Widget Image
Follow PPD Social Media
follow
1,000 Followers
follow
0 Followers
follow
People's Pundit Locals Community
Monday, February 10, 2025
SECTIONS
logo
mobile-logo
HomeStandard Blog Whole Post (Page 498)
Elections

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump smiles as he meets with students and educators before speaking about school choice, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy in Cleveland. (Photo: AP/Evan Vucci)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump smiles as he meets with students and educators before speaking about school choice, Thursday, Sept. 8, 2016, at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy in Cleveland. (Photo: AP/Evan Vucci)

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump continued his outreach to minority voters this week proposing $20 billion in federal grants on school choice for poor children. It marks the most detailed education proposal to date, grounded in the principles championed by school choice education reformers, including poor African-American and Hispanic parents who have been pivotal in driving the charter school movement.

“As president, I will establish the national goal of providing school choice to every American child living in poverty,” Mr. Trump said. “If we can put a man on the moon, dig out the Panama Canal and win two world wars, then I have no doubt that we as a nation can provide school choice to every disadvantaged child in America.”

Speaking to a largely black audience at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, a charter school with about 350 students in kindergarten through the eighth grade, the New York businessman did something few Republican candidates have done in years–listened to the concerns of black voters and asked for their vote. Slamming the failure of the public school system to provide a future for children in the inner cities, he said students should be able to attend a magnet school, a charter school, a public or private school.

“You’re going to like the job I do, folks, I’m going to do such a great job,” Mr. Trump told the crowd. “You give me the chance — I’ll get all your votes in four years. Everybody’s going to be voting for me, by the way: African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, just everybody.”

Mr. Trump said the $20 billion in grants for poor students in failing schools would come from existing federal spending. Known as portability, Mr. Trump proposed giving block grants to states rather than sending federal education dollars to schools, as is the case now. States would have the option of letting the dollars follow students to whichever school they choose, including a charter, private or online school. School reformers believe and argue that adding competition to the marketplace of schools increases performance.

Critics fear that portability, which Congress rejected in its latest overhaul of the nation’s chief education law last year, will bleed dollars from traditional public schools. Critics also oppose channeling taxpayer money to private religious schools and schools run for profit — like the charter Mr. Trump visited.

According to the most comprehensive study ever conducted on school choice to date, entitled A-Win-Win-Solution–The-Empirical-Evidence-on-School-Choice, critics fears on the impact of school choice are unwarranted.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump continued outreach

Opinion

Trump-Putin-AP-Reuters

New York businessman Donald J. Trump, left, and Vladimir Putin. (Photo: Andrew Harnik/AP; Reuters)

As a former military officer, I learned decades ago that when taking command of new unit, an officer has to be a strict disciplinarian. Rules have to be enforced and your subordinates need to respect and understand you are a determined person who takes your oath of office seriously. In reality, these first few months are a negotiation with your troops. First impressions count, they set the stage for your entire command.

Anyone who has followed this 2016 election cycle should know that Donald Trump is always negotiating. When the GOP nominee was talking about preventing Muslims from coming into the country “until we can figure out what is going on,” he was laying out a hard-line negotiating position that could be softened down the road if need be.

When he talks of deporting 12 million illegal immigrants, he is doing the same thing. Now amid hints of possibly softening that stand, he is seen as moderating and appeals to a larger swath of the electorate. I believe Mr. Trump will do the right thing for America when it comes to immigration, but the point is a negotiator starts negotiating long before the media spotlight highlights the actual bargaining begins.

I think Mr. Trump is doing the same thing with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He is laying the groundwork for what he believes will be future success dealing with Moscow. Mr. Trump has spent time in Russia. He has done business with Russians. He understands how they think. He understands they respect strength, not weakness. He understands they also want to be respected. Mr. Trump’s comments complimenting Mr. Putin as a strong leader “in a different system” are stroking the Russian president’s ego at a time when it will do the most good. The liberal media have freaked out because Mr. Trump refuses to follow the Obama administration line on Russia, but all he is doing is speaking nicely while carrying a big stick.

