South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio. (Photo: Getty Images)
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has easily won the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in his reelection effort, with turnout significantly topping challenger Rep. Patrick Murphy. With more than 74% reporting (4,310 of 5,853 precincts), Sen. Rubio led Carlos Beruff with roughly 71.8% of the vote. On the Democratic side, Rep. Patrick Murphy defeated Rep. Alan Grayson with nearly 60% of the vote.
Meanwhile, Republican turnout significantly outpaced Democratic turnout by roughly 300,000 votes. That was also the case in the presidential primary in June, when 652,000-plus more Republicans than Democrats cast their ballots. Sen. Rubio will face Rep. Murphy, who faces allegations of fabricating and embellishing his professional career following a local CBS News report.
In Miami-Dade County, a traditionally Democratic stronghold, the Republican will likely end up with at least the same number of votes than the Democrat. Further, while Sen. Rubio swept the state, Rep. Murphy lost several large, Democratic-voter rich counties, including Orange County and Osceola County, to Rep. Grayson. The latter is also plagued by scandal and was the target of a House ethics investigation. He was also the target of outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who got in a heated argument with the Florida congressman during a Democratic strategy meeting.
This is a bad sign for the Democratic hopes to regain control of the Senate in November. Though there remained more Democratic precincts unreported, Sen. Rubio enjoyed more than 23,000 votes in the deep blue region of the state.
Supporters of the fair tax and flat tax model hold a Tax Day rally in Washington D.C. (Photo: AP)
Our statist friends like high taxes for many reasons. They want to finance bigger government, and they also seem to resent successful people, so high tax rates are a win-win policy from their perspective.
Give their compulsion to control other people’s behavior, these leftists are very happy about what’s happened in Berkeley, California. According to a study published in the American Journal of Public Health, a new tax on sugary beverages has led to a significant reduction in consumption.
Here are some excerpts from a release issued by the press shop at the University of California Berkeley.
…a new UC Berkeley study shows a 21 percent drop in the drinking of soda and other sugary beverages in Berkeley’s low-income neighborhoods after the city levied a penny-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. …The “Berkeley vs. Big Soda” campaign, also known as Measure D, won in 2014 by a landslide 76 percent, and was implemented in March 2015. …The excise tax is paid by distributors of sugary beverages and is reflected in shelf prices, as a previous UC Berkeley study showed, which can influence consumers’ decisions. …Berkeley’s 21 percent decrease in sugary beverage consumption compares favorably to that of Mexico, which saw a 17 percent decline among low-income households after the first year of its one-peso-per-liter soda tax that its congress passed in 2013.
I’m a wee bit suspicious that we’re only getting data on consumption by poor people.
Why aren’t we seeing data on overall soda purchases?
And isn’t it a bit odd that leftists are happy that poor people are bearing a heavy burden?
I’m also amused by the following passage. The politicians want to discourage people from consuming sugary beverages. But if they are too successful, then they won’t collect all the money they want to finance bigger government.
In Berkeley, the tax is intended to support municipal health and nutrition programs. To that end, the city has created a panel of experts in child nutrition, health care and education to make recommendations to the City Council about funding programs that improve children’s health across Berkeley.
But the biggest lesson to learn from this episode is that it confirms the essential insight of supply-side economics. Simply stated, when you tax something, you get less of it.
Which is something that statists seem to understand when they urge higher “sin taxes,” but they deny when the debate shifts to taxes on work, saving, entrepreneurship, and investment.
The Consumer Confidence Index, a closely-watched gauge conducted by the Conference Board, increased in August to 101.1, up from the 96.7 measured in July. The results for the month topped the median forecast, as economists expected the gauge to rise only slightly to 97.0.
The Present Situation Index rose from 118.8 to 123.0, while the Expectations Index increased to 86.4, up from 82.0 last month.
“Consumer confidence improved in August to its highest level in nearly a year, after a marginal decline in July,” said Lynn Franco, Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. “Consumers’ assessment of both current business and labor market conditions was considerably more favorable than last month.”
The percentage of respondents stating business conditions are “good” increased from 27.3% to 30.0%, while those saying business conditions are “bad” was flat at 18.4%. Confidence in the labor market also improved, with those claiming jobs were more “plentiful” gaining three percentage points from 23.0% to 26.0%. However, those claiming jobs are “hard to get” also increased by a similiar margin, up to 23.4% from 22.1%.
