The Conference Board released the Consumer Confidence Index on Tuesday that increased more than expected in March to 96.2 from a revised 94.0 in February. The monthly Consumer Confidence Survey, which is conducted for The Conference Board by Nielsen, reflects the preliminary result ending March 17.
Economists expected a reading of 94.
“Consumer confidence increased in March, after declining in February,” said Lynn Franco, Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. “Consumers’ assessment of current conditions posted a moderate decline, while expectations regarding the short-term turned more favorable as last month’s turmoil in the financial markets appears to have abated. On balance, consumers do not foresee the economy gaining any significant momentum in the near-term, nor do they see it worsening.”
The Present Situation Index declined moderately from 115.0 to 113.5, while the Expectations Index increased from 79.9 to 84.7 in March. The number of respondents saying business conditions were “good” fell from 26.5% to 24.9%, while those saying business conditions are “bad” fell from 19.0% to 18.8%. Consumer views of the labor market, however, were mixed.
Respondents claiming jobs are “plentiful” increased from 22.8% to 25.4%, while those claiming jobs are “hard to get” rose to 26.6%, up from 23.6%.
Home sales and home prices data and reports. (Photo: REUTERS)
The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, covering 20 major U.S. metro areas was unchanged in January on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis. Still, the index of all 9 U.S. census divisions recorded a slightly higher year-over-year gain with a 5.4% annual increase in January 2016.
The expectation was for an increase of 0.1%. From the same period a year prior, prices saw a 5.7% increase, slightly below expectations for a 5.8% rise.
“Home prices continue to climb at more than twice the rate of inflation,” says David M. Blitzer, Managing Director and Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “The low inventory of homes for sale — currently about a five month supply – means that would-be sellers seeking to trade-up are having a hard time finding a new, larger home.”
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks on the USS Iowa in San Pedro, Los Angeles, California, United States September 15, 2015. LUCY NICHOLSON / Reuters
In the wake of the Islamic terror attack in Brussels, Belgium, more voters now say national security is a top issue and it is clearly benefitting Donald J. Trump. A new Morning Consult survey finds 24% of registered voters say security issues are their top concern as they chose a candidate for the Republican nomination, up 7 points from a week ago.
Mr. Trump’s spike in support, up 4 points from 45% to 49% since the prior survey conducted from March 18 to March 21, comes ironically among Republican women. Despite their general dislike of Mr. Trump, as the mainstream media have repeatedly focused on, a plurality (41%) now say security is now their biggest concern and trust the New York businessman the most to keep them safe.
Trump has jumped 6 points since tracking from March 16 to March 18, when he was just 3 points (43%) above his average 40% in Morning Consult tracking. To be sure, he can thank “national security moms” for the new high and would be wise to steer clear of wife-related controversy if he hopes to keep them.
Source: Morning Consult Polling Data
Republican voters who live in the Northeast also saw a pronounced increase in voter concern over security issues, up to 28%. Fifty-nine percent of security voters say they plan to vote for Donald Trump, while just 47 percent who pick the economy as their top issue favor the New York billionaire.
“Trump consolidated his lead over his GOP presidential primary opponents, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, in our national survey,” said Reid Wilson of Morning Consult. However, as Mr. Wilson noted, following prior terror attacks the front-runner has also made gains that were “fleeting.” Still, voters have consistently rated The Donald as the candidate they trust most to deal with security and the economy.
Donald J. Trump now leads on the PPD average of national Republican primary polls by 16.5%, averaging 45% support. With Trump poised to crack 50% ahead of the Wisconsin Republican primary next Tuesday, the anti-frontrunner forces in the party are hoping to block him from reaching 1,237 delegates in The Badger State.
Gov. Scott Walker, who took on Trump and lost before a single vote was cast, has a formidable GOTV operation in his home state and plans to put it to work for Sen. Cruz after his endorsement Tuesday.
Meanwhile, on the Democratic side Hillary Clinton is winning 53% of primary voters who say national security is their top issue; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) takes just 29% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who called security a top concern. Clinton maintains a double-digit lead over Sanders in the latest Morning Consult national poll, 50% to 39%.
Hillary Rodham Clinton leads Bernie Sanders on the PPD average of national Democratic primary polls by 10.2%, averaging roughly 51.9% support.