Mr. Putin has spent a lot of energy recasting the United States as Russia’s No. 1 enemy. Think about it — now that Mr. Trump is very popular among the Russian population, which for the most part yearns for peace just as Americans do, it will be more difficult for the Kremlin to cast America as an existential threat to the Motherland when Mr. Trump is in the White House.

Russians have a 1,000-year-old paranoia regarding the West. They have a deep need to be respected and a desire for prestige. Mr. Trump is playing to those psychological needs. He’s not being naively gushing like George W. Bush, or incompetently appeasing the Russians as Hillary Clinton and President Obama have repeatedly done. He is not narcissistically demeaning Russia is a third-rate power that doesn’t make anything, as our president has insinuated. He’s not making fun of Mr. Putin’s slouch. He is treating the Russian president as a leader worthy of respect, while at the same time looking out for the best interests of the United States.

Mr. Trump has not said he will surrender Western principles or values in the face of future Russian aggression. On the contrary, he wants to rebuild the U.S. military “so that no one will dare mess with us.” That has to give the Kremlin and the oligarchs pause. In the long run, rebuilding our hard and soft power at home will do more to enhance our national security than making promises we can’t or won’t keep. Our government owes $20 trillion, for heaven’s sake.

Mr. Trump’s comments on NATO members paying their fair share for defense are also spot on. The truth is that we do not have an alliance if all the other countries rely on the American nuclear umbrella while attacking our companies for monopolistic practices and tax violations in their own courts. Oh, the hypocrisy!

Russia belongs at the geopolitical table as a great power. Its history demands that. Mr. Trump is certainly aware of this and, by publicly acknowledging the fact, has cleverly already put down the opening marker in his negotiations with Mr. Putin. Mr. Trump’s not being what Lenin once called a “useful idiot” for Russia. He’s simply working the art of the deal.

This article first appeared on The Washington Times

Anyone who has followed this 2016 election

Politics

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)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said late Friday at a fundraiser in New York that she puts half of Donald Trump’s supporters in a “basket of deplorables.”

“The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic, you name it. They are just desperate for change,” Clinton said. “They don’t buy everything [Trump] says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different.”

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway pounced on the comments on Twitter. Jason Miller, a campaign spokesman for Trump, said in a statement Clinton “revealed her true contempt for everyday Americans” and said it was “inexcusable mistake.”

Clinton campaign spokesman Nick Merrill defended the candidate.

“Obviously not everyone supporting Trump is part of the alt-right, but alt-right leaders are with Trump,” Merrill said. “And their supporters appear to make up half his crowd when you observe the tone of his events.”

Democrat Hillary Clinton said late Friday at

Politics

Despite Threats from White House and Riyadh, Bill Passes in Both Houses of Congress

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., led with opening session on September 9 commemorating the 9/11 15th Anniversary Memorial Service with a moment of silence.

House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., led with opening session on September 9 commemorating the 9/11 15th Anniversary Memorial Service with a moment of silence.

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives passed a Senate bill allowing the 9/11 victims’ families to sue Saudi Arabia, setting up a veto showdown with President Obama. In May, the GOP-controlled upper chamber unanimously approved Senate bill 2040 (S.2040), known as the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, ignoring threats from the White House and Riyadh to pull billions of dollars from the U.S. economy if the bill is enacted.

It “amends the federal judicial code to narrow the scope of foreign sovereign immunity by authorizing U.S. courts to hear cases involving claims against a foreign state for injuries, death, or damages that occur inside the United States as a result of a tort, including an act of terrorism, committed anywhere by a foreign state or official.”

