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Elections

Joe Miller, the 2010 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, now the Libertarian Party candidate, left, and Mark Levin, right, conservative talk radio host.

Joe Miller, the 2010 Republican nominee for U.S. Senate, now the Libertarian Party candidate, left, and Mark Levin, right, conservative talk radio host.

Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin endorsed Joe Miller, the Libertarian Party candidate in the Alaska U.S. Senate race over Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Mr. Miller, who won the 2010 Republican Senate nomination against Sen. Murkowski, replaced Cean Stevens on the ballot after he withdrew and the board of directors of the Alaska Libertarian Party unanimously voted in favor of the move.

“Murkowski really is a leftist,” Levin said on his show Friday. “She’s Mitch McConnell’s right-hand person, but she votes left all the time.”

Almost immediately after entering the race in mid-September, Mr. Miller quickly racked up the endorsements of Gun Owners of America, Alaska Right to Life and the support of the Alaska Republican Assembly. In fact, five members of the Alaska GOP’s Central Committee stepped down in order to throw their support behind Mr. Miller after it voted to remove one of its members due to his decision to back him over Sen. Murkowski.

“Miller has consistently held a pro-life position and has viewed the tragedy of abortion as the genocide that it is” said Christopher Kurka, Alaska Right to Life’s Executive Director. “Once elected he will continue to be a true champion for the pre-born in the US Senate. Joe Miller is exactly the caliber of man we need fighting for the weakest of Alaskans in the Senate.”

Mr. Miller would be the first third-party nominee to win a federal seat in decades. Enthusiasm has long-followed the conservative-libertarian and recent data indicate the bid could be contentious. A recent expanded subsample of the PPD U.S. Presidential Election Daily Tracking Poll asked 317 likely Alaskan voters who they would support for the Senate in November. Sen. Murkowski took 38% to Mr. Miller’s 30%. Democrat Ray Metcalfe was at just 13%, topped by “Undecided” at 19%.

When told about Mr. Miller’s candidacy, “very conservative” voters backed him while Democrats abandoned Mr. Metcalfe to support Sen. Murkowski. To be clear, the incumbent Republican is not a conservative. She is a pro-choice Republican with an 80% approval rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America and openly defended her support of Planned Parenthood even after undercover videos revealed the alleged practice of selling the body parts of aborted babies for a profit.

”I believe Planned Parenthood provides vital services to those in need and disagree with their funding cuts,” Sen. Murkowski said at the time.

Indeed, during the last session of Congress the Alaskan senator voted with President Barack Obama and the Democrats 72% of time, second only to the liberal Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.

“This is a beautiful race where a true conservative has the opportunity to win, as long as everybody activates,” Mr. Miller said. “So we have a clear path to victory, and the grassroots are excited as can be that I’m in.”

Despite the historically high turnout on the presidential level during the party primary, Alaska saw a near-historic low of only 15.4% turnout–with only 7.7% of Alaska’s registered voters casting a vote–in the election for the incumbent senator in her primary.

As a result of the polling and subsequent data, the Alaska Senate race is rated a BATTLEGROUND on the PPD 2016 Senate Election Projection Model. PPD will revisit the race with more polling surveys in the near future.

Sen. Murkowski defeated Mr. Miller during her historic general election write-in candidacy in 2010, though it was under circumstances that were suspect. In 2014, he nearly took out two establishment favorites for the GOP Senate nomination, then-Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and former Natural Resources Commissioner and Attorney General Dan Sullivan. Then-AG Sullivan ended up only eking out a win that all the polls predicted would be a long-shot for Mr. Miller.

With only 7 weeks to go before the votes are counted, Mr. Kurka said he is “calling on every life-loving Alaskan to throw their support behind the only pro-life candidate for US Senate. It’s time for Murkowski to be replaced with someone who will take their oath of office seriously and do whatever they can to end the genocide of abortion that is taking the lives of millions of the most vulnerable of Americas populace – the pre-born.”

Conservative talk radio host Mark Levin endorsed

Politics

Donald Trump, left, meets at Trump Tower with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 25, 2016.

Donald Trump, left, meets at Trump Tower with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on September 25, 2016.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met separately on Sunday with Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in New York City the day before the first presidential debate. The meetings were arranged in the last 24 hours, with the Republican meeting with the prime minister at Trump Tower.

The Clinton campaign, which cancelled a visit to Charlotte, North Carolina, simply stated that the two spoke about the alliance, which has weakened under President Barack Obama. The Obama administration publicly denounced the U.S. ally and opposed Israel expanding settlements in the West Bank. However, Mr. Obama completed a $38 billion security aid package for Israel, the largest such agreement ever for a U.S. ally with the hope they could calm election year fears among Jewish voters.

The Trump campaign said the two men “discussed the special relationship between America and Israel and the unbreakable bond between the two countries.”

The topics at hand during the meeting were military assistance, security and stability in the region. Unlike Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump said he recognized Jerusalem has been “the eternal capital of the Jewish People for over 3000 years,” and said a Trump administration will finally accept the long-standing Congressional mandate to recognize Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the State of Israel.

