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Opinion

Yale Commencement

Graduates on campus during a commencement at Yale University in New Haven, Conn., Monday, May 20, 2013. (AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

Even though it’s theoretically possible to design a desirable budget deal that includes a tax increase, I’m a big advocate of the no-tax-hike pledge for the simple reason that – in the real world – support for genuine spending restraint and real entitlement reform evaporates once politicians think higher revenues are an option.

Heck, bumping into the Loch Ness Monster while riding my unicorn is more likely than an acceptable budget deal including tax hikes.

Though I confess that my anti-tax resolve sometimes gets a bit wobbly when I think about unsavory tax breaks such as the ethanol credit, the state and local tax deduction, and the healthcare exclusion. I have to remind myself that while these provisions are very odious, they should be repealed as part of tax reform rather than as part of some deal that gives politicians more money to waste.

Now there’s another example of a tax that is very tempting, and it comes from my home state of Connecticut.

When I was growing up, the Nutmeg State didn’t have an income tax and it was a refuge for overtaxed New Yorkers. But then an income tax was imposed in 1991. And ever since politicians got their hands on this new source of revenue, the burden of spending has skyrocketed and Connecticut has become a fiscal dystopia.

So you would think I’d be reflexively hostile to additional tax hikes by the politicians in Hartford. And I should be, but I’m perversely intrigued by a new levy they’re considering. The Wall Street Journal opines on the proposal.

…most Yale University professors are proud to be progressives. Well, they are now getting the chance to live their convictions as Connecticut Democrats attempt to soak Yale’s rich endowment. Democrats in Hartford have proposed taxing the unspent earnings of university endowments with more than $10 billion in assets. Only Yale’s $25.6 billion endowment—the country’s second largest after Harvard—fits the tax bill. Yale’s tax-exempt investments earned $2.6 billion last year, eight times more than the University of Connecticut’s $384 million endowment. Oh, the inequality! …Hartford is already taxing anything that moves. Last year Democrats raised the top individual tax rate to 6.99% and extended a 20% corporate surtax. The tax hikes precipitated General Electric’s decision in January to move its headquarters to Boston. Between 2010 and 2015, Connecticut lost 105,000 residents to other states. For the last five years, it has recorded zero real GDP growth.

Nobody should be double taxed on income that is saved and invested, so my mind tells me that the right approach is to give all taxpayers the treatment now reserved for places like Yale.

But my heart tells me the opposite because it’s galling that Yale is dominated by statists who presumably want higher taxes on the rest of us, so maybe it’s time they swallow some of their own bitter medicine.

But the way, it’s not just state politicians that are salivating to pillage Yale. It’s now being reported that city politicians want a slice of the action.

The mayor of New Haven is backing a push to revisit an 1834 Connecticut statute affecting taxes for Yale University, saying new guidelines are needed to assess liability for the institution… “Since taxing real estate and other property is the only form of municipal taxation allowed by state law, more modern guidelines as to what’s taxable and what’s tax exempt are essential,” New Haven Mayor Toni Harp said this week in testimony supporting the legislation. …The Ivy League university has strongly objected to proposal.

Gee, I wonder if Yale also “strongly objected” to the various big tax hikes that have savaged the state’s investors, entrepreneurs, and small businesses? Or is their battlefield conversion against tax hikes solely a selfish gesture.

Needless to say, I’m sure it’s the latter, which is why part of me is thinking it would be rough justice if the jackals in state and local government descended on Yale.

That being said, I certainly don’t like the idea of these profligate politicians getting their greedy hands on even more money. So if they do impose taxes on Yale, I hope the university will consider a very thoughtful invitation from the Governor of Florida.

Gov. Rick Scott…issued a statement calling on the Ivy League institution to pick up stakes and move on down to sunny Florida. “We would welcome a world-renowned university like Yale to our state and I can commit that we will not raise taxes on their endowment,” Governor Scott said

Hmmm…. Better weather and no state income tax. Sounds like a good deal to me.

