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Sports

Yogi-Berra-NY-Yankees

This undated photo shows New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra. Berra, who won 10 World Series titles as a player, all with the Bronx Bombers, died on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2015. (File/AP)

Baseball Hall of Famer and New York Yankee legend Yogi Berra died at the age of 90 on Tuesday. Berra, who was known for his malapropisms and contradictory phrases, was beloved by multiple generations of fans and players for his approachable, generous and humble character.

We thought it best to list a few of the most memorable Yogisms, courtesy of the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center at Montclair State University in northern New Jersey, which he opened in 1998. Here they are for your entertainment, just as Yogi would’ve liked:

Famous Yogisms

“It ain’t over ’til it’s over”

“It’s deja vu all over again”

“When you come to a fork in the road … take it”

“I usually take a two hour nap from one to four”

“Never answer an anonymous letter”

“I didn’t really say everything I said”

“I want to thank you for making this day necessary”

“We made too many wrong mistakes”

“You can observe a lot by watching”

“The future ain’t what it used to be”

“It gets late early out here”

“If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be”

“If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark,
nobody’s going to stop them”

“Pair up in threes”

“Why buy good luggage, you only use it when you travel”

He was born Lawrence “Larry” Berra to Italian immigrant parents in St. Louis, Mo., on May 12, 1925 and acquired the nickname “Yogi” when a childhood friend observed that he resembled a Hindu yogi in a movie they saw. Berra is survived by his three sons, all of whom are athletes, and 11 grandchildren.

Did you know?

  • Baseball stat guru Bill James, known for his win shares formula, declared that Berra was the greatest catcher of all time.
  • Berra won three American League MVP awards, was a 15-time All Star, helped his team with 10 World Series Championships, and is remembered as a clutch hitter.
  • In 1957, he became the first World Series pinch-hitter to hit a home run.
  • Berra once went 148 games without making an error and famously caught two no-hitters, both by Allie Reynolds in 1951, and one perfect game, by Don Larsen in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers.
  • Berra, who attended school until the 8th grade, first served in the Navy during World War II and fought during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, despite signing with the Yankees in 1943. Berra decided to enlist before putting on the pinstripes in the fall of 1946.

We thought it best to list a

Polls

VA-Gov-Terry-McAuliffe

Terry McAuliffe gestures as he talks with members of the House and Senate adjournment committee at the Capitol in Richmond. (Steve Helber/AP)

Despite the immediate and intense push from the left following the Virginia shooting on live television, most voters still will not support federal gun control laws. In fact, voters say the federal government should not have the final say on gun ownership and don’t even like a country in which guns are only widespread within the government.

A new Rasmussen Reports poll finds that just 34% of likely voters think gun laws regarding ownership should be the responsibility of the federal government. Interestingly, that level of support is down from a high of just 38% measured in December prior to a reporter and her cameraman being shot and killed by a disgruntled, race-baited coworker in August. It was only minutes after the bodies of Adam Ward, 27, and Alison Parker, 24, were found at the scene when Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe decided to call for stricter federal and state gun control laws, despite having no idea what the specifics of the case were or even if his proposals would’ve prevented the shooting.

As it turns out, Vester Lee Flanaga, a.k.a. Bryce Williams, passed a background check and none of McAuliffe’s stricter state-level proposals would have prevented him from committing the murder. While McAuliffe has deleted several of the tweets from the day that exposed his willingness to politicize the tragedy, his statement remains. In the governor’s official statement, also tweeted out that very same day, he called for legislative action on gun control.

And he has continued his efforts, with the latest event being held just the other day. The governor, a well-known Clintonite, quickly paraded out Parker’s father who presented himself as a devastated parent begging for a nation’s mercy. However, Mr. Parker has been a longtime proponent of gun control, and a longtime liberal. He ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Virginia legislature and, in fact, enjoyed the endorsement of all the pols in the tweet below.

But McAuliffe’s allies and gun control counterparts on Capitol Hill have a steep hill to climb. In addition to the 34% of voters who say the feds shouldn’t have any role whatsoever, slightly more (36%) believe gun ownership is a state government issue and their responsibility, alone, while another 18% say the Second Amendment should only be considered at a local government level. Twelve percent (12%) said they aren’t sure.

The national survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on September 20-21, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

Despite the immediate push from the Left

Economy

home-foreclosures

National and State Mortgage Risk Indices are tracked and released by AEI’s International Center on Housing Risk.