At a State Dinner hosted by Argentine President Mauricio Macri, President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama took to the dance floor with professional dancers to do the tango. It came just after Islamic terrorists attacked Brussels, Belgium. (Photo: AP)
Conservatives and other Obama critics are entitled to a big “I told you so,” after Obama’s stunning admission that he doesn’t believe there’s that much difference between communism and capitalism.
Actually, it’s not that stunning to people paying attention. Many of us warned about Obama’s Marxist sympathies before he was first elected president, and we’ve repeatedly pointed it out during his presidency. Obama was raised and mentored by communists and spent many years engaged in community organizing (radical leftist activism). He established himself as the most liberal member of the Senate. Yet our warnings were met with cries of extremism, irrationality and, of course, racism.
I wonder what these scolds would say now.
After playing his fiddle in Cuba and paying homage to the romanticized Marxist Castro regime while Belgium was burning, Obama spoke to a group of young people in Argentina. He told them, essentially, that there isn’t much difference between capitalism and socialism and that they “should be practical.” He said: “You don’t have to worry about whether it neatly fits into socialist theory or capitalist theory. You should just decide what works.”
He praised President Raul Castro in Cuba for his country’s universal health care and quality education. Please don’t tell me you find that hard to believe, either.
Such extreme leftists as Obama are bound to ignore history and the mountains of evidence that render a verdict against socialism as a destroyer of prosperity and an enslaver and slayer of mankind. Their worldview compels them to advocate economic and political control over the masses for the ends they seek, and they shut themselves off from all information indicating that to exercise such control over markets prevents the very results they profess to seek.
Robert Bartley, late Wall Street Journal editor, said, “In general, ‘the market’ is smarter than the smartest of its individual participants.” This was a modern restatement of Adam Smith’s theories concerning the invisible hand of the market.
In “The Wealth of Nations,” Smith wrote that an individual who “intends only his own gain” is “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” He added: “By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.”
The great Milton Friedman explained: “Smith’s key insight was that both parties to an exchange can benefit and that, so long as cooperation is strictly voluntary, no exchange will take place unless both parties do benefit. No external force, no coercion, no violation of freedom is necessary to produce cooperation among individuals all of whom can benefit.”
Smith, Friedman and Bartley agreed that free market competition benefits individuals and the society as a whole and that there is no way a command economy, even managed by the most brilliant and beneficent of human beings, can possibly bring about comparable results.
Faith in Marxism, communism and socialism is grounded in human pride and promoted by people who believe they can defy the forces of human nature and the way the world works. Despite their hubris, it is impossible for a group of economic planners, no matter how gifted, to assimilate and utilize the infinite data necessary to make an economy run efficiently. In a free market, prices, profits and losses work in ways planners can’t.
Thomas Sowell, in “Basic Economics,” tells us: “Prices are not just ways of transferring money. Their primary role is to provide financial incentives to affect behavior in the use of resources and their resulting products. Prices not only guide consumers, they guide producers as well. … Producers cannot possibly know what millions of different consumers want.” Sowell adds that losses are equally important to profits for economic efficiency because they “tell producers what to stop doing — what to stop producing, where to stop putting resources, what to stop investing in. Losses force the producers to stop producing what consumers don’t want.”
Sowell notes that in allocating resources, command economies stifle the work of free market prices because in a command economy, prices are set not by supply and demand but by central planners. In other words, no matter how noble their goals, the planners lack the omniscience of market forces.
People with a modicum of common sense and basic fairness must acknowledge that among the reasons the United States has been uniquely prosperous is its free market system. They must also concede that socialism results in widespread poverty, misery and death. It has been estimated that in the 20th century, communist regimes in China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, North Korea, Eastern Europe and elsewhere killed nearly 100 million people.
Yet our president is gallivanting about the globe telling young people and anyone else who’ll listen that there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between communism and capitalism.
This kind of pernicious thinking is what is leading to the impoverishment and destruction of the United States, and it must be defeated, which is why in November, we must elect a candidate who clearly understands the relationship among limited government, our liberties and prosperity. The one candidate who believes that our unalienable rights come from God and that they are preserved by the scheme of limited government enshrined in the U.S. Constitution is Sen. Ted Cruz.
