[brid video=”26144″ player=”2077″ title=”LIVE Stream Donald Trump Rally in Lexington SC (12716)”]
Watch live streaming Donald Trump rally in Lexington, South Carolina on January 27, 2016.
(H/T Right Side Broadcasting)
Watch live streaming Donald Trump rally in
Truly, it’s doesn’t get more unconstitutional than this.
A small town in Massachusetts – Lowell, located about 35 miles from Boston – has apparently decided the best way to keep criminals from shooting and killing innocent citizens is to make residents who want unrestricted carry permits first pen essays explaining just why, and then submit those justifications to the chief of local police to grade. Those who don’t obtain passing grades aren’t given their permits.
Insert “Are you kidding me” expression of disbelief here. In effect, the town of Lowell has exempted itself from the Second Amendment.
Of course, the powers-who-be don’t see it that way. They see it as a necessary precaution, a way of ultimately saving citizens from crime and killers.
Or, as local Police Superintendent William Taylor told City Council members when he approached them with his brainchild notion: “We wanted to make sure we allowed people to exercise their constitutional right to carry a firearm, but do it with a balanced, reasonable approach.”
And Taylor, it seems, is just the guy to determine that this constitutional right to carry in a balanced and reasonable way is being upheld, because that’s who City Council members named as the grader of all these papers.
“Chief Bill Taylor has sole authority when it comes to deciding which gun permit essays make the grade,” Inquisitr reported.
The background of this policy, which also includes a mandate that approved permit carriers attend firearms’ safety and training classes at their own expense – up to $1,100 – is that Lowell has maintained a tight control on guns for decades, denying most all concealed carry permit applicants for the past 30 years or so. So this new gun control provision is actually being billed as a freedom.
Local authorities also say applicants don’t actually have to write the essay, but doing so would certainly strengthen their appeals for permits.
Well, isn’t that special. So Lowell citizens have not only been suffering under Second Amendment dings for decades, but now, in some sort of Twilight-Zone-meets-George-Orwell doublespeak scenario, they’re going to be voluntarily forced to beg local officials in writing for their already-guaranteed constitutional rights – and in so doing, subtly acknowledge that this a move toward freedom?
As Jim Wallace with the Gun Owners Action League of Massachusetts said in a statement: “It is absurd. … It’s like having a college professor say, ‘I’m going to read your essay and if I don’t like it, I’m going to give it back to you.’”
Who made the police the gate guard for the Second Amendment? As one freedom-loving patriot said of the topsy-turvy aspect of the situation: “Did the chief of police write an essay to the City [Council] explaining why he and his police force should have the right to carry?”
Indeed. But those who laugh at that question are part of the problem.
In America, where rights come from God, not government, that simple question goes to the nuts and bolts of the tragedy of Lowell’s gun policies. Citizens, in far too many communities and in way too many cases of constitutional issues, have become conditioned to believe those in the public arena, the tax-paid servants, are above the very laws they are trusted to enforce – that they themselves are the sources and lone arbiters of rights and authorities.
The Second Amendment, based on the view of human rights the Founding Fathers all shared, is clear: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Nowhere does it speak of essays and grades and chief of police powers to determine who may carry firearms, and who may not.
[mybooktable book=”police-state-usa-how-orwells-nightmare-is-becoming-our-reality” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]
The new essay-writing requirement to get a
Donald Trump, right, during a campaign stop in Burlington, Vt., on Thursday, Jan. 7, 2016. (Photo: AP) Sen. Ted Cruz, right, speaks in Johnston, Iowa, December 4, 2015. (Photo: Reuters/Brian C. Frank)
Cars run on fuel. Politicians run on votes, and they’ll do almost anything to get them. That includes supporting mandates that force us to use ethanol, a fuel made from corn that Iowa farmers grow.
They support ethanol because Iowa is the first state to vote on presidential candidates. Candidates want to look strong at the start of the race, so every four years they become enthusiastic ethanol supporters. Even those who claim they believe in markets pander to Iowa’s special interests.
Donald Trump, who doesn’t seem to have a consistent political philosophy aside from bashing critics and foreigners, now has joined the ethanol-praising club. In fact, Trump says regulators should force gas stations to increase the amount of ethanol they use. It’s a convenient way to attack his Iowa rival, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex., who courageously says the mandate should be phased out.
