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Opinion

U.S. President Barack Obama, left speaks about immigration reform during a visit to Del Sol High School in Las Vegas, Nevada November 21, 2014. A man protests President Obama's executive action granting amnesty to more than 4 million illegal immigrants. (Photos: AP/Reuters)

U.S. President Barack Obama, left speaks about immigration reform during a visit to Del Sol High School in Las Vegas, Nevada November 21, 2014. A man protests President Obama’s executive action granting amnesty to more than 4 million illegal immigrants. (Photos: AP/REUTERS)

Despite controversies that rage over immigration, it is hard to see how anyone could be either for or against immigrants in general. First of all, there are no immigrants in general.

Both in the present and in the past, some immigrant groups have made great contributions to American society, and others have contributed mainly to the welfare rolls and the prisons. Nor is this situation unique to the United States. The same has been true of Sweden and of other countries in Europe and elsewhere.

Sweden was, for a long time, one of the most ethnically homogeneous countries in the world. As of 1940, only about one percent of the Swedish population were immigrants. Even as the proportion of immigrants increased over the years, as late as 1970 90 percent of foreign-born persons in Sweden had been born in other Scandinavian countries or in Western Europe.

These immigrants were usually well-educated, and often had higher labor force participation rates and lower unemployment rates than the native Swedes. That all began to change as the growing number of immigrants came increasingly from the Middle East, with Iraqis becoming the largest immigrant group in Sweden.

This changing trend was accompanied by a sharply increased use of the government’s “social assistance” program, from 6 percent in the pre-1976 era to 41 percent in the 1996-1999 period. But, even in this later period, fewer than 7 percent of the immigrants from Scandinavia and Western Europe used “social assistance,” while 44 percent of the immigrants from the Middle East used that welfare state benefit.

Immigrants, who were by this time 16 percent of Sweden’s population, had become 51 percent of the long-term unemployed and 57 percent of the people receiving welfare payments. The proportion of foreigners in prison was 5 times their proportion in the population of the country.

The point of all this is that there is no such thing as immigrants in general, whether in Europe or America. Yet all too many of the intelligentsia in the media and in academia talk as if immigrants were abstract people in an abstract world, to whom we could apply abstract principles — such as “we are all descendants of immigrants.”

A hundred years ago, when a very different mix of immigrants were coming to a very different America, there was a huge, multi-volume study of how immigrants from different countries had fared here. This included how they did as workers in various industries and in agriculture, and how their children did in school.

Some people like to refer to the past as “earlier and simpler times.” But it is we today who are so simple-minded that it would be taboo to do anything so politically incorrect as to sort out immigrants by what country they came from. As Hillary Clinton said in one of her recently revealed e-mails, she is for “open borders.”

However congenial the idea of open borders may be to elites who think of themselves as citizens of the world, it is not even possible to have everyone come to America and the country still remain America.

What is it that makes this country so different that so many people from around the world have, for centuries, wanted to come here, more so than to any other country? It is not the land or the climate, neither of which is so different from the land and the climate in many other places.

Nor is it the racial makeup of the country, which consists of races found on other continents. What is unique are American institutions, American culture and American economic and other achievements within that framework.

People who came here a hundred years ago usually did so in order to fit within the framework of America and become Americans. Some still do. But many come from a very different cultural background — and our own multiculturalism dogmas and grievance industry work to keep them foreign and resentful of Americans who have achieved more than they have.

Some immigrant groups seek to bring to America the very cultures whose failures led them to flee to this country. Not all individual immigrants and not all immigrant groups. But too many Americans have become so gullible that they are afraid to even get the facts about which immigrants have done well and improved America, and which have become a burden that can drag us all down.

Despite controversies that rage over immigration, it

Entertainment, Opinion

yoga-pants-girl-field

He thought the readers could use a break from the election craziness and so sent a lighthearted letter to his suburban paper tendering an opinion on yoga pants.

“Yoga pants can be adorable on children and young women who have the benefit of nature’s blessing of youth,” Alan Sorrentino wrote to the Barrington Times in Rhode Island. “However, on mature, adult women there is something bizarre and disturbing about the appearance they make in public.”

All hell broke loose. A protest parade was staged in front of Sorrentino’s house. The organizers wrote on Facebook: “This is a wonderful group of people celebrating our bodies and our right to cover them however we see fit. And while yoga pants seem to be a silly thing to fight for, they are representative of something much bigger — Misogyny and the history of men policing womens bodies.”

The story went international.

Sorrentino was deluged with nasty email. “They say ‘die’ and called me all kinds of vulgarities,” he told me. “The letter was just a point of view of a grumpy old man — although I think (yoga pants) look bad.”

The parade was advertised as “peaceful” and with “ZERO NEGATIVITY.” “Please do not come for a fight,” the official Facebook page said. “You will be shut down.” And the women who marched did so mostly in that spirit.

But the discussion does not end here. Some of the women said Sorrentino has no right to “judge” what women should wear. Actually, he does — just as the women have a right to judge his opinion. Still, marching in front of someone’s personal living space, however nonconfrontationally, takes on an air of intimidation.