“Short-term expectations regarding business and employment conditions, as well as personal income prospects, also improved, suggesting the possibility of a moderate pick-up in growth in the coming months,” Franco added.
The percentage of respondents expecting more jobs in future months increased from 13.5% to 14.2%, while the percentage looking ahead to fewer jobs remained flat at 17.5%. The percentage of consumers expecting their incomes to increase improved from 17.1% to 18.8%, while the proportion expecting a decline decreased marginally from 11.0% to 10.7%.
The monthly Consumer Confidence Survey is based on a probability-design random sample and is conducted for The Conference Board by Nielsen. The cutoff date for the preliminary results was August 18.
The adjustment from military to civilian life can be difficult for most veterans, in large part because just about any career change is dramatic. A few weeks ago, I had a chance to speak with someone who epitomizes this challenge, someone who has been on a journey that began in Jamestown Tenn., and has taken him from Mogadishu to music. On Independence Day, this past July 4th, J.T. Cooper released “Mr. No Apologies,” the first single on a soon-to-be released killer Country Rock album.
But the songs on the album represent more than just a collection of music. They’re a product of his new mission–to help men and women coming out of the service who are trying to figure out what their next move should be. He’s been there and, like so many others, it wasn’t always pretty.
“Not everyone can write a song, but at least I can give them something that they can relate to,” Cooper said. “Something no one else understands.”
After his role in the event culturally known as Black Hawk Down, J.T. Cooper visited the Country Music Hall of Fame, when and where he decided to share his music with the world. In 1996, J.T. Cooper found himself in Syracuse, New York, after being assigned to the 10th Mountain Division in Fort Drum. He was battling survivor’s guilt over the loss of his buddy Jimmy Joseph “Jimmy Joe” Martin Jr., who lost his life in Mogadishu, Somalia.
“Music made me a survivor,” he said. “There was a six-month period when it was a daily choice to live. It, along with a bottle of Jack Daniels, was on the table everyday for six months.”
In the military, a soldier always has direction, a purpose and a goal. You not only know you’re at Point A , but the location of Point B and how you’re going to get there. Out of the military, and with no one telling him what to do next or assigning him the next mission, he wondered what do with that “never surrender” attitude.
He decided his responsibility was to use music to tell his story. The inspiration for “Mr. No Apology” came from a meme he saw online, but the flag-waving, kick-ass Country Rock tune was the breakout single for the upcoming album “Coming Home” to be released in September. I got a preview during the interview and, take my word for it, it’s awesome.
“The majority of my music surrounds God, family and country. They are my three chords and a truth,” he said, in a reference to Country music icon Harlan Howard.
When asked what real country music was, Howard once replied “Country music isn’t nothing but three chords and the truth.”
“I may never be Garth Brooks, but everything that comes out of me you can bank on being 100% J.T. Cooper.”
No doubt “Mr. No Apology” is a hit, but Cooper hopes the real message of the album people take away and carry with them highlights the struggles of veterans. In the United States, 22 veterans each day commit suicide, while countless more feel lost and have a difficult time re-entering the civilian population.
“There’s so much noise out there. Everyone wants to be a star, but no one wants to stand for anything,” he added. “The old country rock stars couldn’t even get on the radio now, they’d be too afraid they might offend someone.”
J.T. was spending the upcoming Saturday before the interview with nearly two-dozen veterans and 40 songwriters. For each veteran, two songwriters will help to compose a song with the veteran, who may have something to put on the shelf, a way to say “there, I dealt with that or I have a way to memorialize that person or event.” For their efforts, the songwriters get inspiration by appreciation.
“Rise again,” a title released in the upcoming album, came out of that very experience, along with another song “Doing Things.” Cooper talks a lot about what retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William “Jerry” Boykin called it the “transcendent cause,” or the unique experience and feeling that you are fighter on behalf of something greater than the interests of a single person.
“The warrior fights for a transcendent cause, for something greater than himself,” Gen. Boykin told attendees at the second annual Operation Heal Our Patriots reunion.
“We were taught to serve, but where are you still serving something bigger than yourself,” Cooper said, adding how the Department of Veterans Affairs, or Veterans Administration (VA) is simply not equipped to deal with the sheer loss a veteran feels when he or she no longer is a warrior for a “transcendent cause” in life. “We’ve become MTV Cribs, where’s my reward. The VA comes out playing to that mentality. I think we’re doing a disservice to our vets handing out drugs, not helping them to get to the next level.”