Netanyahu met with President Barack Obama on Wednesday in what was likely their last face-to-face consultation.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met separately

Elections

Megan Monroe, right, and Brian Fuentes drop of their ballots at an electoral drop box, in Boulder, Colo., Friday, Oct. 31, 2014. Mail-in voting in Colorado means that most voters cast their ballots before Election Day. (Photo: Associated Press/AP)

Megan Monroe, right, and Brian Fuentes drop of their ballots at an electoral drop box, in Boulder, Colo., Friday, Oct. 31, 2014. Mail-in voting in Colorado means that most voters cast their ballots before Election Day. (Photo: Associated Press/AP)

Despite being told voter fraud is not a systemic, serious problem threatening the integrity of the electoral process, yet another story indicates just the opposite. A local CBS news investigation reveals dead voters in Colorado have casted their ballots in battleground counties ranging from El Paso County to Denver and Jefferson County.

“We do believe there were several instances of potential vote fraud that occurred,” said Colorado Secretary of State Wayne Williams after reviewing the CBS4 findings. “It shows there is the potential for fraud.”

CBS4 uncovered the voter fraud by comparing databases of voting histories in Colorado against a federal death database.

“It’s not a perfect system. There are some gaps,” acknowledged Williams.

In fact, election fraud watchers have long pointed to Colorado, particularly mail-in ballot systems, as voter-fraud rich environments. Starting Oct 24, eligible voters can show up at their designated polling stations, but all registered voters automatically receive a mail ballot.

Polls in Colorado are beginning to show a slight lead for Republican Donald Trump and, if in the event he fails to carry Pennsylvania or another big Rust Belt State, the 2016 PPD Presidential Election Projection Model indicates Colorado could put the New York businessman over the top.

READ FULL ARTICLE

A local CBS news probe reveals dead

Policy

jobs-fair

American workers wait on a jobs fair line. (PHOTO: REUTERS)

When I was younger, folks in the policy community joked that BusinessWeek was the “anti-business business weekly” because its coverage of the economy was just as stale and predictably left wing as what you would find in the pages of Time or Newsweek.

Well, perhaps it’s time for The Economist to be known as the “anti-economics economic weekly.”

Writing about the stagnation that is infecting western nations, the magazine beclowns itself by regurgitating stale 1960s-style Keynesianism. The article is worthy of a fisking (i.e., a “point-by-point debunking of lies and/or idiocies”), starting with the assertion that central banks saved the world at the end of last decade.

During the financial crisis the Federal Reserve and other central banks were hailed for their actions: by slashing rates and printing money to buy bonds, they stopped a shock from becoming a depression.

I’m certainly open to the argument that the downturn would have been far worse if the banking system hadn’t been recapitalized (even if it should have happened using the “FDIC-resolution approach” rather than via corrupt bailouts), but that’s a completely separate issue from whether Keynesian monetary policy was either desirable or successful.

Regarding the latter question, just look around the world. The Fed has followed an easy-money policy. Has that resulted in a robust recovery for America? The European Central Bank (ECB) has followed the same policy. Hasthat worked? And the Bank of Japan (BoJ) has done the same thing. Does anyone view Japan’s economy as a success?

At least the article acknowledges that there are some skeptics of the current approach.

The central bankers say that ultra-loose monetary policy remains essential to prop up still-weak economies and hit their inflation targets. …But a growing chorus of critics frets about the effects of the low-rate world—a topsy-turvy place where savers are charged a fee, where the yields on a large fraction of rich-world government debt come with a minus sign, and where central banks matter more than markets in deciding how capital is allocated.

The Economist, as you might expect, expresses sympathy for the position of the central bankers.

In most of the rich world inflation is below the official target. Indeed, in some ways central banks have not been bold enough. Only now, for example, has the BoJ explicitly pledged to overshoot its 2% inflation target. The Fed still seems anxious to push up rates as soon as it can.

The preceding passage is predicated on the assumption that there is a mechanistic tradeoff between inflation and unemployment (the so-called Phillips Curve), one of the core concepts of Keynesian economics. According to adherents, all-wise central bankers can push inflation up if they want lower unemployment and push inflation down if they want to cool the economy.

This idea has been debunked by real world events because inflation and unemployment simultaneously rose during the 1970s (supposedly impossible according the Keynesians) andsimultaneously fell during the 1980s (also a theoretical impossibility according to advocates of the Phillips Curve).

But real-world evidence apparently can be ignored if it contradicts the left’s favorite theories.

That being said, we can set aside the issue of Keynesian monetary policy because the main thrust of the article is an embrace of Keynesian fiscal policy.

…it is time to move beyond a reliance on central banks. …economies need succour now. The most urgent priority is to enlist fiscal policy. The main tool for fighting recessions has to shift from central banks to governments.