Cruz is right. Legally mandating that a certain percentage of fuel used be ethanol is a bad idea for several reasons:
First, mandating ethanol means more land must be plowed to grow corn for fuel. The Department of Energy estimates that if corn ethanol replaced gasoline completely, we’d need to turn all cropland to corn — plus 20 percent more land on top of that.
Second, requiring ethanol fuel raises the price of corn — bad news for consumers who must pay more for food.
Third, although ethanol’s supporters claim burning corn is “better for the environment,” that’s not true. Once you add the emissions from growing, shipping and processing the corn, ethanol creates more pollution than oil. Environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Clean Air Task Force now oppose its use.
Finally, because corn is grown in America, promoters said ethanol would make us more energy independent. Even if the “independence” argument were valid, fracking accomplishes much more. (Anyway, it isn’t a valid argument. Trade with Mexico and Canada is just fine. We don’t need total independence.)
Since Trump is a businessman, I assume he realizes that ethanol is an expensive boondoggle that wouldn’t survive in a competitive market. But in Iowa Trump says, “Ethanol is terrific.”
Dr. Ben Carson didn’t go that far but according to the Washington Examiner said that it would be wrong to end the subsidies. “People have made plans based on those kind of things,” he says. “You can’t just pull out the rug out from under people.”
It sounds like most politicians want to get rid of subsidies in principle, but never right now — certainly not in the middle of their campaigns. Sen. Marco Rubio says he’d support ending the mandate — after another seven years.
At the Iowa Agriculture Summit, Chris Christie sounded annoyed that President Obama hasn’t been more supportive of ethanol subsidies, saying, “Certainly anybody who’s a competent president would get that done!”
Bernie Sanders, I-Ver., criticized subsidies in the past, but on Iowa public radio he sounded as if he loves the boondoggle: “We have to be supportive of that effort — and take every step that we could, and in every way we can, including the growth of the biofuels industry.”
Of course, big-government Democrats always want to subsidize more. Hillary Clinton says ethanol “holds the promise for not only more fuel for automobiles but for aviation … and for military aircraft; we could be fueling so much air traffic with biofuels. We have just begun to explore what we can do.”
Sure. Explore away! That’s what market competition does. Entrepreneurs constantly explore options in search of profit. But that’s very different from government forcing taxpayers to fund one particular fuel.
Only Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ken.) have consistently said that the market, not politicians, should choose fuels. Unfortunately, that principled stance hasn’t brought them much support. Presidential-race betting at ElectionBettingOdds.com has Cruz dropping and Paul tied for last.
Energy expert Jerry Taylor is right to say that running for office in Iowa not only means you must praise Christianity; it means being “willing to sacrifice children to the corn god.”
Cars run on fuel. Politicians run on
Actor Abe Vigoda smiles as he attends the Friars Club Roast of Betty White in New York May 16, 2012. (Photo: Reuters)
Actor Abe Vigoda, who is known for his role in “The Godfather” and as detective Phil Fish in the 1970s TV series “Barney Miller,” died Tuesday at 94.
According to his daughter, Carol Vigoda Fuchs, he died Tuesday morning in his sleep. He had been staying at Fuchs’ home in Woodland Park, New Jersey. She said the cause of death was old age.
“This man was never sick,” Fuchs said.
Actor Abe Vigoda, who is known for
US national debt piles up next to the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., where no one has the political courage to rise to the challenge of staving off the coming crisis.
The Congressional Budget Office has just released its new 10-year fiscal forecast and the numbers are getting worse. Most people are focusing on the fact that the deficit is rising rather than falling and that annual government borrowing will again climb above $1 trillion by 2022.
This isn’t good news, of course, but it’s a mistake to focus on the symptom of red ink rather than the underlying disease of excessive spending.
So here’s the really bad news in the report.
In other words, the progress that was achieved between 2010 and 2014 is evaporating and America is on the path to becoming a Greek-style welfare state.
There are two obvious reasons for this dismal trend.
Here’s a chart that shows what’s been happening. It shows the rolling average of annual changes in revenue and spending. With responsible fiscal policy, the red line (spending) will be close to 0% and have no upward trend.
Unfortunately, federal outlays have been moving in the wrong direction since 2014 and government spending is now growing twice as fast as inflation.
