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Politics

fed_police_state

Police officers in partial riot gear stand in protection of businesses during protests over the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson.

I have a Bureaucrat Hall of Fame to recognize government workers who have demonstrated special skills in ripping off taxpayers. And I’ve created a Moocher Hall of Fame to highlight deadbeats and scroungers who best illustrate the entitlement mentality.

But maybe it’s now time to create Victims of Government Thuggery Hall of Fame (though I need to figure out a more concise title). Charter members would include  Andy Johnson, Anthony Smelley, Charlie Engle, Tammy Cooper, Nancy Black, Russ Caswell, Jacques Wajsfelner, Jeff Councelller, Eric Garner, Martha Boneta, Carole Hinders, Salvatore Culosi, and James Lieto, as well as the Sierra Pacific Company.

And I would want to include the Meitiv family as well. Check out these horrifying details about the kidnapping of children by government, as reported by Reason.

The kids, ages 10 and 6, were supposed to come home at 6:00 p.m. from playing. At 6:30 p.m, Danielle says, she and her husband Sasha were pretty worried. By 8:00 p.m., they were frantic. Only then did someone from the CPS Crisis Center call the parents and tell them that the police had picked the children up. …Husband Sasha Meitiv, raised in the Soviet Union under complete state control, told his wife he was less surprised. “He said, ‘You don’t understand how cruel bureaucracy can be,’” said Danielle. I think we all are beginning to understand just how insane, paranoid, and vindictive the state can be when it comes to respecting human rights—in this case, the right of parents who love their kids to raise them the way they see fit. And the right of kids, all kids, to be outside, part of the world, without having to worry about police snatching them off the street and holding them for hours without even letting them make a phone call. …the children were released back into the Meitiv’s custody but were required to sign a “temporary safety plan,” which prohibits them from letting the kids go outside by themselves

For additional information about this horrifying intrusion into a family’s life, you can click here. The bottom line is that it’s disgustingly insane for government bureaucrats to steal children just because they disagree with parenting decisions that have been (and still should be) routine.

And we also need to allow group membership in this new Hall of Fame.

Consider the plight of some Wisconsin citizens who were subjected to Putin-style oppression and harassment because of their political views.

David French has the surreal details in a must-read National Review column.

Cindy Archer…was jolted awake by yelling, loud pounding at the door, and her dogs’ frantic barking. The entire house — the windows and walls — was shaking. She looked outside to see up to a dozen police officers, yelling to open the door. They were carrying a battering ram. …“I was so afraid,” she says. “I did not know what to do.” She grabbed some clothes, opened the door, and dressed right in front of the police. The dogs were still frantic. …multiple armed agents rushed inside. Some even barged into the bathroom, where her partner was in the shower. The officer or agent in charge demanded that Cindy sit on the couch, but she wanted to get up and get a cup of coffee. “I told him this was my house and I could do what I wanted.” Wrong thing to say. “This made the agent in charge furious. He towered over me with his finger in my face and yelled like a drill sergeant that I either do it his way or he would handcuff me.” …They wouldn’t let her speak to a lawyer. She looked outside and saw a person who appeared to be a reporter. Someone had tipped him off.

Cindy wasn’t the only victim. We also have the case of “Ann.”

Someone was pounding at her front door. It was early in the morning — very early — and it was the kind of heavy pounding that meant someone was either fleeing from — or bringing — trouble. “It was so hard. I’d never heard anything like it. I thought someone was dying outside.” She ran to the door, opened it, and then chaos. “People came pouring in. For a second I thought it was a home invasion. It was terrifying. They were yelling and running, into every room in the house. One of the men was in my face, yelling at me over and over and over.” …It was indeed a home invasion, but the people who were pouring in were Wisconsin law-enforcement officers. Armed, uniformed police swarmed into the house. Plainclothes investigators cornered her and her newly awakened family. Soon, state officials were seizing the family’s personal property…next came ominous warnings. Don’t call your lawyer. Don’t tell anyone about this raid. Not even your mother, your father, or your closest friends.

There were other victims.