As an aside, the passage about shifting recession fighting “from central banks to governments” is rather bizarre since the Fed, the ECB, and the BoJ are all government entities. Either the reporter or the editor should have rewritten that sentence so that it concluded with “shift from central banks to fiscal policy” or something like that.

In any event, The Economist has a strange perspective on this issue. It wants Keynesian fiscal policy, yet it worries about politicians using that approach to permanently expand government. And it is not impressed by the fixation on “shovel-ready” infrastructure spending.

The task today is to find a form of fiscal policy that can revive the economy in the bad times without entrenching government in the good. …infrastructure spending is not the best way to prop up weak demand. …fiscal policy must mimic the best features of modern-day monetary policy, whereby independent central banks can act immediately to loosen or tighten as circumstances require.

So The Economist endorses what it refers to as “small-government Keynesianism,” though that’s simply its way of saying that additional spending increases (and gimmicky tax cuts) should occur automatically.

…there are ways to make fiscal policy less politicised and more responsive. …more automaticity is needed, binding some spending to changes in the economic cycle. The duration and generosity of unemployment benefits could be linked to the overall joblessness rate in the economy, for example.

In the language of Keynesians, such policies are known as “automatic stabilizers,” and there already are lots of so-called means-tested programs that operate this way. When people lose their jobs, government spending on unemployment benefits automatically increases. During a weak economy, there also are automatic spending increases for programs such as Food Stamps and Medicaid.

I guess The Economist simply wants more programs that work this way, or perhaps bigger handouts for existing programs. And the magazine views this approach as “small-government Keynesianism” because the spending increases theoretically evaporate as the economy starts growing and fewer people are automatically entitled to receive benefits from the various programs.

Regardless, whoever wrote the article seems convinced that such programs help boost the economy.

When the next downturn comes, this kind of fiscal ammunition will be desperately needed. Only a small share of public spending needs to be affected for fiscal policy to be an effective recession-fighting weapon.

My reaction, for what it’s worth, is to wonder why the article doesn’t include any evidence to bolster the claim that more government spending is and “effective” way of ending recessions and boosting growth. Though I suspect the author of the article didn’t include any evidence because it’s impossible to identify any success stories for Keynesian economics.

  • Did Keynesian spending boost the economy under Hoover? No.
  • Did Keynesian spending boost the economy under Roosevelt? No.
  • Has Keynesian spending worked in Japan at any point over the past twenty-five years? No.
  • Did Keynesian spending boost the economy under Obama? No.

Indeed, Keynesian spending has an unparalleled track record of failure in the real world. Though advocates of Keynesianism have a ready-built excuse. All the above failures only occurred because the spending increases were inadequate.

But what do expect from the “perpetual motion machine” of Keynesian economics, a theory that isonly successful if you assume it is successful?

I’m not surprised that politicians gravitate to this idea. After all, it tells them that their vice  of wasteful overspending is actually a virtue.

But it’s quite disappointing that journalists at an allegedly economics-oriented magazine blithely accept this strange theory.

With their defense of Keynesian economic policies,

Polls

Hillary Clinton, left, speaks at a fundraiser in New York City, while Donald J. Trump, right, spoke about national defense at the Union League of Philadelphia. (Photos: AP)

Hillary Clinton, left, speaks at a fundraiser in New York City, while Donald J. Trump, right, spoke about national defense at the Union League of Philadelphia. (Photos: AP)

Democrat Hillary Clinton’s 9-point lead over Republican Donald Trump in the battleground state of Pennsylvania has evaporated, down to just 2 points in the 4-way race. Ahead of the first presidential debate on Monday, a new Muhlenberg College Morning Call Poll finds Mrs. Clinton leading with just 40% to 38% for Mr. Trump, 8% for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and 3% for Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein.

The poll, if accurate, is significant for one major reason.

Over the last few weeks, nearly all of the battleground states have moved markedly in Mr. Trump’s favor, putting him within grasp of the needed 270 electoral votes to defeat Mrs. Clinton, who has a far easier path. But the Keystone State, a rich target state for Trump’s message that hasn’t gone for the Republican candidate for president since 1988, has been stubborn.

“Simply put, Donald Trump needs one more big state to move his way to win in November, or a combination of other smaller states,” says PPD’s senior political analyst Richard D. Baris. “He’s pulled significantly further ahead of Hillary Clinton in Ohio, but it’s a whiter state.”

In a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, Mrs. Clinton’s lead expands to a slightly larger 3 points, 44% to 41%, which is still within the 4-point margin of error. The race, clearly tightening, now moves from LEANS CLINTON to BATTLEGROUND on the PPD 2016 Presidential Election Projection Model.

In the United States Senate race Republican incumbent Senator Pat Toomey holds a 1-point lead over Democratic challenger Katie McGinty. This lead marks a 6-point gain for Toomey over last week’s results when he trailed McGinty by 5 points.

The Senate for U.S. Senate remains a BATTLEGROUND on the PPD 2016 Senate Election Projection Model.