The composite National Mortgage Risk Index (NMRI) for Agency purchase loans clocked in at 12.14% in August, up 1% from a year earlier. The monthly composite index, which measures how mortgage loans originated month by month would perform under severely stressed conditions, has now gained on a year-over-year basis every month since January 2014.

Agency loan originations continued to migrate from large banks to nonbanks in August, a shift that has accounted for most of the upward trend in the composite NMRI. Nonbank lending is substantially riskier than the large bank business it replaces.

“The strong spring 2015 home buying season has been paced by outsized gains for first-time buyers,” said Edward Pinto, co-director at the AEI International Center on Housing Risk, as well as the former executive vice president and chief credit officer for Fannie Mae.. “Unfortunately, these gains are fueled in part by liberalized credit standards, which is creating demand pressure and driving real home prices higher. This will lead to future instability.”

The NMRI, which was established after the financial crisis that devastated millions of families, is based on nearly the universe of home purchase loans with a government guarantee. In August, the NMRI data included 297,000 such purchase loans, the highest monthly total since the series began. With the addition of these loans, the total number of loans that have been risk rated in the NMRI since November 2012 increased to 7 million.

Yet, it would appear the executive and legislative branches of government, as well as policy-making bureaucrats, continue to ignore the fact the crisis largely stemmed from a failure to understand the build-up of risk in these markets. Buckling under the weight of the housing market lobby, predominantly the National Association of Realtors, which conducts surveys of existing and pending home sales monthly, government agencies continue to back high-risk mortgage loans with loosened restrictions.

First-time buyers accounted for 56.9% of primary owner-occupied home purchase mortgages with a government guarantee, up from 54.5% the prior August. Further, the Agency FBMRI stood at 15.55%, up 1.3% on a year-over-year basis. The Agency FBMRI is nearly 6& higher than the mortgage risk index for repeat homebuyers, and the gap has been widening over the year. Nearly 54 percent of first-time buyer loans were high risk (MRI above 12%) in August, up from 48½ percent a year earlier.

Other notable takeaways from the August NMRI include the following (h/t AEI):

• The Spring homebuying season continued to be strong, buoyed by robust first-time buyer volume driven by an improving job market and increasing leverage. About 156,000 purchase loans for first-time buyers were added in August, up almost 20% from a year earlier, bringing the total in the NMRI to 3.1 million since April 2013.

• The NMRI for first-time buyers hit 15.55%, a new series high, up 1.3 percentage points from a year earlier and well above the Repeat Primary Homebuyer NMRI of 9.63%.

• Fueled by historically low mortgage rates and high and growing leverage, a seller’s market has now prevailed for 35 straight months. As a result, real home prices rose 12.5 percent from the 2012:Q3 trough to 2015:Q2, far outstripping income growth and crimping affordability.

• Credit standards for first-time home buyers are not tight. In August, 70% had down payments less than or equal to 5%, 26% had DTIs greater than the QM limit of 43%, and the median FICO score was 708, a bit below the median for all individuals in the U.S.

• The cut in FHA’s annual insurance premium early this year boosted its market share to 29.8% in August from 22.6% in August 2014, mainly at the expense of Fannie and Freddie.
“The common claim that first-time buyers face tight credit is simply not true,” said Stephen Oliner, codirector of AEI’s International Center on Housing Risk. “If you have a steady job and an ordinary credit score, you can buy a home with little money down.”

The composite National Mortgage Risk Index (NMRI)

Policy

Capitol-w-flag-money

As we get deeper into an election season, many politicians feel compelled to discuss how to deal with poverty.  And some of them may even be serious about trying to improve the system. This hopefully will lead to big-picture discussions of key issues, such as why the poverty rate stopped falling in the mid-1960s.

Historical-Poverty-Data

If so, it helps to look past the headline numbers and actually understand the scope of the problem. Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute explains that the official poverty data from the Census Bureau overstates the number of poor people.

…the official poverty rate is a positive embarrassment today. The poverty rate manifestly cannot do the single thing it was intended for: to count the number of people in our country subsisting below a fixed and absolute “poverty line.” Among its many other shortcomings, this index implicitly assumes that a family’s annual reported income is identical to its spending power… But income and spending patterns no longer track for the lowest income strata in modern America. …the bottom quintile of US households spent 130% more than their reported pretax income. The disparity between spending and income levels for poorer Americans has been gradually widening over time.

Though the shortcomings of the Census Bureau sometimes largely don’t matter because advocates of bigger government arbitrarily choose different numbers that further exaggerate the degree of poverty in the United States. In a column for National Review, the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector exposes the dishonest tactic (promoted by the Obama Administration and used by the OECD) of measuring income differences instead of actual poverty.