For the family of “Rachel” (not her real name), the ordeal began before dawn — with the same loud, insistent knocking. Still in her pajamas, Rachel answered the door and saw uniformed police, poised to enter her home. When Rachel asked to wake her children herself, the officer insisted on walking into their rooms. The kids woke to an armed officer, standing near their beds. The entire family was herded into one room, and there they watched as the police carried off their personal possessions, including items that had nothing to do with the subject of the search warrant — even her daughter’s computer. And, yes, there were the warnings. Don’t call your lawyer. Don’t talk to anyone about this. Don’t tell your friends.

So who are these people? Suspected bank robbers? Kidnappers? Alleged murderers?

Not exactly.

…they were American citizens guilty of nothing more than exercising their First Amendment rights to support Act 10 and other conservative causes in Wisconsin. …For dozens of conservatives, the years since Scott Walker’s first election as governor of Wisconsin transformed the state…into a place where conservatives have faced early-morning raids, multi-year secretive criminal investigations, slanderous and selective leaks to sympathetic media, and intrusive electronic snooping. Yes, Wisconsin…was giving birth to a new progressive idea, the use of law enforcement as a political instrument, as a weapon to attempt to undo election results, shame opponents, and ruin lives. …This was the on-the-ground reality of the so-called John Doe investigations, expansive and secret criminal proceedings that directly targeted Wisconsin residents because of their relationship to Scott Walker, their support for Act 10, and their advocacy of conservative reform.

There’s no good news in this story, but at least the systematic harassment and oppression may come to an end if courts do their job.

…this traumatic process, however, is now heading toward a legal climax, with two key rulings expected in the late spring or early summer. The first ruling, from the Wisconsin supreme court, could halt the investigations for good, in part by declaring that the “misconduct” being investigated isn’t misconduct at all but the simple exercise of First Amendment rights. The second ruling, from the United States Supreme Court, could grant review on a federal lawsuit brought by Wisconsin political activist Eric O’Keefe and the Wisconsin Club for Growth, the first conservatives to challenge the investigations head-on. If the Court grants review, it could not only halt the investigations but also begin the process of holding accountable those public officials who have so abused their powers.

The article has lots of additional information and I strongly recommend you read the entire piece (at least if you’re not susceptible to high blood pressure).

By the way, you won’t be mistaken if you’re thinking that the Wisconsin story has a similarity to what happened with the IRS targeting of the Tea Party.

In both cases, the bureaucracy and the left (that’s a Venn Diagram with a big overlap) have manipulated government policy and power for solely political ends.

If that sounds like Putin’s Russia or today’s Venezuela, there’s an old saying about “if the shoe fits.” I don’t think we’re anywhere close to that level, fortunately, but if statist politicians and bureaucrats get away with the misdeeds shared above, we’ll take a big step in the wrong direction.

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CATO Institute senior fellow and economist details

Policy

entrepreneurship-super-entrepreneurs

Entrepreneurship (Photo: Shutterstock)

When writing about economic growth, my usual approach is to point out that more output is a function of increases in the quantity and quality of labor capital.

This is a helpful way of thinking about growth since it becomes easier to understand why certain policies are bad (such as redistribution programs that discourage labor supply) and other policies are good (reducing double taxation to encourage more saving and investment).

But labor and capital are only part of the story. Those two “factors of production” are the ingredients for growth, but who decides how those ingredients are combined?

As I point out in one of the Powerpoint slides I often use, there needs to be a “chef.”

This is why entrepreneurs are so important. They are the innovators who often figure out better and smarter ways of mixing labor and capital, leading to the “creative destruction” that characterizes dynamic and prosperous economies.

Entrepreneurs make mistakes all the time, of course, but there’s a feedback mechanism in a private economy called profit and loss. And that rewards good choices and penalizes bad choices. By contrast, when politicians play “chef,” you get cronyism, inefficiency, and corruption.

To understand the critical role of entrepreneurship, I strongly recommend a great two-part series, authored by two Swedish brothers, Tino Sanandaji and Nima Sanandaji, published by Cayman Financial Review.

In Part I, published in January, they share some good news about the state of entrepreneurship in America compared to Europe.