Democrat Hillary Clinton's 9-point lead over Republican

Policy

Hillary Clinton gave a press conference on her campaign airplane in response to the terror attacks in Minnesota, New Jersey and New York. She appeared to be heavily sedated, which kicked off the hashtag #ZombieHillary

Hillary Clinton gave a press conference on her campaign airplane in response to the terror attacks in Minnesota, New Jersey and New York. She appeared to be heavily sedated, which kicked off the hashtag #ZombieHillary

What’s the worst possible tax hike, the one that would do the most economic damage? Raising income tax rates is never a good idea, and there’s powerful evidence from the 1980s about how upper-income taxpayers have considerable ability to change their behavior in response to changes in incentives.

But if you want to know the tax hikes that do the most damage, on a per-dollar raised basis, it’s probably best to focus on levies that boost double taxation of saving and investment.

The Tax Foundation ran some estimates on five different tax increases, for instance, and found that worsening depreciation rules (an arcane part of the tax code dealing with the degree to which new investment is taxed) would do the most damage, followed by a higher corporate tax rate, and then higher individual income tax rates.

But I wonder what they would have found if they also modeled the impact of a higher death tax. That levy is particularly destructive because it directly requires the liquidation of capital. The assets of investors, entrepreneurs, farmers, small business owners, and other victims take a big hit as politicians grab as much as 40 percent of what they’ve worked for during their lives.

This is bad for the economy because it directly reduces the capital stock. Sort of like harvesting apples by cutting down 40 percent of the trees in an orchard. The net result is that the economy’s ability to generate future income is undermined.

But it’s also bad for the economy because it reduces incentives for successful taxpayers to both earn and invest while they’re alive. Why bust your rear end when the government immediately will take at least 39.6 percent (actually more when you consider Medicare taxes, state taxes, and double taxation of interest, dividends, and capital gains) of your income, and then another 40 percent of what you’ve saved and invested when you kick the bucket?

Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton doesn’t seem to care about such matters. She actually just decided to double down on her destructive tax agenda by endorsing an even bigger increase in the death tax.

I’m not joking.

The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is not exactly impressed by Hillary’s class-warfare poison.

On Thursday she decided that her proposal to raise the death tax to 45% from 40% isn’t enough and endorsed even higher levies that would apply to thousands of estates. Though she defeated Bernie Sanders in the primary, she is adopting the socialist’s death-tax rate structure. She’d tax all estates over $10 million at 50%, apply a 55% rate on estates over $50 million, and go to 65% on assets above $500 million. The 65% rate would be the highest since 1981 and is another example of how she is repudiating the more moderate policies of her husband and the Democrats of the 1990s. …the Sanders plan that Mrs. Clinton is copying did not index exemption levels for inflation. …Mrs. Clinton would also end the “step-up in basis” on stock valuations for many filers, triggering big capital gains taxes for a much broader population.

Wow, this is class warfare on steroids. And the part about this being more like Bernie Sanders than Bill Clinton hits the mark. Economic freedom actually increased in America between 1992 and 2000.

Hillary, by contrast, is a doctrinaire and reflexive statist. I’m not aware of a single position she’s taken that would reduce the burden of government.

By the way, here’s a bit of information that won’t shock anyone familiar with the greed and hypocrisy of the political class.

Hillary and her friends will largely dodge the tax, which mostly will fall on small business owners who lack the ability to create clever structures.

…most of her rich friends will set up foundations, as she and Bill Clinton have, to shelter most of their riches from the estate tax. …In any case, Mrs. Clinton is now promising total tax hikes of $1.5 trillion over a decade if elected President.

Gee, knock me over with a feather.

The Tax Foundation may not have included the death tax when it compared the harm of different tax hikes, but it has looked at how the death tax hurts the economy by discouraging capital formation and capital accumulation.

…an estate tax increase would cause economic production to be allocated away from business equipment, reducing the quantity of business equipment in the economy. …Many of the assets that fall under the estate tax, such as residential structures, commercial structures, and business equipment, enhance productivity, or gross domestic product (GDP) per hour worked. …The relationship between these assets and productivity is the focus of one of the most common models in economics, an equation called the Cobb-Douglas production function, which describes how workers and capital goods together produce economic output. Under this model, more capital increases output or income, even as the number of workers is held constant. It therefore increases GDP per hour worked, making people richer. Under such a model, reallocating economic production away from the capital goods that enhance output would reduce GDP in the long run. This is an effect that one might expect to see in a macroeconomic analysis of the estate tax.

Amen. If you want more output and higher living standards, you need to boost worker pay by increasing the quality and quantity of capital in the economy.

But politicians like Hillary

Here are the estimates of what happens to the economy with a 65 percent death tax.

So what would happen if lawmakers instead did the right thing and abolished this wretched example of double taxation?

The Tax Foundation has crunched the numbers. Here’s the impact on the overall economy.

And here’s what happens to federal revenue over the same period.