And since Florida doesn’t double tax anybody, Yale’s leftist professors could sleep easier at night since they no longer would be hypocrites who work at a school that enjoys tax-free status on its investments while neighbors are being taxed.
[mybooktable book=”global-tax-revolution-the-rise-of-tax-competition-and-the-battle-to-defend-it” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Yale University professors are now getting the

Opinion

Donald Trump Gives Address On Immigration In Phoenix

PHOENIX, AZ – JULY 11: Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump addresses supporters during a political rally at the Phoenix Convention Center on July 11, 2015 in Phoenix, Arizona. (Photo: Charlie Leight/Getty Images)

It seems strange that so few of my fellow TV binge-watchers have submitted to the fascinating Norwegian political thriller, “Occupied.” Friends, this is eight hours of your life you won’t mind not getting back.

In the story, an idealistic Norwegian prime minister stops his country’s huge oil production in the name of confronting climate change. To get the oil flowing again, the European Union asks Russia to invade and reopen the taps. Russia complies and proceeds to occupy Norway in a humiliating velvet-glove manner.

The United States plays a central role by virtue of its absence. In this near-future tale, America has become energy-independent and left NATO. Once expected to dive headlong into any crisis, especially where the Russians are involved, the U.S. has decided to watch from the sidelines.

Such scenarios are sounding less fantastical as populist American candidates question the long-held assumption that the U.S. military must maintain order everywhere. They’re addressing the growing distress at seeing rich allies warmly applaud or critique our performance while happily not paying.

That the bombastic Donald Trump is condemning this setup does not strip the complaint of all merit. But it does give “responsible” opinion the luxury of bashing Trump’s remark that “NATO is obsolete” without much elaboration.

These days, our allies — spooked by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its advances in eastern Ukraine — are proclaiming the Atlantic alliance anything but obsolete. Norway, a preacher of peace, has rekindled its love for NATO as the Russian military swarms over the Arctic Circle (in real life, not on TV).
Russian warplanes are flying down the Norwegian coast with in-your-face impunity. And Norway, which had been cutting its defense budget, is finally raising it.
Which brings us to one of Trump’s points about NATO — a point all but glossed over by those incensed by the word “obsolete.”

Americans are paying for 75 percent of NATO’s military spending. And only six of the 28 NATO members have met U.S. demands that they devote at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product to defense. We spend 3.6 percent. For the record, the combined GDP of our NATO allies is about equal to ours.

Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. stop buying Saudi oil if that country’s government doesn’t start contributing ground troops to the fight against ISIS was also greeted with derision. “Without us,” Trump said with a trademark threat, “Saudi Arabia wouldn’t exist for very long.”

What he didn’t say was that the Saudis have also refused to take in Syrian refugees. Nor did he note that they are funding the jihadis threatening the West.

And what about the West? Some of our rich European allies have become so passive and so lazy they’ve barely bothered monitoring known terrorists living off their social benefits. (Belgium, by the way, spends 0.9 percent of its GDP on defense.)

On the left, Bernie Sanders treads some of this territory, rightly questioning America’s seeming addiction to military intervention. He does go off course in arguing that we should spend less on the military so we can spend more on social priorities.

The No. 1 job of the federal government is national defense. We spend whatever we have to. We don’t say: “Oh, there’s a budget surplus this year. Let’s have a war.”

But both Trump and Sanders are solid in asking what all this defense spending is doing for us. Are we Americans obliged to both police the globe and pay for the service? We pick up the bills that other prosperous countries are perfectly content to leave on the table. Let’s ask ourselves why.

Because he is the one criticizing it,

Opinion

Hillary_Clinton_Libya_Trip

Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 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. (Photo: Kevin Lamarque – Associated Press)

The FBI investigation of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s failure to protect state secrets contained in her emails has entered its penultimate phase, and it is a dangerous one for her and her aides.

Federal law enforcement sources have let it be known that federal prosecutors and the FBI have completed their examination of raw data in the case. After the FBI acquires raw data — for example, the nature and number of the state secrets in the emails Clinton failed to protect or the regular, consistent, systematic nature of that failure — prosecutors and agents proceed to draw rational inferences from that data.

Then they proceed to corroborate those inferences, looking for other sources to support or even to contradict them. With one exception, all of this work has been done with neutral sources of evidence — documents, email metadata, government records and technical experts.