I happen to know Alan and know him to be a gentleman. He throws civilized dinner parties to which he invites older widows, the sort of women accustomed to being excluded from couples-oriented guest lists. He contacted his neighbors to express concern that they might be disturbed by demonstrations in front of his house.

Sorrentino had couched his opinion with references to his own aging body. And to cover both genders, he asked how people would respond to men wearing Speedos at the supermarket, concluding with “Yuck.” Joan Rivers’ kinder red-carpet commentary was tougher than anything expressed in this letter.

I also happen to agree with Alan on the subject of yoga pants (and Speedos). He clearly meant tight yoga pants. Just Google “yoga pants” and check the crude images.

During a recent stroll on Madison Avenue, New York’s fancy shopping street, I spotted a woman in tight athletic pants. Even though she was quite fit, the stretched fabric revealed the cellulite on her rear end.

Anyhow, no one is telling women what they may or may not wear. They’re offering an opinion on what they think looks bad. I thought the recent Superman-Batman movie was insultingly dumb. That’s not the same as forbidding people to see it.

What we had here in the yoga pants fuss was a social media pileup designed to exact a price for tendering opinion some have declared off-limits. It’s one thing to mobilize against public figures used to the rough stuff. It’s another to go after an ordinary citizen speaking his or her mind.

Sisters, this ganging up on men who stray from certain feminist guidelines contributed to the rise of Donald Trump. Lighten up, will ya?

The term “fashion police” can go two ways. One tells people what fashions they shouldn’t wear. The other tells people what they shouldn’t say about fashion. Neither is good for the civic culture.

All hell broke loose when Alan Sorrentino

Opinion

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, right. (Photos: AP/Associated Press)

U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, right. (Photos: AP/Associated Press)

Alliances are transmission belts of war.

So our Founding Fathers taught and the 20th century proved.

When Britain, allied to France, declared war on Germany in 1914, America sat out, until our own ships were being sunk in 1917.

When Britain, allied to France, declared war on Germany, Sept. 3, 1939, we stayed out until Hitler declared war on us, Dec. 11, 1941.

As the other Western powers bled and bankrupted themselves, we emerged relatively unscathed as the world’s No. 1 power. The Brits and French lost their empires, and much else, and ceased to be great powers.

Stalin’s annexation of Central Europe and acquisition of an atom bomb, and Mao’s triumph in China in 1949, caused us to form alliances from Europe to Korea, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines and Australia.

Yet, with the end of the Cold War, we did not dissolve a single alliance. NATO was expanded to embrace all the nations of the former Warsaw Pact and three former republics of the USSR.

This hubristic folly is at the heart of present tensions with Russia.

Now, Beltway hawks have begun to push the envelope to bring former Soviet republics Moldova, Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, with some urging us to bring in the Cold War neutrals Sweden and Finland.

Given the resentment of the Russian people toward America, for exploiting their time of weakness after the breakup of the Soviet Union, to drive our alliance onto their front porch, such moves could trigger a conflict that could escalate to nuclear weapons.

Moscow has warned us pointedly and repeatedly about this.

Yet now that the election is almost over, neocons burrowed in their think tanks are emerging to talk up U.S. confrontations with Syria, Russia, Iran and China. Restraining America’s War Party may be the first order of business of the next president.

Fortunately, after the Libyan debacle, President Obama has lost any enthusiasm for new wars.

Indeed, he has a narrow window of opportunity to begin to bring our alliances into conformity with our interests — by serving notice that the United States is terminating its 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty with Manila.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is proving himself to be an unstable anti-American autocrat, who should not be entrusted with the power to drag us into war over some rocks or reefs in the South China Sea.

Earlier this year, we got an idea of what a commitment to go to war for a NATO ally might mean when President Tayyip Recep Erdogan, another mercurial autocrat, shot down a Russian plane that strayed over Turkish territory for 17 seconds.

Had Vladimir Putin retaliated in kind, Erdogan could have invoked Article 5 of NATO, requiring us come to Turkey’s defense against Russia.

Given how Erdogan has acted since this summer’s attempted coup, purging Turkish democratic institutions and imprisoning tens of thousands, do the benefits of our NATO alliance with Ankara still outweigh the risks?

Duterte harbors a lifelong grudge against America for our war of 1899-1902 to crush the Philippine independence movement, after Admiral Dewey sank the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. We liberated the Philippines, only to annex them.

A longtime mayor on Mindanao before being elected president, Duterte is reputedly the godfather of death squads that executed drug dealers and users. Now, the practice has apparently been introduced nationwide.

While campaigning, Duterte said he would Jet Ski 120 miles to Scarborough Shoal, which is occupied by China though it is in Manila’s territorial waters. Since then, he has flipped and become outspokenly pro-China.

Before attending a summit in Laos, Duterte called President Obama “the son of a whore.” He has insulted America and canceled joint military exercises. In Beijing he announced a “separation from the United States. … No more American influence. No more American [military] exercises. It’s time to say goodbye.”

