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Opinion

The Islamic full-length swimming suit known as burkini is displayed on mannequins at a department store in France.

The Islamic full-length swimming suit known as burkini is displayed on mannequins at a department store in France. PHOTO: AFP

A few years ago, I took a French friend to a crowded beach in Rhode Island. No sooner had we hit the soft sands than she ripped off the top of her two-piece, baring her breasts to the sun and to curious boys playing nearby.

“You can’t do that,” I said. “This is New England. People don’t go topless here.”

Not entirely true. There are secluded beaches where New Englanders strip to nothing, but I kept it simple.

She gave me her you-Americans-are-so-backward smirk. I chose not to respond, regarding the region’s penchant for modesty as rather nice.

Which leads to the burkini ban in France. The burkini is a bathing suit favored by many Muslim women. It covers the entire body except for the hands, feet and face. Devout Muslims believe that women’s bodies must be largely hidden from public view.

The issue in France is political, not fashion aesthetics. Many worry that their large Muslim population is not assimilating into the predominant culture. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called the burkini an emblem of “a counter-society” based on “the enslavement of women.”

Others in the West may see the body-covering bathing suit as merely eccentric. In the resort town of Blackpool, England, burkinis are sold and rented.

I could turn the tables on my friend and ask, “Why are you French so darned scared of a bathing suit?” But I won’t. Just as American beaches may stop women from going topless — and Iran can demand that women cover their hair — France can say non to the burkini as an offensive demonstration of apartness.

Note France’s long-held aversion to displays of religious affiliation. In 2004, it banished Muslim headscarfs from public schools and also visible crosses, turbans and Jewish kippas.

Arguing, as one Muslim woman did to BBC News, that banning burkinis “just hands ammunition” to Islamic radicals is not going to work. This is an implied threat — that if French officials don’t submit to their demands, violence could follow.

The French don’t take such threats lightly. They remain traumatized by a string of terrorist attacks. Only last month, a Muslim extremist drove a 19-ton cargo truck through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in the seaside city of Nice, killing 86.

If it were up to me, the French would allow more latitude in distinctive dress. But I do shudder at the sight of a burqa in Western settings. A burqa covers a woman’s entire identity in a sheet, with only a cutout or mesh for the eyes.

In Manhattan, I recently saw a young man in jeans, summer shirt hanging out, walking with a woman entirely encased in a burqa. Scarves and other religion-based headgear are one thing, but the burqa, with its proclamation of female inferiority, is simply jarring.

In the opposite direction — but on a less intense level — it irks me to walk into a surf shop and see racks of roomy long shorts for the boys and tiny bikinis for the girls. At swimming areas, you see the male teens romping comfy and covered while their female companions go highly exposed and often self-conscious in their narrow strips of cloth.

In the end, it should not matter whether I or other non-French people approve of the burkini. If the French want to ban it, that’s their business. And regulating acceptable body exposure on their family beaches is Americans’ business.

Local authorities may set their own rules on dress in accordance with local sensibilities. One doesn’t have to like them — and minds can be changed — but that’s their right.

Harrop: Just as American beaches may stop

Opinion

Police in Milwaukee respond to two days of unrest and violence.

Police in Milwaukee respond to two days of unrest and violence.

Amid the rioting in Milwaukee, there is also a clash between two leading lawmen there — Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke and the city of Milwaukee’s Chief of Police Edward Flynn. They have very different opinions about how law enforcement should be carried out.

Chief Edward Flynn expresses the view long prevalent among those who emphasize the social “root causes” of crime, such as income disparities and educational disparities, as well as the larger society’s neglect of black communities.

Chief Flynn puts less emphasis on aggressive police action and more on community outreach and gun control.

Sheriff David Clarke represents an opposite tradition, in which the job of the police is to enforce the law, as forcefully as necessary, not to make excuses for law-breaking or to ease up on enforcing the law, in hopes that this will mollify rioters. Sheriff Clarke would also like to see law-abiding blacks be armed.

Differences of opinion on law enforcement are sharp and unmistakable — and have been for more than 50 years. However, as the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say, “You’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.”

Unfortunately, facts seem to play a remarkably small role in clashes over law enforcement policies. And that too has been true for more than 50 years.

In his memoirs, the Supreme Court’s Chief Justice Earl Warren declared that “all of us must assume a share of the responsibility” for rising crime rates in the 1960s because “for decades we have swept under the rug” the slum conditions that breed crime.