PHOENIX, AZ – MARCH 18: Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, speaks during a campaign rally, Friday, March 18, 2016, in Phoenix. (Photo: AP/Rick Scuteri/The Associated Press)
Belgians planning to “march against fear” Sunday were told to stay home out of fear for more violence. Americans in Europe, meanwhile, are being advised to “exercise vigilance.” What about Americans in America?
Over here, there’s a bizarre split screen of an intelligent response to a serious terrorist threat and a major political party descending into unbridled stupidity. Would either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz please get a grip and say something grown-up like “I refuse to discuss my wife or yours”?
One could try to compartmentalize the 60-vehicle pileup wreck on the Republican side as an oddity that will pass once a Democrat is elected the next president. The problem is that the spectacle has real-world consequences for the United States and its interests. The more absurd our politicians look the less powerful we seem.
But there’s the other, nobler half of the screen. Americans could swell with pride at the interview in a Belgian hospital of Mason Wells, the grievously wounded 19-year-old from Utah. Head covered in bandages, the Mormon missionary calmly described his painful experience and then extended sympathy to fellow sufferers. Wells expressed hope that they “feel the love that others have for them and how much we feel for them.”
As for the U.S. government response to the massacre, it largely rang with the sound of competence. When Rep. Michael McCaul, head of the House Committee on Homeland Security, was asked about the failings of European security, he answered diplomatically, “Europe is in a pre-9/11 posture.”
McCaul could have lit up Twitter with some lively condemnations of Old Europe. He could have said that many of these countries are reaping the whirlwind of their laziness and passivity toward a growing jihadist threat. But he didn’t, and that was a good thing. Time to move forward.
This country is definitely post-9/11, which is why much of our law enforcement has worked out intelligent responses to horrific events elsewhere. The New York Police Department leads these efforts with a dozen detectives doing surveillance work in other countries.
Whenever a terrorist attack happens elsewhere, the NYPD springs into action. John Miller, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, explained:
In the first hours, the department tries to ascertain whether an attack was European- or Asian-based or otherwise local or part of a global set of actions. And it tries to make sure there’s not a connection with something going on in New York.
As part of the operation, officers are immediately posted at vulnerable locations. “We launched this last one at 4 o’clock in the morning,” Miller said, “and by the rush hour, we had the entire city covered at key nodes.”
The department also sends teams of investigators to the sites of foreign attacks, be they in Paris, Sydney or Mumbai. And they try to dissect the nature of each assault.
Was the attack just “inspired” by terrorists’ leveraging of social media, as occurred in San Bernardino, California? Or was it “enabled” through direct contact with assailants on U.S. soil — people told where to strike and when?
Finally, sophisticated law enforcement is burdened with undoing the damage caused by bigmouths on the campaign trail. For instance, Cruz made a demand to “patrol and secure” Muslim communities in this country. Problem is, some of the best intelligence comes from these same communities.
“Patrol and secure,” Miller complained, “was a subtext for occupy and intimidate.” In the wake of this verbal damage, Miller added, the NYPD is trying to reassure law-abiding local Muslims that law enforcement is working with, not against, them.
So on one side of the Great American Jumbotron is political humiliation. On the other, government readiness. Over there, the screen is entirely grim.
If there is one thing that is bipartisan in Washington, it is brazen hypocrisy. Currently there is much indignation being expressed by Democrats because the Republican-controlled Senate refuses to hold confirmation hearings on President Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
The Democrats complain, and the media echo their complaint, that it is the Senate’s duty to provide “advice and consent” on the President’s appointment of various federal officials. Therefore, according to this claim, the Senate is neglecting its Constitutional duty by refusing even to hold hearings to determine whether the nominee is qualified, and then vote accordingly.
First of all, the “advice and consent” provision of the Constitution is a restriction on the President’s power, not an imposition of a duty on the Senate. It says nothing about the Senate’s having a duty to hold hearings, or vote, on any Presidential nominee, whether for the Supreme Court or for any other federal institution. The power to consent is the power to refuse to consent, and for many years no hearings were held, whether the Senate consented or did not consent.
Nor have Democrats hesitated, when they controlled the Senate, to refuse to hold hearings or to vote when a lame-duck President nominated someone for some position requiring Senate confirmation during a Presidential election year.
When the shoe was on the other foot, the Republicans made the same arguments as the Democrats are making today, and the Democrats made the same arguments as the Republicans are now making.