The Left often claims that the U.S has a far higher poverty rate than other developed nations have. These claims are based on a “relative poverty” standard, in which being “poor” is defined as having an income below 50 percent of the national median. Since the median income in the United States is substantially higher than the median income in most European countries, these comparisons establish a higher hurdle for escaping from “poverty” in the U.S. than is found elsewhere.

Based on honest apples-to-apples numbers, the United States is just as capable as other developed nations of minimizing material deprivation.

A more meaningful analysis would compare countries against a uniform standard. …Garfinkel and his co-authors do exactly that. They measure the percentage of people in each country who fall below the poverty-income threshold in the U.S. ($24,008 per year for a family of four in 2014). The authors reasonably broaden the measure of income to include “non-cash” benefits such as food stamps, the earned-income tax credit, and equivalent programs in other nations. They also subtract taxes paid by low-income families, which are heavy in Europe. …the differences in poverty according to this uniform standard were very small. For example, the poverty rate in the U.S. was 8.7 percent, while the average among other affluent countries was around 7.6 percent. The rate in Germany was 7.3 percent, and in Sweden, it was 7.5 percent. Using a slightly higher uniform standard set at 125 percent of the U.S. poverty-income thresholds, the authors find that the U.S. actually has a slightly lower poverty rate than other affluent countries.

These numbers probably disappoint leftists who want to believe that European nations are somehow more generous and more effective in dealing with poverty.

But Robert explains that advocates of smaller government and individual responsibility should not be happy because the federal government’s profligacy isn’t helping poor people become self sufficient.

It is, of course, a good thing that left-wing claims of widespread deprivation in the U.S. are inaccurate. But government welfare policy should be about more than shoveling out a trillion dollars per year in “free” benefits. When President Lyndon Johnson launched the War on Poverty, he sought to decrease welfare dependence and increase self-sufficiency: the ability of family to support itself above poverty without the need for government handouts. By that score, the War on Poverty has been a $24 trillion flop. While self-sufficiency improved dramatically in the decades before the War on Poverty started, for the last 45 years, it has been at a standstill.

Robert Doar and Angela Rachidi of the American Enterprise Institute make a very similar point about the welfare state failing to promote self sufficiency.

Recently released data show that the official poverty rate was 14.8% in 2014, only slightly below the 15% in poverty in 1970. And this is despite large increases in federal spending on anti-poverty programs.  Spending on these programs has increased almost tenfold in constant dollars since the early 1970s and increased from 1.0% of GDP in 1972 to 3.8% in 2012… Where does this leave us? If helping people achieve self-sufficiency and be free of government assistance is the goal, the safety net has largely failed. But if reducing material hardship is the goal, it performs well.

I would make a very important change to the above passage. Doar and Rachidi write that the poverty rate hasn’t declined “despite large increases” in supposed anti-poverty spending. Based on the evidence, it would be more accurate to say that poverty has stayed high “because of large increases.”

Simply stated, when you subsidize something, you get more of it. Anyhow, all this matters for three reasons.

  • First, dependency is bad news for poor people, particularly when government subsidizes multi-generational poverty and unwed motherhood.
  • Second, the current welfare state is bad news for taxpayers, who are financing a $1 trillion income-redistribution system that fails in its most important task.
  • Third, the current system is bad news for the economy because millions of people are bribed to be out of the labor force, thus lowering potential output.

Let’s summarize what we know. The official poverty rate exaggerates the actual number of poor people by failing to properly measure income, but that may not matter much since proponents of more redistribution prefer to use dishonest numbers that are even more distorted. And we also know that the welfare state is capable of redistributing lots of money, but also that it does a terrible job of promoting self sufficiency. Indeed, it’s almost certainly the case that massive levels of redistribution have had a negative effect.

So, what’s the solution to this mess?

Folks on the left want even more of the same. But why should we expect that to have any positive effect? Indeed, it’s more likely that an expansion of the welfare state will simply lure more people into lives of sloth and dependency. Some people on the right want to replace the welfare state with a guaranteed or basic income. This has some theoretical appeal, but it is based on the very shaky assumption that politicians could be convinced to completely repeal all existing redistribution programs.

Which is why the most prudent and effective step is to simply get the federal government out of the business of redistributing income and let state and local governments decide how best to deal with the issue.

This federalism-based approach has several advantages.

  1. Since redistributing income is not listed as an enumerated power, ending Washington’s role would be consistent with the Constitution.
  2. This federalism model already has been successfully tested with welfare reform in the 1990s and it also is the core feature of proposals to block grant Medicaid.
  3. A state-based model is far more likely to result in the degree of experimentation, diversity, and innovation needed to discover how best to actually promote self sufficiency.