The sponsors of the bipartisan bill in the Senate, Sens. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and John Cornyn, R-Texas, called on the Republican House of Representatives to pass the bill and now they have. The legislation gives victims’ families the right to sue in U.S. court for any role that elements of the Saudi government may have played in the 2001 attacks that killed thousands in New York, the Washington, D.C. area and Pennsylvania. The White House warned of “unintended consequences,” saying the bill would “change longstanding international law regarding sovereign immunity and the president continues to harbor serious concerns this legislation would make the U.S. vulnerable in other court systems around the world.”

Relatives of Sept. 11 victims had been urging the Obama administration to declassify and release U.S. intelligence that allegedly discusses possible Saudi involvement in the attacks. In July, a 28-page 2002 congressional report on the September 11, 2001 terror attacks was released Friday and indicated some of the hijackers had ties to people in the Saudi government. The report cited the reason for a “limited understanding” of Saudi Arabia’s role and financing of terror groups as an unwillingness to investigate “due to Saudi Arabia’s status as an American ‘ally.’”

Saudi-Royal-Family-AP

Members of the royal family, including Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, left, who is one of the men allegedly responsible for funding Bin Laden. (Photos: AP/Getty/AFP)

It also revealed that in 2002–only a year after the deadliest terror attacks in U.S. history–the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had numerous leads indicating ties between Saudis in America and some of the hijackers, specifically the two that took control of Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon. Further, it links associates of the hijackers and Saudi Arabian Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the former longtime ambassador to the United States. In a phone book found on al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in Pakistan in 2002.

The documents released claim Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi national who helped two of the hijackers in San Diego, Calif., was suspected of being a Saudi intelligence officer. “Al-Bayoumi was known to have access to large amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, despite the fact that he did not appear to hold a job,” the report said.

While the 9/11 Commission found him to be an “unlikely candidate for clandestine involvement” with Islamic extremists, the new document says that FBI files indicated al-Bayoumi had “extensive contact with Saudi government establishments in the United States and received financial support from a Saudi company affiliated with the Saudi Ministry of Defense. … That company reportedly had ties to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida.”

The bill also “amends the federal criminal code to permit civil claims against a foreign state or official for injuries, death, or damages from an act of international terrorism. Additionally, the bill authorizes federal courts to exercise personal jurisdiction over and impose liability on a person who commits, or aids, abets, or conspires to commit, an act of international terrorism against a U.S. national.

The House of Representatives passed a Senate

Politics

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)

The Justice Department (DOJ) granted immunity to the IT specialist who deleted emails under a preservation order, the New York Times reported Friday. Paul Combetta, who worked for a Colorado company called Platte River Networks, is one of at least two people we know were given immunity by the Justice Department as part of the FBI probe into Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official State Department business.

The other was Bryan Pagliano, a former campaign staff member for Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, who was granted immunity in exchange for answering questions about how he set up a server in Mrs. Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, New York.

The report comes after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released several internal documents from their probe into Hillary Clinton and they show she claimed ignorance on classified material. The heavily redacted files released Friday, which also revealing large missing gaps of time and information, showed the FBI could not find some 13 Clinton mobile devices that were used to send emails from her personal email address.

In the Friday before Labor Day document dump, an unidentified witness admitted to having an “oh shit” moment after a March 2, 2015 report by the New York Times first brought to light Mrs. Clinton’s use of a private email server to conduct official State Department business. “Sometime between March 25-31, 2015” they “deleted the Clinton archive mailbox from the PRN server and used BleachBit to delete exported .PST files he had created on the server system containing Clinton’s e-mails.”

“Investigation found evidence of these deletions,” the FBI report reads (available here [HRC 1] and here [HRC 2]).

At that point, the House Select Committee on Benghazi had been stonewalled on their May, 2014 request for some of these documents for nearly a year. FBI Director James Comey, after rattling off a litany of criminal offenses during a press conference, claimed he made the decision not to prosecute Mrs. Clinton because they didn’t find an element of intent.

Of course, as has been demonstrated repeatedly, intent is not the standard to prosecute under the law. Gross negligence, which is legally defined as “extreme carelessness,” the very term used by the director, is the standard.