But the hard fact is that the murder rate in the country as a whole was going down during those very decades when social problems in the slums were supposedly being neglected.

Homicide rates among black males went down by 18 percent in the 1940s and by 22 percent in the 1950s. It was in the 1960s, when the ideas of Chief Justice Warren and others triumphed, that this long decline in homicide rates among black males reversed and skyrocketed by 89 percent, wiping out all the progress of the previous 20 years.

The same reversal in the country at large saw murder rates by 1974 more than twice as high as in 1960. This was after the murder rate had been cut in half from where it had been in the 1930s.

Ghetto riots, which erupted in the 1960s, were blamed on poverty and discrimination. But what were the facts?

Poverty and discrimination were worse in the South than in the rest of the country. But ghetto riots were not nearly as common in the South.

The most deadly ghetto riot of the 1960s occurred in Detroit, where 43 people were killed — 33 of whom were black. In Detroit at that time, black median family income was 95 percent of white median family income. The unemployment rate among blacks was 3.4 percent and black home ownership was higher in Detroit than in any other major city.

What was different about Detroit was that politicians put the police under orders that restricted their response to riots — and some rioters said “the fuzz is scared.” It was black victims who paid the highest price for letting rioters run amuck.

By contrast, Chicago’s 1960s mayor Richard Daley came on television to say that he had ordered his police to “shoot to kill” rioters who started fires. There was outrage among the politically correct across the country. But Chicago, with a larger population than Detroit, had no such death rate in riots.

In later years, New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s aggressive police policies in high-crime neighborhoods cut the murder rate down to a fraction of what it had been before.

But, in England, opposite policies prevailed, with what London’s “Daily Telegraph” newspaper referred to as “politically correct policing” that has police acting “more like social workers than upholders of law and order.”

Although England had long been regarded as one of the most law-abiding nations on Earth, riots that swept through London, Manchester and other British cities in 2011 were virtually identical to riots in Ferguson, Baltimore and other American cities. Most of the British rioters were white but what they did was the same, right down to setting fire to police cars.

But do facts matter anymore?

Amid the rioting in Milwaukee, Milwaukee County

Elections

Huma Abedin, left, Hillary Clinton, right. (Photo: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

Huma Abedin, left, Hillary Clinton, right. (Photo: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)

The Clinton campaign is denying top Clinton aide Huma Abedin played a formal role in a radical Muslim journal after a bombshell New York Post report on Sunday. The comments come even though she was listed as an editor on the hate-filled periodical’s masthead for a dozen years.

“My understanding is that her name was simply listed on the masthead in that period,” Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said. “She did not play a role in editing at the publication.”

Mr. Merrill said Abedin was just a figurehead and not actually on staff at the Saudi-based and -funded Journal of Minority Muslim Affairs, which featured radically anti-feminist views and backed strict Islamic laws roundly criticized for oppressing women…

Meanwhile, her brother, who was an associate editor, and a sister, who was also employed as an assistant editor, are listed as staff members, as well. The Abedins have a long and documented history of being radical Muslim sympathizers, including with the Muslim Brotherhood. However, the Clintons have either ignored charges or long denied Huma Abedin, herself, was a sympathizer.

Abedin’s Pakistani mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, remains editor-in-chief.

The recent report is not the only potential toxic story surrounding Abedin that is making headlines this week. New emails show donors sought access to Mrs. Clinton and her aides at the State Department through the charity’s staff, a dual role Ms. Abedin played during the Democratic presidential candidate’s tenure. Emails released Monday as a result of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit connected the Clinton Foundation to the State Department, with one showing a Clinton donor told Ms. Abedin in a message that “it goes without saying” that her outreach on behalf of a client was based on “relationships to the Clinton’s.”

The Clinton campaign is denying top Clinton

Policy

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks in Warren, Michigan. August 11, 2016. (Photo: AP)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks in Warren, Michigan. August 11, 2016. (Photo: AP)

If you get into the weeds of tax policy and had a contest for parts of the internal revenue code that are “boring but important,” depreciation would be at the top of the list. After all, how many people want to learn about America’s Byzantine system that imposes a discriminatory tax penalty on new investment? Yes, it’s a self-destructive policy that imposes a lot of economic damage, but even I’ll admit it’s not a riveting topic (though I tried by using ABBA as an example).