By the way, this federalist system may begin with block grants from the federal government (i.e., transfers of cash to state and local governments), but the ultimate goal should be to phase out such subsidies so that state and local governments are responsible for choosing how to raise funds and how to allocate them. And once welfare is truly a responsibility of state and local governments, we have good evidence that this will lead to better policy.

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As we get deeper into an election

Opinion

We Should Adopt Policies and Principles that Produce Results, Rather than Act on Misguided Good Intentions

Pope-Francis-Obama-Andrews-AF-Base

Pope Francis, accompanied by President Barack Obama and others, is greeted upon his arrival at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2015. AP PHOTO/ANDREW HARNIK

Pope Francis arrived Tuesday for a six-day historic trip to the United States, marking the first time the “slum pope” stepped foot in America. Despite telling reporters aboard the chartered plane that some in the media have given the impression that he’s “a little bit more left-leaning” than he truly is on economic issues, this pope has undoubtedly been an outspoken critic of capitalism.

It is true that millions of American Catholics are ecstatic over his arrival, but it is also true that millions of individual American Catholics and institutions are finding themselves in a deeply spiritual, internal conflict over this pope. Sure, the media have focused too heavily on the pope’s prior economic statements, which he claimed Tuesday are religious doctrine rather than political doctrine, for political reasons. However, I am not at all surprised to see this tension, nor was I surprised to hear Pope Francis make some of his more controversial statements.

While the economic views of Pope Francis were shaped by the man and his experiences, the greater internal strife is rooted in part by the American experience of ethic Catholics, which has differed greatly from their European and Latin American counterparts. But, and perhaps most controversial, it is an undeniable fact that much of the church’s role throughout U.S. history and its characteristics are antithetical to American principles and traditions.

The Many Faces of a Centralized Power: The Catholic Church

The Catholic Church did not survive for centuries because they were not able to adapt their own principles to better appeal to regional traditions. As a result, the Latin American Church, which is where Pope Francis is from and where he spent his career ministering to the masses, does not resemble the European Church or even the North American Church. In fact, the church in the United States, which took root largely due to ethic Catholics such as Italians and Irish immigrants early in the 20th century, is the least “Catholic” of all the branches around the world.

Ultimately, the Catholic Church has for centuries relied upon their capacity to act as a centralized power, complete with a head of state wielding power and holding sway that is completely foreign to the American model of self-governance. In fact, we are doing our Founding Fathers a serious injustice if we don’t recognize the papacy’s role in the inevitable crafting of the very first amendment in our Bill of Rights. The founders were very concerned about a “transplanting of sorts” of that centralizing power “from European to American soil.”

“Where Protestant zeal burned fiercely and where the Catholic presence in Canada seemed ominous, the conviction grew that the threat against civil liberty posed by unconstitutional taxation was partly a papist conspiracy to subvert Protestantism,” historian Robert Middlekauf correctly observed from primary sources studied in the writing of The Glorious Cause.

But, at least for the latter half of the last century, an adherence to a centralized power to the detriment of individual liberty was almost as unwelcome among ethic Catholic Americans than it was among Protestant natives. In studying the political maturation of ethic Catholics, it became crystal clear Italian and Irish Catholic immigrants to America assimilated with, prioritized and adopted American principles and our national identity, though Italians did so at a far faster pace.

Nevertheless, that national identity was largely built upon the tenets of Protestantism and, more specifically, the Protestant ethic, not Catholicism.

Pope Francis the Man

Pope Francis is from Argentina, which as I just previously explained, practices Catholicism in a very different manner than the North American or European Catholic Churches. In Latin America much of the population are either descendants or live within the territories of the once Catholic Spanish Empire. Thus, it should come as no surprise to Americans that the Catholic Church has had enormous success in the region and that much of the population succumbed to the false promises of communism.

That includes Pope Francis, who The Economist recently called “the Peronist Pope,” referring to his known sympathies for Argentina’s failed, radical left-wing three-time president, Juan Perón. In 1946, when Juan Perón came to power, Argentina was one of the 10-richest nations in the world, as fellow Team PPD member and CATO economist Dan Mitchell recently pointed out.

“Economic policy certainly wasn’t perfect, but government wasn’t overly large and markets generally were allowed to function,” Mitchell said. “But Perón decided to conduct an experiment in statism. The bottom line is that Perón was a disaster for his nation. Not only did he sabotage Argentina’s economy, he also apparently undermined the social capital of the country by somehow convincing a big chunk of the population that ‘Peronism’ is an alluring economic philosophy.”