“I would rather go to Russia and to China,” he added.

President Obama should email President Duterte: “Message received. Accept your decision. Good luck with the Russians and Chinese.”

Would termination of our Mutual Defense Treaty mean severing ties with the Filipino people? By no means.

What it would do, though, is this: restore America’s absolute freedom to act or not act militarily in the South China Sea, according to our interests, and not Duterte’s whims.

Whether we intervene on Manila’s behalf or not, the decision would be ours alone. Terminating the treaty would absolve us of any legal or moral obligation to fight for Scarborough Shoal, Mischief Reef or any of the other rocks in a South China Sea that are now in dispute between Beijing and half a dozen nations.

A U.S. decision to terminate the treaty would also send a wake-up call to every ally:

America’s Cold War commitments are not forever. Your security is not more important to us than it is to you. As Donald Trump has been saying, we are starting to put America first again.

On this, maybe even President Obama could find common ground.

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is showing he's

Opinion

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus greets Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign rally, Friday, Aug. 12, 2016, in Erie, Pa. (Photo: AP/Evan Vucci)

Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Reince Priebus greets Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump during a campaign rally, Friday, Aug. 12, 2016, in Erie, Pa. (Photo: AP/Evan Vucci)

Some of us this election year don’t even want to say the words “Clinton” or “Trump” — and with good reason. However, there is one word that we should keep in mind: “Turnout.”

If we sit home in disgust on election day, we forfeit the right — and the duty — to elect a Congress that can keep either of these dangerous people from doing permanent damage to this country and to the future of this generation — and generations yet unborn.

Control of Congress has probably never mattered more than in this election, simply because of two out-of-control people, one of whom is going to become President of the United States.

We need a Congress that can block dangerous legislative proposals coming from the White House, and block dangerous nominees to the federal courts, including especially the Supreme Court. More than that, we need a Congress that can remove a dangerous President who ignores the law and commits impeachable offenses. Any Congress theoretically can do so, since the House of Representatives has the power to impeach and the Senate then votes on whether to remove the President from office.

However, as we have seen over the past seven years, that theoretical power means nothing, if neither House of Congress has the incentives and the guts to use the power they have.

Barack Obama has repeatedly exceeded the powers of his office, disregarding laws passed by Congress, and making in effect a unilateral treaty with Iran, exempting it from American sanctions for building nuclear bombs.

Just by not calling it a treaty, Obama has ignored the Constitution’s requirement that all treaties be made only with Senate approval. Yet there has never been a treaty with more far-reaching — and potentially fatal — consequences than this unilateral presidential agreement with a foreign country.

Yet who was going to impeach “the first black President,” with the media ready to go ballistic if they tried?

With no credible threat of impeachment, neither of this year’s candidates for President will have any deterrent to indulging their already demonstrated headstrong disregard of anything other than their own interests and their own egos.

Not only does this mean that we have a duty to vote for Congress, even if we don’t have the stomach to vote for either presidential candidate, it also means that we need to decide what kind of Congress we want, in light of the high stakes.

We need to ask which of our local candidates for the House of Representatives, and which of our statewide candidates for the Senate, is someone with the character and the guts to remove a President from office.

Don’t try to hide behind the lame excuse that “They’re all the same.”

Let’s not forget that President Richard Nixon resigned for a reason. That reason was that Senator Barry Goldwater led a delegation of Republican Senators to the White House to inform Republican President Nixon that they would not support him in the Senate if the House of Representatives impeached him.

We know it can be done, because it already has been done.

The real question now is: What kind of voters are we? Those who ask “What can I do, I am only one little person?” are just copping out.

“We the People” are not only the first three words of the Constitution, it is where the Constitution put the ultimate power to make or break any politician. What can you do? Everything.

If you can’t be bothered, then be honest enough to say, “I can’t be bothered.” But don’t cop out with a lame excuse. Too many other people’s fate depends on whether you do your duty.

Painful as it may be to realize that we are reduced to considering the impeachability of a presidential candidate, that is a reality that will not go away, just because we don’t like it.

How impeachable is Hillary Clinton? Since she would be “the first woman President,” any criticism of her, much less any impeachment, would bring loud howls from the media across the country that ugly sexist bias was behind any opposition to anything she did — no matter how awful. Hillary in the White House would have a blank check, and she would not hesitate to use it.

Donald Trump has no such exemption. Neither the media nor Congressional Republicans would automatically spring to his defense if he overstepped the line. His impeachability may be his most important asset in a year of painful choices.

[mybooktable book=”wealth-poverty-and-politics-an-international-perspective” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

There is one word that we should

Elections

[brid video=”70680″ player=”2077″ title=”Rigging the Election Video III Creamer Confirms Hillary Clinton Was PERSONALLY Involved”]

In the third explosive video of a multipart series, Democracy Partners founder Robert Creamer directly implicates Hillary Clinton in illegal campaign coordination. Logs show Creamer, husband of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., who represents the district covering Chicago, visited the White House on 342 occasions and met directly with President Barack Obama 47 times.