Entrepreneurship matters. And the rate of entrepreneurship differs across the Atlantic. Of the 100 largest public companies in the U.S., 31 were founded by an entrepreneur during the post-war era. In Europe, the corresponding figure is only seven out of the 100 largest firms. While these new firms in the U.S. created over four million jobs, those in Europe created about a million. A slightly different measure is the 500 largest global firms listed by the Financial Times. Amongst the U.S. firms on the list 29 percent were formed after 1950. This compares with merely eight percent in Europe.

But they make a valuable observation that entrepreneurship and self-employment are not necessarily the same thing.

In fact, the U.S. has a lower rate of self-employment than most other industrialized countries. Self-employment is the highest in Greece, Turkey, Spain, Portugal and Italy, countries with low rates of innovative entrepreneurship. Within the U.S., the self-employment rate in Silicon Valley is half that of the average of California. Clearly, the concept of entrepreneurship is very much different from that of self-employment. …When asked directly, four out of five business owners would not even define themselves as entrepreneurs. And approximately nine out of ten of the self-employed report that their firm does not engage in any innovative activity. So while a percentage of self-employed are true or potential entrepreneurs, not all of them are.

So the Sanandaji brothers decided to create a new measure based on “SuperEntrepreneurs.”

…we have worked on constructing a measure of high-impact entrepreneurship. The basis of our analysis is the comprehensive work that Forbes Magazine annually does when compiling the list ‘The World’s Billionaires’. We build upon Forbes’ work by distinguishing the individuals who have amassed a billion dollar fortune through entrepreneurship.

Their findings are fascinating.

The richest individuals in capitalist market economies to a surprisingly large extent appear to earn their wealth by creating new value, rather than inheriting it or acquiring it illegitimately. …the difference between both sides of the Atlantic is significant. In Western Europe 42 percent of the billionaires are self-made entrepreneurs, with most of the rest having inherited their wealth. In the U.S., 70 percent of billionaires are self-made entrepreneurs. In countries such as China that have only recently opened to capitalism, virtually all billionaires are self-made entrepreneurs. This indicates that the American Dream – the notion that it is possible for individuals to rise to the top through effort, luck and genius – is still alive. Self-made billionaire entrepreneurs have created millions of jobs, billions of dollars in private wealth and probably trillions of dollars of value for society.

And that value varies by region.

The number of SuperEntrepreneurs varies significantly across countries. Hong Kong has the most, with around three SuperEntrepreneurs per million inhabitants. The second highest rate of entrepreneurship is found in Israel, where there are close to two SuperEntrepeneurs per million inhabitants, followed by the U.S., Switzerland and Singapore. …When comparing large regions, the gap in super-entrepreneurship can be clearly seen. The U.S. is roughly four times as entrepreneurial as Western Europe and three times as entrepreneurial as Japan. The same relations hold regardless of whether we look at our measure of SuperEntrepreneurs, large firm founders or venture capital investment as a percentage of GDP.

But why does SuperEntrepreneuship vary by regions?

In Part I, the Sanandajis note that there seems to be more success in the Anglosphere (i.e., nations that got their legal system from England).

In Part II, published in April, they dig deeper and identify the policies that make a difference.

They start with property rights.

One institution that has a direct and positive link to entrepreneurship is the protection of private property. …Property rights matter because individuals will rarely invest the massive amounts of time and money needed to creating an entrepreneurial company if there is an imminent risk that their firm will be taken from them in the event it becomes valuable. In economies with weak protection of property rights and corrupt states, firms tend to stay small and informal. This of course inhibits high growth entrepreneurship. …In our study, we find a clear link between property rights – as measured by the International Property Rights Index – and the level of SuperEntrepreneurship per capita around the world. The countries which have the strongest property rights tend to have more high-impact entrepreneurs.

They also find taxes make a difference.

Another key factor influencing the rate of high-impact entrepreneurship is taxes.  …Taxes are therefore a necessary evil. The need to balance the need for revenue and the damaging impact of taxes on the economy is perhaps the biggest challenge of modern welfare states. …Entrepreneurial success is a fabulous prize that motivates many to try, for a few to succeed. If taxes diminish the value of this prize, fewer individuals will make the effort and take the risk to win. … If taxes eat away a sizable part of the return from the rare cases of great success, the calculus between these choices is changed. …high taxes can make a previously profitable investment unprofitable. …Research has consistently shown that business owners reduce their output more in reaction to taxes than workers; they are, in the terminology of economists, more responsive. This is likely due to a combination of entrepreneurs having more control over their reported income, more control over effort and being more responsive to economic incentives. …In our study, we indeed do find a clear relation between taxes on profit and the share of high-impact entrepreneurs in our list. The nations that have the highest tax rates tend to be the same that have the lowest rates of entrepreneurship.