“Sadly, Pope Francis appears to be one of those people,” Mitchell added.

Despite the empirical evidence, the left-wing sect of the Catholic Church driven by public opinion in the region has gained power and the ascent of Pope Francis is evidence of that shift.

“Pope Francis is part of a larger trend of the rise of the political left among Catholic intellectuals,” another fellow Team PPD member and economist Thomas Sowell wrote in his column this week. “He is, in a sense, the culmination of that trend.”

But it’s largely because of this background that Pope Francis doesn’t understand the true Spirit of Capitalism, which is uniquely American and, like our national identity, forged from Protestantism, not Catholicism.

The Origins and Spirit of Capitalism

In his truly seminal work, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, German sociologist Max Weber not only searches for and identifies its origin but also correctly separates the American model of free market capitalism from the simple pursuit of greed.

“The impulse to acquisition, pursuit of gain, of money, of the greatest possible amount of money, has in itself nothing to do with capitalism. This impulse exists and has existed among waiters, physicians, coachmen, artists, prosti-tutes, dishonest officials, soldiers, nobles, crusaders, gamblers, and beggars,” Weber’s thesis states. “It should be taught in the kindergarten of cultural history that this naïve idea of capitalism must be given up once and for all. Unlimited greed for gain is not in the least identical with capitalism, and is still less its spirit.”

I believe Pope Francis is a good man and his beliefs driven by good intentions. Unfortunately, as a matter of policy and ideology, we should be driven to adopt policies and principles that produce results, rather than act on misguided good intentions. Neither capitalism nor the Protestant ethic are to blame for poverty in America or around the world. In reality, it is poverty that is the natural economic state of humankind and it is prosperity and progress that need to be explained as the exception.

Hopefully, the head of the Vatican will use his trip to familiarize himself with the unique model of free market capitalism in the U.S., though considering the locations he is set to visit aren’t particularly representative, it is doubtful. Still, we can pray.

While I could rattle on more about the tenets of the Protestant ethic and its views on how to address and treat the poor–you can learn more about that in my book–it would be wiser to end with a quote from Benjamin Franklin, who personified and lived by the ethic and true Spirit of Capitalism.

“Govr. Thomas was so pleas’d [sic] with the Construction of this Stove, as describ’d in it that he offer’d to give me a Patent for the sole Vending of them for a Term of Years; but I declin’d it from a Principle,” Benjamin Franklin wrote of the what we now know to be the Franklin Stove in his autobiography. “That as we enjoy great Advantages from the Inventions of others, we should be glad of an Opportunity to serve others by any Invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously.”

Franklin also refused to profit from the lightning rod because “it pleased God,” and “the most acceptable service we render to Him is in doing good to his other children.”

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While the economic views of Pope Francis

Opinion

Hillary-Clinton-Bernie-Sanders

Vermont socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders, left, and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, right. (Photo: AP)

Government wants you to think it helps you at every turn. Every time you make a decision, a purchase, government wants to be there, looking essential. But it’s a trick. Most government “help” creates new problems.

Students once went to private banks to get college loans. Banks, since they had their own money on the line, tried to lend only to students who were likely to succeed and then pay them back. Politicians then said, “Banks don’t lend enough, so we’ll guarantee loans or make loans ourselves! After all, college is essential for success.”

Colleges responded by raising tuition at seven times the rate of inflation. It’s a spiral in which taxpayers are forced to give money to colleges — which then charge high tuition, so students graduate deep in debt, and then politicians demand that taxpayers forgive that debt.

President Obama said, sure, just pay back 10 percent or, after 20 years, nothing! Taxpayers will pay the rest, which goes to schools that employ professors who demand more government programs. It’s a spiral that makes government bigger.

The same thing happened with housing. People once borrowed from private banks, which applied market discipline. If they thought you wanted to borrow more than you would likely repay, banks wouldn’t lend you the money.

But now government — Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Administration — guarantee nearly every loan. That helped create the last housing bubble. After it burst, and taxpayers were charged nearly $2 billion to bail out the FHA, the politicians assured the public they would fix this to make sure it never happened again.

But they didn’t. Today, once again, more than 90 percent of home loans are backed by taxpayers, and after briefly raising down-payment requirements, the FHA will again make loans to people who make down payments of as little as 3 percent.