Creamer, along with Scott Foval, the National Field Director at Americans United for Change, were fired after the first and second videos were released by the election integrity group of journalists, Project Veritas Action. But not before they revealed that these plans to start violence at Donald Trump’s rallies and election fraud schemes are either approved by Mrs. Clinton and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or hatched by them.

“In the end, it was the candidate, Hillary Clinton, the future president of the United States, who wanted ducks on the ground,” says Creamer in one of several exchanges. “So, by God, we would get ducks on the ground.”

Creamer then realized that his comment proves direct coordination between Democracy Partners and the Clinton campaign, which is illegal. Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, the DNC and the non-profit organizations had daily communications to plot disruptions and Trump rallies, disguised as a duck. Donald Duck was used to launch a narrative claiming “Donald Ducks” releasing his tax returns.

“Don’t repeat that to anybody.”

Federal campaign finance laws prohibit a candidate’s election campaign from coordinating with the candidate’s super PAC.

The video also features Brad Woodhouse, the President of Americans United for Change and longtime Clinton surrogate.

Politics, Hillary Clinton,Election 2016,Project Veritas,James O'Keefe,Voter Fraud,Election Fraud,Bob Cramer,Scott Foval,Democracy Matters,Americans United for Change

Source: Project Veritas Action

Last week, People’s Pundit Daily reported on the first video proving illegal communication between the Clinton campaign, super PACs and other organizations. The operatives admitted, in fact bragged, about inciting violence at Trump rallies by paying “mentally ill people,” including at a scheduled rally in Chicago that nearly turned into a riot and put the lives of police officers in danger.

“It doesn’t matter what the legal and ethics people say,” Foval says in the opening of the video. “We need to win this motherfucker.”

The “shit” Foval was talking about has been given a name by the campaign and activists–it’s called birddogging. The word itself, which has never before been used, further proves illegal coordination between the Clinton campaign and the PACs. When we also checked campaign emails recently released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, we found numerous references to and from Clinton campaign officials.

“DREAMers have been bird dogging Republican presidential candidates on DACA/DAPA, but they’ve learned to respond,” Xochitl Hinojosa, the Director of Coalitions Press at Hillary for America wrote to campaign manager Robby Mook and others. “There’s an opportunity to bird dog and record questions about Trump’s comments and connect it to the policy.”

The second video in the series exposed Democrat operatives hatching a corrupt mass voter fraud strategy step-by-step, with top officials discussing the plan and one key operative admitting that the Democrats have been rigging elections for fifty years.

This video also stars Cesar Vargas, the founder of the Dream Action Coalition. Vargas works with Cramer, in fact, “is really good friends with him.” A “dreamer” born in Mexico, he is an undocumented alien and lawyer. He was the man the Clinton allies believed would be the one to pull off the voter fraud scheme.

“Yeah, for me I totally get it,” he says on the video. “This is illegal, this is something that can be done.”

The videos comes as Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is spending the final weeks of his presidential bid vowing to “drain the swamp” in Washington D.C., and as he is claiming there’s an unprecedented election fraud conspiracy to elect Secretary Clinton.

Many top Republican Party officials agree and, with the latest video offering a deeper look into this investigation and the promise of more videos to come, the outrageous evidence is beginning to pile up.

In the third Project Veritas video, Democracy

Polls

FBI Director James Comey, left, holds a press conference in Washington D.C. Former Secretary Hillary Clinton, right, works from a desk inside a C-17 military plane following her departure from Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, bound for Tripoli, Libya, Oct.18, 2011. Former Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Gaddafi, right. (Photos: Kevin Lamarque - Associated Press)

FBI Director James Comey, left, holds a press conference in Washington D.C. Former Secretary Hillary Clinton, right, works from a desk inside a C-17 military plane following her departure from Malta, in the Mediterranean Sea, bound for Tripoli, Libya, Oct.18, 2011. Former Libyan dictator Col. Moammar Gaddafi, right. (Photos: Kevin Lamarque – Associated Press)

Last week, People’s Pundit Daily reported multiple agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are saying Director James Comey protected Hillary Clinton from prosecution relating to her mishandling of classified information. With two weeks left before Election Day, a majority of voters still say with the FBI should have indicted the former secretary of state, and even more rate the issue as important to their vote.

A new Rasmussen Reports Poll finds only 39% of likely voters agree with the FBI’s decision not to indict Mrs. Clinton, while a far larger 53% disagree and believe the FBI should have sought a criminal indictment against her. As far as how it will impact their vote, 70% say her mishandling of classified information is important to their vote for president, including 49% who say it’s “Very Important.”

Twenty-seven percent (27%) say the issue is not important, but that only includes 9% who say it’s “Not At All Important” to how they will vote.

Not surprisingly, though perhaps unfortunately, party affiliation greatly impacts how voters view the issue and its importance at the ballot box. While 85% of Clinton’s supporters agree with the FBI’s decision, 92% of Trump supporters disagree. Only 37% of Clinton voters say the issue is important to their vote, but 96% of Trump voters say it is. Most undecided voters and supporters of Libertarian Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein also consider this an important voting issue.

