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Politics


Bevin-Comer-GOP-Governor-Kentucky

May 19, 2015: These photos show Kentucky Republican gubernatorial candidates James Comer, left, and Matt Bevin, right. (Photos: AP)

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Matt Bevin leads James Comer by less than 100 votes in the Kentucky Republican primary for governor, specifically 83 votes. In Kentucky, there are no automatic recounts and no runoff elections, leaving election officials to count ballots from the state’s overseas voters, including soldiers, which came in by the 6 p.m. deadline.

Bevin appeared to declare victory on Tuesday night, telling supporters that he had “terrific conversations” with Comer and Heiner. He highlighted his running mate Jenean Hampton, who if elected would become the state’s first African-American to hold statewide office.

“We stand before you tonight as a team. We both grew up below the poverty level, but we have both been blessed to live the American dream,” Bevin said. “We are Kentucky. We are black, white, male, female, we are Kentucky.”

Ben Hartman, Bevin’s campaign manager, said they “have a very high confidence that the results as they stand currently will hold.”

However, Comer, the state’s agriculture commissioner, said late Tuesday that he would ask for a recanvass, which is only allowed if a county clerk or a county board of elections notices a discrepancy or if a candidate makes a written request to the Secretary of State. It is a second review of the vote totals in each county and, according to state law, would take place on May 28.

“This has been a difficult election. We’ve gone through a lot together in this race,” Comer told supporters at the Capital Plaza Hotel in Frankfort. “We overcame so much money, we overcame the bad press with the newspapers in the state. We overcame a lot. And I owe it to our supporters to ask for a recanvass.”

Two other Republican candidates, Hal Heiner and Will T. Scott, conceded early in the race when it seemed that Bevin would win an outright victory by a larger margin. But returns from the western counties, including the home county of Sen. Rand Paul, a Republican candidate for president, led to a comeback and tightening of the margins. While a court ordered an extension on the deadline for another 11 days because of a problem with an outside vendor, that extension applies only to 12 specific ballots.

It was a divisive and bitter campaign, with Comer spending the last two weeks denying allegations from Marilyn Thomas, his former college girlfriend, who claimed he emotionally and physically abused her when they were in a relationship at Western Kentucky University more than two decades ago. That left Bevin, who used his name recognition gained during his failed primary bid for U.S. Senate against Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, to raise $5 million.

True to his outsider form, Bevin ran TV ads starring actors depicting themselves as Comer and Heiner, two career politicians, sitting at a table and throwing food at each other like children taking a tantrum.

Yet, there was a good degree of common ground between Bevin and Comer on several major issues, including passing laws to ban companies from forcing its employees to join a labor union and vowing to dismantle the state-run health insurance exchange authorized by the federal Affordable Care Act.

The winner will fact Democratic nominee Jack Conway. Despite the morning media hype, the Bluegrass State has trended deeply red in the last six years. For instance, most pundits — save for the PPD election projection model and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball — believed that Kentucky Sec. of State Alison Lundergan Grimes had a decent chance of defeating McConnell in the 2014 Senate race. But, as we repeatedly noted, that was always pipe dream and Grimes was defeated by a man with a dismal approval rating by a 14-point margin.

The root of the Democrats’ Kentucky problem is largely underscored by the 5th Congressional District, a once-competitive region of the state that is a heavily unionized and historically Democratic coal mining constituency. Since the era of Obama began in 2008, the 5th District has been naturally bailing on the national Democratic Party and bleeding once-loyal Democratic voters. The “War on Coal” may be a sound bite for most media outlets, but it’s real life for Kentucky coal miners.

It will once again prove to be a difficult mountain for Conway, no doubt.

With 100 percent of precincts reporting, Matt

World


north-korea-missile-test

A South Korean man watches a TV news program showing an image published in North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper of North Korea’s ballistic missile believed to have been launched from underwater, at Seoul Railway station on May 9, 2015. (Photo: AP Photo/Ahn Young-oon)

North Korea claimed Wednesday that it has successfully manufactured mini nuke warheads that are small enough to fit on the head of a nuclear submarine. The announcement comes after the regime openly conducted submarine-based missile launch tests that are of growing concern to South Korea.