In second place would be a policy called “deferral,” which deals with a part of the law that allows companies to delay an extra layer of tax that the IRS imposes on income that is earned – and already subject to tax – in other countries. It is “boring but important” because it has major implications on the ability of American-domiciled firms to compete for market share overseas.

Here’s a video that explains the issue, though feel free to skip it and continue reading if you already are familiar with how the law works.

The simple way to think of this eye-glazing topic is that “deferral” is a good policy that partially mitigates the impact of a bad policy known as “worldwide taxation.”

Unfortunately, good policy tends to be unpopular in Washington. This is why deferral (and related issues such as inversions, which occur for the simple reason that worldwide taxation creates a huge competitive disadvantage for U.S.-domiciled companies) is playing an unusually large role in the 2016 election and concomitant tax debates.

Consider the tax controversy involving Apple. The CEO does not want to surrender money that belongs to shareholders to the government.

Apple CEO Tim Cook struck back at critics of the iPhone maker’s strategy to avoid paying U.S. taxes, telling The Washington Post in a wide ranging interview that the company would not bring that money back from abroad unless there was a “fair rate.”

Since the discussion is about income that Apple has earned in other nations (and therefore about income that already has been subject to all applicable taxes in other nations), the only “fair rate” from the United States is zero.

That’s because good tax systems are based on “territorial taxation” rather than “worldwide taxation.”

Though a worldwide tax system might not impose that much damage if a nation had a low corporate tax rate.

Unfortunately, that’s not a good description of the U.S. system, which has a very high rate, thus creating a big incentive to hold money overseas to avoid having to pay a very hefty second layer of tax to the IRS on income that already has been subject to tax by foreign governments.

Along with other multinational companies, the tech giant has been subject to criticism over a tax strategy that allows them to shelter profits made abroad from the U.S. corporate tax rate, which at 35 percent is among the highest in the developed world.

“Among”? I don’t know if this is a sign of bias or ignorance on the part of CNBC,but the U.S. unquestionably has the highest corporate tax rate among developed nations.

Indeed, it might even be the highest in the entire world.

Anyhow, Mr. Cook points out that there’s nothing patriotic about needlessly paying extra tax to the IRS, especially when it would mean a very punitive tax rate.

…a few particularly strident critics have lambasted Apple as a tax dodger. …While some proponents of the higher U.S. tax rate say it’s unpatriotic for companies to practice inversions or shelter income, Cook hit back at the suggestion. “It is the current tax law. It’s not a matter of being patriotic or not patriotic,” Cook told The Post in a lengthy sit-down. “It doesn’t go that the more you pay, the more patriotic you are.” …Cook added that “when we bring it back, we will pay 35 percent federal tax and then a weighted average across the states that we’re in, which is about 5 percent, so think of it as 40 percent. We’ve said at 40 percent, we’re not going to bring it back until there’s a fair rate. There’s no debate about it.”

Cook may be right that there’s “no debate” about whether it’s sensible for a company to keep money overseas to guard against bad tax policy.

But there is a debate about whether politicians will make the law worse in a grab for more revenue.

Senator Ron Wyden, for instance, doesn’t understand the issue. He wrote an editorial asserting that Apple is engaging in a “rip-off.”

…the heart of this mess is the big dog of tax rip-offs – tax deferral. This is the rule that encourages American multinational corporations to keep their profits overseas instead of investing them here at home, and it does so by granting them $80 billion a year in tax breaks. This policy…defies common sense. …some of the most profitable companies in the world can put off paying taxes indefinitely while hardworking Americans must pay their taxes every year. …that system creates a perverse incentive to keep corporate profits overseas instead of investing here at home.

I agree with him that the current system creates a perverse incentive to keep money abroad.

But you don’t solve that problem by imposing unconstrained worldwide taxation, which would create a perverse incentive structure that discourages American-domiciled firms from competing for market share in other nations.

Amazingly, Senator Wyden actually claims that making the system more punitive would help make America a better place to do business.

…ending deferral is a necessary step in making sure…the U.S. maintains its position as the best place to do business.

Wow, this rivals some of the crazy things that Barack Obama and Hillary Clintonhave said.

Though I guess we need to give Wyden credit for honesty. He admits that what he really wants is for Washington to have more money to spend.

Ending deferral will also generate money from existing deferred taxes to pay for rebuilding our country’s crumbling infrastructure. …This is a priority that almost all tax reform proposals have called for.