A sensible solution would be to get government out of the home loan business, but even Republicans claim government support for homebuilding is needed. It isn’t. Canada has no Fannie, Freddie or FHA, and no housing bubble. In Canada, lenders and homeowners risk their own money, yet just as many people are able to buy homes.

Finally, Obamacare makes the same arrogant assumption about healthcare: Without government, people can’t afford health care and won’t make good decisions. But healthcare is bureaucratic and costly because of government.

For decades, government encouraged us to pay for health care — even routine procedures — with insurance. But insurance is designed for large, rare expenditures, like your house catching fire or a heart attack.

When everything from head colds to backaches is paid for through insurance, neither the customer nor service provider pays much attention to what anything costs. I’m on Medicare now. I’m amazed that when I go to a doctor, no one even mentions price.

If we paid for everything that way — clothing, groceries, computers — everything would cost much more. No one would know when to shop around, when they were getting a great deal, or when to say: enough.

The more we enshrine the idea that “everyone must have health insurance,” the more big insurance companies can raise prices without worrying about customers fleeing. Forced government insurance steers everyone into a few big plans instead of letting individuals make decisions that foster competition. Hospitals and insurance companies are the ones really being helped.

President Eisenhower addressed a similar problem when he complained about a “military-industrial complex.” Today we have a broader “government-industrial complex.”
It shouldn’t surprise us when big companies start out opposing regulation but then announce that they wholeheartedly support government’s latest “reform.”

By the time legislation is passed, the major players in the industry have had a role in writing the laws, ensuring that they are guaranteed a profit.

I don’t think government makes my life easier by being around me all the time. Instead, it makes it harder and harder to imagine life without government. Perhaps that was their goal.

Government wants you to think it helps

Sports

Yogi-Berra-NY-Yankees

This undated photo shows New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra. Berra, who won 10 World Series titles as a player, all with the Bronx Bombers, died on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2015. (File/AP)

Baseball Hall of Fame legend Yogi Berra has died Tuesday at the age of 90, the Yogi Berra Museum confirmed in a tweet. Berra, an oft-quoted player of the people, outlived all of his other teammates who were a part of the famed Yankees dynasty that dominated Major League Baseball from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. His cause of death was not immediately disclosed.

Baseball stat guru Bill James, known for his win shares formula, declared that Berra was the greatest catcher of all time. Berra won three American League MVP awards, was a 15-time All Star, helped his team with 10 World Series Championships, is remembered as a clutch hitter and one of the greatest catchers of all time. In 1957, he became the first World Series pinch-hitter to hit a home run. Berra once went 148 games without making an error and famously caught two no-hitters, both by Allie Reynolds in 1951, and one perfect game, by Don Larsen in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Berra was a household name and beloved national icon. The animated cartoon character–Yogi Bear–was named after him in 1958.

He was born Lawrence “Larry” Berra to Italian immigrant parents in St. Louis, Mo., on May 12, 1925 and acquired the nickname “Yogi” when a childhood friend observed that he resembled a Hindu yogi in a movie they saw. Berra, who attended school until the 8th grade, first served in the Navy during World War II and fought during the D-Day invasion of Normandy, despite signing with the Yankees in 1943. Berra decides to enlist before putting on the pinstripes in the fall of 1946.

The oft-quoted Yankee legend and beloved Hall of Famer was known for saying “When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” among other phrases that mistook the use of a word in place of a similar-sounding one. He also gave us the phrase, “It’s Déjà vu all over again” and “It ain’t over til its over.”

In 1950, he struckout just 12 times in 597 at-bats, and in five of his 19 seasons he had more home runs than strikeouts.

“If I can see it, I can hit it,” Berra once plainly said. He also went 148 games without making a single error.

Baseball Hall of Fame legend and 15-time

Politics

Hillary-Clinton-Iowa-9-22-2015

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks during a community forum on health care, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2015, at Moulton Elementary School in Des Moines, Iowa. (PHOTO: CHARLIE NEIBERGALL/AP)

While the world and major American media outlets were focused on Pope Francis arriving for his first ever visit to the U.S., Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton told a relatively small crowd of supporters in Iowa on Tuesday she opposes the Keystone pipeline.

“I think it is imperative that we look at Keystone pipeline as what I believe it is, a distraction from the important work we have to do to combat climate change,” Clinton said. “And unfortunately, from my perspective, one that interferes with our ability to move forward to deal with the other issues. Therefore I oppose it. I oppose it.”