“It is long since the DPRK’s nuclear striking means have entered the stage of producing smaller nukes and diversifying them,” a spokesman for North Korea’s National Defense Commission told Yonhap News. “The DPRK has reached the stage of ensuring the highest precision and intelligence and best accuracy of not only medium- and short-range rockets, but long-range ones.”

Pyongyang also claimed earlier in May that it successfully test-fired a newly developed ballistic missile from a submarine, yet another display of the potential military advancements made even in isolation. Hours after the announcement, South Korean officials said the North fired three anti-ship cruise missiles into the sea off its east coast.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un personally oversaw the submarine-based missile test and called the missile a “world-level strategic weapon” that went off with “eye-opening success,” according to the North’s official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA. The exact timing or location of the launch, but it is believed to have occurred sometime around May 9.

Kim boasted that North Korea now has a weapon capable of “striking and wiping out in any waters the hostile forces infringing upon the sovereignty and dignity of (North Korea).”

Experts say that if Pyongyang has mastered the technology to build a nuclear weapon small enough to fit atop its new submarine-fired intercontinental ballistic missile, it would be an alarming development. Submerged vessels are significantly harder to detect than land based delivery systems, particularly before a hypothetical intercontinental launch. It is a real concern that it could be fired at the U.S. mainland.

While the Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment, South Korea’s defense ministry did confirm that they believe Pyongyang has roughly 70 submarines of Russian design. The North is believed to have obtained several of Russia’s Navy’s retired Golf-class ballistic missile submarines in the mid-1990s following the fall of the Soviet Union.

At the U.S. State Department and the U.N., officials responded to the threat with the usual empty rhetoric. A spokesman at the State Department claimed the administration was aware of the reports, but only said the test launches are “a clear violation” of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions. That sentiment was echoed by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who plans to visit an inter-Korean industrial complex in its border city of Kaesong on Thursday.

While U.S. and U.N. officials talk, Pyongyang’s neighbor grows more concerned. A South Korean Joint Chief of Staff official told Stars and Stripes that the North fired three anti-ship cruise missiles into the sea within a span of one hour early Saturday evening from an area near the eastern port city of Wonsan. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, identified the missiles as KN-01 missiles, which the North also test-fired in February in an event personally attended by North Korean leader Kim.

North Korea claimed Wednesday that it has

Opinion


Bipartisan_Policy_Center_Medical_Innovation

Members of the Bipartisan Policy_Center talk medical innovation.

For years, my scientist brother Tom was the nonpolitical Stossel.

I defended free markets on TV, and he studied blood at Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Mom asked me when I’d get a “real job” like his.

Then the crusade against capitalism reached his world.

Medical “journalists” demanded that corporations distance themselves from medical research. They’ll bias the results, “put profits before people” and sell dangerous goods.

Tom didn’t notice this “conflict of interest crusade” until he joined the scientific advisory board of a biotech company and learned how difficult it is to bring medical innovation to market. Now he’s furious about what he calls “pharma-phobia.”

He says criticism of medical-industry cooperation “is a mixture of moralistic bullying, opinion unsupported by empirical evidence, speculation, simplistic and distorted interpretations …”
You get the idea. At dinner, we tell him, “You’re probably right, but shut up now.”

But he shouldn’t shut up. Trying to take money out of medicine will deprive us of the very innovation we want. Drug companies are the ones with the resources to create cures. It’s insane to limit their access to medical research.

Tom just wrote a book about this titled Pharmaphobia: How the Conflict of Interest Myth Undermines American Medical Innovation.

One way that the anti-capitalists want to purify medicine is by urging people not to trust scientists who consult for industry and to ban them from government advisory panels and scientific studies. But it’s usually the smartest researchers who are hired by industry. Banning them means banning the most qualified scientists.

While activists denounce industry for “exploiting” sick people, industry keeps helping us live healthier lives.

“Over the nearly 50 years I’ve been a physician, health care has improved,” writes Tom. “Our lifespan has increased by 10 years, we’re half as likely to die of a heart attack or stroke, and suffer a lot less from arthritis as we age.” If that’s what happens when capitalists get involved in medicine, I say: Let’s have more of it!

The activists take new treatments for granted but resent paying for them and resent the profit motive that brought them about. So do many patients.