Nevertheless, a look at the timeline makes the idea Clinton was lacking an intent even more difficult to believe.

  • March 2: The New York Times, more specifically the same journalist who published the most recent report, reveals Clinton’s use of a private email server.
  • March 3 to March 4: A preservation order is issued for emails and documents residing on the server as a result of a congressional subpoena
  • March 9: Platte River Networks, the IT firm handling Mrs. Clinton’s personal email server, was told to retain the emails.
  • March 25: Mrs. Clinton’s legal team–including one of her top aides at the State Department Cheryl Mills–holds a conference call with Platte River Networks associates. The exact content of the conference call is unknown.
  • March 31: Mr. Combetta at Platte River Networks deletes Mrs. Clinton’s email archive and violates the preservation order.

“As the F.B.I.’s report notes,” Brian Fallon, Clinton campaign spokesman said, “neither Hillary Clinton nor her attorneys had knowledge of the Platte River Network employee’s actions. It appears he acted on his own and against guidance given by both Clinton’s and Platte River’s attorneys to retain all data in compliance with a congressional preservation request.”

In truth, that’s not actually accurate, either. What the FBI report(s) claim is that Mrs. Clinton claimed she didn’t know. But then again, she also claimed not to know what the (C) meant, either. Further, Mr. Combetta said in his first interview with the FBI in February that he did not remember being aware of the preservation order from the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which Mrs. Clinton’s lawyer, Cheryl D. Mills, had sent to Platte River.

However, in his first interview in May, he said that at the time he deleted and “wiped” the server “he was aware of the existence of the preservation request and the fact that it meant he should not disturb Clinton’s email data.”

Rep. Trey, R-S.C., the chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, was outraged to hear the latest report, which he said he has no reason to doubt.

“If the FBI and Justice Department gave this witness transactional immunity, it’s tantamount to to giving immunity to the trigger man in a robbery,” Rep. Gowdy said. “They blew it.”

The Justice Department (DOJ) granted immunity to

Elections

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a campaign rally in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on August 10.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to supporters during a campaign rally in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on August 10. (Photo: AP)

The Trump campaign announced Thursday it raised a record $90 million in August, which is a personal record but still short of the $143 million haul for Hillary Clinton. The disparity is significant considering the Republican presidential candidate has 1) been a less-than prolific fundraiser and 2) spends far less time with bundlers than on the campaign trail than his opponent and previous presidential candidates.

“We have broad support from across America. Hillary Clinton and her super PACs have spent over $130 million on negative political ads, and yet we are virtually tied (or better) in the most recent national polls and leading in many of the important swing states,” said Steven Mnuchin, Trump campaign finance chairman. “Hillary Clinton spent August attending 70 fundraisers; Donald Trump spent August at 34 rallies and speeches.”

Swing state polls have begun to catch up to the national polls, which show a considerable tightening, with Iowa, Florida, Ohio, Virginia and North Carolina all moving toward the New York businessman. Pennsylvania, which the campaign has made a major play for, remains allusive in most major polling surveys.

“We are very pleased he has continued to dedicate time to fundraise with the RNC to support important ground operations for the Republican Party. We want to thank our many volunteers and contributors that are clearly committed to electing Donald J. Trump as President in November.”

The Trump campaign announced it raised a

Opinion

fair-tax-rally-dc

Supporters of the fair tax and flat tax model hold a Tax Day rally in Washington D.C. (Photo: AP)

Based on the title of this column, you may think I’m going to write about oppressive IRS behavior or punitive tax policy. Those are good guesses, but today’s “brutal tax beating” is about what happens when a clueless leftist writes a sophomoric column about tax policy and then gets corrected by an expert from the Tax Foundation.

The topic is the tax treatment of executive compensation, which is somewhat of a mess because part of Bill Clinton’s 1993 tax hike was a provision to bar companies from deducting executive compensation above $1 million when compiling their tax returns (which meant, for all intents and purposes, an additional back-door 35-percent tax penalty on salaries paid to CEO types). But to minimize the damaging impact of this discriminatory penalty, particularly on start-up firms, this extra tax didn’t apply to performance-based compensation such as stock options.

