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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in an exclusive CNN interview that Turkey will not apologize for shooting down a Russian fighter jet they claim violated their airspace last week.
“I think if there is a party that needs to apologize, it is not us. Those who violated our airspace are the ones who need to apologize. Our pilots and our armed forces, they simply fulfilled their duties.”
Turkey released audio of what they claim is the transmission warning the Russian pilots that they were in Turkish airspace before shooting them down. However, a senior U.S. defense official told PPD Friday that the Russian fighter jet “did not appear to be” in Turkish airspace when it was shot down, adding that the timing and duration of the transmission indicates they were putting on a show for the international community.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin made good on his promise to impose “significant consequences” for Turkey shooting down the Russian Su-24 fighter jet, hitting the NATO-member nation with billions in new sanctions. The decree signed by Putin sanctions imports from Turkey, the work of Turkish companies in Russia and any Turkish nationals working for Russian companies.
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Dr. Ben Carson, former child’s neurosurgeon and Republican presidential candidate, is in Jordan visiting Syrian refugees whom he says uniformly tell him they want to go home.
“Well, you know, I was very, uh, pleasantly surprised that — to see how welcoming they are,” Carson said on “Face the Nation” Sunday. “I had an opportunity to talk to many of the Syrian refugees and ask them what is your supreme desire?”
“And it was pretty uniform. They want to go back home, obviously.”
Carson went on to praise the effort by the Jordanians, who have been dealing with Syrian refugees for far longer than the more than 3-year civil war currently raging on, albeit on a far greater scale. However, Carson noted that the U.S. can do much more in the effort simply to help Jordan without taking massive numbers of refugees.
“And I said, what kinds of things could a nation like the United States do that would be helpful to you?” Carson reiterated. “And, again, I was a little bit surprised with the answer, because it wasn’t what we’re hearing a lot. We’re hearing that they all want to come here to the United States. And that’s not what they want. They want to go back home.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin, center, with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, left, and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, right, at the re-opening of the Cathedral Mosque in Moscow on Wednesday, September 24, 2015. (Photo: AP)
Russian President Vladimir Putin made good on his promise that there would be “significant consequences” for Turkey shooting down a Russian Su-24 fighter jet last week, hitting the NATO-member nation with billions in new sanctions. The decree signed by Putin sanctions imports from Turkey, the work of Turkish companies in Russia and any Turkish nationals working for Russian companies.
Dmitry Peskov, a Putin spokesman, said on Saturday that there were close to 90,000 Turkish nationals working in Russia. When factoring in family members, Russian officials tout how that figure rises to 200,000.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan warned Putin not to “play with fire” on Friday, though his paper tiger warning fell on deaf ears. On Saturday, he said he was “saddened” by the downing of the jet and, on Sunday, even promised to ensure the dead Russian pilot would be returned to Moscow.
“I would like to meet [Putin] face-to-face in Paris,” Erdoğan said on Friday. “I would like to bring the issue to a reasonable point. We are disturbed that the issue has been escalated.”
It was apparently too late for Erdoğan, who refused to apologize for the downing, as the NATO-member nation claimed it gave repeated warnings.
However, a senior U.S. defense official told PPD Friday that the Russian fighter jet “did not appear to be” in Turkish airspace when it was shot down on Tuesday. U.S. officials confirmed early Tuesday that a Turkish F-16 fighter jet shot down the Russian pilots with an air-to-air missile near the border between Turkey and Syria.
Donald Trump told “Meet the Press” host Chuck Todd on Sunday he was not taking back his comments that American Muslims in New Jersey were cheering after September 11, 2001.
Todd repeatedly grilled Trump for saying last week “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in Jersey City, NJ, celebrated the World Trade Center attack. In fact, Todd spent more than half of the interview questioning and even rejecting Trump’s claim.
“You demand and you’ve demanded of me pinpoint accuracy when I report on things about you, including, for instance, your net worth,” Todd said in his very first question of the interview. “Why shouldn’t we demand the same pinpoint accuracy in the claims that you make?”
Trump didn’t back down, instead pointing to the calls, emails and tweets he has received from supporters backing up his claim.
“I saw it. So many people saw it … So, why would I take it back? I’m not going to take it back.”
As someone who lived in New Jersey during the attack and, unfortunately, lost family on that day, there is no doubt that American Muslims in the region were celebrating the attacks. However, the video footage of “thousands and thousands” in widespread celebration was in the Middle East, including Palestine, Iran and Pakistan. Outward celebration was quickly shot down in Jersey after most communities began to realize the gravity of their own situation in a post-September 11 America.