By the way, can you guess which presidential candidate agrees with Senator Wyden and wants to impose full and immediate worldwide taxation?

If you answered Hillary Clinton, you’re right. But if you answered Donald Trump,that also would be a correct answer.

This is a grim example of why I refer to them as the Tweedledee and Tweedledum of statism.

Though to be fair, Trump’s plan at least contains a big reduction in the corporate tax rate, which would substantially reduce the negative impact of a worldwide tax system.

The Wall Street Journal opines on the issue and is especially unimpressed by Hillary Clinton’s irresponsible approach on the issue.

Mrs. Clinton is targeting so-called inversions, where U.S.-based companies move their headquarters by buying an overseas competitor, as well as foreign takeovers of U.S. firms for tax considerations. These migrations are the result of a U.S. corporate-tax code that supplies incentives to migrate… The Democrat would impose what she calls an “exit tax” on businesses that relocate outside the U.S., which is the sort of thing banana republics impose when their economies sour. …Mrs. Clinton wants to build a tax wall to stop Americans from escaping. “If they want to go,” she threatened in Michigan, “they’re going to have to pay to go.”

Ugh, making companies “pay to go” is an unseemly sentiment. Sort of what you might expect from a place like Venezuela where politicians treat private firms as a source of loot for their cronies.

The WSJ correctly points out that the problem is America’s anti-competitive worldwide tax regime, combined with a punitive corporate tax rate.

…the U.S. taxes residents—businesses and individuals—on their world-wide income, not merely the income that they earned in the U.S. …the U.S. taxes companies headquartered in the U.S. far more than companies based in other countries. Thirty-one of the 34 OECD countries have cut corporate taxes since 2000, leaving the U.S. with the highest rate in the industrialized world. The U.S. system of world-wide taxation means that a company that moves from Dublin, Ohio, to Dublin, Ireland, will pay a rate that is less than a third of America’s. A dollar of profit earned on the Emerald Isle by an Irish-based company becomes 87.5 cents after taxes, which it can then invest in Ireland or the U.S. or somewhere else. But if the company stays in Ohio and makes the same buck in Ireland, the after-tax return drops to 65 cents or less if the money is invested in America.

In other words, the problem is obvious and the solution is obvious.

But there are too many Barack Obamas and Elizabeth Warrens in Washington, so it’s more likely that policy will move in the wrong direction.

Hillary Clinton claims to target so-called inversions,

Elections

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, followed by aide Huma Abedin, second from right, walks on the tarmac as she arrives to board Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Tuesday, July 5, 2016. President Barack Obama and Clinton are traveling to Charlotte, N.C. to campaign together. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, followed by aide Huma Abedin, second from right, walks on the tarmac as she arrives to board Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Tuesday, July 5, 2016. President Barack Obama and Clinton are traveling to Charlotte, N.C. to campaign together. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton this week will reserve nearly $80 million in television advertising for the fall campaign season, a senior campaign official told Politico. The campaign decision comes as polls, which have shown the former secretary of state leading nationally and in the battleground states, appear to be tightening leading up to Labor Day.

The total amount includes $3 million for ads airing in the remaining days of August, with roughly $77 million reserved specifically for September and October. The number doesn’t include $15 million reserved for radio advertising in the fall, a large buy in a race that is supposed to over and in states where she is supposed to have a large lead.

The ads target Florida, Iowa, Ohio, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina and Pennsylvania. Interestingly, Nebraska’s Omaha market will also see the campaign’s investment, as the state has been reliably Republican yet awards electoral votes based on districts, one of which she believes she can win. The purchase, which is typically subject to change, aims to lock in lower rates as it is more expensive to reserve the time last-minute.

Despite her two-week long lead in the polls, Mrs. Clinton has already burned $70 million worth of advertising in the aforementioned states as well as Virginia and Colorado.

“Our campaign is going to use every tool in our toolbox from a massive grassroots campaign, state-of-the-art digital outreach and a significant advertising campaign to make sure every voter knows the stakes in this election and the danger Donald Trump represents,” a senior campaign official allegedly told Politico.

While Donald Trump has now begun to advertise in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and reserved the time through August 29, the Republican candidate doesn’t have any spending earmarked for the fall.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton this week

Video

[brid video=”59988″ player=”2077″ title=”RNC Chairman Reince Priebus On ABC’s ‘This Week'”]

(August 21, 2016) — Well, someone is feeling confidence after last week. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said on ABC’s “This Week” that Donald Trump “has been disciplined and mature” and will tie it up by Labor Day.