The exception is Bryan Pagliano, the one member of Clinton’s inner circle who, with either a written promise of non-prosecution or an order of immunity from a federal judge, began to cooperate with federal prosecutors last fall.

Here is what he told the feds.

Pagliano has explained to federal prosecutors the who, what, when, how and why he migrated an open State Department email stream and a secret State Department email stream from government computers to Clinton’s secret server in her home in Chappaqua, New York. He has told them that Clinton paid him $5,000 to commit that likely criminal activity.

He has also told some of the 147 FBI agents assigned to this case that Clinton herself was repeatedly told by her own State Department information technology experts and their colleagues at the National Security Agency that her persistent use of her off-the-shelf BlackBerry was neither an effective nor an acceptable means of receiving, transmitting or safeguarding state secrets. Little did they know how reckless she was with government secrets, as none was apparently then aware of her use of her non-secure secret server in Chappaqua for all of her email uses.

We know that the acquisition and corroboration phase of the investigation has been completed because the prosecutors have begun to ask Clinton’s top aides during her time as secretary of state to come in for interviews. This is a delicate and dangerous phase for the aides, all of whom have engaged counsel to represent them.
Here are the dangers.

The Department of Justice will not reveal to the aides or their lawyers what it knows about the case or what evidence of criminal wrongdoing, if any, it has acquired on each of them. Hence, if they submit to an FBI interview, they will go in “blind.” By going in blind, the aides run the risk of getting caught in a “perjury trap.” Though not under oath, they could be trapped into lying by astute prosecutors and aggressive FBI agents, as it is a crime — the equivalent of perjury — to lie to them or materially mislead them.

For this reason, most white-collar criminal defense lawyers will not permit their clients to be interviewed by any prosecutors or FBI agents. Martha Stewart’s lawyers failed to give her that advice, and she went to prison for one lie told in one conversation with one FBI agent.

After interviewing any Clinton aides who choose to be interviewed, the DOJ personnel on the case will move their investigation into its final phase, in which they will ask Clinton herself whether she wishes to speak with them. The prosecutors will basically tell her lawyers that they have evidence of the criminal behavior of their client and that before they present it to a grand jury, they want to afford Clinton an opportunity blindly to challenge it.

This will be a moment she must devoutly wish would pass from her, as she will face a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t dilemma.

Here is her dilemma.

If she were to talk to federal prosecutors and FBI agents, they would catch her in many inconsistencies, as she has spoken with great deception in public about this case. She has, for example, stated many times that she used the private server so she could have one mobile device for all of her emails. The FBI knows she had four mobile devices. She has also falsely claimed publicly and under oath that she neither sent nor received anything “marked classified.” The FBI knows that nothing is marked classified, and its agents also know that her unprotected secret server transmitted some of the nation’s gravest secrets.

The prosecutors and agents cannot be happy about her public lies and her repeated demeaning attitude about their investigation, and they would have an understandable animus toward her if she were to meet with them.

If she were to decline to be interviewed — a prudent legal but treacherous political decision — the feds would leak her rejection of their invitation, and political turmoil would break loose because one of her most imprudent and often repeated public statements in this case has been that she can’t wait to talk to the FBI. That’s a lie, and the FBI knows it.

Some Democrats who now understand the gravity of the case against Clinton have taken to arguing lately that the feds should establish a different and higher bar — a novel and unknown requirement for a greater quantum of evidence and proof of a heavier degree of harm — before Clinton can be prosecuted. They have suggested this merely because she is the likely Democratic presidential nominee.

The public will never stand for that. America has a bedrock commitment to the rule of law. The rule of law means that no one is beneath the law’s protections or above its requirements. The DOJ is not in the business of rewriting the law, but the Democrats should get in the business of rethinking Clinton’s status as their presumptive presidential nominee, lest a summer catastrophe come their way.

The FBI investigation of former Secretary of

Economy

jobs-fair-line

Unemployment Americans stand on a job fair line. (Photo: Reuters)

The payroll processing firm ADP released the National Employment Report showed 200,000 people were added to private sector payrolls in March. The median estimate from economists called for 194,000 private sector jobs, while February’s payrolls were revised lower by 9,000 to 205,000.