The obvious reason, in both cases, is that the party controlling the Senate wants to save the appointment for their own candidate for the Presidency to make after winning the upcoming election. The rest is political hypocrisy on both sides.
None of this is new. It was already well-known 40 years ago, when President Gerald Ford nominated me to become one of the commissioners of the Federal Trade Commission during the 1976 Presidential election year.
After months passed without any hearings being held, I went to see the chief legislative aide of the committee that was responsible for confirming or denying. When the two of us were alone, he said to me, quite frankly, “We’ve gone over your record with a fine tooth comb and can find nothing to object to. So we are simply not going to hold hearings at all.”
“If this were not an election year,” he said, “your nomination would have sailed right through. But we think our man is going to win the Presidential election this year, and we want him to nominate someone in tune with our thinking.”
Various Democrats who are currently denouncing the Republican Senate, including Vice President Biden, have used very similar arguments against letting lame-duck Republican Presidents appoint Supreme Court justices.
Last week, the New York Times ran a front-page “news” story about something Chief Justice John Roberts had said, more than a month ago, prior to the death of Justice Scalia, under the headline “Stern Rebuke For Senators.”
Since Justice Scalia was still alive then, and there was no Supreme Court vacancy to fill at the time, Chief Justice Roberts’ remarks had nothing to do with the current controversy. Nor were these remarks news after such a long lapse of time. But this was part of a pattern of the New York Times’ disguising editorials as front-page news stories.
In short, the political hypocrisy was matched by journalistic hypocrisy. Indeed, there was more than a little judicial hypocrisy in Chief Justice Roberts’ complaint that Senate confirmation hearings on Supreme Court nominees do not confine themselves to the nominees’ judicial qualifications, rather than their conservative or liberal orientations.
If judges confined themselves to acting like judges, instead of legislating from the bench, creating new “rights” out of thin air that are nowhere to be found in the Constitution, maybe Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominees would not be such bitter and ugly ideological battles.
Chief Justice Roberts himself practically repealed the 10th Amendment’s limitation on federal power when he wrote the decision that the government could order us all to buy ObamaCare insurance policies. When judges act like whores, they can hardly expect to be treated like nuns.
Politicians, journalists and judges should all spare us pious hypocrisy.
Home for sale sign (Realtors) and potential exiting and pending home sales contract. (PHOTO: REUTERS)
The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI), which gauges contracts to buy previously-owned homes in the U.S., rose 3.5% to 109.1 in February, topping economists’ expectations. The report, conducted by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and released on Monday reverses the previous month’s deep decline.
The Pending Home Sales Index is now at its highest level in seven months, while January’s reading was revised to show a 3.0% decline, which was slightly worse than initially reported. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast contracts rising 1.2 percent last month.
“After some volatility this winter, the latest data is encouraging in that a decent number of buyers signed contracts last month, lured by mortgage rates dipping to their lowest levels in nearly a year1 and a modest, seasonal uptick in inventory2,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist. “Looking ahead, the key for sustained momentum and more sales than last spring is a continuous stream of new listings quickly replacing what’s being scooped up by a growing pool of buyers. Without adequate supply, sales will likely plateau.”
Pending home contracts become sales after a month or two. Contracts were up 0.7% from a year ago. The PHSI in the Northeast declined 0.2% to 94.0 in February, but is still 12.6% above a year ago. In the Midwest the index shot up 11.4% to 112.6 in February, and is now 2.5% above February 2015.
In the South, contracts increased 2.1% to an index of 122.4 in February but are 0.4% lower than they were in February. The index in the West gained 0.7% in February to 96.4, but is now 6.2% below a year ago.
“Any further moderation in prices would be a welcome development this spring,” adds Yun. “Particularly in the West, where it appears a segment of would-be buyers are becoming wary of high asking prices and stiff competition.”
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)
The Commerce Department on Monday reported consumer spending rose modestly by $11.0 billion, or 0.1% in February, matching the media forecast revealed in a poll by Reuters. Spending, which accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity, will likely not be enough to boost gross domestic product (GDP) beyond the previously estimated, historically weak rate of around 2%.
Meanwhile, personal income rose by $23.7 billion, or 0.2% in February, topping the median estimate for a rise of 0.1%.
Real DPI increased 0.3 percent in February, the same increase as in January. Real PCE increased
0.2 percent in February, in contrast to a decrease of less than 0.1 percent in January.