Most Republicans (85%) and unaffiliated voters (55%) disagree with the FBI’s decision not to indict Clinton, while 22% of Democrats agree. A whopping 70% of Democrats agree with the FBI’s decision. Seventy-seven percent (77%) of Republicans and 51% of unaffiliated voters say the e-mail scandal issue is “Very Important” to their vote in the upcoming November election, but only 23% of Democrats agree.

Meanwhile, according to two agents to two agents who have worked on corruption and security crimes, Director Comey “stood in the way” of the Bureau properly investigating former Secretary Clinton. Agents, which may or may not be the same sources for a separate report developed by People’s Pundit Daily, told The Daily Caller their colleagues are furious Director Comey has led the Bureau into an era of politicization.

“This is a textbook case where a grand jury should have convened but was not. That is appalling,” said one FBI special agent, who has public corruption and criminal cases under their belt. “We talk about it in the office and don’t know how Comey can keep going.”

Joe DiGenova, a D.C.-based attorney told WMAL radio’s Drive at Five last week that agents “are starting to talk” and more will become public soon.

“People inside the Bureau are furious. They are embarrassed. They feel like they are being led by a hack but more than that that they think he’s a crook. They think he’s fundamentally dishonest. They have no confidence in him. The bureau inside right now is a mess,” he said. “The most important thing of all is that the agents have decided that they are going to talk.”

Two weeks before Election Day, a majority

Polls

Start around 8:00-minute mark

The public polling in the 2016 presidential election has been all over the place, largely because “there are too many polls and not enough pollsters,” as PPD’s editor, polling and elections director Richard D. Baris likes to say.

Despite the media outrage following the final presidential debate, tracking polls–including IBD/TIPP, LA Times, Rasmussen Reports and People’s Pundit Daily–all have the race either tied or even Trump leading over the last few days. Yet, Big Media state polling and national polls still show Democrat Hillary Clinton as the overwhelming favorite.

Democratic pollster Pat Caddell said that he “cannot explain” the “discrepancies” in the public polls, which have been all over the place.

“I’ll tell you I think something is going on in the country with the polls,” Caddell said. “All of the tracking polls keep holding with Trump being ahead and then all of these other polls, these one-off polls–I don’t know, I don’t know how some of these Universities are doing these polls–but I’m going, ‘something isn’t adding up’.”

He said university polling is automatically considered credible “whether they know what they are doing or not.”

“Either they’re right and Hillary wins in a landslide or we’re headed for one of the greatest shocks in American politics,” he said. “I think it’s a very close call. I think the shock potential is enormous.”

Caddell also cited many of the recent polling blunders since 2014. Polling in 2014, and the election projection models that overly rely on them, were way off.

“I just think something is going on here,” he added. “I can’t explain these discrepancies. And I just wonder if people are tired of answering, they just don’t want to deal with this election.”

In truth, response rates for pollsters are now down in the low single-digits, which has prompted data journalists like People’s Pundit Daily to develop and test other methods of tracking public opinion.

“This smells to me a lot like 2014,” Caddell said. “I urge people to go back and look at the coverage a week prior to the midterm.”

In fact, the People’s Pundit tweeted out a similiar charge over the weekend. With trackers showing a close race, ABC News released what they called a “tracking poll” with Mrs. Clinton leading Mr. Trump by 12 points, 50% to 38%. Worth noting, it is the first time ABC characterized a poll they’ve released as a “tracking poll,” rather than a snap shot.

Democratic pollster Pat Caddell said that he

Elections

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump pumps his fist during a campaign rally, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016, in Naples, Fla. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump pumps his fist during a campaign rally, Sunday, Oct. 23, 2016, in Naples, Fla. (AP Photo/ Evan Vucci)

Early voting begins in Florida on Monday, and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is barnstorming the must-win battleground state with multiple events. Trump will hold rallies in Tallahassee, Sanford and Tampa.

On Sunday at a rally in Naples, Trump continued to pitch his new “Contract with the American Voter” that promises to “drain the swamp” of corruption in Washington D.C. He unveiled his closing argument on Saturday in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, which outlined his first 100 days in office.

“Hillary Clinton isn’t running against me,” Trump said. “She is running against change. She is running against you, the American people.”

Republicans currently hold a 2-point lead and polling indicates Trump leads among those who already cast a ballot by nearly double that margin. According to the latest official tally, among those who voted by mail Republicans lead by roughly 2 points, 502,901 to 482,361.

“Early voting numbers are tricky to compare from the previous two cycles because of changes to the law and who receives ballots by mail and absentee,” says R. D. Baris, PPD’s senior political editor who not only predicted Gov. Rick Scott would win reelection, but within 5,000 votes. “You have to look at where these ballots are coming back from and where you can see those efforts have been energized.”