By the way, the Wall Street Journal editorial cited above did contain a bit of good news.

Congress is starting to push back against President Obama’s stealth death tax increase. Rep. Warren Davidson (R., Ohio) read our recent editorial about Treasury plans to raise taxes on minority stakes in family businesses by artificially inflating their value, and he’s drafted a bill to stop Treasury’s tax grab as a violation of the separation of powers. …A former owner of several businesses, Mr. Davidson says the U.S. economy needs owners focused on “growing assets, not structuring them for life events.” He explains that many farms in particular may carry high values but hold little cash, and so the death tax triggers land sales to pay the IRS. “The whole concept of a death tax is immoral,” Mr. Davidson says, and he’s right. The tax confiscates assets that have already been taxed once or more when first earned, and it punishes a lifetime of investment and thrift.

I wrote about this issue the other day, so I’m glad to see that there’s pushback against this Obama Administration scheme to unilaterally boost the burden of the death tax.

P.S. Politicians are not the only beneficiaries of the death tax.

CATO economist Daniel Mitchell outlines the negative

Elections

Donald-Trump-Ted-Cruz

Donald Trump, right, during a campaign stop in Burlington, Vt., on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016. (Photo: AP) Sen. Ted Cruz, right, speaks in Johnston, Iowa, December 4, 2015. (Photo: Reuters/Brian C. Frank)

Texas Senator Ted Cruz will endorse his former rival and Republican nominee Donald Trump for president, with an announcement coming as early as Friday. People’s Pundit Daily has confirmed the two camps were in talks for a number of weeks and that the senator has been growing increasingly concerned about the preservation of the Constitution and American liberty in the event Hillary Clinton were to win in November.

UPDATE: (CRUZ ENDORSED IN A FACEBOOK POST, SEE FULL BELOW)

“After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump,” Sen. Cruz wrote on Facebook. “I’ve made this decision for two reasons. First, last year, I promised to support the Republican nominee. And I intend to keep my word.
Second, even though I have had areas of significant disagreement with our nominee, by any measure Hillary Clinton is wholly unacceptable — that’s why I have always been #NeverHillary.”

With the Republican candidate’s chances of winning rising and both candidates looking to lock up their base, the decision was made to put aside personal differences. The two men began what turned into a bitter primary on good terms, even appearing jointly at a rally in D.C. to protest the Iran nuclear deal. But as Trump took frontrunner status and it became clear that Sen. Cruz would emerge as his main competitor, the relationship took a turn.

It is unclear whether the two men will appear together in the future, but Sen. Cruz made endorsement. The development comes as Mr. Trump has surged over Mrs. Clinton in a number of battleground states, but struggles in some national polls and in a few other states that could put him over 270 electoral votes.

This election is unlike any other in our nation’s history. Like many other voters, I have struggled to determine the right course of action in this general election.

In Cleveland, I urged voters, “please, don’t stay home in November. Stand, and speak, and vote your conscience, vote for candidates up and down the ticket whom you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.”

After many months of careful consideration, of prayer and searching my own conscience, I have decided that on Election Day, I will vote for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump.
I’ve made this decision for two reasons. First, last year, I promised to support the Republican nominee. And I intend to keep my word.

Second, even though I have had areas of significant disagreement with our nominee, by any measure Hillary Clinton is wholly unacceptable — that’s why I have always been #NeverHillary.

Six key policy differences inform my decision. First, and most important, the Supreme Court. For anyone concerned about the Bill of Rights — free speech, religious liberty, the Second Amendment — the Court hangs in the balance. I have spent my professional career fighting before the Court to defend the Constitution. We are only one justice away from losing our most basic rights, and the next president will appoint as many as four new justices. We know, without a doubt, that every Clinton appointee would be a left-wing ideologue. Trump, in contrast, has promised to appoint justices “in the mold of Scalia.”

For some time, I have been seeking greater specificity on this issue, and today the Trump campaign provided that, releasing a very strong list of potential Supreme Court nominees — including Sen. Mike Lee, who would make an extraordinary justice — and making an explicit commitment to nominate only from that list. This commitment matters, and it provides a serious reason for voters to choose to support Trump.

Second, Obamacare. The failed healthcare law is hurting millions of Americans. If Republicans hold Congress, leadership has committed to passing legislation repealing Obamacare. Clinton, we know beyond a shadow of doubt, would veto that legislation. Trump has said he would sign it.

Third, energy. Clinton would continue the Obama administration’s war on coal and relentless efforts to crush the oil and gas industry. Trump has said he will reduce regulations and allow the blossoming American energy renaissance to create millions of new high-paying jobs.

Fourth, immigration. Clinton would continue and even expand President Obama’s lawless executive amnesty. Trump has promised that he would revoke those illegal executive orders.
Fifth, national security. Clinton would continue the Obama administration’s willful blindness to radical Islamic terrorism. She would continue importing Middle Eastern refugees whom the FBI cannot vet to make sure they are not terrorists. Trump has promised to stop the deluge of unvetted refugees.