“I think that he is getting into a groove. I think he likes the new style that he has been out on the campaign trail producing and speaking of,” Chairman Priebus said. “So I think he’s done great.”

“What you’re going to see is these polls will begin to tighten in the next couple of weeks,” he said.

“And by Labor Day or thereafter, I think you’re going to be back to an even race if we continue down this path.”

“And I obviously just saw Kellyanne Conway do, I think, a really fantastic job in pivoting and showing the direction of this campaign that we’re going,” Mr. Priebus added, referring to Mr. Trump’s new campaign manager during her interview earlier on the Sunday show.

“And Donald Trump has been disciplined and mature. And I think he’s going to get this thing back on track. And also tight and ahead as we move through September.”

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said on ABC's

Opinion

April 28, 2012: John McLaughlin arrives at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, File)

April 28, 2012: John McLaughlin arrives at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in Washington. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, File)

Issue one!

To understand John McLaughlin, it was helpful to have been a 13-year-old entering an all-boys Jesuit school in the 1950s.

For when John yelled “Wronnng” at me from his center chair of “The McLaughlin Group,” it hit with the same familiar finality I had heard, many times, from Jesuits at the front of the class at Gonzaga.

In that era, John was himself a Jesuit teacher at Fairfield Prep, where the black cape he wore and his authoritarian aspect had earned him from his students the nickname — Father God.

In 1970, Fr. John heard another calling, and, declaring himself a liberal Republican, challenged Sen. John Pastore in his home state of Rhode Island. An unamused Sen. Pastore obliterated John by two-to-one.

The McLaughlin Group 8:02

On The McLaughlin Group panel, including Pat Buchanan, Eleanor Clift, Mort Zuckerman, and Tom Rogan discuss the latest in U.S. news and world news.

It was right after this election, while I was vacationing in the Bahamas, that, one morning, I encountered Father John in his Bermuda shorts at a hotel newsstand on Paradise Island.

John was soon, at poolside, explaining to me why I, as a Catholic and a beneficiary of eight years of Jesuit education, had a moral obligation, a moral duty, to get him a job as a speechwriter in the Nixon White House.

Over some resistance, we succeeded, and John was soon the oracle of the shop, known to younger speechwriters as, “The Rev.”

When Watergate broke, Nixon’s aide Dick Moore urged John to get out and use his speaking talents to defend the president. John was soon out on the front lawn of the White House preaching to large assemblies of writing press and TV cameras.

Dick Moore told me, “Pat, I think we’ve created a monster.”

But John was a portrait in loyalty to the embattled president.

When transcripts of the Oval Office tapes were released, containing the phrase, “expletive deleted,” hundreds of times, and Dr. Billy Graham was publicly scandalized, John was unfazed.

He stepped out on the White House lawn and immortalized himself by calling Richard Nixon, and I quote, “the greatest moral leader in the last third of this century.” Now that is loyalty.

When President Ford came in, John, despite his resistance, was the first man out of the White House. To raise his profile, he asked me to contact William F. Buckley Jr., and get him on as a guest on “Firing Line.”

I wrote Buckley, and got back a letter that read in its entirety, “Dear Patrick: Intending no disrespect, who is the Rev. John J. McLaughlin, S. J.? Cordially, Bill.”

As it would have crushed John, I did not show him the letter, until he became famous. As he soon did.

John achieved a niche in the pantheon of television journalism when, in 1982, he launched “The McLaughlin Group.” As one of the initial panelists, I was joined by Bob Novak of the perpetual scowl, known to colleagues as “The Prince of Darkness,” Jack Germond and Mort Kondracke.

Soon Eleanor Clift was aboard, and far from being discriminated against as a woman, she was treated every bit as badly as the rest of us.

“The McLaughlin Group” was a media controversy and a sensation from the first of its 34 years. President Reagan was a regular viewer.

It was balanced between left and right. Panelists were told to bring opinions as well as facts. John welcomed disagreement. And rather than confine the issues to the political, he introduced ideological, cultural, social and even moral issues.

John selected the topics and the tape to be used, edited his own copy, and ran the show like a ringmaster at a circus — to which the Group was sometimes compared.

And he introduced new features. Predictions at the end of each show. Annual awards shows. I loved it. It was great, great fun.