According to People’s Pundit Daily’s Sunshine State tracking poll, Trump currently holds a 1-point lead over Hillary Clinton. While other public polls have shown a 3 to 4 point lead for the former secretary of state, the Democratic Party simply don’t have as large a pool to draw from as they did in 2008 and 2012. When President Barack Obama ran for reelection, Democrats held a 4,821,859 to 4,263,587 advantage over the GOP.

That’s now fallen to 4,800,905 to 4,500,960. As of Monday, there were 3,353,421 voters not affiliated with either major political party in the state Mitt Romney lost by just 70,000 votes.

“It’s not an accident that Trump will visit Hillsborough County on Monday, which is home to many of those independent voters,” Baris said. “Gov. Romney lost that swing-to-Democrat leaning county to President Obama by roughly 7 points and he is running about even there with Mrs. Clinton. In the I-4 corridor, which is another once-swing region of the state that is moving toward leaning Democrat, the Republican is running a few points ahead of his rival.”

Still, Baris says Democrats close strong in the final weeks of a campaign in Florida, which is why they requested a federal judge to push back the deadline to register to vote. They won that legal fight and lost another after they filed a request asking judge to allow absentee ballots to get cast without verifying voter eligibility and identification.

Early voting begins in Florida on Monday,

Politics, World

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been the target of Democratic Party attacks and the Ecuador government who cut his Internet connection after he began releasing hacked documents damaging to Hillary Clinton. The above image began circulating around social media and Internet.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has been the target of Democratic Party attacks and the Ecuador government who cut his Internet connection after he began releasing hacked documents damaging to Hillary Clinton. The above image began circulating around social media and Internet.

The WikiLeaks Editorial Board released a statement commenting on the status of their founder Julian Assange, the government of Ecuador and the U.S. election. Sources tell People’s Pundit Daily and other news have reported that the Obama administration, more specifically Secretary of State John Kerry, had the Ecuadorian government cut Assange’s personal Internet connection to prevent him from releasing further documents damaging to his predecessor and the president’s hopeful successor–Hillary Clinton.

The documents released thus far have exposed mass corruption in and between Big Media, top officials at the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton campaign, as well as coordinated efforts to derail the candidacy of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during the party’s primary.

It reads in full below:

wikileaks-statement-ecuador-assange

The documents include the transcripts from Mrs. Clinton’s Wall Street and big donor speeches, as well as communications from her campaign chairman John Podesta. Democrats have attempted to divert attention away from the content of the documents and emails toward how they were obtained, which they say came from Russia sources. As of yet, there has been no evidence released to the public to back up the charges of Russian involvement. Assange himself previously alluded DNC staffer Seth Rich was a source for the DNC leaks.

Rich was found dead after being shot in the back in D.C. during what officials first believed to be a robbery. But Metro police say there were no items from removed from Mr. Rich during the course of the murder, including his cell phone and wallet.

Until this past week, Democratic Party operatives and surrogates did not question the veracity of the documents released. However, several have now indicated that certain bits and pieces of information don’t match “their records,” which they have not provided and do not plan to provide to rebut WikiLeaks. The anti-secrecy group has never before released fake or doctored documents obtained for public release.

“WikiLeaks has a perfect, decade-long record for publishing only true documents,” it said in the statement. “It has many thousands of sources but does not engage in collaboration with states.”

The WikiLeaks Editorial Board released a statement

Policy

Arizona-Immigration-Law-2010

April 23, 2010: Supporters of the illegal immigration enforcement law rallied at the state Capitol in Phoenix. (PHOTO: AP)

While the overall issue of immigration is highly controversial and emotional, I’ve explained before that everyone should be able to agree that it’s a very good idea to bring in people who can be expected to increase per-capita economic output.

The good news is that we have some policies designed to make this happen, including the H-1B visa for skilled workers and the EB-5 visa for job-creating investors. And if the data on median income for certain immigrant groups is any indication, we’re getting some good results.

Today, motivated in part by the fact that I’ll be participating next month in a conference in London on the topic of “economic citizenship” and therefore having to prepare for that discussion,  let’s take a closer look at the EB-5 policy and why it’s a smart approach (by the way, I’m allowed to share a few discounted registrations since I’m a speaker, so contact me if you’re interested in the London event).

To put things in context, we’ll begin by reviewing a four-author study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research that looks at the growing effort by many nations to attract highly productive and capable immigrants.

Highly skilled workers play a central and starring role in today’s knowledge economy. Talented individuals make exceptional direct contributions—including breakthrough innovations and scientific discoveries—and coordinate and guide the actions of many others, propelling the knowledge frontier and spurring economic growth. In this process, the mobility of skilled workers becomes critical to enhancing productivity. …In the 2013 World Population Policies report, 40 percent of countries reported policies to raise immigration of high-skilled workers, a large increase from 22 percent in 2005. …For recipient countries, high-skilled immigration is often linked to clusters of technology and knowledge production that are certainly important for local economies and are plausibly important at the national level. …When it comes to talented foreigners, a number of countries…implement recruiting programs. …Canada has been very active in targeting skilled migrants who are denied or frustrated by the H-1B visa system in the United States, even taking out ads on billboards in the United States to attract such migrants.