Sixth, Internet freedom. Clinton supports Obama’s plan to hand over control of the Internet to an international community of stakeholders, including Russia, China, and Iran. Just this week, Trump came out strongly against that plan, and in support of free speech online.

These are six vital issues where the candidates’ positions present a clear choice for the American people.

If Clinton wins, we know — with 100% certainty — that she would deliver on her left-wing promises, with devastating results for our country.

My conscience tells me I must do whatever I can to stop that.

We also have seen, over the past few weeks and months, a Trump campaign focusing more and more on freedom — including emphasizing school choice and the power of economic growth to lift African-Americans and Hispanics to prosperity.

Finally, after eight years of a lawless Obama administration, targeting and persecuting those disfavored by the administration, fidelity to the rule of law has never been more important.
The Supreme Court will be critical in preserving the rule of law. And, if the next administration fails to honor the Constitution and Bill of Rights, then I hope that Republicans and Democrats will stand united in protecting our fundamental liberties.

Our country is in crisis. Hillary Clinton is manifestly unfit to be president, and her policies would harm millions of Americans. And Donald Trump is the only thing standing in her way.
A year ago, I pledged to endorse the Republican nominee, and I am honoring that commitment. And if you don’t want to see a Hillary Clinton presidency, I encourage you to vote for him.

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz will endorse former

Policy

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at an LGBT fundraiser in New York City. (Photo: AP)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at an LGBT fundraiser in New York City. (Photo: AP)

Because of my disdain for the two statists that were nominated by the Republicans and Democrats, I’m trying to ignore the election. But every so often, something gets said or written that cries out for analysis.

Today is one of those days. Hillary Clinton has an editorial in the New York Times entitled “My Plan for Helping America’s Poor” and it is so filled with errors and mistakes that it requires a full fisking (i.e., a “point-by-point debunking of lies and/or idiocies”).

We’ll start with her very first sentence.

The true measure of any society is how we take care of our children.

I realize she (or the staffers who actually wrote the column) were probably trying to launch the piece with a fuzzy, feel-good line, but let’s think about what’s implied by “how we take care of our children.” It echoes one of the messages in her vapid 1996 book, It Takes a Village, in that it implies that child rearing somehow is a collective responsibility.

Hardly. This is one of those areas where social conservatives and libertarians are fully in sync. Children are raised by parents, as part of families.

To be fair, Hillary’s column then immediately refers to poor children who go to bed hungry, so presumably she is referring to the thorny challenge of how best to respond when parents (or, in these cases, there’s almost always just a mother involved) don’t do a good job of providing for kids.

…no child should ever have to grow up in poverty.

A laudable sentiment, for sure, but it’s important at this point to ask what is meant by “poverty.” If we’re talking about wretched material deprivation, what’s known as “absolute poverty,” then we have good news. Virtually nobody in the United States is in that tragic category (indeed, one of great success stories in recent decades is that fewer and fewer people around the world endure this status).

But if we’re talking about the left’s new definition of poverty (promoted by the statists at the OECD), which is measured relative to a nation’s median level of income, then you can have “poverty” even if nobody is poor.

For the sake of argument, though, let’s assume we’re using the conventional definition of poverty. Let’s look at how Mrs. Clinton intends to address this issue.

She starts by sharing some good news.

…we’re making progress, thanks to the hard work of the American people and President Obama. The global poverty rate has been cut in half in recent decades.

So far, so good. This is a cheerful development, though it has nothing to do with the American people or President Obama. Global poverty has fallen because nations such as China and India have abandoned collectivist autarky and joined the global economy.

And what about poverty in the United States?

In the United States, a new report from the Census Bureau found that there were 3.5 million fewer people living in poverty in 2015 than just a year before. Median incomes rose by 5.2 percent, the fastest growth on record. Households at all income levels saw gains, with the largest going to those struggling the most.

This is accurate, but a grossly selective use of statistics.

If Obama gets credit for the good numbers of 2015, then shouldn’t he be blamed for the bad numbers between 2009-2014? Shouldn’t it matter that there are still more people in poverty in 2015 than there were in 2008? And is it really good news that it’s taken Obama so long to finally get median income above the 2008 level, particularly when you see how fast income grew during the Reagan boom?

We then get a sentence in Hillary’s column that actually debunks her message.

Nearly 40 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 60 will experience a year in poverty at some point.

I don’t know if her specific numbers are accurate, but it is true that that there is a lot of mobility in the United States and that poverty doesn’t have to be a way of life.

Hillary then embraces economic growth as the best way of fighting poverty, which is clearly a true statement based on hundreds of years of evidence and experience.

…one of my top priorities will be increasing economic growth.

But then she goes off the rails by asserting that you get growth by spending (oops, I mean “investing”) lots of other people’s money.

I will…make a historic investment in good-paying jobs — jobs in infrastructure and manufacturing, technology and innovation, small businesses and clean energy.