Tom’s brother-in-law Patrick was dying of cancer until he was given a new drug that’s kept him alive for 15 years. Patrick was grateful but angry that the drug costs so much: $123,000 per year (his insurance company pays the bill).

That cost — $123,000 — seems outrageous, especially because activists claim government funds all-important scientific research. But that’s a lie. Eighty-seven percent of new drugs are discovered by private industry, only 13 percent come from public-sector research.

Then there’s the average 16 years of required government testing before it will allow you to sell anything. Only vilified industry has the patience and self-interest to wade through that process, knowing they may lose money because 9 out of 10 promising new drugs will never be approved.

You start to suspect that the activists aren’t really concerned about what’s best for patients. Some are purists, argues Tom, who just want profit removed from life. But many have self-serving agendas: Insurers benefit from drug price controls, and a demonized industry is easier prey for prosecutors and tort lawyers.

New rules imposed on universities and hospitals forbid doctors to educate other doctors about new drugs, or learn FDA-approved drug information from company representatives.

Even tiny gifts from companies, like a pen with a corporate logo, are regarded as potentially corrupting. Part of Obamacare called the “Sunshine Law” demands that companies report to the U.S. Department of Health any payment of as little as $10 to a doctor.

This is useless. Few doctors are corrupted by a box of donuts, and no one reads thousands of pages of disclosure forms. Much worse is that it diverts billions of dollars from drug research to bureaucrats working pointlessly in companies’ new “compliance” departments.

In a free market, medical practitioners and medical companies earn more money if they make their patients and customers happy and keep them healthy. That’s the best incentive. I trust that competition more than I’ll ever trust the activists who want to shut it down.

Stossel: In capitalism, medical practitioners and medical

Policy


obama-georgetown-poverty-summit

From left, E.J. Dionne, Robert Putnam and Arthur Brooks listen to President Barack Obama speak Tuesday during the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Overcoming Poverty at Georgetown University in Washington. (Photo: CNS/Tyler Orsburn)

President Obama recently took part in a poverty panel at Georgetown University. By D.C. standards, it was ideologically balanced since there were three statists against one conservative (I’ve dealt with that kind of “balance” when dealing with the media, as you can see here and here).

You won’t be surprised to learn that the President basically regurgitated the standard inside-the-beltway argument that caring for the poor means you have to support bigger government and more redistribution.

Many observers were unimpressed. Here’s some of what Bill McGurn wrote for the Wall Street Journal.

The unifying progressive contention here is the assertion that America isn’t “investing” enough in the poor—by which is meant the government isn’t spending enough. …President Obama…went on to declare it will be next to impossible to find “common ground” on poverty until his critics accept his spending argument.

I think this argument is nonsense. We’re spending record amounts of money on means-tested, anti-poverty programs, yet the poverty rate hasn’t come down since the “War on Poverty” started.

Indeed, you can make a very persuasive case that government intervention has backfired since the poverty rate was falling before the federal government got involved. Yet now that Washington is paying people to be poor, progress has ground to a halt.

war on poverty cost

In his column, though, McGurn pointed out that it’s also important to look at how money is spent.

…it’s simply false to say that Republicans won’t make the public “investments” needed to help the poor. In New York in the 1990s, for example, Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani not only invested in the police but sent them into the areas where they were most needed—primarily poor and minority neighborhoods. In too many other Democratic cities, by contrast, mayors in effect cede whole neighborhoods to the thugs and gangs. Republicans are also willing to spend on education. What they are not willing to do is dump ever more dollars down the same rathole of big-city public school systems that function more as jobs programs for city bureaucrats and members of the teachers unions.

And he challenged the view of some GOPers that government spending will promote stable families.

…it would similarly be good for Republicans to address the hard implications of their own message. If, for example, broken families are indeed driving modern American poverty, is the only answer despair—or praying for some miracle? And if you believe the government can’t help but bungle something as basic as food stamps, shouldn’t you bring this same skepticism to a “conservative” program that enlists the government to, say, discourage divorce or promote chastity?

I certainly agree with that point. President Bush’s program to encourage marriage certainly wasn’t a success.

But let’s focus on the present. Here’s some of what Thomas Sowell said about Obama’s performance. As you can see, he was not impressed with the President’s abuse of the English language.