The payroll processing firm ADP released the

Policy

Democratic Presidential Candidates Hold First Debate In Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS, NV – OCTOBER 13: Democratic presidential candidates Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) (L) and Hillary Clinton take part in a presidential debate sponsored by CNN and Facebook at Wynn Las Vegas on October 13, 2015 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Five Democratic presidential candidates are participating in the party’s first presidential debate. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are basically two peas in a pod on economic policy. The only difference is that Sanders wants America to become Greece at a faster rate.

Folks on the left may get excited by whether we travel 60 mph in the wrong direction or 90 mph in the wrong direction, but this seems like a Hobson’s choice for those of us who would prefer that America become more like Hong Kong or Singapore.

Consider the issue of taxation. Clinton and Sanders both agree that they want to raise tax rates on investors, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and other “rich” taxpayers. The only difference is how high and how quickly.

Scott Winship of the Manhattan Institute has a must-read column on this topic in today’s Wall Street Journal.

He starts by speculating whether there’s a rate high enough to satisfy the greed of these two politicians.

Here is a question to ask Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders: What is the best tax rate to impose on high-income earners…? Perhaps they think it is 83%, a rate that economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez hypothesized in 2014… Or maybe it is 90%, which Sen. Sanders told CNBC last May was not out of the question.

He then points out that there were very high tax rates in America between World War II and the Reagan era.

…the U.S. had such rates in the past. From 1936 to 1980, the highest federal income-tax rate was never below 70%, and the top rate exceeded 90% from 1951 to 1963. …The discussion of these rates can easily create the impression that the federal government collected far more money from “the rich” before the Reagan administration.

But rich people aren’t fatted calves awaiting slaughter. They generally are smart enough to figure out ways to avoid high tax rates. And if they’re not smart enough, they know to hire bright lawyers, lobbyists, and accountants who figure out ways to protect their income.

Which is exactly what happened.

The effective tax rates actually paid by the highest income earners during the 1950s and early ’60s were far lower than the highest marginal rates. …In the 1960s, for example, the average rate paid by the top 0.1% of tax filers—the top 10th of the top 1%—ranged from 26.5% to 29.5%, according to a 2007 study by Messrs. Piketty and Saez. Even during the 20 years after the Reagan tax cuts, the top 10th of the top 1% paid an average rate of 23.7% to 33%—essentially the same as in the 1960s.

Gee, sounds like Hauser’s Law – a limit on how much governments can tax – is true, at least for upper-income taxpayers.

And Winship provides some data showing that high tax rate are not the way to collect more revenue.

When average tax rates went up from 27.6% in 1965 to 34% in 1975, revenues went down, from 0.6% to 0.5% of the sum of GDP plus capital gains. When average tax rates declined to 23.7% over the second half of the 1970s and the ’80s, tax revenues from the top went up, reaching 0.8% of GDP plus capital gains in 1990. …in the early 1990s, Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton raised average tax rates at the top, and revenue from the top 0.1% eventually skyrocketed. But the flood of revenue overwhelmingly reflected not the increase in rates but the stock market’s takeoff… Consider: If the higher top tax rates had caused the growth in revenue, then revenues should have fallen when Mr. Clinton cut the top tax rate on capital gains to 20% from 28% in 1997. But revenues from the top 0.1% kept pouring in.

And if you want more detail, check out the IRS data from the 1980s, which shows that rich taxpayers paid a lot more tax when the top rate was dropped from 70 percent to 28 percent.

That was a case of the Laffer Curve on steroids!

No wonder some leftists admitthat spite is their real reason for supporting confiscatory tax rates on the rich, not revenue.

But what if the high tax rates are imposed on a much bigger share of the population, not just the traditional target of the “top 1 percent”?

Well, even hardcore statists who favor punitive tax policy admit that this would be a recipe for economic calamity.

Mr. Piketty said, “I firmly believe, that imposing a 70% or 80% marginal rate on large segments of the population (say, 25% of the population, or even 10%, or even a few percentage points) would lead to an economic disaster.” In other words, sayonara increased tax revenue.

Heck, even the European governments with the biggest welfare states rarely impose tax rates at those levels.