The announcement, which came just moments after the Pope took to the red carpet at Andrews Air Force Base, marks a complete 180 on the former secretary of state’s position while she was serving out her tenure, but most recently she resorted when pressed to telling voters they would know where she stands on the issue after she becomes president. Clinton said she shouldn’t take a position on the issue because it might interfere with the Obama administration’s decision-making process regarding the project that would transport oil from Canada’s tar sands to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico.

READ ALSO: Obama Was For Pipelines Before Tom Steyer Was Against Them

Further, she in 2010, while speaking on the issue that was making its way through the State Department review process, Clinton told a San Francisco audience, “We’re either going to be dependent on dirty oil from the Gulf or dirty oil from Canada.” With this and other statements weighing on activists and special interest donors like millionaire hedge fund activist Tom Steyer, she began to run out of time on dodging the issue. Clinton’s campaign events in New Hampshire and Maine last week were attended by activists who held signs that read “I’m Ready for Hillary to say no KXL.” They were shouting and demanding she oppose the pipeline.

Meanwhile, according to multiple State Department reviews and findings, both from reports conducted during her tenure and now-Secretary John Kerry, the Keystone pipeline would actually benefit the environment as it would reduce emissions from transporting oil via rail and other methods already in place. The decision will no doubt enrage already unexcited labor unions, who support the project and have grown increasing frustrated with the Obama administration. Unfortunately, for them, they have little other choice in what has quickly become a party moving farther-and-farther to the Left.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a loud and proud self-proclaimed socialist and Hillary’s main primary opponent until Vice President Joe Biden jumps into the race, is running against the Keystone pipeline and for the millions of dollars from Steyer that comes with it.

“As a senator who has vigorously opposed the Keystone pipeline from the beginning, I am glad that Secretary Clinton finally has made a decision and I welcome her opposition to the pipeline,” Sanders said in a statement following the announcement. “Clearly it would be absurd to encourage the extraction and transportation of some of the dirtiest fossil fuel on the planet.”

While her opposition to the Keystone pipeline is clearly aimed at preventing Sanders from hitting her on her primary left flank, the announcement now presents a challenge to her in the general election. According to aggregate polling, roughly 70 percent of the American people support its construction. While the president downplayed the economic benefit of approving the pipeline–after caving to radical environmentalists, when he delayed the construction indefinitely–a recent study found that a 485-mile stretch of the pipeline has been a huge economic boon for some two dozen poor Oklahoma and Texas counties.

Leading economists have concluded construction of the entire pipeline will pay greater-than-expected economic dividends, which will be difficult for Clinton to explain to working class whites in the fall.

Hillary Clinton in Iowa on Tuesday said

US

Pope-Francis-Obama-Andrews-Air-Base

Pope Francis, right, is greeted by President Barack Obama, left, at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland just outside of D.C. on Sept. 22, 2015. (Photo: AP)

WASHINGTON – Pope Francis arrived Tuesday at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, just outside the nation’s capital, and was met with “Welcome to the U.S.A.” cheers on the red-carpeted tarmac.

Francis, an outspoken critic of capitalism, will use the first visit of his life to the United States to bring his “church of the poor” message to the world’s wealthiest nation. His visit comes at a time when the country is polarized over issues closest to his heart: immigration, social injustice and economic inequality.

President Barack Obama, the first lady, and his two daughters welcomed Francis after his chartered plane touched down from Cuba, which is considered an honor for the pontiff. U.S. Presidents typically make important visitors, particularly heads of state, come to them at the White House when they visit the United States. Pope Francis, 78, removed his skullcap and proceeded down the steps in his white robes before being met by a military honor guard, schoolchildren, politicians, and Roman Catholic clergymen.

During his six-day, three-city visit to the U.S., the pope will meet with the president, address Congress, speak at the United Nations in New York and take part in a Vatican-sponsored conference on the family in Philadelphia. President Obama, unsurprisingly, has drawn some harsh criticism inviting gay rights activists, abortionists and rogue left-wing former Catholic clergy who have been sanctioned by Bishop George to the meeting. However, the Argentine Pope, known as the “slum pope” for ministering to the downtrodden in his native Buenos Aires, is in fact expected to urge Americans to take better care of the environment and the poor.

But even as he urges some on the left to its founding ideals of religious liberty, he will ask Americans to open their arms for illegal and legal immigrants. During the flight from Communist Cuba, where he met with the Castro brothers, Francis answered some of the conservative criticisms and concerns of his economic views. He told reporters aboard the plane that some in the media have given the impression that he’s “a little bit more left-leaning” than he truly is, and said they are interpreting his words wrong, and he is only repeating church doctrine.