One of the ways of fighting poverty, [the President] proposed, was to “ask from society’s lottery winners” that they make a “modest investment” in government programs to help the poor. …But the federal government does not just “ask” for money. It takes the money it wants in taxes, usually before the people who have earned it see their paychecks. …It seizes what it wants by force. If you don’t pay up, it can take not only your paycheck, it can seize your bank account, put a lien on your home and/or put you in federal prison. So please don’t insult our intelligence by talking piously about “asking.”

And Sowell closes his column by raising the fundamental question of whether it makes sense to let government consume a greater share of economic output.

The fact that most of the rhetorical ploys used by Barack Obama and other redistributionists will not stand up under scrutiny means very little politically. After all, how many people who come out of our schools and colleges today are capable of critical scrutiny? When all else fails, redistributionists can say, as Obama did at Georgetown University, that “coldhearted, free-market capitalist types” are people who “pretty much have more than you’ll ever be able to use and your family will ever be able to use,” so they should let the government take that extra money to help the poor. …The real question is whether the investment of wealth is likely to be done better by those who created that wealth in the first place or by politicians. The track record of politicians hardly suggests that turning ever more of a nation’s wealth over to them is likely to turn out well.

Amen. The academic evidence is very strong that nations with large public sectors suffer from economic anemia.

And since the poor are most dependent on growth to get a good foothold on the economic ladder, Prof. Sowell surely is right when he states that it’s better to leave resources in the productive sector of the economy. Moreover, he’s explained in the past that the welfare state certainly doesn’t help the poor.

P.S. Since today’s column ended with a discussion about whether government should be bigger or smaller, it’s appropriate to share this bit of humor concocted by the Princess of the Levant.

If you’re a new reader and don’t get the joke, Richard is famous for the Rahn Curve, though I think he overstates the growth-maximizing size of government. As such, I argue that we need to impose my (not nearly as famous) Golden Rule of spending restraint.

P.P.S. Shifting back to the topic of poverty and redistribution, we should all be very concerned that the Obama White is trying to manipulate the definition of poverty in order to justify ever-larger amounts of redistribution and dependency. And you won’t be surprised to learn that the OECD supports this dishonest and misleading initiative.

P.P.P.S. Here’s an image that accurately summarizes the left’s misguided view of redistribution.

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President Obama recently took part in a

Polls


George-Stephanopoulos-740x400

George Stephanopoulos, the former Clinton operative and host of “This Week” on ABC News. (Photo: ABC News)

There have been growing calls for George Stephanopoulos, a former Clinton operative-turned-ABC News anchor, to step down amid revelations he failed to disclose donations to the Clinton Foundation. Despite two attempts to apologize for what he characterized as a “failure to take the extra step” and disclose this relationship before interviewing Clinton Cash Peter Schweitzer, a plurality and near-majority of the American people say he needs to be banned from covering the 2016 presidential election.

According to a new Rasmussen Reports poll, 46 percent of likely voters say ABC News should ban Stephanopoulos from any programming related to the 2016 presidential campaign due to his relationship with Hillary Clinton, who is running for president. Meanwhile, 36 percent of respondents disagree, but 18 percent, who consequently report being less aware of the story, are undecided.

Interestingly, the number of voters who say Stephanopoulos needs to go is higher than those who were calling for the removal of NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams, who was recently caught lying about a story he often repeated, claiming the helicopter he was traveling in while covering the Iraq War in 2003 took RPG and AK-47 fire. Numerous stories Williams had told over the years were simply not true.

But, then again, voters had always trusted Williams more than Stephanopoulos and he did have the highest rated network evening news program in America. Now, the former Clinton lackey has sacrificed his public image for grilling the man who exposed questionable dealings at the Clinton Foundation, without public disclosure, all with the aim to get back in the Clinton’s good graces.

Only 34 percent of voters have a favorable opinion of Stephanopoulos, which is down 11 points from the 45 percent measured in February. However, that includes just 11 percent who say they have a “Very Favorable” opinion of him, while a greater 18 percent hold a “Very Unfavorable” view.

In total, his unfavorables have risen to 39 percent, with a sizable 27 percent saying they haven’t heard enough about the senior ABC anchor’s attempt to hide a $75,000 donation render enough of an opinion.

How much of a hit has ABC News taken over this story?