By the way, I can’t resist observing that the authors recognize that highly talented (and therefore highly compensated) people are very important for economic growth. Based on the tax policies they advocate, that’s something politicians such as Hillary Clinton have a hard time understanding. Heck, upper-income taxpayers are the ones who finance the lion’s share of big government, so you’d think leftist politicians would be slapping them on their backs rather than across their faces.

But I digress. Let’s look at what the study says about migration by those most capable of producing growth.

Observed migration flows are the result of a complex tangle of multinational firms and other employers pursuing scarce talent, governments and other gatekeepers trying to manage these flows with policies, and individuals seeking their best options given the constraints imposed upon them. …The number of migrants with a tertiary degree rose nearly 130 percent from 1990 to 2010, while low skilled (primary educated) migrants increased by only 40 percent during that time. A pattern is emerging in which these high-skilled migrants are departing from a broader range of countries and heading to a narrower range of countries—in particular, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia. …More than half of the high-skilled technology workers and entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are foreign-born. …host countries may end up with high concentrations of high-skilled immigrants in particular occupations. For example, immigrants account for some 57 percent of scientists residing in Switzerland, 45 percent in Australia, and 38 percent in the United States (Franzoni et al. 2012). In the United States, 27 percent of all physicians and surgeons and over 35 percent of current medical residents were foreign born in 2010. Immigrants also accounted for over 35 percent of recent enrollments in STEM fields, with very high proportions in specific areas like Electrical Engineering (70 percent), Computer Science (63 percent) and Economics (55 percent)… The global migration of inventors and the resulting concentration in a handful of countries have been particularly well documented. …the global migration rate of inventors in 2000 stood at 8.6 percent, at least 50 percent greater in share terms than the average for high-skilled workers as a whole. Figure 4 builds on WIPO global patent filings from 2001-2010. The United States has received an enormous net surplus of inventors from abroad.

The authors then consider the policies that different nations adopt in their search for GDP-enhancing immigrants.

…we then review the “gatekeepers” for global talent flows. At the government level, we compare the points-based skilled migration regimes as historically implemented by Canada and Australia with the employment-based policies used in the United States through mechanisms like the H-1B visa program. …The exceptional rise in the number of high-skilled migrants to OECD countries is the result of several forces, including increased efforts to attract them by policymakers as they recognize the central role of human capital in economic growth, positive spillovers generated by skill agglomeration, declines in transportation and communication costs, and rising pursuit of foreign education by young people. Among the resulting effects are the doubling of the share of the tertiary-educated in the labor force and fierce competition among countries hoping to attract talent. …One can explain certain aspects of current high-skilled migration patterns using this model. For example, the United States has a very wide earnings distribution and low tax levels and progressivity, especially compared to most source countries, including many high-income European countries. As a result, we can see why the United States would attract more high-skilled migrants…relative to other high-income countries.

By the way, I can’t resist making one minor correction. While we generally have lower taxes than other developed nations, we actually have a very “progressive” tax system. But US-style progressivity is the result of very low taxes on lower- and middle-income workers (no value-added tax, for instance), not unusually steep taxes on higher-income workers.

Returning to our main topic , the authors explain that developed nations either use a points-based system or an employment-based system when seeking to facilitate more high-skilled immigration.

Here’s how the the points-based system works.

Canada and Australia are prominent examples of countries that implement points-based systems for skilled migration. These programs select individuals based upon their observable education, language skills, work experience, and existing employment arrangements. …In the Canadian example, migrants need to collect 67 points across six categories. In terms of education, for example, 15 points are awarded for one-year post-secondary diploma, trade certificate or apprenticeship, compared to 25 for a doctorate degree. With regards work experience, six or more years of applicable experience receive 15 points, compared to 9 points for just one year of experience.

And here’s information on the employment-based approach, with the US being an obvious example.

The United States is the most cited example of a country that uses an employer-driven program for highskilled immigration, with the H-1B and L1 visas as primary categories (Kerr et al. 2015a). The H-1B visa allows US companies to temporarily employ skilled foreigners in “specialty occupations,” defined to be those demanding application of specialized knowledge like engineering or accounting. …Virtually all H-1B holders have a bachelor’s degree or higher and about 70% of the visas in recent years went to STEM-related occupations. India is by far the largest source country, accounting for about two-thirds of H-1B recipients in recent years. …most real-world regimes combine different features of points-based and employment-driven systems.

But the study notes that America also has a special system for bringing in ostensible superstars. Sort of a points system for the super talented.

Superstar talent rarely competes for H-1B visas, for example, but instead gains direct access to the United States through O1 temporary visas for extraordinary ability and direct green card applications of the EB-1 level for those with even more exceptional talent. …In effect, the US operates a points system for individuals with truly exceptional talents such as Nobel Prize winners, superstar athletes and musicians.

Now let’s turn the EB-5 program, which is another way that the United States seeks to attract those capable of making big economic contributions.