And when they do (as in the case of Hollande’s 75 percent tax rate in France), they suffer severe consequences.

Which is why the real difference in taxation between the United States and Europe isn’t the way the rich are taxed.Government is bigger in Europe because of higher tax burdens on the poor and middle class, specifically onerous value-added taxes and top income tax rates that take effect at relatively modest levels of income.

In other words, the rich already pay the lion’s share of tax in the United States. But not because we have 1970s-style tax rates, but because the tax burden is relatively modest for lower- and middle-income people.

Which brings us to Winship’s final point.

Proposals to soak the rich by raising their tax rates are unlikely to yield the revenue windfall that Mr. Sanders or Mrs. Clinton are dangling before voters. Leveling with the American people means…admitting that they will have to raise the money from tax hikes on middle-class voters.

Though he “buried the lede,” as they say in the journalism business. The most important takeaway from his column is that the redistribution agenda being advanced by Clinton and Sanders necessarily will require big tax hikes on the middle class.

Indeed, the “tax-the-rich” rhetoric they employ is simply a smokescreen to mask their real goals.

Which is why I included that argument in my video that provided five reasons why class-warfare taxation is a bad idea.

Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders are

Politics

Obama Administration Least Transparent in History

Obama-UCC-Statement

President Barack Obama gives a press conference in response to the shootings. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/EPA)

Well, the statistics have been compiled and the results are in, and the conclusion about this current White House and its record of transparency is clear: This administration is about the worst in history.

The numbers don’t just deliver a sigh – they clang a drum. President Obama, after all, did rise into office promising the most open and transparent government ever. On January 21, 2009, his first full day in the White House, he signed two memoranda to the heads of his executive departments and agencies pressing for transparency and for speedy fulfillment of Freedom of Information Act requests. One read, in part: “My administration is committed to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government.”

Very well. But Obama didn’t stop there.

On December 8, 2009, Obama’s Office of Management and Budget director, Peter Orszag, advanced the White House’s stated commitment to transparency with the issuance of the Open Government Directive, expressing how agencies and departments were to “implement the principles of transparency, participation and collaboration.” On April 7, 2010, the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board published the outcome of this Open Government Directive – the Open Government Plan – and requested public comment.

All this flurry of activity – surely it’s paid off for the American transparency-seeking citizen, right?

Hardly. As the Associated Press found, in an analysis of the White House’s record on FOIA fulfillment, published this March: “The Obama administration set a record for the number of times its federal employees told disappointed citizens, journalists and others that despite searching, they couldn’t find a single page requested under [FOIA].”

The numbers bare all. On 129,825 different occasions, or on more than one in six times, the government’s response to citizen and media FOIA requests was a resounding Sorry, Can’t Find It. As AP wrote: “People who asked for records under the law received censored files or nothing in 77 percent of requests, also a record.”

The White House’s response to this subpar performance? Deny and divert.

Obama spokesman Josh Earnest told questioning members of the press he wasn’t aware of the actual FOIA fulfillment figures, but he was certain federal employees were working hard in this regard. He then suggested the media ought to focus on Congress, and the fact members of the House and Senate are exempted from the very FOIA rules they affixed to the executive branch 50 years ago.

“Congress writes the rules and they write themselves out of being accountable,” he said.

That’s a good point – a very valid shot. Why indeed does Congress pass laws it exempts itself from following? But that’s also an argument for a different day. The point Earnest was trying so hard to dodge was that fact Obama pledged an “unprecedented” level of transparency. That was Obama’s word – “unprecedented.” Congress, as a body, hasn’t pledged similarly.

Congress didn’t sign a memorandum directing all its members to provide historical levels of openness and transparency to constituents. But Obama did, and in so doing, invited accountability and feedback.

So, the feedback is in. This administration, this president, is failing on FOIA.

“Where’s the transparency that Obama promised?” The Washington Post blared in a headline, from March, 2011.

“This is the most closed, control freak administration I’ve ever covered,” said David Sanger, a long-time Washington correspondent for the New York Times, to the Committee to Protect Journalists in October, 2013.

“Obama’s Transparency Promise Became a Big, Fat Lie,” scolded the Fiscal Times, in a headline for a March, 2015, story.