Forty-one percent of Republicans, 32 percent of Democrats and 30 percent of unaffiliated voters say they are less likely now to trust ABC News. The news agency now finds itself in a percarious situation, considering they just renewed his contract for $105 million.

Despite attempts by George Stephanopoulos to apologize

Politics


obama-camden

President Barack Obama talks with students and law enforcement officials following a sit-down discussion at the Salvation Army Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center in Camden, N.J., May 18, 2015. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Obama just moved to limit the ability of the nation’s police from obtaining and using gear from military – and a surface glance would seem to render high marks from the civil rights sector.

But not so fast. The fact that Obama’s moving monarch-like to rein in police this way is by itself a big red flag, waving once again in Congress’ face. But another, even larger problem is the lie that’s brought about this executive action: Obama’s using the power of his pen and podium to advance a “hands up, don’t shoot” cause that’s already been outed as unfounded and false.

Tread carefully; this demilitarized police measure has all the makings of a disaster that leaves law enforcement without the authority they need to properly perform their jobs.

Police militarization really came to public life last year, when a white police officer, Darren Wilson, in Ferguson, Missouri, shot and killed a black 18-year-old, Michael Brown.

Internal and external investigations, including one from Eric Holder’s Department of Justice, as well as one from a grand jury, found Wilson did nothing untoward when he shot Brown. But protesters took to the streets just the same, decrying what they viewed as a racist police agency bent on taking out minorities or, at least, jailing them without cause. “Hands up, don’t shoot” became the rallying cry across the nation for anyone who wanted to show solidarity with Brown and with the civil rights call for crackdowns on police powers.

Officers responded to the protests with a massive street presence that included MRAPs and other militarized gear. The video images of the police-protest standoffs shocked many in the nation, and Obama, in August, pointed to the difference between “our military and our local law enforcement and we don’t want those lines blurred.”

Agreed. Obama’s right on that principle — that police and military serve different functions and uniformed peace officers should not adopt a militarized demeanor, backed by military firepower and defensive gear, when dealing with members of the civilian public.

So then the White House announced it was going to kick off a study of all the gear that police around the nation have that’s from the military – most of it, from the Pentagon’s 1033 transfer program – while Obama signed an executive order for federal agencies to consult with civilian police, civil rights officials and civil liberties individuals and recommend changes to make the militarized police matter more transparent.

And those recommended changes?

Well, that’s the report that just came out, suggesting law enforcement agencies around the nation cease and desist from using certain types of military equipment, like tanks, MRAPs and grenade launchers. A separate report from the 21st Century Policing task force also suggests states and localities start collecting police-related data that’s not currently reported, and turn it over to the Department of Justice for processing and analysis. Further, it also recommended police actually turn in some pieces of equipment that have just been placed on the hot list, like tracked-vehicles and certain caliber weapons. The Department of Justice, meanwhile, is offering $163 million in grants for police agencies to hire personnel to help with the adoption and enactment of the federal task force’s recommendations.

And here’s where things go awry.

Obama has no constitutional business ordering local police agencies around, or making and shaping them into his vision of community patrollers. Civilian police agencies are local government bodies, funded primarily by local boards of supervisors and city councils, subject to the localities they serve. They don’t serve at the whim or pleasure of the president. If Obama wants to reform police business, he ought to turn to Congress and the duly elected lawmakers for assistance. The fact that he’s using the power of his Justice Department to wield massive policy influence in police agencies across the nation is yet another example of his preference for issuing monarch-like decrees over abiding constitutional restraints.

But the bigger problem is this: Where was Obama and his rants against police militarization when 18-month-old Bounkham “Bou Bou” Phonesavanh’s face was half blown off by a SWAT member’s mistaken flash bang grenade throw? That widely reported Georgia incident occurred May 2014, after officers, working off faulty information that placed a drug suspect inside the home where Bou Bou slept, barged through doors in the middle of the night, via a no-knock search warrant, and tossed a military style flash bang device right into the baby’s crib. The family, at first anxious their baby wouldn’t even live, were then stuck with about $1 million of medical bills to pay. But Obama?