In part because the natural inefficiency of government creates opportunities for corruption in implementation, the EB-5 program has become very controversial. Some lawmakers even want the entire program to lapse when its authorizationexpires in December.

At the risk of understatement, I hope they don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The Brookings Institution notes that Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) want to impose stricter rules and micro-manage how the investment occurs.

It also raises the minimum investment amount to $800,000 within a [targeted employment area] and $1.2 million otherwise. Most important for reaching the program’s economic development goals, however, are the bill’s new rules on defining TEAs. …The bill would revise the TEA definition to include rural areas, closed military bases, or single census tracts within metro areas with an unemployment rate at 150 percent of the national average. To further increase the effect of EB-5 financing, at least 50 percent of the job creation would have to be within the metro area, or within the county in which a rural TEA is located.

The business community doesn’t object to some stricter standards, as reported byThe Hill, but wants the program to remain and wants it made permanent.

A coalition of business groups is pushing Congress to permanently renew a controversial investor visa program before it expires in September. …In a letter shared with The Hill on Thursday, those groups called on lawmakers to renew the EB-5 investor visa program with bolstered security and anti-fraud checks, adjustments to highly criticized investment incentives and streamlined visa processing. “Congress must not let this important job-creating program lapse, in large measure because of the immediate negative consequences to U.S. businesses and projects counting on EB-5 investment to create jobs for Americans,” wrote the groups to the Senate and House Judiciary committees. …The EB-5 program is responsible for more than $15 billion in investment and 100,000 jobs between 2005 and 2010, the coalition says.

Ike Brannon, writing for the Weekly Standard, worries that politicians will undermine the positive impact of the program with some back-door central planning.

That EB-5 program has succeeded at its intended purpose is not in dispute: A Brookings Institution study estimated that the program has created nearly 100,000 jobs along with over $5 billion of new investment since its inception. The current EB-5 program technically consists of two different pieces: The first is the original EB-5 visa program, which Congress enacted in 1990. Its intent was to help American business compete for foreign investment with countries like Canada and Australia, which had similar investor programs in place. …The overriding intent of the program has always been about job creation, anywhere and everywhere. Senator Paul Simon, a sponsor of the original EB-5 program, took care to emphasize that its purpose was first and foremost to attract entrepreneurs and spur job creation, noting that “neither the Senate nor the House bill established any sort of criteria about the type of business investment…As long as the employment goal is met, it is unnecessary to needlessly regulate the type of business or the character of the investment.”

But politicians love the “needlessly regulate,” so the EB-5 system has lots of red tape and Ike fears it may get even more.

Congress nonetheless attempted to spur some sort of geographic balance-cum-urban development with the creation of Target Employment Areas [TEAs], which consist of areas with high unemployment rates or rural areas outside the boundary of any city or town with a population over 20,000. In a TEA, the necessary investment need only be $500,000, so long as it creates the requisite number of jobs. …The problem with a federal top-down approach of this sort is that such a constraint could limit the efficacy of the program. …imposing a new rule that restricts how states designate Targeted Employment Areas will only make EB-5 more of a political football than it already is. Creating a welter of restrictions about where such investment can and cannot go would likely dampen the economic impact of the program.

A columnist for Forbes explains why the program should continue.

The EB-5 immigration visa may be the best immigration program the U.S. has to offer. Foreign investors…are putting up a minimum of $500,000 to renew and rebuild rundown urban areas and create jobs. It’s a legal way in for the kind of immigrant, a fortunate one, that tends to contribute to the neighborhood by bringing in money and jobs. …“EB-5 has economic benefits that doesn’t stop at the five hundred thousand dollars they need to invest to participate,” says Julian Montero, a partner in the Miami law office of Arnstein & Lehr. “It’s just the beginning of a more significant investment that will be made by these families when the come here. They’re going to private schools. They’re making good income. They’re paying taxes. And most of them start other businesses once here.” …The EB-5 has become a way for developers to attract foreign capital at low, project finance-style structured interest rates because the people giving the money are getting a prize: the right to live, work and study in the United States.

Perhaps most notably, even the International Monetary Fund recognizes the advantages of this type of program.

…economic residency programs were recently launched across a wide range of (generally much larger) European countries, including Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain. Almost half of EU member states now have a dedicated immigrant investor route. Also known as golden visa programs, these arrangements give investors residency rights…some advanced economies, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States, have had immigrant investor programs since the late 1980s or early 1990s, offering a route to citizenship in exchange for specific investment conditions… The inflows of funds to countries from these programs can be substantial, with far-reaching macroeconomic implications for nearly every sector.

The IMF article includes a helpful summary of nations that have programs to attract investors.

The bottom line is that there are many high-income and high-wealth people in the world (including the “super-entrepreneurs“) who would like to move to places that offer more stability, security, and opportunity. This creates a potential win-win situation for both the people migrating and the recipient nations.

The United States is already a big beneficiary of economic-based migration, but we could reap even greater benefits with a more sensible, streamlined, and expanded EB-5 system.

Everyone should be able to agree that

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