, Sept. 15, 2017 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Since its arrival in 2004, the Cassini-Huygens mission has been a discovery machine, revolutionizing our knowledge of the Saturn system and captivating us with data and images never before obtained with such detail and clarity. On Sept. 15, 2017, operators will deliberately plunge the spacecraft into Saturn, as Cassini gathered science until the end. The “plunge” ensures Saturn’s moons will remain pristine for future exploration. During Cassini’s final days, mission team members from all around the world gathered at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, to celebrate the achievements of this historic mission. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

Cassini program manager at JPL, Earl Maize, left, and spacecraft operations team manager for the Cassini mission at Saturn, Julie Webster, right, embrace after the Cassini spacecraft plunged into Saturn, Friday, Sept. 15, 2017 at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Since its arrival in 2004, the Cassini-Huygens mission has been a discovery machine, revolutionizing our knowledge of the Saturn system and captivating us with data and images never before obtained with such detail and clarity. On Sept. 15, 2017, operators will deliberately plunge the spacecraft into Saturn, as Cassini gathered science until the end. The “plunge” ensures Saturn’s moons will remain pristine for future exploration. During Cassini’s final days, mission team members from all around the world gathered at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, to celebrate the achievements of this historic mission. Photo Credit: (NASA/Joel Kowsky)

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft completed it’s historic mission on Friday by plunging into the atmosphere of Saturn, ending its 13-year tour of the ringed planet. Mission Control lost contact with the Cassini spacecraft took place on Sept. 15 at 7:55:46 a.m. EDT (4:55:46 a.m. PDT).

“This is the final chapter of an amazing mission, but it’s also a new beginning,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Cassini’s discovery of ocean worlds at Titan and Enceladus changed everything, shaking our views to the core about surprising places to search for potential life beyond Earth.”

Having expended almost all of the rocket propellant it carried to Saturn, NASA said Cassini was intentionally put on a path to plunge into the gas giant to ensure Saturn’s moons – in particular the ice-covered, ocean-bearing moon Enceladus, with its subsurface ocean and signs of hydrothermal activity – remained pristine for future exploration.

This graphic shows Cassini's final plunge toward Saturn, with tick marks representing time intervals of 2 minutes, leading to the spacecraft's entry into the atmosphere. (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

This graphic shows Cassini’s final plunge toward Saturn, with tick marks representing time intervals of 2 minutes, leading to the spacecraft’s entry into the atmosphere. (Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Enceladus is particularly interesting to NASA because — like Europa, the smallest of the four Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter — it conceals a global ocean of salty liquid water beneath its icy surface. Some of that water even shoots out into space, creating giant plumes.

Titan, a planet-sized moon Titan hiding dunes, mountains of water ice and rivers and seas of liquid methane, was also a factor in the plunge. Of the hundreds of moons in our solar system, Titan, with its intriguing pre-biotic chemistry, is the only one with a dense atmosphere and large liquid reservoirs on its surface.

That makes it in some ways more like a terrestrial planet.

“It’s a bittersweet, but fond, farewell to a mission that leaves behind an incredible wealth of discoveries that have changed our view of Saturn and our solar system, and will continue to shape future missions and research,” said Michael Watkins, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, which manages the Cassini mission for the agency. JPL also designed, developed and assembled the spacecraft.

The final plunge for Cassini closed out the “Grand Finale,” 22 weekly dives between Saturn and its rings, something never before accomplished or even attempted by any spacecraft.

“The Cassini operations team did an absolutely stellar job guiding the spacecraft to its noble end,” said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at JPL. “From designing the trajectory seven years ago, to navigating through the 22 nail-biting plunges between Saturn and its rings, this is a crack shot group of scientists and engineers that scripted a fitting end to a great mission. What a way to go. Truly a blaze of glory.”

In 1997, NASA launched the Cassini spacecraft from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. It finally arrived at Saturn in 2004 and NASA extended its mission twice — first for 2 years, and then again for 7 more. During the second mission, Cassini conducted dozens of flybys of the ringed planet’s icy moons. In 2009, its cameras captured images of Saturnian lighting for the first time.

“Things never will be quite the same for those of us on the Cassini team now that the spacecraft is no longer flying,” said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at JPL. “But, we take comfort knowing that every time we look up at Saturn in the night sky, part of Cassini will be there, too.”

NASA said the enormous amount of data the Cassini spacecraft collected on its mission to Saturn — including its magnetosphere, rings and moons — will continue to yield new discoveries for decades to come.