“Chuck, you have a huge Muslim population over there. And that’s fine. But you have a huge Muslim population. … Why wouldn’t it have taken place?” Trump asked. “I’ve had hundreds of people call in and tweet in on Twitter, saying that they saw it, and I was 100% right.”
The “Meet the Press” host questioned whether Trump should really cite tweets as evidence.
“You wouldn’t make a business deal based on retweets and based on hearsay. You’re running for president of the United States,” Todd said. “Your words matter. Truthfulness matters. Fact-based stuff matters. No?”
Trump fired back, making Todd look like he was coming unhinged, which in reality, he was.
“Take it easy, Chuck. Just play cool,” Trump replied. “This is people in this country that love our country that saw this, by the hundreds they’re calling, and they’re tweeting. And there’s a lot of people.”
Trump added: “I have a very good memory. I saw it somewhere on television many years ago and I never forgot it.”
An unemployed American speaks to a recruiter at a jobs fair. (Photo: Mark Ralston AFP/Getty)
In conversations with statists, I’ve learned that many of them actually believe the economy is a fixed pie. This misconception leads them to think that rich people get rich only by somehow making others poor.
In this simplistic worldview, a bigger slice for one person means less for everyone else. In reality, though, their fixation on the distribution of income leads them to support policies that hinder growth.
To improve their understanding (and hopefully to make my leftist friends more amenable to good policy ideas), I often share two incontestable facts based on very hard data.
But lots of statists are still reluctant to change their minds, even if you get them to admit that it’s possible to make the economic pie bigger.
I suspect in many cases their resistance is because (at least subconsciously) they resent the rich more than they want to help the poor. That’s certainly the conclusion that Margaret Thatcher reached after her years in public life.
So, in hopes of dealing with this mindset, let’s augment the two points listed above.
3. There is considerable income mobility in the United States, which means today’s rich and today’s poor won’t necessarily be tomorrow’s rich and tomorrow’s poor.
Let’s look at some evidence for this assertion.
And we’ll start with businesses. Here’s what Mark Perry of the American Enterprise Institute found when he investigated changes in the Fortune 500.
Comparing the 1955 Fortune 500 companies to the 2015 Fortune 500, there areonly 61 companies that appear in both lists… In other words, only 12.2% of the Fortune 500 companies in 1955 were still on the list 60 years later in 2015… The fact that nearly 9 of every ten Fortune 500 companies in 1955 are gone, merged, or contracted demonstrates that there’s been a lot of market disruption, churning, andSchumpeterian creative destruction… The constant turnover in the Fortune 500 is a positive sign of the dynamism and innovation that characterizes a vibrant consumer-oriented market economy, and that dynamic turnover is speeding up in today’s hyper-competitive global economy.
Here’s the list of the companies that have managed to stay at the top over the past six decades.
Now let’s shift from companies to people.
The most famous ranking of personal wealth is put together by Forbes.
Is this a closed club, with the same people dominating the list year after year?
Well, there’s considerable turnover in the short run, as noted by Professor Don Boudreaux.
…21 of the still-living 100 richest Americans of only five years ago are no longer in that group today. That’s a greater than 20 percent turnover in a mere half-decade.
There’s a lot of turnover – more than 50 percent – in the medium run, as revealed by Mark Sperry.
Of the 400 people in the 2001 Forbes list of the wealthiest Americans, 230 were not in the 1989 list.
And there’s almost wholesale turnover in the long run, as discovered by Will McBride of the Tax Foundation.
Of the original Forbes 400 from the first edition in 1982, only 35 remain on the list. …Of those on the 1987 Forbes 400 list, only 73 remain there in 2013.
In other words, it’s not easy to stay at the top. New entrepreneurs and investors constantly take the place of those who don’t manage to grow their wealth.
So far, we’ve focused on the biggest companies and the richest people.
But what about ordinary people? Is there also churning for the rest of us?
The answer is yes.
Here are some remarkable findings from a New York Timescolumn by Professor Mark Rank of Washington University.
I looked at 44 years of longitudinal data regarding individuals from ages 25 to 60 to see what percentage of the American population would experience these different levels of affluence during their lives. The results were striking. It turns out that 12 percent of the population will find themselves in the top 1 percent of the income distribution for at least one year. What’s more, 39 percent of Americans will spend a year in the top 5 percent of the income distribution, 56 percent will find themselves in the top 10 percent, and a whopping 73 percent will spend a year in the top 20 percent of the income distribution. …This is just as true at the bottom of the income distribution scale, where 54 percent of Americans will experience poverty or near poverty at least once between the ages of 25 and 60…this information casts serious doubt on the notion of a rigid class structure in the United States based upon income.