Some journalists sniffed in disparagement, but others like Fred Barnes, Clarence Page, Michael Barone, Tony Blankley, Mort Zuckerman and Tom Rogan became regulars.

And John was loyal. When I took a leave of absence to go into the Reagan White House, then requested three more leaves to pursue private endeavors in the 1990s, which did not pan out, John, after leaving me in the penalty box for a while, always brought me back to the beadle’s chair.

At the end, we could see how badly John was failing. But, unlike Maritza, who took wonderful care of him, we did not know how much he was suffering, or the nature of the illness that was taking his life. That he soldiered on in the job he loved for so long is a testament to the courage and character of the man. He persevered.

John and I loved to banter about our favorites poets like T. S. Eliot and recite to each other Latin passages we had learned in school and the Old Church. And in writing this eulogy the words of the poet Catullus, to his brother, came to mind:

Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

And forever, brother, hail and farewell.

This eulogy was delivered Saturday, Aug. 20, in the Basilica at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C.

Pat Buchanan delivered the eulogy for John

Sports

Melina Vastola-USA TODAY Sports,Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports,Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports,Leon Halip/-USA TODAY Sports

Melina Vastola-USA TODAY Sports,Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports,Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports,Leon Halip/-USA TODAY Sports

Alabama leads the AP Top 25 Poll with 10 national titles, followed closely by Notre Dame with 8 and Oklahoma at 7, with Miami and Southern California at 5. For the first time since 1975, Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State are ranked in the Top 15 of the preseason AP Top 25 Poll.

The Associated Press began its college football poll on October 19, 1936 and it is now the longest-running survey of those that award national titles at the end of the season.

The preseason weekly poll was started in 1950 and is comprised of a panel of 61 sports writers and broadcasters nationwide. All participants have an extensive background in covering college football.

Check out the AP Table below and, below that, read about the AP Top 25 Poll methodology. See who voted how and when by routinely visiting PPD or the AP Top 25 Poll page.

1
Alabama (33)
SEC
Record: 14-1
PV Rank

1

Points

1,469
2
Clemson (16)
ACC
Record: 14-1
2
1,443
3
Oklahoma (4)
Big 12
Record: 11-2
5
1,352
4
Florida State (5)
ACC
Record: 10-3
14
1,325
5
LSU (1)
SEC
Record: 9-3
16
1,269
6
Ohio State (1)
Big Ten
Record: 12-1
4
1,224
7
Michigan (1)
Big Ten
Record: 10-3
12
1,147
8
Stanford
Pac-12
Record: 12-2
3
1,029
9
Tennessee
SEC
Record: 9-4
22
1,021
10
Notre Dame
Division I FBS Independents
Record: 10-3
11
1,006
11
Mississippi
SEC
Record: 10-3
10
718
12
Michigan State
Big Ten
Record: 12-2
6
710
13
TCU
Big 12
Record: 11-2
7
707
14
Washington
Pac-12
Record: 7-6
–
651
15
Houston
The American
Record: 13-1
8
644
16
UCLA
Pac-12
Record: 8-5
–
496
17
Iowa
Big Ten
Record: 12-2
9
484
18
Georgia
SEC
Record: 10-3
–
448
19
Louisville
ACC
Record: 8-5
–
447
20
USC
Pac-12
Record: 8-6
–
344
21
Oklahoma State
Big 12
Record: 10-3
20
316
22
North Carolina
ACC
Record: 11-3
15
283
23
Baylor
Big 12
Record: 10-3
13
280
24
Oregon
Pac-12
Record: 9-4
19
218
25
Florida
SEC
Record: 10-4
25
180

Other’s receiving votes: Miami 159, Texas A&M 81, Utah 74, Washington St. 68, Boise St. 49, San Diego St. 46, Wisconsin 42, Auburn 22, Pittsburgh 15, Arkansas 14, Texas 12, Nebraska 11, Navy 8, Northwestern 5, W. Kentucky 4, South Florida 2, Toledo 2.

POLL METHODOLOGY

The AP Top 25 is determined by a simple points system based on how each voter ranks college football’s best teams. A team receives 25 points for each first place vote, 24 for second place and so on through to the 25th team, which receives one point. The rankings are set by listing the teams’ point totals from highest to lowest. The mathematical formula is the same as the one used for the AP Pro 32 rankings and the AP Top 25 rankings for men’s and women’s basketball.