“Cassini may be gone, but its scientific bounty will keep us occupied for many years,” Spilker said. “We’ve only scratched the surface of what we can learn from the mountain of data it has sent back over its lifetime.”

NASA's Cassini spacecraft completed it's historic mission

Politics

President Donald J. Trump, center, announces his support for the RAISE Act, flanked by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., left, and David Perdue, R-Ga., who first introduced similiar legislation. (Photo: Reuters)

President Donald J. Trump, center, announces his support for the RAISE Act, flanked by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., left, and David Perdue, R-Ga., who first introduced similiar legislation. (Photo: Reuters)

President Donald Trump said Friday that chain migration would be a deal-breaker for any immigration reform legislation passed in Congress and sent to his desk. On Twitter, he said it “cannot be allowed,” indicating he would use his veto power.

The term Chain Migration refers to the endless chains of foreign nationals who are allowed to immigrate to the United States because citizens and lawful permanent residents are allowed to sponsor their non-nuclear family members. Annual immigration has at least tripled since chain migration began in the mid-1960s, though some estimates are even higher.

For instance, in 2001, the United States admitted 1,064,318 immigrants-, roughly 4 times greater than in the 1950s. As the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) notes, that’s enough people to populate or even create a major city the size of Chicago, Illinois.

Only five years after chain migration began, the number of immediate relative admissions nearly doubled from 32,714 in 1965 to 79,213 in 1970. Thirty-six years later, the number of immediate relatives admitted was more than 13 times higher–443,964.

It has led to millions being consigned to visa waiting lists and chain migration further incentivized illegal immigration, which has been exacerbated by programs like Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

In August, President Trump–flanked by Sens. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., and David Perdue, R-Ga.–introduced the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy Act, or RAISE Act. Supported by more than 70% of Americans, the RAISE Act reform the U.S. legal immigration system from a family-based (chain) to a merit-based in order to benefit U.S. workers.

It is estimated to cut entries by 50% over the next decade and establishes a points-based merit system that prioritizes high-skilled immigrants and those who have the potential to become job-creating entrepreneurs. The changes are modeled on the immigration systems adopted in Canada and Australia.

White House Legislative Affairs Director Marc Short said just last week that the White House would be open to trading DACA-related amnesty for tax reform. Previously, a trade for the RAISE Act was the deal on the table.

However, President Trump on Wednesday invited Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to discuss a deal on DACA. The two released a joint statement following the meeting declaring victory on a deal struck for DACA recipients without funding for the The Wall.

President Trump denied a deal had been struck, adding “border security would have to be agreed to” before he would sign the legislation. He also said The Wall “is already under construction” and “will continue to be built” regardless of the deal.

On June 15, 2012, the Obama Administration via the Secretary of Homeland Security announced DACA. It stated certain people who came to the United States by 2007 as children were allowed to request consideration of deferred action for a period of 2 years, subject to renewal if they met certain guidelines.

In 2014, Barack Obama expanded protection from deportation to the parents of illegal immigrants with Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents, or DAPA. Both programs are widely considered to be unconstitutional and legal challenges have already affirmed that they are.

The Trump Administration revoked DAPA immediately–in reality, without really having a choice–but Attorney General Jeff Sessions just announced an end to DACA two weeks ago. President Trump decided to give Congress six months to pass legislation.

President Donald Trump said that chain migration

Economy

File: Wholesale trade sales and inventories. (Photo: Bureau of Labor Statistics/ BLS)

File: Wholesale trade sales and inventories. (Photo: Bureau of Labor Statistics/ BLS)

The U.S. Census Bureau said business inventories rose 0.2% in July as gains for merchant wholesalers and manufacturers offset a decline for retailers. The combined value of distributive trade sales and manufacturers’ shipments for July, adjusted for seasonal and trading-day differences but not for price changes, was an estimated $1,358.8 billion, up 0.2% (±0.1%) from June 2017 and was 4.9% (±0.4%) from July 2016.

Manufacturers’ and trade inventories, adjusted for seasonal variations but not for price changes, were estimated at $1,873.9 billion for the end of the month, up 0.2% (±0.1%) from June 2017 and 3.0% (±0.3%) from July 2016. The total business inventories/sales ratio based on seasonally adjusted data at the end of July was 1.38, down from 1.40 for the July 2016 ratio.

Merchant wholesalers saw a 0.6% build and manufacturers saw a 0.2%, offsetting a 0.1% decline for retailers.

The U.S. Census Bureau said business inventories

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