2015 2016
Oct. Nov. Dec. Jan. Feb.
(Percent change from preceding month)
Personal income, current dollars 0.3 0.3 0.3 0.5 0.2
Disposable personal income:
Current dollars 0.2 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.2
Chained (2009) dollars 0.2 0.1 0.3 0.3 0.3
Personal consumption expenditures:
Current dollars 0.2 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.1
Chained (2009) dollars 0.1 0.3 0.2 0.0 0.2
Donald Trump Isn’t Remaking the Republican Party’s Foreign Policy, He’s Restoring It
PHOENIX, AZ – MARCH 19: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks to guest gathered at Fountain Park during a campaign rally on March 19, 2016 in Fountain Hills, Arizona. (Photo by Ralph Freso/Getty Images)
In an extended 90-minute interview with The New York Times, Donald Trump revealed his America First foreign policy platform and a shortlist of advisors. Mr. Trump called for reforming NATO, leveling the financial and logistical burden, and modernizing the alliance to better enable it to meet the threat of radical Islam.
Despite a bipartisan majority of Americans agreeing with him, The Donald is taking fire–to include friendly fire–from elites and rivals in both parties. For most of the elites on the Right, the interview stands to confirm their fears that the Trump candidacy itself is a threat to their view of the Republican Party and the principles for which it stands.
Many, to include former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, find this ironic because, 1) the Republican Party hasn’t stood on principle, or for anything in years and 2) these critics seem to be in need of a basic history lesson.
Speaker Gingrich, a historian, of course does not and knows full-well Mr. Trump didn’t just make up the phrase “America First.” He took it straight out of the pre-neoconservative Republican Party vocabulary.
An America First Republican candidate in the 20th century–creatively referred to as “America-firsters”–fought against the League of Nations and later the United Nations. They opposed the Marshall Plan proposed by Democratic President Harry Truman, which called for $103 billion (in today’s dollars) to rebuild the economies of 16 European countries between 1948 and 1952. They advocated for post-World War trade deals that ensured U.S. businesses had a competitive advantage.
Yet, even Mr. Trump’s closest rival Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, called the frontrunner’s plan “isolationism.” This candidate is the very man who previously sounded more like Mr. Trump on foreign policy than the defeated neoconservative Florida Sen. Marco Rubio.
Of course, that was then and this is now. And now, Sen. Cruz finds himself in need of the neoconservative wing in order to win the nomination. Thus, he has quickly altered his message in both substance and tone publicly, as well as in private meetings with donors.
“It is striking that the day after Donald Trump called for weakening NATO, withdrawing from NATO, we see Brussels, where NATO is headquartered, the subject of a radical Islamic terror attack,” Sen. Cruz said. “Donald Trump is wrong that America should retreat from Europe, retreat from NATO, hand Putin a major victory and while he’s at it, hand ISIS a major victory.”
While we’ll soon address the substance of that attack, there’s little wonder why the rise of Donald J. Trump has sparked an identity crisis in the Republican Party. They don’t seem to remember where they came from. Considering Sen. Cruz’s connection to the Bushes, one might expect he remembers George W. Bush campaigned on the same NATO reform platform. Hell, he even railed against China on trade, routinely, harkening back to President Ronald Reagan hit Japanese automakers with a tariff to protect U.S. automakers.
They caved.
It wasn’t until the September 11, 2001 terror attacks that President Bush allowed his presidency to become the pinnacle of neocon power, much to the chagrin of his own father. President George H. W. Bush was a globalist who came up in a world dominated by realism, but even he understood the impracticality of neoconservatism. In truth, the intellectually debunked neoconservative school of thought was never a core Republican value.
Neocons are now closer policy-wise to the Democratic Party than any plank of the traditional GOP platform, as well they should be. They, being former liberal Democrats like Irvine Kristol, are a rather recent historical edition to the Republican Party and remain the voting minority, though they claim to be mainstream Republicans.
In fact, despite their disproportionate representation on Fox News, they’re are not at all representative of the base.
Let’s start with the not-so distant history nobody seems to want to discuss.