And of course, the AP’s headline for its March 2016 piece: “Obama Administration Sets Record for Failure to Provide Documents for FOIA Requests.”

Talk about double-speak. Secrecy with this administration is not an anomaly; it’s a trend. And it’s very likely a trend that will be talked about in the history books for decades. Nixon has Watergate, Clinton has Finger-Wagging Lies – and Obama will have the Transparency That Never Was.

[mybooktable book=”police-state-usa-how-orwells-nightmare-is-becoming-our-reality” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Well, the statistics have been compiled and

Opinion

Hillary-Trump-Johnson

Presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton, left, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, center, and New York businessman Donald J. Trump, right. (Photos: AP)

Trump! Clinton! Is that all there is? No. Fortunately, we have other choices.

A recent poll shows that if the election were held today, 11 percent of Americans would vote for a Libertarian, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson. That’s surprising, since last election Johnson got just 1 percent of the vote.

This year, he’s doing better, probably because Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton hold the highest percentage of “unfavorable” reactions from voters in more than 30 years. I assume the Libertarian total will go higher, since most poll respondents had no opinion about Johnson. They probably don’t know who he is.

They can learn more by watching my Fox Business Network show April 1 and April 8. On those days, I’ll air a debate among the three leading Libertarian candidates. They are Johnson, software businessman John McAfee and The Libertarian Republic founder Austin Petersen. The Party will choose its nominee at the Libertarian convention in Orlando, Florida, over Memorial Day weekend.

What a relief to hear libertarian views after months of hearing Clinton and Trump talk about reducing Americans’ liberties.

Clinton wants to raise taxes, curtail gun rights, force us all to pay for inefficient “green energy,” impose new regulations on just about everything, etc.

Trump wants to increase spying on American citizens, put a giant wall between the U.S. and Mexico, start a ruinous trade war, etc.

Libertarians want limited government, one that doesn’t mess around in your personal life or try to run the economy.

Gary Johnson suggests immigrants to the U.S. just first undergo a background check to make sure they aren’t criminals or terrorists, and then prove they have employment and can pay their taxes. He’d get rid of the complicated quotas the U.S. has on who can come here from which countries and in which professions — a bureaucracy that takes the best and brightest immigrants years to navigate.

Johnson has a track record. The governor cut red tape and the number of government workers in New Mexico. He vetoed 750 bills and used a line-item veto to cut thousands of other items. He lowered New Mexico’s taxes and balanced the budget while remaining popular with voters. Running as a Republican, he was elected to a second term in that Democratic state.

Now, as a Libertarian presidential candidate, he warns “the idea that we can somehow balance the federal budget without cutting military spending and reforming entitlements is fantasy.”

John McAfee calls government “corrupt” and “technologically illiterate.” He says he’ll push a policy of “privacy, freedom and technology.”

McAfee says, “Individuals should be free to make choices for themselves and accept responsibility for the consequences of the choices they make.” He’s had a few brushes with the law himself, including an arrest for driving under the influence, so he knows what it’s like to be in the government’s crosshairs.

Like economist Milton Friedman, he says that we can’t have open borders and a big welfare state — so McAfee says get rid of the welfare state and open the borders, so long as immigrants submit to being documented.

He wants to reduce government’s domestic role to policing disputes and otherwise let people engage in trade, including drug sales. He says our military role overseas should be reduced so that we interfere less in the affairs of other nations.

Austin Petersen, like many libertarians, describes himself as “fiscally conservative and socially tolerant.” He proposes a 1 percent spending reduction in all government programs and a simple flat tax, and he would let young people opt out of Social Security.

Like Johnson and McAfee, he wants to reduce immigration bureaucracy, the drug war and military interventions. Unlike some Libertarians, Petersen says he is pro-life.

You might be surprised to hear that there is division among Libertarians on issues like abortion. This Friday and next you can watch how these candidates handle the differences.

On Facebook and Twitter, viewers told me they want to know how Libertarians would reduce the welfare state, defeat terrorism and help workers cope with changes caused by global trade.

I’m sure the Libertarians’ answers will make more sense than those we hear from Trump and Clinton.

Trump! Clinton! Is that all there is?