And they explain that regulatory burdens also are important.

The third institutional factor that is strongly linked to the rate of SuperEntrepreneurship is regulation.  …Each individual regulation may seem reasonable in out of itself… Taken together however, these well-meaning regulations can grow exponentially and inhibit business startup. This is especially true as startups do not have the resources to hire full time employees to deal with regulations like large firms. Regulations can also inhibit the rate of growth, take energy from the entrepreneur that could instead be used to develop the venture and can also force the firm to make poor business decisions in order to comply with some rule or regulation. …in many countries regulations arise not in order to ensure desirable social outcomes, but in order to facilitate government control and even corruption….we rely in our work on the World Bank “ease of doing business” index… We find that countries with a heavy regulatory burden have fewer entrepreneurs per capita. The findings are replicated when using an alternate regulatory index for the OECD countries. Even when controlling for tax rates and per capita income, more regulation is associated with fewer SuperEntrepreneurs.

I’m only skimming the surface on what’s included in the two articles.

But here’s the bottom line, as illustrated by this table from Part II.

SuperEntrepreneur-Policies

And their conclusion emphasizes why it’s important to have genuine free markets so highly productive people seek success by serving the needs and wants of consumers. In a cronyist economy, by contrast, people seek “success” through government favoritism.

Another aim is to distinguish between crony capitalists and constructive entrepreneurs. Our preliminary analysis shows that countries with free market policies are dominated by individuals who become rich by creating even greater value for society at large. Countries with high levels of state involvement and weak market institutions on the other hand encourage individuals to gain wealth atthe expense of others. In all systems, individuals are motivated by wealth.

Now let’s close by looking at the issue from a more US-centric perspective.

Liya Palagashvili of George Mason University writes in U.S. News and World Report that entrepreneurship seems to be waning in the United States.

And government deserves the blame.

What exactly are the factors leading to the decline in business activity in the United States? And what can be done to revive the American entrepreneurial environment? Economists identify the costs imposed on entrepreneurs by the regulatory environment as one of the most important influences on business dynamism. Where regulations make it difficult to start and operate businesses, entrepreneurs have a difficult time bringing new ideas and innovations to fruition. Promising entrepreneurs who face burdensome regulations might opt out of doing business or decide to take their ideas to countries with more favorable business climates. Burdensome regulations such as credit and labor-market regulations, business taxes and start-up costs – like the number of procedures, payments and minimum capital requirements to start a business – all influence individuals’ decisions to engage in entrepreneurial activity. Is it costly to start a business? Am I even allowed to start a business? Will my business entail high labor costs? Can I easily fire bad or redundant workers?

Unfortunately, while government deserves the blame, the rest of us will bear the costs.

These trends pose a long-term problem. If a favorable entrepreneurial environment is eroding, what will become of economic prosperity for future Americans? …People living in the United States and much of the developed world today experience significantly higher standards of living because entrepreneurs continuously introduce and improve market products – not only items such as personal computers and cell phones, but new medicines, better clothing and other technologies that improve ordinary people’s daily lives. New technological improvements are sparked when entrepreneurs are able to reap the benefits of their innovations, and business entry is high when start-up costs are low.

So we have yet another piece of evidence showing the superiority of free markets and small government.

P.S. At the start of the month, I defended religious liberty laws based on the libertarian principle of freedom of association. Simply stated, the government shouldn’t have the power to force you to do business with people you don’t like, even if you have repugnant motivations.

Well, that principle is a two-way street. Check out these excerpts from a recent news report out of Colorado.