Sure, it’s true there are plenty of success stories. That’s why many come back and transition to careers in law enforcement or other first responder careers such as firefighters. But thus far, addressing the void a veteran feels from the loss of the transcendent cause is largely taboo, a dynamic captured in the documentary film Honor the Code, which featured Cooper.
“You know a beer and a paycheck is never going to be enough,” he said. “They build you up to be a warrior but then take your weapons and send you home. My goal is to preach the mission. What am I doing to serve humanity. Veterans criticize civilians, but it’s our job to teach them. You weren’t any different when you came in. Instead of being mad, teach them.”
That goal is to complete this mission one song, one show at a time. During events, J.T. has taken to asking the crowd if they can name a single person that died for their freedom. Now, the number one request he gets is not for his autograph. It’s for him to write the name so they never again do not know the name of one person who died for my freedom.
Hillary Clinton, left speaks in Warren, Michigan on August 11, while Donald Trump, right, speaks to supporters at the Charlotte Convention Center in North Carolina on August 19, 2016. (Photos: AP)
Republican Donald Trump holds a slight 45% to 43% edge over Democrat Hillary Clinton in the battleground state of North Carolina, with Libertarian Gov. Gary Johnson at 8%. A brand new [content_tooltip id=”38226″ title=”Emerson College Polling University”] of 800 likely voters conducted August 27-29 finds both candidates are winning 81% of their own party’s vote, but Tar Heel State independents favor Mr. Trump over Mrs. Clinton 45% to 34%, with Gov. Johnson getting 14%.
“Trump’s strongest support is in the eastern and western parts of the state, where he is winning 47% to 45% and 53% to 36%, respectively,” said Professor Spencer Kimball, polling advisor for Emerson College Polling Institute. “He and Clinton are in a statistical dead heat in the central region, with each having 42% of the vote. Clinton leads 62% to 31% in the Greensboro/Charlotte area.”
Among white voters, Mr. Trump leads 63% to 24%, with African- American voters backing Clinton 75% to 16%. Those results are inline with another recent North Carolina poll conducted by SurveyUSA, which found 20% of black voters, to whom the GOP nominee is trying to reach out, supporting the Republican candidate. Mrs. Clinton also has a large lead with Hispanics, 59% to 15%, larger than the national average, and among multiracial voters (94% to 6%).
From the 2012 ballot, which gauges how the sample voted in the 2012 reelection of President Barack Obama, Mr. Trump appears to be slightly outperforming Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who carried the Tar Heel state by roughly 3 points.
2012 Ballot
Frequency
Percent
Valid Percent
Cumulative Percent
Barack Obama (D)
Mitt Romney (R)
Someone else
Total
387
405
8
800
48.4
50.6
1.0
100.0
48.4
50.6
1.0
100.0
48.4
99.0
100.0
Worth noting, Emerson College, which was awarded a lifetime grade of an A on the PPD Pollster Scorecard, was the single most accurate polling outfit in the country during the primary season.
In the U.S. Senate race, a pivotal election in the battle for control of the upper chamber, Republican incumbent Richard Burr holds a 4-point edge over his Democratic opponent Deborah Ross, 45% to 41%, with 5% choosing someone else and 8% undecided.
The Emerson College Polling Society North Carolina poll was conducted from August 27-29, 2016. The sample consisted of 800 likely general election voters with a margin of error of +/- 3.4%. Data was weighted by 2012 election results and regional weights. The state was broken into four regions based on Congressional districts. The East was comprised of districts 1,3,7, and 13; North Central included districts 4 and 6; South Central consisted of districts 2,8, and 9; Greensboro/Charlotte was made up of district 12, and the West encompassed districts 5,10, and 11.
So, you can imagine that I’m not overly enthused about Hillary Clinton’s embrace of class-warfare tax policy to finance an ever-growing burden of government spending.
Here’s a story that’s giving me heartburn. The Washington Examinerreports that Hillary is “going where the money is.”
Hillary Clinton promised Tuesday that she would pay for her ambitious White House agenda by hitting up the wealthy. “I’ll tell you how we’re going to pay for it,” she said Tuesday in Pennsylvania, referring specifically to her economic agenda. “We’re going where the money is. We are going after the super wealthy, we are going after corporations, we are going after Wall Street so they pay their fair share.”