A thoroughly footnoted study from the National Center for Policy Analysis has more evidence.
…83 percent of adults born into the lowest income bracket exceed their parents’ income as adults. About 40 percent of people in the lowest fifth of income earners in 1986 moved to a higher income bracket by 1996, and roughly half of the people in the lowest income quintile in 1996 moved to a higher income bracket by 2005. …In both the 1970s and 1980s, 8 percent of children born in the bottom fifth of the income distribution rose to the top fifth. About 20 percent of children born in the middle fifth of the income distribution later rose to the top fifth.
And here’s some of Ronald Bailey’s analysis, which I cited last year.
Those worried about rising income inequality also often make the mistake of assuming that each income quintile contains the same households. They don’t. …In 2009, two economists from the Office of Tax Analysis in the U.S. Treasury compared income mobility in two periods, 1987 to 1996 and 1996 to 2005. The results, published in the National Tax Journal, revealed that “over half of taxpayers moved to a different income quintile and that roughly half of taxpayers who began in the bottom income quintile moved up to a higher income group by the end of each period.” …The Treasury researchers updated their analysis of income mobility trends in a May 2013 study for the American Economic Review, finding that about 75 percent of taxpayers between 35 and 40 years of age in the second, middle and fourth income quintiles in 1987 had moved to a different quintile by 2007.
Last but not least, let’s look at some of Scott Winship’s recent work.
…for today’s forty-somethings who grew up in the middle fifth around 1970…19 percent ended up in the top fifth, 23 percent in the middle fifth, and 14 percent in the bottom fifth… Among those raised in the bottom fifth, 43 percent remain there as adults. …30 percent made it to the top three-fifths… Mobility among today’s adults raised in the top fifth displays the mirror image: 40 percent remain at the top, 37 percent fall to the bottom three-fifths.
The bottom line is that there is considerable income mobility in the United States.
To be sure, different people can look at these numbers and decide that there needs to be even more churning.
My view, for what it’s worth, is that the correct distribution of income is whatever naturally results from voluntary exchange in an unfettered market economy.
I’m far more concerned with another economic variable. Indeed, it’s so important that we’ll close by adding to the three points above.
4. For those who genuinely care about the living standards of the less fortunate, the only factor that really matters in the long run is economic growth.
How Many Middle East Migrants and Refugees Proved to Be Radical Islamic Terrorists?
Barack Obama delivers a statement on the attacks in Paris from the press briefing room on Friday Nov. 13, 2015, left, and a Syrian refugee yells at a Hungarian border guard. (Photos: Pete Souza/WH/Reuters)
This past week Senator Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., released a list of recent radical Islamic migrants and refugees who had engaged in terrorist actions against the United States of America. His list was far from complete. I am adding an additional 14 immigrants/refugees, but my list, too, is far from complete.
Please keep in mind that those listed here are not listed for engaging in actions that would only kill one or two Americans. Their goals were much more devastating.
Credit for making this information available belongs to the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
(If you have others you would like to add to this list that were arrested after September 11, 2001, please do contact me with the information. I will credit your contribution and add them to this list.)
2004
Ali Al-Timimi, son of Iraqi immigrants, was born in the Washington-D.C. area. He was arrested in 2004 and convicted in 2005 of soliciting and engaging others to levy war against the United States and attempting to contribute services to the Taliban.
Fawaz Damra, born in the West Bank of Israel, trained in Islamic law (Sharia) while in Jordan. He moved to America in the mid-1980s and became the Iman of the al-Farooq mosque in Brooklyn, New York, where he remained from 1986 to 1990 before moving to Cleveland. In the Buckeye State, from 1991 to 2004, he headed up northeastern Ohio’s largest mosque, the Islamic Center of Greater Cleveland. Fawaz raised funds for the Palestinian Islamic Jihad through the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP), and was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator implicated in the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing. His phone was tapped by the FBI, who overheard him discussing funding suicide bombers‘ families with Sami Al Arian, also listed below. Fawaz was deported in 2007 for lying on his citizenship application.
Sami Al Arian, a Kuwaiti-born immigrant, was arrested for his leadership role in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). He was sentenced on May 1, 2006, to 57 months in prison, which includes 38 months for time served, and agreed to be deported after serving out his prison term. He was deported in the Spring of 2015. Yet, his daughter Laila is listed as a visitor in the White House log.