He waited until massive political rallies about police discrimination, police brutality and police abuses swept the nation before he jumped into the fray and delivered speeches drawing moral equivalencies between thug-like Ferguson protesters and police who were reacting to the scene, and later, after a grand jury found no cause to indict Wilson, nonetheless decrying the problem of racist police.

A portion of his November 2014 speech: “What is also true is that there are still problems and communities of color aren’t just making these problems up. … There are issues in which the law too often feels as if it is being applied in discriminatory fashion.”

It’s that kind of rhetoric that gives fuel to those who seek to portray police, en masse, as racist bigots bent on ridding communities of minorities. So it’s with skeptical eyes America should regard Obama’s restrictions on police and militarized gear. Granted, the limits are good ideas whose times have come. But their same times could have come earlier, in a less politicized environment, when the focus would have been purely on saving innocent lives and not on creating a social justice movement that’s likely to clamp police from doing their jobs.

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Obama’s using the power of his pen

Policy


amtrak-mayor-michael-nutter

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter takes a photo with his cell phone as Train 110 leaves Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station, Monday, May 18, 2015. (Photo: AP)

I almost feel sorry for my leftist friends. Whenever there’s a story about a crazed shooter, they invariably speculate that it’s someone affiliated with the Tea Party. So they must be sad when it turns out to be a random nut or in some cases a leftist.

Similarly, when the news broke a few days ago about the Amtrak derailment, they instantly decided that the crash was the result of inadequate handouts from Washington. So imagine how forlorn they must be since it turns out the bureaucrat in charge of the train was traveling at about twice the appropriate speed.

But let’s set aside the tender feelings of our statist buddies and look to see whether there are any policy lessons to learn from the recent Amtrak tragedy.

Writing for National Review, Kevin Williamson makes a key point that Amtrak, like other parts of government, is first and foremost focused on maximizing the amount of money that can be extracted from taxpayers.

…everything from the stimulus bill to regular appropriations has spent billions of dollars on Amtrak, and Amtrak still failed to install the speed-control system that was supposed to be completed this year — a system that the NTSB and others believe would have prevented this accident. So, the “investments” in safety systems have produced no safety system. Where does Amtrak spend its money? Almost every dime of ticket revenue is spent on personnel — salaries, benefits, bonuses, etc.  Amtrak can’t be bothered to finish up a safety system on time. But did Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman ever miss a nickel of his $350,000-a-year salary? No. Did Amtrak fail to pay employee bonuses? No—in fact, it paid bonuses to people who weren’t even eligible for them, and then refused to rescind them once it was pointed out that they were unauthorized. So Amtrak took care of Amtrak’s priorities, just like every other government agency. But Amtrak’s priorities are not its customers’ priorities.

In other words, the culture at Amtrak is to maximize goodies from government, not to maximize profits, which is the culture at a real company.

And the beneficiaries are the overpaid bureaucrats who operate Amtrak, as well as the insiders (like Joe Biden’s son) who get special appointments to Amtrak’s board of directors.

So what, then, is the solution?

As explained by Jeffrey Dorfman, an economics professor at the University of Georgia, it’s time to wean Amtrak from the public teat.

…within two days liberal politicians had seized on the occasion to demand larger subsidies for Amtrak. In fact, the events of last week show the precise opposite-Amtrak should not receive a larger subsidy, but rather should be sold off and privatized. Currently, Amtrak receives more than $1 billion in funding from Congress although it still manages to lose money. …This leads to the question of why Americans taxpayers should subsidize a rail service that only somewhere around one or two percent of Americans actually use. The clear and obvious answer is that they should not be. While Democratic leaders are calling for more federal funding, the problem is not a lack of subsidies but instead that Amtrak’s leadership is divided between serving its customers and serving the political benefactors who provide it with about $1.4 billion per year. If Amtrak was privatized, it could focus solely on serving its customers. If those customers were concerned with safety, then Amtrak would prioritize safety improvements because that would be a necessary step to staying in business.

Moreover, Amtrak would have the incentive to behave rationally if it wasn’t sponging off taxpayers.

If sold for a fairly low valuation for a railroad, Amtrak would sell for around $6.5 to $7 billion. …the federal government would save the $1.4 billion each year that it has been providing to Amtrak. After privatization, Amtrak will know that federal government subsidies are not available to it and will focus on serving its customers and turning a profit. That may mean that some routes are discontinued or continue operating with fewer scheduled trains. At the same time, some routes, such as those in the northeast corridor, may see an increase in the quality and frequency of service as Amtrak responds to the level of consumer demand in the free market.