Last week, the Colorado Civil Rights Division ruled that Denver’s Azucar Bakery did not discriminate against William Jack, a Christian from Castle Rock, by refusing to make two cakes with anti-gay messages and imagery that he requested last year. …Silva told the civil rights agency that she also told Jack her bakery “does not discriminate” and “accept[s] all humans.” Jack told the civil rights agency the bakery treated him unequally and denied him goods or services based on his religious creed, Christianity. He said he found this “demeaning to his beliefs.”

I’m glad the Colorado Civil Rights Division ruled in favor of the bakery, though its legal reasoning is laughable. The bakery unambiguously discriminated.

But it’s not the role of government to force people to like each other or do business with each other, whether the issue involves some Christians preferring not to do business with some gays or some gays (or gay sympathizers) preferring not to do business with some Christians.

P.P.S. Here’s another update on a previous column.

I wrote last year about how some gun control laws were imposed by racist state governments that wanted to disarm oppressed black Americans.

Well, fortunately those bad laws weren’t always successful. Here’s a blurb from a recent book that Tyler Cowen posted at Marginal Revolution.

…although nonviolence was crucial to the gains made by the freedom struggle of the 1950s and 1960s, those gains could not have been achieved without the complementary and still underappreciated practice of armed self-defense.  The claim that armed self-defense was a necessary aspect of the civil rights movement is still controversial.  However, wielding weapons, especially firearms, let both participants in nonviolent struggle and their sympathizers protect themselves and others under terrorist attack for their civil rights activities.  This willingness to use deadly force ensured the survival not only of countless brave men and women but also of the freedom struggle itself.

Another reason why Glenn Reynolds (a.k.a., Instapundit) is correct to call the 2nd Amendment a civil rights issue.

Or a human rights issue, as powerfully illustrated by Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

[mybooktable book=”global-tax-revolution-the-rise-of-tax-competition-and-the-battle-to-defend-it” display=”summary” buybutton_shadowbox=”true”]

Mitchell: To understand the critical role of

Politics, Video

obama-apologizes-for-hostages

U.S. President Barack Obama apologizes in a statement on the accidental killing of two hostages held by al-Qaida, American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto, in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on April 23, 2015.

President Obama delivered a statement on the accidental killing of two hostages held by al-Qaida, American Warren Weinstein and Italian Giovanni Lo Porto. He expressed expressed “grief and condolences” to their families and said “nothing I can say will take their pain away.” He took full responsibility for what happened in the counterterrorism operation.

“As a husband and a father, I cannot imagine the pain the Weinsteins and the La Portos are feeling today,” Obama said. “I know there is nothing I can ever say or do that can ease their heartache.”

[brid video=”7349″ player=”1929″ width=”630″ height=”354″]

“As president and commander-in-chief, I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations — including the one that inadvertently took the lives of Warren and Giovanni,” Obama said said. “I profoundly regret what happened. On behalf of the United States government offer our deepest apologies to the families.”

However, a White House official Thursday told PPD that the president did not give the order for the drone strike, which they claimed is the administration’s policy and standard operating procedure. Apparently, there are a list of guidelines and requirements that — if met — are enough for top level military and administration officials to order counterterrorism drone strikes without the president’s authority.

President Obama delivered a statement on the

Politics

Warren-Weinstein

File photo depicting Warren Weinstein, the American hostage killed by a drone strike while in al Qaeda captivity earlier this year. (MIKE REDWOOD/AP)

The family of an American hostage held by al Qaeda responded to the tragic confirmation he and an Italian hostage were accidentally killed in a U.S. drone strike earlier this year. American development expert Dr. Warren Weinstein, who was abducted more than three and a half years ago in Pakistan, and Italian national Giovanni Lo Porto were killed in a counterterrorism operation earlier this year, the White House confirm Thursday in a stunning and tragic admission.

Background

Dr. Weinstein, while working as an economic development advisor, was captured from his home in Lahore, Pakistan on August 13, 2011, and was held hostage for more than three and a half years. Speaking from the White House Thursday, President Obama expressed “grief and condolences” for the deaths of the hostages and said he has order a review and declassification of the mission.

“As president and commander-in-chief, I take full responsibility for all our counterterrorism operations — including the one that inadvertently took the lives of Warren and Giovanni,” Obama said said. “I profoundly regret what happened. On behalf of the United States government offer our deepest apologies to the families.”