Irving Kristol was called “godfather” of neoconservatism. (Photo: Wiki)
Mr. Kristol, the father of Bill Kristol from the allegedly “conservative” anti-Trump publication The Weekly Standard, was one of many domestic liberals and globalists that split from the Democratic Party over foreign affairs, a process that began during the 1960s. Neocons believed President Jimmy Carter was too weak on national security and eventually became a small part of just one of the three legs President Reagan defined in his new Republican coalition.
Still, as Pat Buchanan recently pointed out, though he was counseled by them “the Gipper was no neocon” and was not influenced by them in any meaningful policy agenda.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, more of the more influential neocon advisors to President Reagan, wouldn’t even agree with modern neocons and their chosen candidates, the latest (whether you like it or not) being Sen. Cruz.
Jeane Kirkpatrick, former Ambassador to the United Nations under President Ronald Reagan. (Photo: Wiki)
In Dictatorships and Double Standards, an article that appeared in Commentary Magazine, Kirkpatrick outlined what international relations students would later dumb down to the ABCs, or “anything but communism.”
Unlike Bushism, the modern and practical embodiment of neoconservatism, Kirkpatrick drew a distinction between authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, the latter being the Soviet Union. More importantly, she believed and argued that certain countries could not transition to or sustain a governing democracy. Democracy, for these nations, was simply not compatible with their values and history.
That is no longer the case with neoconservatives, who advocate the promotion of democracy around the world through the use of U.S. military force or the primacy of U.S. power. But here’s the real kicker.
They mock the America First approach to foreign policy while advocating for another that is built on a lie, a lie fundamentally antithetical to conservatism. Conservatism, at its core, assumes that government is largely corrupt, incompetent and somewhat indifferent to the needs of civil society. Citizens, not civil servants, bureaucrats or politicians, are better positioned to know what is best for their communities.
So, if American national government is not suited to solve the domestic problems of its own people, why then should we have any confidence in its ability to solve the problems of other nations? Second, neoconservatism presupposes democracies are more peaceful than other forms of government, when in fact, there is absolutely no evidence to support this assumption. The democratic peace theory, which was perhaps best argued by Bruce Russett in Grasping the Democratic Peace, has been thoroughly discredited.
Intellectuals, contrary to popular belief, mock neoconservatism, the democratic peace theory and liberal internationalism, alike. Outside of the halls of the State Department and D.C.-based think tanks, most understand that the actions of nation-states and the balance of power are not governed by imaginary norms, weak global institutions and faux global cooperation.
They are governed by the principles of realism, i.e. the balance of power and pursuit of preservation. If given a chance, which is exactly what NATO does, so-called allied nations will free ride or jump on the bandwagon, and exploit the wealth of stronger states to defer responsibility for their own security. Enemies will bait and bleed, drawing them into prolonged conflicts, which they know the population doesn’t have the stomach to fight.
They know they don’t have the resolve to do what is politically incorrect yet necessary to defeat their enemy. Sound familiar?
Brian Kilmeade, during a phone interview with Mr. Trump on Fox and Friends Monday morning, leveled a similiar criticism heard by Sen. Cruz on the idea of reforming NATO at a time of Russian aggression. Mr. Trump correctly stated NATO is antiquated, designed to confront the threat of the Soviet Union rather than to meet the threat of radical Islam. Mr. Kilmeade, citing Ukraine, offered the same false choice as Sen. Cruz: dismantle NATO or leave it as is.
Mr. Kilmeade, as so many others have done, completely overlooked the obvious. NATO failed to prevent Russian President Vladimir Putin from annexing Crimea and much of eastern Ukraine. NATO failed to prevent the spread of radical Islam and, more recently, the terror attacks in Brussels and Paris that Sen. Cruz cited in his criticism of Mr. Trump.
Too often we in the media focus too much on what is not at all important and conflate the issues that are central to the discussion. NATO, fundamentally, was established and designed to confront nation-states. America now faces traditional nation-state enemies and non-state actors, as well. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is more than 70-percent funded by the U.S., has been woefully inadequate at confronting either threat.
With the U.S. national debt approaching $20 trillion, which sounds more conservative or realistic? Leaving NATO, as is, or reforming it?
The Nordics-to-Nordics comparisons seem especially persuasive because they’re based on apples-to-apples data. What other explanation can there be, after all, if the same people earn more and produce more when government is smaller?
Again, what possible explanation is there other than the degree of economic freedom?