Great, more Solyndras and cronyism.

And fewer jobs for low-skilled workers, if she gets here way, along with less opportunity for women (even according to the New York Times).

And we need to…rais[e] the minimum wage and finally guarantee… equal pay for women.

The comment about equal pay sounds noble, though I strongly suspect it is based on dodgy data and that she really favors the very dangerous idea of “comparable worth” legislation, which would lead to bureaucrats deciding the value of jobs.

Then Hillary embraces a big expansion of the worst government department.

…we also need a national commitment to create more affordable housing.

And she echoes Donald Trump’s idea of more subsidies and intervention in family life.

We need to expand access to high-quality child care and guarantee paid leave.

And, last but not least, she wants to throw good money after bad into the failed Head Start program.

…we will work to double investments in Early Head Start and make preschool available to every 4-year-old.

Wow, what a list. Now perhaps you’ll understand why I felt the need to provide a translation of her big economic speech last month.

The moral of the story, based on loads of evidence, is that making America more like Europe is not a way to help reduce poverty.

P.S. The only other time I’ve felt the need to fisk an entire article occurred in 2012 when I responded to a direct attack to my defense of low-tax jurisdictions.

Hillary Clinton editorial in the New York

Elections

Donald Trump gives the stage over to former UKIP and Brexit leader Nigel Farage during a campaign rally in Mississippi. (Photo: Getty)

Donald Trump gives the stage over to former UKIP and Brexit leader Nigel Farage during a campaign rally in Mississippi. (Photo: Getty)

For those of you who read and follow People’s Pundit Daily, particularly our election projection models, you know I am a true believer in the average of polls and aggregate data. I do not believe in “unskewing” the polls nor the practice of weighting polling results for party identification. Party identification, which is fluid, is not the same as party registration and respondents should dictate to pollsters what the party breakdown of the electorate will be, not the other way around.

That being said, the 2016 presidential election is testing my faith. First, there are too many polls and not enough pollsters. Simply put, the same firms that completely blew the 2014 midterm elections and, subsequently, the 2016 primary elections, are doubling down on being statistically stupid. Most clearly refuse to improve on their model’s assumptions and methodologies and, as a result, the aggregate polling is over the place.

National polls, for those who aren’t polling junkies, are typically thought to be a leading indicator of state polls. In 2012, it was certainly the other way around, though they inevitably coalesced. Yet, despite clear movement in most battleground states toward Trump, the national averages remain skewed by suspicious outliers. Take the polling released in the past month, for instance.

Clinton’s dominance during the month of August, which was the combined result of her convention bounce and a media barrage covering Trump’s self-inflicted wounds, was shattered with the release of a CNN Opinion Research Poll. Trump led by 2 points in the four-way race and 1 point in the fictional two-way race. The TIPP Poll, conducted for Investors Business Daily, which is one of the most accurate, highly-rated pollsters analyzed by the PPD Pollster Scorecard, had the 4-way race tied.

[brid video=”62575″ player=”2077″ title=”MSNBC Unskews Poll Showing Trump Beating Clinton”]

Clinton also lost her roughly 6-point lead on the PPD U.S. Presidential Election Daily Tracking Poll after Labor Day and was clinging to a small lead on other trackers such as Reuters, Rasmussen and YouGov. Battleground states–including Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina and Colorado–either moved to BATTLEGROUND, LEANS TRUMP or LIKELY TRUMP on the PPD 2016 Presidential Election Projection Model.

Republicans haven’t won Maine since 1988, yet it’s currently a BATTLEGROUND with Trump poised to at least claim the Second Congressional District. Rhode Island is a 3-point race due to large-scale defections from former supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders (more on that to come).

Then, national polling went dark. It was a black out.

In all of the tracking polls, including those like PPD that track the race daily, the race is either tied (YouGov) or Trump is slightly leading (Reuters, PPD). In the Rasmussen White House Watch Poll, he has a slightly larger 5-point lead. Nevertheless, this week, the national polling clearly showed movement in favor of the Republican candidate.

Yet, to Hillary’s rescue, an AP-GfK poll, which hadn’t released a poll in 10 weeks, and a McClatchy/Marist Poll, which hadn’t been out for 7 weeks, showed Mrs. Clinton with an identical 6-point lead, bucking the daily and weekly tracking polls and mirroring what appeared to be an outlier NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll. The latter repeatedly underestimated Trump’s vote share during the primary. Remember when they had Cruz +2 before South Carolina, because I do?

To be honest, I’m not sure what is going on behind the scenes anymore. Another trusted pollster I recently spoke with says he’s convinced “they are putting their thumb on the scale.” To this pollster’s credit, he’s one of only two pollsters who caught Trump’s true vote share during the primary. No honest assessment of the media coverage this election could conclude anything other than anti-Trump bias. So, maybe polling bias is the new norm, too. I don’t want to believe that, but something doesn’t jive.