2007
Adnan Babar Mirza was a Pakistani on a F-1 Student Visa that permitted him to enter the United States for educational purposes on August 15, 2001. The visa expired on December 12, 2005. He pled guilty to 13 counts, many related to terrorism on September 19, 2007.
2009
Mohammed Abdullah Warsame, a naturalized Canadian citizen of Somali descent, pleaded guilty to the material support of a foreign terrorist organization – al Qaeda. He was sentenced on July 8, 2009 to 92 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Unbelievably, he is slated to be released in 2017.
Najibullah Zazi was born in a village in Paktia Province, Afghanistan. His family immigrated to the U.S. in the early 1990s. On February 22, 2010 he pled guilty to: 1) conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction (explosive bombs) against persons or property in the United States, 2) conspiracy to commit murder in a foreign country and providing material support to al-Qaeda. Among several other things, Zazi admitted that he brought TATP [Triacetone Triperoxide] explosives to New York on Sept. 10, 2009, as part of plan to attack the New York subway system.
Adis Medunjanin, 28, was born in Bosnia. His family immigrated to the USA in the early 1990s. He joined al-Qaeda and plotted to commit a suicide terrorist attack, was found guilty of multiple federal terrorism offenses on May 1, 2012. Adis and his accomplices came within days of executing a plot to conduct coordinated suicide bombings in the New York City subway system in September 2009, as directed by senior al-Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.
Zarein Ahmedzay, a.k.a. Omar, originally from Afghanistan, pleaded guilty to taking part in “a deadly plot hatched by al-Qaeda leaders overseas to kill scores of Americans in the New York City subway system in September 2009,” said Attorney General Eric Holder.
2010
Ahmad Wais Afzali, a.k.a. Muhammad, is an iman who was deported from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia on July 6, 2010. He was sentenced to deportation per his plea agreement for aiding Najibullah Zazi by telling him that he was under surveillance by the FBI. His crime was protecting a potential mass murderer.
2011
Hamid Seifi, also known as HANK SEIFI, is an Iranian born United States national who pleaded guilty of conspiracy to illegally export military components for fighter jets and attack helicopters from the United States to Iran on July 1, 2011.
2012
Nima Ali Yusuf, 26, a Somali-born refugee-now-permanent resident of the U.S. pleaded guilty on November 7, 2012, to two counts of providing material support and resources to al-Shabaab, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. She received a sentence of 8 years.
2013
Asia Siddiqui, a 31-year-old native of Saudi Arabia, was arrested in May 2013 for terror-related incidents. According to the New York Daily News, “Siddiqui was arrested in possession of propane gas tanks and instructions on converting them into bombs. And authorities say Valentzas became obsessed with pressure cookers after the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.”
2015
Abdullahi Mohamud Yusuf, a Somalian-American former refugee, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support and resources to the Islamic State (ISIL, ISIS) on February 26, 2015.
Mehrdad Yasrebi, an Iranian-American, pleaded guilty to illegally funneling millions of dollars to Iran in violation of the longtime U.S. trade embargo.
Obama at business roundtable summit, right, proposing more regulations on April 18, 2014. (Photos: AP/PPD)
When people think about government regulation, it’s understandable that they focus on things that impact their everyday lives. Most of us, for instance, are irked by government’s war against modern life. Bureaucratic pinheads in Washington think they have the right to plague us with crummy dishwashers, inferior light bulbs, substandard toilets, and inadequate washing machines.
But what matters more is the way that onerous regulation throws sand in the gears of the economy, slowing growth and undermining job creation. And no matter how you slice the data, there’s no escaping the conclusion that American competitiveness is suffocating because of red tape and regulation from Washington.
Here are some very depressing bits of information I’ve shared in the past.
A World Bank studydetermined thatmoving from heavy regulation to light regulation “can increase a country’s average annual GDP per capita growth by 2.3 percentage points.”
So what’s President Obama’s plan to deal with this regulatory morass?
Well, he wants to make matters worse. I’m not joking. Here are some excerpts from a report in The Hill.
President Obama is moving to complete scores of regulations as he looks to cement key parts of his legacy… The White House quietly released its formal rulemaking schedule late last week, revealing the administration’s latest plans for regulations currently in the works at agencies across the federal government. …Obama has no intentions of slowing down the process during his final year in office. …Critics, however, say the President has already issued far too many burdensome regulations. …the administration has finalized about one rule a day since Obama took office and estimates the compliance costs associated with those rules to total about $700 billion.