By the way, don’t forget that we’re at the very start of the looming tsunami of retiring baby boomers, so this should be the time when spending restraint is relatively easy.
Yet if you’ll allow me to mix metaphors, bipartisan profligacy is digging a deeper hole as we get closer to an entitlement cliff.
Now let’s shift to the good news. It’s actually relatively simple to solve the problem.
Here’s a chart that shows projected revenues (blue line) and various measures of how quickly the budget can be balanced with a modest bit of spending restraint.
Regular readers know I don’t fixate on fiscal balance. I’m far more concerned with reducing the burden of government spending relative to the private sector.
That being said, when you impose some restraint on the spending side of the fiscal ledger, you automatically solve the symptom of deficits.
With a spending freeze, the budget is balanced in 2020. If spending is allowed to climb 1 percent annually, the deficit disappears in 2022. And if outlays climb 2 percent annually (about the rate of inflation), the budget is balanced in 2024. And if you want to give the politicians a 10-year window, you get to balance by 2026 if spending is “only” allowed to grow 2.5 percent per year.
In other words, the solution is a spending cap.
Here’s my video on spending restraint and fiscal balance from 2010. The numbers obviously have changed, but the message is still the same because good policy never goes out of style.
[brid video=”26080″ player=”2077″ title=”It’ Simple to Balance The Budget Without Higher Taxes”]
Needless to say, a simple solution isn’t the same as an easy solution. The various interest groups in Washington will team up with bureaucrats, politicians, and lobbyists to resist spending restraint.
P.S. A final snow update. Since my neighbors were kind enough to help me finish my driveway yesterday, I was inspired to “pay it forward” by helping to clear an older couple’s driveway this morning (not that I was much help since another neighbor brought a tractor with a plow).
It’s amazing that these good things happen without some government authority directing things!
[mybooktable book=”global-tax-revolution-the-rise-of-tax-competition-and-the-battle-to-defend-it” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]
The Congressional Budget Office has just released
Jerry Falwell, Jr., right, presents Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. (Photo: Getty)
Jerry Falwell Jr., the head of Liberty University and son of the late evangelical icon, endorsed Donald Trump on Tuesday, giving the front-runner a real blessing ahead of the Iowa caucus.
In a statement announcing his endorsement, Falwell called Trump “a successful executive and entrepreneur, a wonderful father and a man who I believe can lead our country to greatness again.”
Trump quickly tweeted his appreciation for Falwell’s support.
“Great honor- Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr. of Liberty University, one of the most respected religious leaders in our nation, has just endorsed me!” he said.
Great honor- Rev. Jerry Falwell Jr. of Liberty University, one of the most respected religious leaders in our nation, has just endorsed me!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 26, 2016
People’s Pundit Daily did hear last week that this endorsement was coming, but could not confirm it. Falwell did cut a radio advertisement for Trump last week, but stopped short of endorsing, comparing Trump to his father by pointing out their disdain for political correctness.
Nevertheless, whether it came then or now, the endorsement is a blow to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Mr. Trump’s chief rival in Iowa. Cruz, who desperately needs to consolidate evangelical support in Iowa (and beyond), announced his bid for the nomination at Liberty University. While he briefly led in the Hawkeye state, Cruz currently trails Trump on the PPD average of aggregate polls by 5.7%.
Jerry Falwell Jr., the head of Liberty
Home sales and home prices data and reports. (Photo: REUTERS)
The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index covering 20 metropolitan areas increased 5.8% in November on a year-over-year basis compared with 5.5% in the month of October. That was just above the 5.7 percent estimate from a Reuters poll of economists and marked the largest such increase since July 2014.
“Home prices extended their gains, supported by continued low mortgage rates, tight supplies and an improving labor market,” says David M. Blitzer, Managing Director and Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “Sales of existing homes were up 6.5% in 2015 vs. 2014, and the number of homes on the market averaged about a 4.8 months’ supply during the year; both numbers suggest a seller’s market. The consumer portion of the economy is doing well; like housing, automobile sales were quite strong last year.”
The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index
Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index. (Photo: Reuters)
The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index rose more than expected in January to 98.1 from a revised December reading of 96.3. Economists polled by Reuters had expected a more modest rise to 96.5.