Notwithstanding the recent accident, trains actually are very safe. And in the absence of government meddling, a private rail company would have the right incentives to produce the correct amount of investments in safety.

Train travel is already ten times safer than driving in terms of deaths per mile traveled. It is possible that riders do not want to pay more for train tickets in exchange for safety improvements. After all, Amtrak is actually ahead of many private railroads in installing the positive train control safety systems. However, if riders demand it, a private, profit-oriented railroad will provide it.

P.S. Here’s a personal story to give you a sense of Amtrak’s misguided culture.

P.P.S. The good news, for what it’s worth, is that Amtrak is a bargain for taxpayers compared to the rail boondoggle taking place in California. And I guess we should be happy that we don’t have the Chinese version of Amtrak.

P.P.P.S. Don’t carry a lot of cash if you’re a young black male and riding Amtrak.
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When the news broke a few days

Opinion


obama-georgetown-university

President Barack Obama talks backstage with moderator E. J. Dionne, Jr., left, Washington Post columnist and professor in Georgetown’s McCourt School of Public Policy, before the Catholic-Evangelical Leadership Summit on Overcoming Poverty, at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., May 12, 2015. Other panelists backstage are, from left, Robert Putnam, professor of public policy at the Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government and Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

In a recent panel discussion on poverty at Georgetown University, President Barack Obama gave another demonstration of his mastery of rhetoric — and disregard of reality.

One of the ways of fighting poverty, he proposed, was to “ask from society’s lottery winners” that they make a “modest investment” in government programs to help the poor.

Since free speech is guaranteed to everyone by the First Amendment to the Constitution, there is nothing to prevent anybody from asking anything from anybody else. But the federal government does not just “ask” for money. It takes the money it wants in taxes, usually before the people who have earned it see their paychecks.

Despite pious rhetoric on the left about “asking” the more fortunate for more money, the government does not “ask” anything. It seizes what it wants by force. If you don’t pay up, it can take not only your paycheck, it can seize your bank account, put a lien on your home and/or put you in federal prison.

So please don’t insult our intelligence by talking piously about “asking.”

And please don’t call the government’s pouring trillions of tax dollars down a bottomless pit “investment.” Remember the soaring words from Barack Obama, in his early days in the White House, about “investing in the industries of the future”? After Solyndra and other companies in which he “invested” the taxpayers’ money went bankrupt, we haven’t heard those soaring words so much.
Then there are those who produced the wealth that politicians want to grab. In Obama’s rhetoric, these producers are called “society’s lottery winners.”

Was Bill Gates a lottery winner? Or did he produce and sell a computer operating system that allows billions of people around the world to use computers, without knowing anything about the inner workings of this complex technology?

Was Henry Ford a lottery winner? Or did he revolutionize the production of automobiles, bringing the price down to the point where cars were no longer luxuries of the rich but vehicles that millions of ordinary people could afford, greatly expanding the scope of their lives?

Most people who want to redistribute wealth don’t want to talk about how that wealth was produced in the first place. They just want “the rich” to pay their undefined “fair share” of taxes. This “fair share” must remain undefined because all it really means is “more.”

Once you have defined it — whether at 30 percent, 60 percent or 90 percent — you wouldn’t be able to come back for more.

Obama goes further than other income redistributionists. “You didn’t build that!” he declared to those who did. Why? Because those who created additions to the world’s wealth used government-built roads or other government-provided services to market their products.

And who paid for those roads and other government-provided services if not the taxpayers? Since all other taxpayers, as well as non-taxpayers, also use government facilities, why are those who created private wealth not to use them also, since they are taxpayers as well?

The fact that most of the rhetorical ploys used by Barack Obama and other redistributionists will not stand up under scrutiny means very little politically. After all, how many people who come out of our schools and colleges today are capable of critical scrutiny?

When all else fails, redistributionists can say, as Obama did at Georgetown University, that “coldhearted, free-market capitalist types” are people who “pretty much have more than you’ll ever be able to use and your family will ever be able to use,” so they should let the government take that extra money to help the poor.