In a good and simple tax system, which taxes income only one time (including business income), the entire provision would be repealed.

But when Alvin Chang, a graphics reporter from Vox, wrote a column on this topic, he made the remarkable claim that somehow taxpayers are subsidizing big banks because the aforementioned penalty does not apply to performance-based compensation.

…the government doesn’t tax performance-based pay for…any…top bank executive in America. Unlike regular salaries — where the government takes out taxes to pay for Medicare, Social Security, and all other sorts of things — US tax code lets banks deduct the big bonuses they give to their executives. … The solution most Americans want is to either heavily tax CEO pay over a certain amount, or to set a strict cap on how much CEOs can make, relative to their workers. As long as this loophole is open, though, it makes sense for banks to continue paying executives these huge sums. ..for now, taxpayers are still ponying up to help make wealthy bankers even wealthier, because the US tax code encourages it.

Since Mr. Chang is a graphics reporter, you won’t be surprised that he included several images to augment his argument.

Here’s one making the case that companies should pay a 35 percent tax on performance-based pay for CEO types. Keep in mind, as you peruse this image, that recipients of performance-based pay have to declare that income on their 1040s and pay 39.6 percent individual income tax.

And here’s Chang’s look at how much money the IRS could have collected from big banks in recent years if the anti-CEO tax penalty was extended to performance-based pay.

When I look at these images, my gut reaction is to be offended that Chang equates “taxpayers” with the federal government.

So I would change the caption of the first image so it ended, “…this pile would be diverted from shareholders to politicians.”

And the caption in the second image would read, “This is the amount it saved taxpayers.”

But Chang’s argument is also flawed for much deeper reasons. Scott Greenberg of the Tax Foundation debunks his entire column. Not just debunks. Eviscerates. Destroys.

Here are some of the highlights.

…the article contains several factual errors and misleading claims about how CEOs are taxed in America. The article begins by making an incorrect claim: that the federal government does not tax performance-based CEO pay… This is simply untrue. Under the U.S. tax code, households are generally required to pay individual income taxes on the value of the stock options and bonuses that they receive…up to 39.6% on the performance-based pay… The article continues with another false assertion…it claims that CEO performance-based pay is not subject to the same Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes as “regular salaries.” In fact, all employee compensation, including CEO pay, is subject to Medicare payroll taxes, and high-income individuals actually pay a higher Medicare payroll tax rate than most other employees. …it claims that U.S. businesses are allowed to deduct CEO pay but are not allowed to deduct “regular salaries.” This is patently incorrect. Under the U.S. tax code, businesses are allowed to deduct virtually all compensation to employees. In fact, the only major exception to this rule is that businesses are only allowed to deduct $1 million in non-performance-based salaries to CEOs. This means that the U.S. tax code gives the same, if not worse, treatment to CEO compensation as “regular salaries.”

Scott also addresses the silly assertion that deductions for CEO compensation are some sort of subsidy.

You probably wouldn’t claim that taxpayers are subsidizing the restaurant worker’s salary, because the deduction for employee compensation is a regular, structural feature of the tax code. In general, businesses in the U.S. are taxed on their revenues minus their expenses, and the salary paid to the worker is a business expense like any other. The same argument applies for CEO compensation. When a business pays a CEO $155 million, it has increased its expenses and decreased its profits. The normal logic of U.S. tax law dictates that the business be allowed to deduct the CEO’s compensation from its taxable income. Then, the CEO is required to pay individual income taxes on the compensation.

The bottom line, as Scott points out, is that Bill Clinton’s provision means that CEO pay is penalized rather than subsidized.

…wages and salaries of CEOs are penalized relative to the wages and salaries of regular employees, while performance-based compensation is taxed in the same manner as regular wages and salaries. In sum, it is simply wrong to say that the federal tax code subsidizes CEO pay.