So what does it mean for various groups to “pay their fair share”?
But that’s not what Hillary means. She wants voters to adopt and us-vs-them mentality, so she demonizes successful people and implies that their wealth is somehow illegitimate.
In part, she is perpetuating the traditional leftist myth that the economy is a fixed pie and that the rest of us have less because someone like Bill Gates has more.
But I also think she wants to imply that upper-income people somehow don’t deserve their money. Maybe they are a bunch of Paris Hilton types with trust funds, living indolent lives while the rest of us have to work.
That’s never been a compelling argument to me. If Paris Hilton’s family earned money honestly (and already paid tax on the money when it was first earned), it’s their right to give it to their children without all sorts of punitive extra layers of taxation.
But this stereotype isn’t even accurate in the first place. James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute shows that people like the late Steve Jobs are more the norm. In other words, rich people are rich because they are innovating and creating, building new businesses and new products that make the rest of our lives better.
Since innovation, risk-taking, investment, entrepreneurship, and hard work are the keys to long-run growth, it certainly seems that the tax code shouldn’t be punishing those things.
Yet that’s what Hillary has in mind when she demagogues about the “super wealthy.”
Interestingly, another New York Democrat seems to understand the negative relationship between taxes and good outcomes, at least on a selective basis. Larry O’Connor explains.
Without the teeniest sense of irony, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has proposed that America’s Olympic medal winners should not have to pay taxes on the cash prizes they are awarded with their medals. Schumer’s reasoning behind lifting the tax? Because “hard work” and excellence shouldn’t be punished.
The problem, of course, is that Senator Schumer routinely supports higher taxes.
Indeed, the only tax hike he doesn’t favor, to my knowledge, is the Trump-Clinton plan to hike the capital gains tax on “carried interest.” But Schumer’s only good on that issue because of the money he gets from the private-equity folks on Wall Street, not because he actually understands or favors good tax policy.
But Schumer’s make-believe support for lower taxes on Olympic medal winners is good news, if for no other reasons than it gave Mark Perry an excuse to produceanother one of his famous Venn diagrams.
Let’s close by contemplating Hillary’s statement that she wants to go “where the money is.”
That statement rang a bell. Someone else said almost the exact same thing.
And then I remembered. It was an infamous bank robber named Willie Sutton, who is widely reported to have said he robbed banks because “That’s where the money is.”
Needless to say, I don’t want to imply that there’s some moral equivalence between Hillary Clinton and Willie Sutton. Perish the thought!
After all, I’m sure Willie Sutton never expected gratitude from his victims.
P.S. In my role as the Don Quixote of fiscal policy, I have helpfully shared evidence with Mrs. Clinton about the consequences of higher tax burdens in bothEurope and various American states.
Why would a country with the world’s largest Jewish population, outside of Israel, admit large numbers of immigrants from countries where hatred of Jews has been taught to their people from earliest childhood?
This question is ultimately not about Muslims and Jews. It is about discussing immigrants in the abstract, rather than in terms of the specific concrete realities of particular immigrants in particular circumstances at a particular time and place — that time being now and that place being the United States of America.
A hundred years ago, when immigration from other parts of the world was a major issue, there was a government study which provided voluminous statistics on how immigrants from various countries performed in American society — economically, educationally and in terms of social pathology.
Today, it would not be considered right — that is, not politically correct — even to ask such questions about immigrants, especially if immigrants were broken down by country of origin. Despite some among the intelligentsia who like to refer to the past as “earlier and simpler times,” it is we today who are so simple-minded as to discuss immigrants as if they were just abstract people in an abstract world, to whom we could apply our abstract principles.
Yet there are immigrants from some countries who swell the welfare rolls, while immigrants from some other countries almost never go on welfare. Immigrants from some countries are highly educated — more so than most Americans — while immigrants from other countries have little education and few skills.
So much of what is said about immigration today simply lumps very different immigrants together, and even lumps very different circumstances together. Insipid statements about how “we are all descendants of immigrants” blithely ignore the fact that millions of Americans are descendants of legal immigrants who were not allowed into the country until they met medical and other criteria.
Today people flood across the border with whatever diseases they bring, and are dispersed to various communities around the country by the federal government, without even a notice to local authorities as to what history of diseases, or crimes, these immigrants bring — much less what risks of terrorism they bring.