Let’s now look at two other examples of how leftist arguments fall apart when using apples-to-apples comparisons.
A few years ago, there was a major political fight in Wisconsin over the power of unionized government bureaucracies. State policy makers eventually succeeded in curtailing union privileges.
Some commentators groused that this would make Wisconsin more like non-union Texas. And the Lone Star States was not a good role model for educating children, according to Paul Krugman.
This led David Burge (a.k.a., Iowahawk) to take a close look at the numbers to see which state actually did a better job of educating students. And when you compare apples to apples, it turns out that Longhorns rule and Badgers drool.
…white students in Texas perform better than white students in Wisconsin, black students in Texas perform better than black students in Wisconsin, Hispanic students in Texas perform better than Hispanic students in Wisconsin. In 18 separate ethnicity-controlled comparisons, the only one where Wisconsin students performed better than their peers in Texas was 4th grade science for Hispanic students (statistically insignificant), and this was reversed by 8th grade. Further, Texas students exceeded the national average for their ethnic cohort in all 18 comparisons; Wisconsinites were below the national average in 8… Not only did white Texas students outperform white Wisconsin students, the gap between white students and minority students in Texas was much less than the gap between white and minority students in Wisconsin. In other words, students are better off in Texas schools than in Wisconsin schools – especially minority students.
Gee, with all these examples, I wonder if there’s a pattern?
Our second example showing the value of apples-to-apples comparisons deals with gun control.
Writing for PJ Media, Clayton Cramer compares murder rates in adjoining American states and Canadian provinces. he starts by acknowledging that a generic US-v.-Canada comparison might lead people to think gun rights are somehow a factor in more deaths.
…for Canada as a whole, murder rates are still considerably lower than for the United States as a whole. For 2011, Canada had 1.73 homicides per 100,000 people; the United States had 4.8 murders and non-negligent homicides per 100,000 people.
But he then makes comparisons that suggest guns are not a relevant factor.
…look at murder rates for Canadian provinces and compare them to their immediate American state neighbors. When you do that, you discover some very curious differences that show gun availability must be either a very minor factor in determining murder rates, or if it is a major factor, it is overwhelmed by factors that are vastly more important.
Gun ownership is easy and widespread in Idaho, for instance, but murder rates are lower than in many otherwise similar Canadian provinces.
I live in Idaho. In 2011, our murder rate was 2.3 per 100,000 people. We have almost no gun-control laws here. You need a permit to carry concealed in cities, but nearly anyone who may legally own a firearm and is over 21 can get that permit. We are subject to the federal background check on firearms, but otherwise there are no restrictions. Do you want a machine gun? And yes, I mean a realmachine gun, not a semiautomatic AR-15. There is the federal paperwork required, but the state imposes no licensing of its own. I have friends with completely legal full-automatic Thompson submachine guns. Surely with such lax gun-control laws, our murder rate must be much higher than our Canadian counterparts’ rate. But this is not the case: I was surprised to find that not only Nunavut (21.01) and the Northwest Territories (6.87) in Canada had much higher murder rates than Idaho, but even Nova Scotia (2.33), Manitoba (4.24), Saskatchewan (3.59), and Alberta (2.88) had higher murder rates.
The same is true for other states (all with laws that favor gun ownership) that border Canada.
What about Minnesota? It had 1.4 murders per 100,000 in 2011, lower than not only all those prairie provinces, but even lower than Canada as a whole. Montana had 2.8 murders per 100,000, still better than four Canadian provinces and one Canadian territory. When you get to North Dakota, another one of these American states with far less gun control than Canada, the murder rate is 3.5 per 100,000, still lower than Manitoba, Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut. And let me emphasize that Minnesota, Montana, and North Dakota, like Idaho, are all shall-issue concealed-weapon permit states: nearly any adult without a felony conviction or a domestic violence misdemeanor conviction can obtain a concealed weapon permit with little or no effort.
The takeaway from this evidence (as well as other evidence I have shared) is that availability of guns doesn’t cause murders.
Other factors dominate.
P.S. Regarding the gun control data shared above, some leftists might be tempted to somehow argue that American states with cold weather somehow are less prone to violence. That doesn’t make sense since the Canadian provinces presumably are even colder. Moreover, that argument conflicts with this bit of satire comparing murder rates in chilly Chicago and steamy Houston.
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