Uncategorized

2016 Wisconsin Republican Primary

42 Delegates: Winner-Take-Most (April 5, 2016)

Total delegates include 10 base at-large, 24 in 8 congressional districts, 3 party and 5 bonus. Rules explained below polling table.

[election_2016_polls]

Badger State Polling Data

[wpdatatable id=56]

The latest Wisconsin Republican Primary polls for the winner-take-most contest on Tuesday April 5. There are 42 delegates up for grabs in The Badger State. All 42 of Wisconsin’s delegates to the Republican National Convention are allocated to candidates on the day of the Wisconsin Republican Primary.

  • 24 district delegates are to be allocated to presidential contenders based on the voting results in each of the 8 congressional districts: each congressional district is assigned 3 National Convention delegates and the candidate receiving the greatest number of votes in that district will receive all 3 of that district’s National Convention delegates. [Republican Party of Wisconsin Constitution Article X Section 5.]
  • 18 at-large delegates (10 base at-large delegates plus 5 bonus delegates plus 3 RNC delegates) are to be bound to the presidential contender receiving the greatest number of votes in the primary statewide. [Republican Party of Wisconsin Constitution Article X Section 6.]

[ssbp]

2016 Wisconsin Republican Primary 42 Delegates: Winner-Take-Most (April 5,

US

Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager for Donald Trump, has been charged with misdemeanor battery for allegedly grabbing a female reporter at a scrum. Former Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields claimed Mr. Lewandowski left bruises on her arm following a press conference at Trump’s Mar-A-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida.

The Trump campaign and the candidate himself have maintained Mr. Lewandowski did nothing wrong and Ms. Fields was either mistaken or made up the confrontation. Fields, who claims not to have seen who roughly grabbed her arm, was standing next to numerous other reporters. A Washington Post reporter, who is undoubtedly adversarial to Trump and his candidacy, identified Mr. Lewandowski as the man.

“Mr. Lewandowski was issued a Notice to Appear and given a court date. He was not arrested. Mr. Lewandowski is absolutely innocent of this charge. He will enter a plea of not guilty and looks forward to his day in court. He is completely confident that he will be exonerated,” Trump’s campaign said in a statement.

Multiple videos of the scrum do appear to show Mr. Lewandowski corralling and later reaching for Ms. Fields, but they walk out of the footage before definitive proof can be obtained. However, the police department did release another overhead video showing some contact.

What Trump is referring to is the earlier statement made by Ms. Fields that she was nearly pulled to the ground and barely managed to stay on her feet. Mr. Lewandowski is being represented by Scott Richardson of the law office of Scott N. Richardson, P.A. in West Palm Beach, and Kendall Coffey of Coffey Burlington in Miami. They were not immediately available for comment.

Corey Lewandowski, the campaign manager for Donald

Politics

Scott-Walker-Chamber

FILE – In this Sept. 10, 2015 file photo, Republican presidential candidate, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker speaks in Eureka, Ill. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File)

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker endorsed Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for president Tuesday morning, a week ahead of the Republican primary in The Badger State. The governor made the announcement in an interview on Milwaukee radio station, Newsradio 620 WTMJ.

Sen. Cruz is hoping that Gov. Walker’s endorsement puts him at an advantage ahead of the primary on April 5. While he has a formidable GOTV operation, the Wisconsin governor dropped out of the 2016 presidential race in September of last year, after a mere 71 days of campaigning and before any of the voters even went to the polls. Gov. Walker was one of many now that took on Donald Trump rather than the issues of the race, and lost.

The Republican front-runner responded to the endorsement, which everyone knew was coming as part of the party’s effort to deprive Trump of the needed 1,237 delegates necessary to clinch the nomination, prior to the announcement.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson refused to rule out whether he would campaign with Mr. Trump. Sen. Johnson, who said he believes it is best to remain neutral in the presidential nomination, faces a significant challenge from the once-incumbent he defeated back in 2010–Russ Feingold.

“In many cases I think these endorsements backfire,” Sen. Johnson said. “I pray every night I go to bed for a man with honor, integrity and courage. And that’s it. I’ll support whomever is the Republican nominee.”

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker endorsed Texas Sen.

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