Game, set, and match. Mr. Chang should stick to graphics rather than tax policy.

And policy makers should resist tax policies based on envy and resentment since the net result is a tax code that is needless complex and pointlessly destructive.

[mybooktable book=”global-tax-revolution-the-rise-of-tax-competition-and-the-battle-to-defend-it” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Based on the title of this column,

World

North-Korea-Nuclear-Test

South Koreans watch a TV news program showing North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s New Year speech at the Seoul Railway Station. (Photo: Associated Press)

North Korea confirmed it has conducted a “nuclear warhead explosion” test, defying increased international sanctions and pressure to curb its nuclear ambitions. Pyongyang says the test was conducted to counter what it calls “U.S. hostility.”

South Korea had said that the communist regime in North Korea conducted its fifth atomic test, which produced its biggest explosive yield yet to date. The South’s weather agency said the explosive yield of the North Korean blast was roughly 10 to 12 kilotons, or 70% to 80% of the force of the 15-kiloton atomic bomb the United States dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in 1945.

The North’s fourth test was an estimated six kilotons. U.S. National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said the U.S. is aware of “seismic activity” on the Korean Peninsula near where Pyongyang has been known to conduct nuclear tests.

“The standardization of the nuclear warhead will enable (North Korea) to produce at will and as many as it wants a variety of smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear warheads of higher strike power,” the North said. “This has definitely put on a higher level (the North’s) technology of mounting nuclear warheads on ballistic rockets.”

Thursday, South Korean and international monitoring agencies reported an earthquake near North Korea’s northeastern nuclear test site, an indication that Pyongyang detonated another atomic test to mark the 68th anniversary of the country’s founding. North and South Korea technically remain in a state of war. The 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

North Korea confirmed it conducted a “nuclear

Politics

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is helped up stairs in a photo captured by Reuters. (PHOTO: REUTERS)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is helped up stairs in a photo captured by Reuters. (PHOTO: REUTERS)

Once upon a time, a brash, bold-faced candidate called Hillary Clinton thought she’d take a seat in the back of the campaign room, collect donor dollars, and adopt a wait-and-see plan as her platform to the presidency, her sole strategy seeming: Donald Trump is a circus act and well – who ya gonna vote for, except me?

Her strategy was underscored by her 18 months-plus of dodging press conferences, and by her near-disappearance from the public campaign trails in August, in favor of private fundraisers.

Then came this, from the pundit and media class: What’s up with all her coughing during public speeches? And this, from the medical community, the latest of which included Dr. Drew: Her brain is malfunctioning due to past injury, and she ought to get a neurological exam to prove fitness for the presidency. And then this, perhaps most damning: The FBI itself reported a tie between Mrs. Clinton’s memory lapses and her prior concussion.

[brid video=”62806″ player=”2077″ title=”Dr. Drew “Gravely Concerned” About Hillary Clinton’ Health”]

In the course of investigating Clinton’s long-running email scandal, and in the course of asking the former secretary of State to explain her take on the many briefings she attended while serving President Barack Obama’s administration that spelled out just how agents of government ought to handle classified information and public documents – queries she addressed by saying she didn’t remember — the FBI, inadvertently but no less shockingly, drew a direct parallel between her brain injury and her inability to lead.

“In December of 2012,” the FBI wrote, in summary of interrogations of Clinton over her use of a private, home-based email server for secretary of State business, Reuters reported, “Clinton suffered a concussion and then around the New Year had a blood clot. Based on her doctor’s advice, she could only work at State for a few hours a day and could not recall every briefing she received.”

While the FBI didn’t specifically say Clinton’s memory fails were due to her brain injury, the link speaks volumes. And when combined with other health-related snafus on the campaign trail, the question of her presidency has undergone a dramatic shift. No longer are Americans wondering which candidate, Clinton or Trump, would provide the best security, open the doors to the most vibrant economy, pave the way for the most sound and logical border plan. But rather the focus becomes: Will Hillary make it through the day without a visit to the hospital?