What makes this so depressing is that the Mercatus Center has new research showing that the regulatory burden is especially harmful to entrepreneurs and small businesses.
Here are some of the findings from this new study.
…a 10 percent increase in the intensity of regulation as measured by the RegData index leads to a statistically significant 0.5 percent decrease in overall firm births. …regulation deters hiring overall. A 10 percent increase in regulation is associated with a statistically significant 0.9 percent decrease in hiring. …Regulation leads to a statistically significant reduction in hiring and firm births for firms overall and for small firms. …our results suggest that from 1998 to 2011, increased federal regulation reduced the entry of new firms by 1.2 percent and reduced hiring by 2.2 percent. That result implies that returning to the level of regulation in effect in 1998 would lead to the creation of 30 new firms and the hiring of 530 new employees every year for an average industry.
So who benefits from red tape?
Other than bureaucrats and lobbyists, the big winner is big business.
…we find that large incumbents are actually less likely to die when their industry becomes more regulated. That finding suggests that incumbents, in particular, benefit from increasing levels of regulation and provides support for the idea that incumbents might actively seek increasing regulation to deter entry and limit competition (consistent with capture theory).
The good news is that a growing number of people are recognizing the need to deal with excessive regulation.
I don’t think many people would accuse Professor Noah Smith of Stony Brook University of being a libertarian, yet he makes a strong case for regulatory relief in a recent Bloombergcolumn.
Republicans should stop focusing so much on taxes and devote more attention to deregulation. …Although it’s very difficult to measure the amount of regulation across the economy, there are more and more areas that are cause for concern. For example, the scope of occupational licensing, which economists mostly believe is a drag on growth, is startling, and seems to have no good reason behind it. …Another concern is environmental regulation…local development opponents are often able to use costly environmental reviews to block needed infrastructure. A third area is zoning. As the incentives for density have risen, zoning regulation has become an increasing burden on growth.
He lists additional items, such as the approval process at the FDA for new drugs and all the Byzantine red tape required by the Sarbanes-Oxley law, and he also makes the very important point that cost-benefit analysis is necessary since not all regulations are created equal.
So what’s the solution to this mess?
Research from the folks at Mercatus points to some possible solution.
First and foremost, cut the budgets for regulatory agencies. If there’s less money, there will be fewer bureaucrats with fewer resources.
Here’s a very persuasive chart from a Mercatus report showing the correlation between regulatory budgets and the burden of red tape.
By the way, notice how regulatory spending exploded during the Bush years. Yet another bit of data showing that statist Republicans can be even worse for the economy than statist Democrats.
But I’m digressing. Let’s now look at another potential way of reining in the regulatory state.
Another study from Mercatus looks at a policy in Canada that put an aggregate cap on red tape.
Canada recently became the first country in the world to legislate a cap on regulation. The Red Tape Reduction Act, which became law on April 23, 2015, requires the federal government to eliminate at least one regulation for every new one introduced. Remarkably, the legislation received near-unanimous support across the political spectrum: 245 votes in favor of the bill and 1 opposed.
The nationwide legislation was based on an experiment in British Columbia.
When the BC government first introduced the Reform Policy in 2001, two regulatory requirements had to be eliminated for every one introduced. …today the policy calls for eliminating one requirement for every new one introduced. …requiring regulators to…eliminate…regulatory requirements for every new one introduced represented a dramatic change in thinking about regulation in BC: It put the onus on the government to…reduce the total amount of regulation.
And this policy apparently was very successful.
There is no question that BC’s economic performance improved markedly after 2001 in contrast to the “dismal decade” of the 1990s. The province went from being one of the worst performing in the country to being among the best. …economic growth in BC was 1.9 percentage points below the Canadian average between 1994 and 2001 but 1.1 percentage points above the Canadian average between 2002 and 2006. BC’s real GDP growth was lower than Canada’s as a whole in six of the nine years between 1992 and 2000, but BC’s GDP grew faster than Canada’s every year between 2002 and 2008.
…a hard cap on the total amount of regulatory requirements…has forced a discipline that did not previously exist, a discipline that has helped change the culture within government to one where regulators see their job as focusing on the most important rules.
Gee, what a radical idea. Requiring the folks in Washington to set priorities and make tradeoffs!
P.P.S. Since we just reviewed research on how big corporations can benefit by supporting regulations that will disproportionately hurt their small competitors, you probably won’t be surprised to learn that some of those same big companies support tax hikes that will be especially damaging to small businesses.