The White House revealed that two Americans working with Al Qaeda were killed, as well. Ahmed Farouq, an American Al Qaeda leader, was killed in the same operation in which the hostages died. However, a White House spokesperson told PPD Farouq and Gadahn were not targeted in the operations, and the U.S. did not have specific information indicating their presence at the sites.

American-born Al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gadahn was killed in January in a separate incident, according to White House officials.

Read Mrs. Weinstein’s Statement Below:

On behalf of myself, our two daughters, our son-in-law, and two grandchildren, we are devastated by this news and the knowledge that my husband will never safely return home. We were so hopeful that those in the U.S. and Pakistani governments with the power to take action and secure his release would have done everything possible to do so and there are no words to do justice to the disappointment and heartbreak we are going through. We do not yet fully understand all of the facts surrounding Warren’s death but we do understand that the U.S. government will be conducting an independent investigation of the circumstances. We look forward to the results of that investigation. But those who took Warren captive over three years ago bear ultimate responsibility. I can assure you that he would still be alive and well if they had allowed him to return home after his time abroad working to help the people of Pakistan.

The cowardly actions of those who took Warren captive and ultimately to the place and time of his death are not in keeping with Islam and they will have to face their God to answer for their actions.

Warren spent his entire life working to benefit people across the globe and loved the work that he did to make people’s lives better. In Pakistan, where he was working before he was abducted, he loved and respected the Pakistani people and their culture. He learned to speak Urdu and did everything he could to show his utmost and profound respect for the region.

We cannot even begin to express the pain our family is going through and we ask for the respect of our privacy as we go through this devastating ordeal.

I want to thank Congressman John Delaney, Senator Barbara Mikulski, and Senator Ben Cardin – as well as specific officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation – for their relentless efforts to free my husband.” Mrs. Weinstein added, “Unfortunately, the assistance we received from other elements of the U.S. Government was inconsistent and disappointing over the course of three and a half years. We hope that my husband’s death and the others who have faced similar tragedies in recent months will finally prompt the U.S. Government to take its responsibilities seriously and establish a coordinated and consistent approach to supporting hostages and their families.

I am disappointed in the government and military in Pakistan. Warren’s safe return should have been a priority for them based on his contributions to their country, but they failed to take action earlier in his captivity when opportunity presented itself, instead treating Warren’s captivity as more of an annoyance than a priority. I hope the nature of our future relationship with Pakistan is reflective of how they prioritize situations such as these.

[brid video=”7349″ player=”1929″ width=”630″ height=”354″]

The family of an American hostage held

Economy

(Photo: REUTERS)

New home sales in the U.S. plummeted in March by the biggest margin in just under two years, reversing three months of gains in the struggling housing market. The Commerce Department reported Thursday that sales fell by 11.4 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 481,000 units, the biggest percentage drop since July 2013.

Sales in the month of February was revised up to 543,000 units, which was the highest level since February 2008 and up from the previously reported 539,000 units. However, when averaging in March’s sales pace it would take 5.3 months to clear the supply of houses on the market, up from 4.6 months in February.

New homes sales tumbled 33.3 percent in the Northeast and 3.4 percent in the West. Sales in the South, where most new housing activity takes place, dropped 15.8 percent. It was the biggest decline since July 2013. In the Midwest, new home sales actually rose 5.9 percent.

The stock of new houses available on the market rose 1.9 percent last month to 213,000. However, supply still remains less than half of what it was at the height of the housing boom and the data was way off the mark.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast new home sales, which account for 8.5 percent of the market, falling to a 513,000-unit pace last month. Data on Wednesday showed that existing home sales, or previously owned homes, hit an 18-month high in March.

The fairly upbeat report will not be enough, however, to sway economists’ expectations on second quarter growth following a considerably weak first quarter. Considering the abysmal data on retail sales, housing starts, manufacturing and now new home sales, it is unlikely the Federal Reserve will start to raise interest rates in June.

New home sales in the U.S. plummeted

Economy

jobs-line

Labor Department reports on weekly jobless claims, otherwise known as first-time jobless claims. (Photo: Reuters)

The Labor Department reported Thursday that weekly jobless claims rose for the third consecutive week, increasing by 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 295,000. The number of Americans seeking first-time unemployment benefits, which gauges layoffs across the U.S., surpassed economists’ expectation of 290,000 for the week ended April 18.