Alabama leads the AP Top 25 Poll

Policy

Hillary Clinton gives an economic policy speech aimed at women and women's rights in Ohio. (Photo: Reuters/Darren Hauck)

Hillary Clinton gives an economic policy speech aimed at women and women’s rights in Ohio. (Photo: Reuters/Darren Hauck)

I’ve been accused of making supposedly inconsistent arguments against Hillary Clinton. Make up your mind, these critics say. Is she corrupt or is she a doctrinaire leftist?

I always respond with the simple observation that she’s both. Not that this should come as a surprise. Proponents of bigger government have long track records of expanding their bank accounts at the same time they’re expanding the burden of the public sector. This is true for radical leftists in places like Venezuela and it’s true for establishment leftists in places like America.

And it’s definitely true for Hillary Clinton. I shared lots of information about Hillary’s corruption yesterday, so let’s spend some time today detailing her statist policy agenda.

Consider her new entitlement scheme for childcare. As the Wall Street Journal opines, it’s even worse than an ordinary handout.

Hillary Clinton is methodically expanding her plans to supervise or subsidize those remaining spheres of human existence unspoiled by government. Mrs. Clinton rolled out her latest proposal…to make child care more affordable for working parents and also to raise the wages of child-care workers. The Democrat didn’t mention how she’d resolve the contradiction between her cost-increasing ideas and her cost-reducing ideas, though you can bet it will be expensive. …Her solution is for the feds to cap the share of a family’s income that goes toward care at 10%, with the rest of the tab covered by various tax benefits, direct cash payments and scholarships.

Her scheme to cap a family’s exposure so they don’t have to pay more than 10 percent may be appealing to some voters, but it is terrible economics.

Although we don’t have details on how the various handouts will work, the net effect surely will be to exacerbate a third-party payer problem that already is leading to childcare costs rising faster than the overall inflation rate.

After all, families won’t care about the cost once it rises above 10 percent of their income since Hillary says that taxpayers will pick up the tab for anything about that level.

There’s more information about government intervention in the editorial.

The auditors at the Government Accountability Office report that there are currently 45 federal programs dedicated to supporting care “from birth through age five,” spread across multiple agencies. The Agriculture Department runs a nursery division, for some reason. …Mrs. Clinton also feels that caregivers are paid “less than the value of their worth,” and she promises to increase their compensation. How? Why, another program of course. She’ll call it the Respect and Increased Salaries for Early Childhood Educators (Raise) Initiative, which she says is modelled after another one of her proposals, the Care Workers Initiative. …If families think day care and health care are “really expensive” now, wait until they have to pay for Mrs. Clinton’s government.

Just as subsidized childcare will be very expensive if Hillary gets elected, the same will be true for higher education.

But in a different way. The current system of subsidies and handouts gives money (in the form of grants and loans) to students, who then give the money to colleges and universities. This is a great deal for the schools, who have taken advantage of the programs by dramatically increasing tuition and fees, while also expanding bureaucratic empires.

Hillary’s plan will expand the subsidies for colleges and universities, but students apparently no longer will serve as the middlemen. Instead, the money will go directly from Uncle Sam to the schools.

Here’s some analysis from the Pope Center on Hillary’s new scheme.

Clinton has come out with a plan to make public colleges and universities free for families with earnings less than $125,000 annually by 2021. …“free” college…would depend on state governments going along with her scheme whereby the federal government would pay them if they cooperate by charging no tuition… Suppose a state decides to adopt Clinton’s free college plan. What would the consequences be? …That would mean at least a modest increase in enrollment, but it would come mainly from the most academically marginal students. The colleges and universities that gained in those enrollments would also find they need to increase remedial programs. …Another adverse result from making college tuition free would be that many students would devote less effort to their courses. …Federal Reserve Bank of New York economist Aysegul Sahin…studied the effort college students put into their work in a 2004 paper“The Incentive Effects of Higher Education Subsidies on Student Effort.” She concluded, “Low-tuition, high-subsidy policies cause an increase in the ratio of less highly-motivated students among the college graduates and that even highly-motivated ones respond to lower tuition by choosing to study less.”

As with much of Hillary’s agenda, we don’t have full details. I strongly suspect that colleges and universities will have a big incentive to jack up tuition and fees to take advantage of the new handout, though I suppose we have to consider the possibility (fantasy?) that the plan will somehow include safeguards to prevent that from happening.

Oh, and don’t forget all the tax hikes she’s proposing to finance bigger government.