Hillary Clinton does not, in fact, cannot have a 6-point national lead over Donald Trump. Nor does she have 90-plus percent of the Democratic vote, which is one of the several inaccurate assumptions these pollsters are making.

She cannot be leading nationally by 6 points with 90-plus percent of the Democratic vote, yet losing Ohio. In 2012, President Obama won the Buckeye State by just over 2 points when he won the national popular vote by a little less than 4 points (3.9%).

She cannot be leading nationally by 6 points with 90-plus percent of the Democratic vote yet losing Iowa. In 2012, President Obama won the Hawkeye state by roughly 6 points when he won the national popular vote by a little less than 4 points.

She cannot be leading nationally by 6 points with 90-plus percent of the Democratic vote yet losing Florida. In 2012, President Obama won the Sunshine State by less than 1 point when he won the national popular vote by a little less than 4 points.

She cannot be leading nationally by 6 points with 90-plus percent of the Democratic vote yet losing Nevada. In 2012, President Obama won the Silver State by more than 6 points when he won the national popular vote by a little less than 4 points.

I could go on and on, but you get my drift. If the state polling is correct, which is in line more accurate pollsters such as Emerson College, Fox News and PPD, the real state of the race suggests movement toward Trump, though electoral map challenges remain for the Republican nominee. Specifically, he needs one more big state or a combination of smaller states to cobble together 270 electoral votes.

Even if we consider and factor in what we’ve seen as a political realignment this cycle, assumptions made by some of these pollsters run contrary to our own findings and the findings of pollsters we trust the most. We poll this race daily and find both candidates have consistently struggled to consolidate their base. While we hear more about Trump’s base in the media, the problem for Clinton with former Bernie voters is actually more severe.

Considering he already endorsed Clinton at the convention, it would appear there is little room for her to grow with these voters. The reality on the campaign trail confirms our results and runs contrary to their results.

We consistently find that only around 60% of Bernie voters are certain to back Clinton, while the rest support one of the other three candidates. A significant percentage–ranging from 11% to nearly a quarter, depending on the state–are supporting Trump. While a significant number of primary voters who supported another Republican candidate are backing Clinton, it is smaller than the percentage of partisans he takes from her.

The same is true about the enthusiasm gap, which the aforementioned pollsters dispute. Trump voters consistently report a higher level of interest and enthusiasm than voters supporting the former secretary of state. A whopping two-thirds (66%) say they are “Extremely Enthusiastic” about voting for Trump in November, while roughly half (55%) say the same about voting for Clinton. Another one-fifth (20%) of Trump voters say they are “Very Enthusiastic” juxtaposed to 24% for Clinton.

I’m not saying Clinton can’t end up winning by six points–though I seriously, seriously doubt it barring something like a debate meltdown–I am saying she doesn’t have that lead right now.

The latest presidential election polls are all

Politics

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)

American citizens are paying leftwing bureaucrats overtime to pack the electorate with naturalized immigrants so they can vote against their choice in the presidential election. In an email released by Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., who chairs the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, the Houston field office of U.S. Customs and Immigration Services — a sub-agency of DHS — asked tells immigration bosses “to take advantage of the OT if you can” because the election is coming up.

In other words, make sure the government is working overtime to help elect Hillary Clinton.

“The Field Office due to the election year needs to process as many of their N-400 cases as possible between now and FY 2016,” the email reads. “If you have cases in this category or other pending, you are encouraged to take advantage of the OT if you can.”

“This will be an opportunity to move your pending naturalization cases. If you have not volunteered for OT, please consider and let me know if you are interested,” the email adds.

In response, Sen. Johnson and Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, sent a letter on Wednesday to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson accusing the agency of trying to rig the election in favor of Mrs. Clinton to stop Republican Donald Trump.

“We write to express serious concern about an apparent push by your department to rush adjudication of naturalization applications before the upcoming presidential election, presumably in an attempt to create as many new citizens as possible,” the jointly written letter reads.

The effort mirrors one to bring in new voters when former President Bill Clinton ran for re-election in 1996. Claude Arnold, a retired U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations, recalled the 1990s-era push.

“I am not at all surprised by this revelation,” Arnold told Fox news. “This is a repeat of the Clinton election playbook. Then it was to help re-elect Bill Clinton, this time it is to help elect Hillary Clinton.”

Dan Stein, president of Federation for American Immigration Reform, said the Obama administration is pulling the levers of government to help Mrs. Clinton win,.

“In the pursuit of a partisan advantage, one party has decided integrity in the system is irrelevant,” Mr. Stein said. “They don’t really care about checking backgrounds or verifying status and eligibility–it is more about increasing the number of eligible voters in the upcoming election.”

If the American electorate wasn’t “fundamentally transformed” by legal and illegal immigration from it’s compositional makeup in 1980, President Obama would’ve handily lost to Mitt Romney in 2012. In fact, Donald Trump is winning such a large share of the white vote, he would win in a near Reagan-esque landslide.

The Obama administration approved overtime for bureaucrats

People's Pundit Daily
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