“Consumer confidence improved slightly in January, following an increase in December,” said Lynn Franco, Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board. “Consumers’ assessment of current conditions held steady, while their expectations for the next six months improved moderately. For now, consumers do not foresee the volatility in financial markets as having a negative impact on the economy.”
Consumers’ appraisal of current conditions was relatively flat in January. The percentage saying business conditions are “good” was virtually unchanged at 27.2 percent, while those saying business conditions are “bad” declined slightly from 18.9 percent to 18.5 percent. Consumers’ assessment of the labor market was modestly more positive. The proportion claiming jobs are “plentiful” decreased from 24.2 percent to 22.8 percent, while those claiming jobs are “hard to get” declined to 23.4 percent from 24.5 percent.
The monthly Consumer Confidence Survey is conducted for The Conference Board by Nielsen, a leading global provider of information and analytics around what consumers buy and watch. The cutoff date for the preliminary results was January 14.
The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index rose
The latest tempest in a teapot controversy is over a lack of black nominees for this year’s Academy Awards in Hollywood.
The assumption seems to be that different groups would be proportionally represented if somebody were not doing somebody else wrong. That assumption carries great weight in far more important things than Academy Awards and in places more important than Hollywood, including the Supreme Court of the United States.
In an earlier era, the groupthink assumption was that groups that did not succeed as often, or as well, were genetically inferior. But is our current groupthink assumption based on any more hard evidence?
Having spent decades researching racial and ethnic groups around the world, I have never yet found a country in which all groups — or even most groups — are even roughly equally represented in most endeavors.
Nor have I been the only one with that experience. The great French historian Fernand Braudel said, “In no society have all regions and all parts of the population developed equally.” A study of military forces around the world failed to find a single one in which in which the ethnic makeup of the military was the same as that of the society.
My own favorite example of unrepresentativeness, however, is right at home. Having watched National Football League games for more than 50 years, I have seen hundreds of black players score touchdowns, but I have never seen one black player kick the extra point.
What are we to conclude from this? Do those who believe in genetics think that blacks are just genetically incapable of kicking a football?
Since there have long been black colleges with football teams, have they had to import white players to do the opening kickoff, so that the games could get underway? Or to kick the extra point after touchdowns? Apparently not.
How about racist discrimination? Are racists so inconsistent that they are somehow able to stifle their racism when it comes to letting black players score touchdowns, but absolutely draw the line when it comes to letting blacks kick the extra point?
With all the heated and bitter debates between those who believe in heredity and those who believe in environment as explanations of group differences in outcomes, both seem to ignore the possibility that some groups just do not want to do the same things as other groups.
I doubt whether any of the guys who grew up in my old neighborhood in Harlem ever went on to become ballet dancers. Nor is it likely that this had anything to do with either genetics or racism. The very thought of becoming a ballet dancer never crossed my mind and it probably never occurred to the other guys either.
If people don’t want to do something, chances are they are not going to do it, even if they have all the innate potential in the world, and even if all the doors of opportunity are wide open.
People come from different cultures. They know different things and want different things.
When I arrived in Harlem from the South as a kid, I had no idea what a public library was. An older boy who tried to explain it to me barely succeeded in getting me to get a library card and borrow a couple of books. But it changed the course of my life. Not every kid from a similar background had someone to change the course of his life.
When Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe arrived in New York in the 19th century, they were even poorer than blacks from the South who arrived in Harlem in the 20th century. But the Jews crowded into public libraries because books had been part of their culture for centuries. New York’s elite public high schools and outstanding free colleges were practically tailor-made for them.
Groups differ from other groups all over the world, for all sorts of reasons, ranging from geography to demography, history and culture. There is not much we can do about geography and nothing we can do about the past. But we can stop looking for villains every time we see differences.
That is not likely to happen, however, when grievances can be cashed in for goodies — and polarize a whole society in the process.
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The latest tempest in a teapot controversy
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz speaks in Boone, Iowa, on Jan. 4, 2016. (Photo: Andrew Harnik, AP)
I believe Donald Trump’s meteoric and sustained rise is a direct result of Obama’s largely successful campaign to fundamentally transform America and the establishment Republicans’ unwillingness to fight back.