Slippery use of the word “use” seems to confine it to personal consumption. The real question is whether the investment of wealth is likely to be done better by those who created that wealth in the first place or by politicians. The track record of politicians hardly suggests that turning ever more of a nation’s wealth over to them is likely to turn out well.

It certainly has not turned out well in the American economy under Barack Obama.

In a recent panel discussion on poverty

World


iraqi-security-forces-fleeing-ramadi

Iraq security forces withdraw from Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s Anbar province, 115 kilometers (70 miles) west of Baghdad, Sunday, May 17, 2015. Suicide car bomb attacks killed over 10 members of Iraqi security forces Sunday in Ramadi, which now is largely held by the Islamic State group, authorities said. Last week, the militants swept through Ramadi, seizing the main government headquarters and other key parts of the city. It marked a major setback for the Iraqi government’s efforts to drive the militants out of areas they seized last year. (Photo: AP)

BAGHDAD — Islamic State (ISIS) militants have captured the city of Ramadi, killing some 500 civilians and soldiers and forcing 8,000 to flee from their homes, according to an official. The government-backed Shiite militias vowed to mount a counter-offensive and reclaim the Anbar provincial capital, which is located approximately 70 miles from the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.

“Ramadi has fallen,” Muhannad Haimour, a spokesman for the provincial governor of Anbar, told AP Sunday. “The city was completely taken. … The military is fleeing.”

The ISIS victory that resulted in a complete takeover of the city followed a three-day siege that began with a wave of car bombs, including four simultaneous bombings on Sunday that targeted police officers defending the Malaab district in southern Ramadi. The attack killed at least 10 policemen and wounded 15. Among the dead was Col. Muthana al-Jabri, the chief of the Malaab police station. Another three suicide bombers drove their explosive-laden cars into the gate of the military headquarters for the province, killing at least five soldiers and wounding 12, the officials said.

“We do not have an accurate count yet,” said an Anbar spokesman, Muhannad Haimour. “We estimate that 500 people have been killed, both civilians and military, and approximately 8,000 have fled the city.”

The U.S.-led coalition Sunday touted the fact it had conducted seven airstrikes in Ramadi in the last 24 hours, a military effort most analyst consider to be insufficient to turn back ISIS gains.

“It is a fluid and contested battlefield,” Pentagon spokesman Army Col. Steve Warren said. “We are supporting (the Iraqis) with air power.”

Speaking in South Korea, Secretary of State John Kerry tried to downplay what are clearly disastrous developments, calling Ramadi a “target of opportunity” for extremists. Kerry also said he was confident that ISIS’ gains could be reversed in the coming days, but history doesn’t back up that sentiment.

Islamic State (ISIS) militants have captured the

US

Dominique Sharpton, left, and her father, Al Sharpton, right, at The Apollo Theater on June 14, 2010 in New York City. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images)

Dominique Sharpton, left, and her father, Al Sharpton, right, at The Apollo Theater on June 14, 2010 in New York City. (Photo by Jemal Countess/Getty Images)

Dominique Sharpton, the daughter of Rev. Al Sharpton, alleged in an Oct. 2 lawsuit that she was “severely injured, bruised and wounded” due to a fall last year where she sprained her ankle on uneven pavement in lower Manhattan.

The lawsuit goes on to say that she’s in “permanent physical pain” and “still suffers and will continue to suffer for some time physical pain and bodily injuries.” However, Sharpton, whose Twitter handle @MSSharpton2u reads “Actress, National Action Network(NAN), Education for a Better America (EBA), SharptonEntertainment, LLC. Extraordinary Amongst The Ordinary,” appears not to have enough “permanent physical pain” that she cannot hike up mountains in Bali.

Dominique-Sharpton-Twitter

Dominique Sharpton — @MSSharpton2u — Twitter Feed.

That link is directed to her Instagram account, which shouldn’t be too hard for New York City officials to pull up in an effort to countersue her for filing a fraudulent lawsuit. No doubt her father, who hasn’t paid his taxes in years, can give her the money to pay the city to recover their legal fees.

Dominique-Sharpton-Instagram

Dominique Sharpton’s ankle injury doesn’t seem to stop her from climbing a mountain, which she posted on her Instagram.

Dominique Sharpton, the daughter of Rev. Al

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