Claims for the prior week were not revised from the initially reported 294,000, and claims have risen 3 out of the prior 4 weeks since the Labor Department changed their method for calculating weekly jobless claims for first-time unemployment benefits.

Still, the four-week moving average of claims, which is considered a better measurement as it irons out weekly volatility, rose by 1,750 to 284,500. When the average rises above 300,000, it is a concerning sign in the labor market.

The economy added 126,000 jobs in March, far below the average 269,000 jobs created in the prior 12 months, and wage growth continues to stagnate.

The Labor Department report found the number of continuing claims for unemployment benefits rose by 50,000 to 2.33 million for the week ended April 11. Continuing claims are reported with a one-week lag. The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending April 4 was 2,434,208, a significant number but still lower than the 2,922,195 in the year prior.

The Labor Department said there were no special factors impacting the latest claims data, but figures for Puerto Rico were estimated due to a holiday in that territory.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that weekly

Politics

ted-cruz-liberty-university-speech

Speaking at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va, Sen. Ted Cruz announced his candidacy for president on March 23, 2015.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, on March 23 became the first Republican to announce that he will run for president in 2016 during a speech at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va. He hammered home his campaign’s theme of “courageous conservatism” at the largest the Christian university in America, and the world.

Cruz, who is running as a Washington outsider with a relatively smaller campaign staff, will have to secure the Republican nomination in a growing and deep GOP bench if he, or other hopefuls, want to become president. Whether you agree with him or not on the issues, no one can say that Cruz doesn’t do what he says or isn’t the man he purports to be. Take one look at his staff, which is not saturated with big Beltway names or longtime D.C. residents, and you know what his strategy entails.

Here are a list of names representing the most influential political advisors and operatives behind Team Ted Cruz 2016, who will work tirelessly to get out the evangelical vote, as well as energize and expand the conservative base. The team members are mostly Lone Star State Republicans with a good deal of experience doing just that. The early staffing moves from various candidates will all be introduced to our visitors and subscribers in PPD’s new series, Team 2016: Players, Pollsters And Pockets Behind The Campaign.

THE CAMPAIGN

Jeff Roe, founder of the Kansas City-based political consulting group Axiom Strategies, which has worked on numerous congressional races, will serve as Cruz’s campaign manager. His resume includes Mike Huckabee’s 2008 presidential primary campaign, when he shocked pundits by winning the Iowa caucus, and public opinion campaigns involving voter identification laws. Roe also worked as a political consultant to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry in 2012.

Chad Sweet, co-founder of the Chertoff Group, a security consulting group started with former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Michael Chertoff, will serve as Cruz’s campaign chairman. Sweet also served as chief of staff.

Chris Wilson, the former executive director of the Texas Republican Party and Oklahoma City-based pollster and consultant, will serve as Cruz’s director of analytics and research. It is also worth mentioning that Chris Perkins, who is Wilson’s business partner, is also going to have a role in the campaign.

Jason Miller, a partner and executive vice president at the conservative firm Jamestown Associates. He has extensive experience in House and Senate races, and served as the deputy communications director on former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign. As Cruz’s senior communications adviser, he will be paying close attention to the data Wilson is pulling in, and is a perfect fit. His firm is known for butting heads with party committees, just like Sen. Cruz, himself.

Catherine Frazier will serve as Sen. Cruz’ national press secretary, another logical decision considering she is his Senate spokeswoman. Frazier is also a Lone Star State player. She came after years of service with Gov. Rick Perry, including his failed 2012 presidential bid.

Brian Phillips will work closely with Frazier as the senator’s rapid response director. He has a good deal of communications experience, including serving as Utah Sen. Mike Lee’s communications director.

Rick Tyler, a long-serving spokesman for former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, will serve in the same role for Ted Cruz. He will serve as national campaign spokesman.

Jason Johnson, a seasons Texas-based Republican consultant and one of the men behind Cruz’s Senate upset victory over Establishment favorite Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, will serve as chief strategist. His resume, which includes chief of staff for now-Gov. Greg Abbott, who he helped to elect as AG in 2002, is filled with Lone Star State campaigns.