Still, this is the same Pope the Economist recently called “the Peronist Pope,” referring to his known sympathies for Argentina’s failed, radical left-wing three-time president, Juan Perón.

“What’s the greatest economic tragedy in modern history?” CATO economist and PPD contributor Dan Mitchell asked recently. “The obvious answer is communism, which produced tens of millions of needless deaths and untold misery for ordinary people. Just compare living standards in North Korea and South Korea, or Chile and Cuba.”

But, despite their political disagreements and concerns, Pope Francis is popular with Americans, particularly Catholics.

“What the pope does in the United States will be more important than what he says,” said Mat Schmalz, a religious studies professor at Holy Cross college in Worcester, Massachusetts. “There are a lot of things he will say about capitalism and about wealth inequality, but many Americans and politicians have already made up their minds on these issues. What I would look for is a particular gesture, an unscripted act, that will move people.”

A New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last week found 63 percent of Catholics have a favorable view of him, and nearly 8 in 10 approve the direction he is taking the church. According to a Rasmussen Reports survey, 56% of Americans overall thought he was good for public relations at the Catholic Church.

Pope Francis arrived Tuesday at Andrews Air

Politics

“Tough Guy Donald Trump Starts Whining When His Liberal Record is Revealed”

Donald-Trump-Iowa-State-Fair

Donald Trump enjoys a pork chop on a stick at the Iowa State Fair on Sunday August 16, 2015. (Photo: AP)

The Club for Growth responded to real estate mogul Donald Trump accusing them of “libel” in a letter that an aide sent to reporters on Tuesday. The Trump campaign announced earlier Tuesday they sent a cease and desist letter that states ads produced by the Club and running in Iowa are not only “disingenuous, but replete with outright lies, false, defamatory and destructive statements and downright fabrications which you fully know to be untrue.”

Trump and the Club for Growth have a long adversarial history, with the latest being a claim by the billionaire that the Club “asked for a ridiculous $1,000,000 contribution.” Now, the Club is responding to the letter and the press release.

“Tough guy Donald Trump starts whining when his liberal record is revealed,” Club for Growth President David McIntosh wrote in an email response to PPD. “Trump has advocated higher taxes numerous times over many years, just like he’s advocated for universal health care, the Wall Street bailout, and expanded government powers to take private property.”

Club for Growth Action, a political arm of the Club for Growth, announced an ad buy last week in Iowa targeting the Republican frontrunner. The ad campaign, which totals more than $1 million, features two 30-second television ads that are now airing on broadcast, cable and satellite television in the first-in-the-nation caucus state. Trump, who is and has been leading both nationwide and in Iowa caucus polling since the summer, as well as all the other early voting states, responded to the ads attacking him as just another politician who supports liberal policies.

“I am not surprised the dishonest, irrelevant and totally failing Club for Growth has resorted to attacking the definitive front runner, especially after I refused to contribute to their pathetic group,” Trump said in a statement. “We will be releasing my current tax proposal, which is a major decrease in taxes, in the next week and will continue to expose the two faced hypocrisy of the Club for Growth and the problems groups like this perpetuate within a broken Washington, D.C.”

Thus far, attacks on Trump’s past statements have had little impact on his standing among GOP primary voters. In fact, since candidates and their surrogates have begun their onslaught, the frontrunner has only widened his lead. Trump, himself, has likened himself to former President Ronald Reagan, the now-conservative standard-bearer who was once a Democrat. While it has satisfied voters, and even echoed by America’s Mayor former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, President Reagan’s son has voiced his disagreement with the comparison.

“While a reputable organization would have at least had the decency to disclose its source — and the fact that the source article is more than 15 years old — your pitiful little group conveniently chose to leave that information out in a deliberate attempt to mislead the public into believing that it is reflective of Mr. Trump’s current position — when, unquestionably, it is not,” Trump lawyer Alan Garten wrote in the cease and desist letter. “Simply stated, your Attack Ad is not only completely disingenuous, but replete with outright lies, false, defamatory attacks and destructive statements and downright fabrications which you fully know to be untrue, thereby exposing you and your so-called ‘club’ to liability for damages and other tortious harm.”

Meanwhile, in the email from the Club sent to PPD, Mr. McIntosh made it perfectly clear he and his organization have no intention of buckling under the frontrunner’s pressure.

“Trump’s own statements prove that our ads are accurate,” McIntosh also said in his statement to PPD. “They will continue to run. We suggest that Donald grow up, stop whining, and try to defend his liberal record.”

Read Trump’s Cease and Desist Letter:

Cease and Desist CFG

The Club for Growth responded to real

People's Pundit Daily
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