The really sad part about all this is that her husband actually wound up being one of the most market-oriented presidents in the post-World War II era. I’ve written on this topic several times (including speculation on whether the credit actually belongs to the post-1994 GOP Congress).

Is it possible that Hillary decides to “triangulate” and move to the center if she gets to the White House?

Yes, but I’m not brimming with optimism.

The Wall Street Journal has some depressing analysis on Bill Clinton vs Hillary Clinton.

…the Obama-era Democratic Party has repudiated the Democratic Party’s Bill-era centrist agenda. They now call themselves progressives, not New Democrats… The Clinton contradiction is that she claims she’ll produce economic results like her husband did with economic policies like Mr. Obama’s.

The editorial looks at Bill Clinton’s sensible record and compares it to what Hillary is proposing.

His wife wants to nearly double the top tax rate on long-term cap gains to 43.4% from 23.8%, in the name of ending “quarterly capitalism.” That’s higher than the 40% rate under Jimmy Carter, and she’d also impose a minimum tax on millionaires and above, details to come. …Mrs. Clinton has repudiated the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership that she had praised as Secretary of State. …She wants to extend Dodd-Frank regulation to nonbanks, and she promises to entrench Mr. Obama’s anticarbon central planning at the EPA and expand ObamaCare with price controls on new medicines. …Mrs. Clinton is proposing to impose many more such work disincentives. She’ll bestow tax credits on everything from child care to elderly care, from college tuition to businesses that share profits with workers. To the extent her new mandates for family leave, the minimum wage, overtime and “equal pay” increase the cost of labor, she’ll drive more Americans out of the workforce. Oh, and…Mrs. Clinton wants to “enhance” Social Security benefits and make Medicare available to pre-retirees.

I’ve already written about her irresponsible approach to Social Security.

And I also opined on the issue in this interview.

[brid video=”59868″ player=”2077″ title=”Dan Mitchell Slams Hillary Clinton’s Plan to Expand Social Security”]

The bottom line is that we’re in a very deep hole and Hillary Clinton, simply for reasons of personal ambition, wants to dig the hole deeper. As I remarked in the interview, she’s akin to a Greek politician agitating for more spending in 2007.

Given all this, is anyone surprised that “French President Francois Hollande endorsed Hillary Clinton”? What’s next, a pro-Hillary campaign commercial featuring Nicolas Maduro? A direct mail piece from the ghost of Che Guevara?

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

CATO economist Daniel Mitchell argues against Hillary

World

A man and a woman mourn next to a body of one the victims of a blast targeting a wedding ceremony in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep, Turkey, August 20, 2016. (Photo: Ihlas News Agency via REUTERS)

A man and a woman mourn next to a body of one the victims of a blast targeting a wedding ceremony in the southern Turkish city of Gaziantep, Turkey, August 20, 2016. (Photo: Ihlas News Agency via REUTERS)

The death toll in a terror attack in the southern city of Gaziantep, Turkey has risen to 50 and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan blamed Islamic State. There has been no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which struck a Turkish wedding, but President Erdoğan marks the last of several to point the finger at ISIS.

“This was a barbaric attack. It appears to be a suicide attack. All terror groups, the PKK, Daesh, the (Gulen movement) are targeting Turkey. But God willing, we will overcome,” Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek told NTV, using the term Daesh, the Arabic name for ISIS.

Turkey, a member of the NATO alliance, has been the victim of a string of attacks by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or the Islamo-leftist group known as PKK. The Kurdish militants, which began fighting for autonomy and independence in southeast Turkey in 1984, is labeled by the government and its allies as a terrorist organization.

Earlier this week, two car bombs targeting police stations killed at least six people and wounded at least 219 others. Last month, the country was nearly torn apart by an attempted coup by a small rogue element within the military trying to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The Turkish military has always seen itself as a protector of the secular constitution, but President Erdoğan claims the coup was plotted and supported by a former ally, the exiled Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen.

But even as the country moves further toward hardline Islamism under the current president, they still have been plagued by Islamic extremism.

Three suspected Islamic State suicide bombers killed 44 people at Istanbul’s main airport in July, marking the deadliest in a string of attacks in Turkey this year. Anadolu Agency, a state-run news agency in Turkey, cited Gaziantep Governor Ali Yerlikaya as saying Saturday’s explosion was a “terror attack.”

The death toll in a terror attack

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