P.P.P.S. While I suspect America wins the prize for worst regulatory agency and most despicable regulatory practice, Japan almost surely wins the prize for the oddest regulation.
And HUD unquestionably is a cesspool of waste, so it certainly should be shuttered.
But the more I read about the bizarre handouts and subsidies showered on big agribusiness producers by the Department of Agriculture, the more I think there’s a very compelling argument that it should be at top of my list.
Indeed, these giveaways are so disgusting and corrupt that not only should the department be abolished, but the headquarters should be razed and then the ground should be covered by a foot of salt to make sure nothing ever springs back to life.
That’s a bit of hyperbole, I realize, but you’ll hopefully feel the same way after today. That’s because we’re going to look at a few examples of the bad results caused by government intervention.
To get an idea of the Soviet-style nonsense of American agricultural programs, a Reuters report on the peanut programs reveals how subsidies and intervention are bad news for taxpayers and consumers. Here’s the big picture.
A mountain of peanuts is piling up in the U.S. south, threatening to hand American taxpayers a near $2-billion bailout bill over the next three years, and leaving the government with a big chunk of the crop on its books. …experts say it is the unintended consequence of recent changes in farm policies that create incentives for farmers to keep adding to excess supply.
And here’s a description of the perverse and contradictory interventions that have been created in Washington.
First, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is paying farmers most of the difference between the “reference price” of $535 per ton (26.75 cents per lb) and market prices, now below $400 per ton. A Nov. 18 report to Congress estimates such payments this year for peanuts exceed those for corn and soybeans by more than $100 per acre. Secondly, government loan guarantees mean once prices fall below levels used to value their crops as collateral, farmers have an incentive to default on the loans and hand over the peanuts to the USDA rather than sell them to make the payments.
Gee, what a nice scam. Uncle Sam tells these farmers welfare recipients that they can take out loans and then not pay back the money if peanut prices aren’t at some arbitrary level decided by the commissars politicians and bureaucrats in Washington.
In other words, assuming the peanut lobbyists have cleverly worked the system (and unfortunately they have), it’s a license to steal money from the general population by over-producing peanuts. And we’re talking a lot of peanuts.
Through forfeitures, the USDA amassed 145,000 tons of peanuts from last year’s crop, its largest stockpile in at least nine years, according to data compiled by Reuters. …That stockpile is enough to satisfy the average annual consumption of over 20 million Americans – more than the population of Florida – and puts the administration in a bind. …As peanut carryover inventories are forecast to hit a record of 1.4 million tons by end-July 2016 and as loans begin to come due next summer, farmers are expected to fork over more peanuts to the USDA.
Moreover, because the perverse interaction of the various handouts, there’s no solution (other than…gasp!…allowing a free market to operate).
Storing the peanuts in shellers’ and growers’ warehouses comes at a cost. Selling them could depress the market further and in turn would add to the price subsidy bill.
Now let’s shift gears and look at another sleazy and corrupt example of agricultural welfare.
The Des Moines Registeris reporting that corn growers and other beneficiaries of the ethanol program are working to cement their place at the public trough.
Iowa’s billion-dollar ethanol industry is turning up the heat… America’s Renewable Future, a bipartisan political group backed by top Iowa elected officials and people in agriculture and the ethanol industry, is in the midst of a million-dollar ad campaign to exert pressure on candidates ahead of the Iowa caucuses, supporting candidates who back the Renewable Fuel Standard and criticizing those who denounce it.
Ethanol is a particularly evil handout, encompassing regulatory mandates, special tax preferences, trade barriers, and other forms of subsidies. All this is necessary because it makes no economic sense to turn corn into fuel. But with the right amount of goodies from Washington, dumb things suddenly become “profitable.”
And to maintain the flow of undeserved loot, the moochers are applying pressure.
Patty Judge, co-chair of America’s Renewable Future and a former Iowa agriculture secretary, said the group has signed up 45,000 people who have pledged to look closely at how the candidates stand on the Renewable Fuel Standard when they vote in the Iowa caucuses. …Iowa is the nation’s largest ethanol producer, churning out 3.9 billion gallons in 2014.
While the stories about peanuts and ethanol make for grim reading, now it’s time to get really depressed.
That’s because we’re going to take a look at aNew York Timesstory on how Washington is dealing with ag subsidies.