Such high-handedness is neither incidental nor accidental. It is part of a much wider pattern, extending beyond immigration, and extending beyond the United States to many European countries, where narrow elites imagine themselves so superior to the rest of us that it is both their right and their duty to impose their notions on us.
Many of these elites seem to see themselves as citizens of the world, and to regard national borders as unfortunate relics of the benighted past.
If people within those borders are so much better off than other people outside those borders, then to such elites it is only a matter of fairness or “social justice” to let the outsiders in, to get a share of our windfall gain.
However lovely this vision may seem, and however much it flatters those who embrace it, admitting immigrants is an irreversible decision, regardless of how it turns out.
Any problems, or even disasters, that particular immigrants may cause are unlikely to be caused within the gated communities or other upscale enclaves where the elites live.
However much educational standards or behavioral standards may suffer in schools when immigrant children from a poorer background flood in, that is not likely to affect the elite’s children in pricey private schools.
European countries have gone much further down this road, and their elites have been even more immune to hard facts about the disasters they have created. Rapes of women on the streets of Germany by male refugees from the Middle East have been ignored or downplayed by authorities.
Recurrent terrorist attacks across Europe from the same source have not caused any reconsideration of “hate speech” laws that can be invoked against anyone who warns of the dangers.
American elites who say that we should learn from other countries almost always mean that we should imitate what they have done. But what we need to learn most of all is not to repeat their mistakes.
Mylan to Launch First Generic of EpiPen at 50 Percent Discount
So the seller of the EpiPen is now going to offer a generic alternative costing 50 percent less. The Mylan drug company has been drowning in public outrage for jacking up the list price of an EpiPen two-pack from about $100 to as high as $600 over nine years. The EpiPen is a lifesaving injection device for people suffering a severe allergy.
Story not over, as much as Mylan would like it to be. Story not over by a long shot.
Why did the Mylan execs raise the price of an old treatment sixfold? Because they could get away with it.
Why could they get away with it? Because the United States Congress let them. The U.S. is the only advanced country that doesn’t routinely negotiate drug prices with the makers. (The Department of Veterans Affairs and Medicaid are exceptions.)
Mylan surely didn’t want this scandal leading to serious efforts in Washington to start regulating what drug companies may charge the American people. Better to stage this semi-retreat and change the subject.
Note that this is not an ordinary take-it-or-leave-it consumer product. For people severely allergic to spider bites, bee stings, nuts, eggs or shellfish, it’s take it or possibly die.
Our elected representatives have tied the American consumer down, belly up, to accept corporate abuse that other countries would not tolerate. Mylan showed its “thanks” by incorporating in the Netherlands to avoid U.S. taxes.
When the EpiPen price backlash hit full force in the U.S., the Canadian government simply reassured its citizens: Don’t worry. An EpiPen still costs only about $100 in Canada.
Mylan’s initial response to public anger was a program offering to help some patients with out-of-pocket costs. These patient-assistance deals are basically PR stunts, charitable gestures for which Americans are supposed to feel grateful.
Mylan CEO Heather Bresch tried to distinguish herself from the soulless drug industry vampires who infamously bled desperate patients, taxpayers and buyers of insurance. That would be Martin Shkreli, who hiked the price of a 62-year-old HIV drug by 5,455 percent, and J. Michael Pearson, whose Valeant Pharmaceuticals raised the price of a lifesaving heart drug 525 percent in one day. Bresch is not different, only smoother.
In an interview on CNBC about the EpiPen price hike, Bresch said, “Look, no one’s more frustrated than me.”
“But you’re the one raising the price,” the interviewer gasped. Perhaps she isn’t smoother.
Defenders of the status quo argue that competition is the ticket to lower drug prices, not a more assertive government. They blame the federal Food and Drug Administration bureaucracy for hindering would-be rivals. Some criticize the excessive monopoly rights the U.S. government grants drug companies.
They are not entirely wrong. More competition would help. But the fact remains that an EpiPen two-pack costs only about $85 in France, a fraction of the new $300 wholesale list price “deal” Mylan is now offering Americans — and it’s not because drugmakers are tripping over one another to offer competing products.
The real villain of the piece is a Congress that lets these companies prey on Americans. Congress actually forbade the government to negotiate drug prices on behalf of Medicare patients. (For the record, Bresch is the daughter of Sen. Joe Manchin.)