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign has become like a NASCAR race – one boring lap after another, while waiting to see if there’s a crash and burn.

The New York Post ran this headline, in January: “Hillary Clinton Can’t Stop Coughing During Speech,” in reference to her address before Iowa supporters.

In mid-February, it was this from the Conservative Outfitters: “Hillary Clinton Suffers From Another Severe Coughing Fit While Speaking in NYC.”

In April, Mrs. Clinton suffered yet another bout of coughing during an interview with a radio station host, after which she pointed to the “allergy season” as the blame. In May, it was more of the same – this time, as the Washington Free Beacon reported – during a California campaign event.

“On June 4,” the American Mirror reported, “Clinton was [simply] listening during a round table discussion when she began hacking uncontrollably.”

Now this latest, another spasm of coughing just this week in Ohio – and videos are making the rounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UEY9mMFvQg

As the Daily Beast opined: “Is Hillary Clinton’s Cough the New Benghazi?”

It’s actually a valid question – and one, like Benghazi and the death of four Americans on Mrs. Clinton’s watch, the mainstream media hates to ask. CNN even has a name for those who question Mrs. Clinton’s physical ability to hold the high office – “healthers,” a play on the “birthers” who doubted Mr. Obama’s constitutional right to the presidency.

But the facts are: Mrs. Clinton suffered a concussion in 2012. She was shortly after hospitalized for a blood clot in her head. She can’t remember key details of her own government briefings, according to the FBI. And now, her campaign trail is marked by one curious coughing fit after another. Her supporters may scoff, but the reality remains: A president who can’t speak, is going to be hard pressed at diplomacy. A president who isn’t healthy, especially in brain and in head, sets an uncertain White House tone and therefore, puts the fate of the nation at risk.
[mybooktable book=”the-devil-in-dc” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) itself

Opinion

Donald Trump, holds up his Bible as he speaks during the Values Voter Summit Sept. 25 in Washington (Photo: AP/Jose Luis Magana)

Donald Trump, holds up his Bible as he speaks during the Values Voter Summit Sept. 25 in Washington (Photo: AP/Jose Luis Magana)

Are you as sick as I am of seeing the tedious finger-pointing between never-Trumpers and certain Republicans who have decided — many reluctantly — to vote for Donald Trump?

I assume that most people on both sides are in good faith and are doing what they believe is in the nation’s best interests. I wish people would quit judging the others as immoral or sellouts. That’s a bit presumptuous and self-congratulatory for my tastes.

I doubt that many people outside the commentator universe are agonizing over the decision to the extent the “professionals” are. To most Republicans and conservatives, voting for Trump over Hillary Clinton is a no-brainer, even if they find Trump distasteful, unpredictable and significantly unreliable.

I was a vocal supporter of Ted Cruz’s and don’t slightly regret it, mainly because I believe that most politically related problems plaguing the nation stem from our abandonment of the Constitution and that the best remedy for them is to restore constitutional principles and advance policies based on them. I believe that authentic, constitutional conservatism has not been tried for too long and that Cruz would have brought it.

But Cruz lost. Trump won. And either he or Clinton will be the next president. There’s nothing I can do to change that, but there is something I can do to help affect, however slightly, the outcome of the election. That something is my vote. Abstaining or voting for a fantasy candidate will help Clinton. We can argue logical fallacies all day long, but I have only one option if I want my vote to contribute to Clinton’s defeat, and that is to vote for Trump.

I can’t see myself being a cheerleader for Trump, but having made my decision on the basis of the nation’s best interests, I do want to do my small part to help him put his best foot forward and to nudge him toward doing the right things and implementing the correct policy prescriptions should he prevail.

So when I see an improvement in his demeanor and his approach, when I see him making good, substantive speeches on national security and other subjects, my pride does not interfere with my applauding those developments. Maybe I’m rationalizing, but this may signal that he is listening to the right people and that he will follow through on these ideas.