In April, Republicans newly in control of Congress celebrated their agreement on a plan to save $5 trillion — that’s trillion, with a “T” — and balance the budget in a decade. …Yet as the year closes, Congress instead is planning to repeal one of the few spending cuts it has passed into law since approving that budget resolution: $3 billion over a decade from subsidies for crop insurers. …Republican leaders agreed to hold a vote next month to delete the savings after lawmakers from agricultural states complained…the agriculture committees, like most others, had no intention of turning budget-balancing numbers into policy reality by voting for cuts that would anger constituents, contributors and influential interest groups — not the $20 billion that the budget resolution recommended, nor even the $3 billion reduction from crop insurers, a cut that administration officials and Republican leaders tucked into the bipartisan budget deal Congress passed in October.
P.S. You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the disgraced and convicted former House Speaker, Denny Hastert, had his filthy hands in the ethanol business.
P.P.S. And don’t forget that the wasteful food stamp program is part of the Department of Agriculture, largely to create an unholy alliance of rural moochers and urban moochers.
P.P.P.S. Last but not least, the clowns in Washington not only muck up how food is produced, they also can’t resist interfering in how food is consumed.
Suspect confirmed as Robert L. Dear date of birth of 4/16/1958 (Photo: Courtesy of the Colorado Springs Police Department)
The Colorado Springs Police Department confirmed Saturday the Planned Parenthood shooting suspect is 57-year-old Robert L. Dear, though offered no details as to his motive. Dear, of North Carolina, is alleged to have killed 3 people, including a police officer, before he was taken into custody after an hours-long standoff and shootout.
#CSPD confirms the items brought to the scene by suspect have been secured and processed items no longer a threat
“We don’t have any information on this individual’s mentality, or his ideas or ideology,” Lt. Catherine Buckley of the Colorado Springs Police Department said.
Buckley also said Dear had brought “items” with him inside the building and left some outside, but officers have since made sure there were not “any kind of devices” or weapons remaining in the building.
Dear, wearing a long coat and armed with a rifle, gave up after officers inside the building began shouting at him, though he previously had been firing at police who entered the Planned Parenthood facility in Colorado Springs.
The University of Colorado in Colorado Springs police department identified the officer killed as Garrett Swasey, 44, a six-year veteran of the force. Nine other people, including five police officers, were shot and are in stable condition.
UCCS police officer, Garrett Swasey (University of Colorado Colorado Springs)
Swasey, who was married with two young children and was a co-pastor for seven years at Hope Chapel in Colorado Springs, was described by his fellow church members and friends as a courageous man and loving father. Those who knew him best said he was a devout Christian who drew strength and inspiration from his faith, The New York Times reported Saturday.
“Here’s a guy who worked full time as a police officer, and then gave a great amount of time to his local church and didn’t get a dime for it,” co-pastor Scott Dontanville told The Times. “He did it because it was the thing that he felt he needed to do.”
Keeping with his pattern, President Obama jumped on the opportunity to push more restrictive gun control measures, a tactic that all but got him disinvited from a previous mass shooter event in Oregon. However, as of now, there are no details regarding how or when Dear obtained the weapons used in the shooting on Friday.
“If we truly care about this — if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience — then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them,” Obama said.
File: TSA officers check bags at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photos: Amy Zerba/Getty/Newscom/PPD)
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has become infamous over the years for things that it doesn’t allow on planes. Consider these examples of the Keystone Cops in action.
Though, to be fair, other governments are similarly brainless.
I was quite amused by this bit of news from Ireland.
When passing through security at the airport, a Minion fart gun…was seized from a young toddler and taken away. The security officers claimed it was a ‘threat’ and took the toy gun away from the child.
Just in case you think a “fart gun” is too realistic and that a potential terrorist might grab it from the child and use it to take over the plane, here’s a picture to put your mind at ease.
And let’s not forget that airport bureaucrats all over the planet are on guard against criminal toiletries. I’ve had obviously dangerous toothpaste and deodorant confiscated not only in the United States, but also at airports in seemingly sensible places such as Australia and Cayman.
But let’s be fair. The TSA gets a lot of attention for things it doesn’t allow on planes, so perhaps it is time to give the bureaucrats some attention for the things it does allow.
Unfortunately, as reported by Politico, the TSA apparently is better at blocking fake weapons rather than real weapons.
…news that the Transportation Security Administration failed to detect 67 of 70 mock weapons in a secret test shook the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees it, and led to renewed calls for the TSA to clean up its act. …Rep. John Mica, a Florida Republican who used to chair the transportation committee, said the 95 percent failure rate is evidence of a sweeping conceptual failure. …“They’re spending billions of dollars on a huge screening bureaucracy,” he added. …the TSA also cannot publicly point to many significant attacks thwarted at airport gates, leading experts to insist that its protocols should be considered largely ineffective. Rafi Sela, president of international transportation security consultancy AR Challenges, said the agency’s nearly $8 billion budget is largely being misspent on a misguided model.