The injuries to American drug consumers continue piling up. Over the past 15 years, the average price of new cancer drugs in the United States has risen five- to tenfold. Cancer drugs now cost about twice as much in this country as they do in Canada.
Americans should be asking candidates for Congress whether they support government intervention against obscene drug prices. Until that happens, this disgraceful story will not be over.
A shopper organizes his cash before paying for merchandise at a Best Buy Co. store in Peoria, Illinois, U.S., on Friday, Nov. 23, 2012. (Photo: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg/Getty)
Consumer spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, increased slightly by 0.3% last month, matching the median forecast. Personal income increased 0.4%, which also matched economists’ estimates.
The report also follows another from the Commerce Department on Friday showing the U.S. economy stalled, with second-quarter (2Q) gross domestic product (GDP) coming in at a disappointing and weak 1.1%. The second reading on 2Q GDP declined from the preliminary reading of 1.2% initially reported. The economy grew at a similarly weak 0.8% pace in the first quarter (1Q), and just 1.0% in the first half of 2016.
Further, the latest Survey of Consumers, a closely-watched gauge of consumer sentiment from the University of Michigan, clocked in at 89.8 in August, down from the preliminary reading of 90.4. Economists anticipated a reading of 90.6 for the month.
[brid video=”60907″ player=”2077″ title=”Charles Henderson Civil Rights Leader at Historic LunchCounter SitIn Endorses Trump”]
On February 1, 1960, Charles Henderson and three other African American college students sat down at a “whites only” lunch counter at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina. When the four black men politely asked for service, the request was refused they were asked to leave.
But they remained in their seats until the store closed that night. In the spirit, philosophy and practice of Dr. Martin Luther King, their act of peaceful civil disobedience helped fuel a youth-led movement to challenge racial inequality throughout the South.
On Saturday, during an interview on “CNN Newsroom,” Mr. Henderson endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. Mr. Henderson told CNN’s Jim Sciutto that he was backing Mr. Trump because of his business experience and unique understanding of how to create jobs, which black communities desperately need and have lacked under President Barack Obama.
“Donald Trump is a businessman and America is a business,” Mr. Henderson stated. “In order to run America, in order to be a part of running America, you have to understand the economics of America and that we are free society.”
While the Woolworth lunch-counter sit-in was not the first of the Civil Rights Movement, the Greensboro sit-ins were instrumental and the most well-known. Worth noting, the Woolworth store is now the International Civil Rights Center and Museum. Just one week after the Greensboro sit-ins began, students in other North Carolina towns launched their own protests and the movement quickly spread to other Southern cities, including Richmond, Virginia and Nashville, Tennessee.
On the second day of the Greensboro sit-in, Joseph A. McNeil and Franklin E. McCain are joined by William Smith and Clarence Henderson at the Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. (Courtesy of Greensboro News and Record)
“He knows how to create jobs,” he added. “One of the biggest problems in America right now, especially in black communities, are the lack of jobs. He has proven before that he knows how to create jobs. We are a country, the land of opportunity, not the land of entitlement.”
The endorsement comes as the New York businessman makes a concerted push for the African-American vote, which he says his opponent Hillary Clinton and Democrats have long-taken advantage of. It came as the GOP nominee was visiting Iowa and recognizing the 53rd anniversary of the “March on Washington,” which was led by Dr. King.
“Today we honor the enduring legacy of the great Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and the legacy of all who marched for freedom, justice and opportunity,” Mr. Trump said in a statement. “Their courage, heroism and sacrifice in the face of oppression is an inspiration to us all. Now, today’s leaders must work to ensure that all of our people can live in safety, prosperity, equality and peace.”
Mr. Trump, joined by Dr. Ben Carson, will visit a black church in Detroit this week in the first of many outreach visits on the campaign trail.
“I’ve spoken a lot in recent days about the deplorable conditions in many of our inner cities. As a father, as a builder, as an American, it offends my sense of right and wrong to see anyone living in such conditions,” Mr. Trump said in Iowa. “In Detroit, half of its residents do not work. In Milwaukee, almost 4 in 10 African-American men between the age of 24-54 are not employed.”
“Failed Democratic policies – the policies of Hillary Clinton – have created this high crime and crushing poverty.”
Look how bad it is getting! How much more crime, how many more shootings, will it take for African-Americans and Latinos to vote Trump=SAFE!
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