Grassroots conservatives have wanted someone to stand up to Obama and stand up for our nation — and they are sick and tired of Beltway politicians and pundits alike patronizingly assuring them that nothing extraordinary is occurring and to calm down. “We’ll take care of it after we’re re-elected.” Sure.
Yes, some of these establishment, moderate or, if you prefer, unexcitable types have finally come around, belatedly acknowledging Obama’s intentions but failing to admit they were slow on the uptake, much less that they’re sorry for branding the rest of us who caught on years before they did as mean-spirited, extremist or kooky.
It’s important to review this history, not for “I told you so” purposes, but because it’s relevant to our current hotly contested GOP campaign and how we choose to go forward. It’s crucial in assessing and judging Ted Cruz’s actions in valiantly trying to stand up for the people against Obama’s tyranny.
The establishment has always been squeamish about standing up to liberalism, forever cautioning us not to sound too much like the conservatives we are for fear we will sound mean and alienate independents, centrists and other squishes we need to win national elections. Never mind that the only time we’ve resoundingly won these elections — presidential and congressional — is when we’ve run decidedly conservative candidates or pushed strongly conservative themes. With our moderates we have mostly lost.
The establishment’s allergy to fighting reached its apex with the advent of Barack Obama. Presumably because of his race, his initial popularity or his projected image as a uniter, their fear of resisting Democrats grew into full-blown paranoia. This was most noticeable in the budget battles the GOP had with Obama.
They told us not to allow the government to shut down, because the people would blame Republicans — the party perceived to favor smaller government — and we’d lose the next election. Taking their argument to its logical conclusion, Obama could have taken an infinitely unreasonable position without being blamed for the shutdown, and that is absurd.
Even after we won the next elections our guys were no more emboldened. They continued to move the goal posts to the next election after that. And so it went. Many of those elected on promises to stop or try harder to stop this nonsense were co-opted by the establishment or pressured into acquiescence.
Ted Cruz, along with a few others, rejected the conventional GOP wisdom and refused to take their orders to stand down. The establishment uniformly pans his “doomed-to-fail” efforts and says he was only showboating in furtherance of his political ambitions. But what if they’d stood united behind him? What if they’d expressed similar confidence in conservative ideas and joined with him both in resisting Obama’s lawless despotism and in taking their case directly to the American people, instead of dooming his efforts by telegraphing their surrender in advance?
These same people blister Obama for such feckless negotiating tactics and preemptive surrender with respect to Iran, but when dealing with Obama they fold like the crease in his pants.
The establishment has always justified their position by claiming that we didn’t have the votes to override Obama’s vetoes or overcome Democratic filibusters, or that we would be blamed for shutting down the government. Conservatives have argued otherwise — that we might have won some of these battles if we’d stood up for our ideas, and if not, we’d certainly have been in a better position to win the next election having tried and stood for something. That’s not futility; that’s not “Don Quixote.”
From one perspective we can’t prove who was right, because Congress didn’t often stand up to Obama and our idea was never tested. But from another perspective we conservatives are vindicated.
That the establishment didn’t sufficiently oppose Obama, reserving most of its angst for conservatives instead of the president, directly led to Donald Trump, who would not have resonated otherwise. The establishment’s habitual weakness gave us Trump, which means their arrogant and unyielding calculations about the next election were wrong. This is the big next election they never anticipated because they underestimated the degree to which they were disappointing and infuriating the base and frustrating their will.
I believe if the establishment had backed Ted Cruz we’d have seen different results, though I can’t conclusively prove that. But I am pretty sure I don’t need to prove the obvious reality that Trump arose because they wouldn’t join Cruz and their constituents in the fight.
I appeal to the rest of you to review recent history in this light and to reconsider the wisdom of Ted Cruz’s approach, even though it was rejected by the majority of other Republican politicians, whose very party is on the ropes because of their conceit, arrogance and tone-deafness.
Cruz was right, and grassroots conservatives were right. We should have stood up to Obama then and didn’t, so Trump was born and is flourishing. With Ted Cruz we know what we’re getting and we know it’s the reverse of Obama’s infernal effort to fundamentally transform America. Say what you want about Ted Cruz, but about this there is little doubt.
The establishment is now taking a second look at Obama, albeit without much humility. I’m not naive enough to think they’ll take a second look at Ted Cruz, but how about you?
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Ted Cruz, along with a few others,