Great, we’re flushing $8 billion down the toilet on a system that does a bad job based on a bad methodology.
Heck, the bureaucrats can’t even stop the wrong people from getting through security.
A man with a stolen boarding pass got through airport security in Salt Lake City and checked in at a gate for a flight to California… Salata, who is on the sex offender registry in Utah, grabbed a boarding pass that a woman accidently left at a check-in kiosk and used it to get through a Transportation Security Administration checkpoint, said Craig Vargo, chief of airport police.
He was only stopped because the woman obtained another boarding pass.
Salata was detained when the woman who had left the pass checked in using a replacement ticket that had been uploaded to her phone.
The TSA tried to rationalize this goof by stating that at least he wasn’t able to smuggle any guns or bombs past security.
TSA spokeswoman Lori Dankers said an agent made a mistake in identifying Salata, but the man was properly screened to determine if he was carrying anything dangerous.
Gee, how reassuring.
Now that we’ve mocked the TSA for stopping harmless items and allowing potentially dangerous items (or people), let’s contemplate some actual solutions.
In previous columns, I’ve argued that it’s time to put the private sector in charge, citing the good work of Arnold Kling and Nick Schulz. And as Steve Chapman has explained, there were lots of benefits to the pre-TSA system.
Let’s now add to that list.
We’ll start with some passages from Jeff Jacoby’s column in the Boston Globe.
He starts by beating up on the TSA.
Fourteen years after the creation of the TSA, there is still no indication that the agency has ever caught a terrorist, or foiled a 9/11-type plot in the offing. Conversely, there are reams of reports documenting the inability of TSA screeners to spot hidden guns, knives,bomb components, and other dangerous contraband as they pass through airport checkpoints. It’s doubtful that anyone is still capable of being surprised by a fresh confirmation of the TSA’s incompetence… The Transportation Security Administration, which annually costs taxpayers more than $7 billion, should never have been created. The responsibility for airport security should never have been federalized, let alone entrusted to a bloated, inflexible workforce.
He then points out that there’s a better approach.
The airlines themselves should bear the chief responsibility for protecting planes and passengers at airports. After all, they have powerful financial incentives to ensure that flights are free of danger, while at the same time minimizing the indignities to which customers are subjected. Their bottom line would be at stake. The TSA feels no such spur. Effective defense against airline terrorism doesn’t require patting down grandmothers or confiscating eyedrops. It requires sophisticated counterterror intelligence (which is what stopped the 2006 liquid bomb plot), and it calls for passengers to be vigilant (which is what ultimately foiled the underwear and shoe bombers). The TSA supplies neither.
A column by Adam Summers in the Orange County Register reaches the same conclusion.
He starts with the indictment of the current system.
TSA’s performance has steadily declined. A 2002 USA Today report revealed that undercover agents got bombs and weapons through security about a quarter of the time. By 2007, the failure rate had increased to 75 percent. Since then, the TSA has increased the number of screeners from 30,000 to 46,000 and spent $550 million on new screening equipment and agent training, yet somehow it continues to get worse. …The TSA has also perpetuated – and even expanded – failed and unproven programs, such as the Screening of Passengers by Observation Techniques program, which seeks to weed out evildoers by looking for certain behavioral cues among passengers. The GAO…recommended shuttering the program. Nonetheless, the agency has spent roughly $1 billion on SPOT since 2007 and is defiantly moving forward to “enhance” the program.
And then points to a sensible solution.
The TSA has proven to be abusive, unaccountable and totally ineffective. To restore some sense of competency and accountability, the agency should simply be abolished, and security should be made the responsibility of private airlines and airports, which have a strong incentive to prevent their customers from being killed. Competition among private providers would also lead to adoption of the most efficient and effective security measures while still respecting travelers’ rights.
Wow, what a shocking conclusion. The private sector is more competent than the government. Knock me over with a feather!
Let’s close with some humor (though the joke is on us). The column by Adam Summers mentioned TSA’s SPOT program, which even the Government Accountability Office has recognized as a wasteful failure.
Well, the folks at Reason have a very amusing video on the characteristics that might lead SPOT bureaucrats to identify you as a potential terrorist.
[brid video=”21010″ player=”2077″ title=”The TSA's 12 Signs You Might Be a Terrorist”]
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