Even if you doubt Trump’s genuine commitment to conservative policies, remember that he has many incentives to implement our policies. Apart from a few issues, his supporters want him to govern like a conservative, and he knows he’ll never appease the rabid left.

Regardless, I have no doubt that he’d govern infinitely more conservatively than Clinton. Remember, if Clinton were to win, not only would she govern as an ultra-leftist (Barack Obama on stilts) but also her constituency groups would urge her to go further left, rewarding her for doing so and punishing her for deviating. The electorate has changed enough now that she doesn’t usually even bother pretending to be moderate. That should scare all of us.

As for the never-Trumpers, I believe there are different types among them. Some are more conservative and closer to being constitutional purists — many, but not all, of whom voted for Cruz. They share the frustration that many original Trump supporters have with so-called establishment Republicans. They have seen our predicament as perilous, with the nation facing a number of real, existential threats. But they are apparently convinced that the nation’s plight isn’t so dire as some of the rest of us believe it is, that we could survive a Hillary Clinton term and that the best chance of saving the nation in the long run is to avoid elevating Trump to president and leader of the party because he could forever destroy conservatism and the Republican brand.

I can relate to those arguments and have even made them myself in earlier discussions. But in the end, I think our situation is so precarious that if we elected Clinton, we might never again have the luxury of worrying about the viability of conservatism or the Republican Party. If we lost the borders issue alone, we might never win another election. If Clinton were to appoint one or more Supreme Court justices, there’s no limit to the damage the court could do to the Constitution, which is already in trouble. If we keep pretending we are not at war with terrorists and continue to degrade our military, we will be inviting further attacks at home and the triumph of evil abroad. And on and on.

So once Cruz lost, I concluded we have to cut our losses and try to save the nation, however imperfectly we do it. In the process, we can remain constitutional watchdogs and advocates and lobby and pressure Trump to pursue conservative policies.

Other never-Trumpers, the establishment types, have never seemed as alarmed about Obama’s destruction of this nation. They haven’t seen the urgency, and they believe that establishment Republicans have been unfairly criticized for not doing enough to oppose and stop Obama. Some of them apparently see a Clinton presidency as just another day at the office or are convinced Trump would be so bad that Clinton couldn’t be worse, which is hard for me to wrap my head around. Many of them have contempt for the Cruz types because they believe that Cruz was opportunistically chasing after rainbows, for example, in his willingness to fight Obama to the point of a government shutdown. They don’t share the grass roots’ frustrations with Republicans and therefore don’t grasp that their complacency contributed to the rise of Trump. What an irony!

I don’t agree, however, with those avid Trump supporters who blame conservatism or conservatives for Obama and the left’s successes. Conservatism shouldn’t be tainted by the failures of those who falsely call themselves conservatives to win elections or lack courage to stand up to Democrats and the media. Conservatism itself, and true conservatives advancing it, is still the answer. But even true conservatives, going forward, must take a page out of Trump’s playbook in fighting back against political correctness (when he has actually and properly done so) and in counterattacking the ruthless left without fear of being shunned as mean-spirited.

But for now, we have two — and only two — choices. To say otherwise is to fool ourselves. I choose to proceed optimistically, with the prayer that Donald Trump will implement mostly conservative ideas and help stop the bleeding with regard to our borders, our courts, our tax and regulatory systems, and our national security. I know for a fact that Hillary Clinton would not do so.

I respect the never-Trumpers and will not presume to judge them as abandoning the nation’s best interests, and I hope they will accord people like me the same consideration — realizing that we have the same goals but disagree on how to reach them.

[mybooktable book=”the-emmaus-code-finding-jesus-in-the-old-testament” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Are you as sick as I am

People's Pundit Daily
You have %%pigeonMeterAvailable%% free %%pigeonCopyPage%% remaining this month. Get unlimited access and support reader-funded, independent data journalism.

Start a 14-day free trial now. Pay later!

Start Trial

Subscribe