Austen Furse, a Texas businessman and former director of policy planning under President George H.W. Bush, will serve as policy director.

Victoria Coates, Cruz’s national security advisor in the Senate, is now his senior foreign policy adviser. She is behind Cruz’s hawkish foreign policy and served as an aide to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Nick Muzin, a Palmetto State veteran who worked for Sen. Tim Scott, is Cruz’s senior adviser. Will get more into the team in South Carolina, but Muzin will no doubt be an asset to Cruz in the early state primary. Muzin also had the connections to make introductions to the Jewish Republican donor class.

Josh Perry will do what he does best, which is handle the day-to-day operations as a digital strategist. He also played this role in Cruz’s Senate office, where he tweeted for Cruz. He was affiliated with Vincent Harris, which is an Austin-based digital consultant who did a little work with Cruz. Harris, as we outlined in Meet Team Paul 2016, went to work for Sen. Paul.

Here is a sample of his retweet work:

And here is another sample.  retweeting Mark Halperin’s take on the petition:

Mark Campbell, a well-known Republican consultant, will serve as political director. Campbell also ran Giuliani’s 2008 presidential campaign and multiple other presidential campaigns.

Before we get into the individual early states, it is worth mentioning that you will see a pattern. Sen. Ted Cruz has populated Team Ted Cruz 2016 with two players; one that knows his or her state better than outside strategists and consultants; and, a trusted Lone Star State member of the inner circle. While it appears Cruz understands getting vital information from the local activists and players is absolutely necessary, he also wants an inner circle member overseeing things, as well.

IOWA

• Bryan English, a social conservative player, will spearhead Sen. Cruz’s efforts in the Iowa caucus. English, a former staffer for Rep. Steve King, will work with Jon McClellan, a Cruz regional political director based out of Houston, to maximize evangelical turnout in the first-in-the-nation Hawkeye State caucus.

NEW HAMPSHIRE

• Ethan Zorfas, who served in multiple capacities for Rep. Frank Guinta, will be a chief political consultant in the Granite State. The experience Zorfas gathered in the epic Guinta vs Shea-Porter races gives him insight into a swingy and, very important, region of the state. David Sawyer, a Houston-based regional political director will also play a major role in the campaigns efforts in New Hampshire.

SOUTH CAROLINA

• LaDonna Ryggs, a big grassroots player in the Palmetto State, will head up Cruz’s efforts in South Carolina. Ryggs, along with Muzin, will focus on maximizing turnout from and widening margins in the conservative Upstate region of the state.

READ ALSO — Meet Team Rubio 2016: Players, Pollsters And Pockets Behind The Campaign
READ ALSO — Meet Team Rand Paul 2016: Players, Pollsters And Pockets Behind The Campaign
DEEP POCKETS

• Lauren Lofstrom, a former fundraiser for Gov. Perry in 2012 and associate of the Republican Governors Association, is serving as the campaign’s finance director. Her experience has given her connections and access to Texas money. We fully expect her to do her job well and outperform media expectations.

Speaking of outperforming media expectations, Keep the Promise or some variation of it make up four super PACs supporting Sen. Ted Cruz. The PACs wowed pundits and pols alike after reportedly raising some $30 million for Cruz in the first couple weeks after his announcement. Austin-based attorney Dathan Voelter serves as treasurer for three, while New York-based Jacquelyn James serves as treasurer for one. Robert and Diana Mercer, as well as their daughter Rebekah, come from a wealthy New York family and the word is that they are backing one of the PACs. Stand for Principle, an Atlanta-based super PAC tied to Cruz’s college friend, David Panton, is run by Maria Strollo Zack. John Drogin, Cruz’s 2012 campaign manager, is the executive director of Make D.C. Listen.

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In this edition of Team 2016: Players,

Opinion

eric holder

Aug. 20, 2014: Attorney General Eric Holder speaks during his meeting at the FBI building in St. Louis. (Photo: AP)

Does the FBI manifest fidelity, bravery and integrity, or does it cut constitutional corners in order to incriminate? Can the FBI cut the cable television lines to your house and then show up pretending to be the cable guy and install listening devices? Can FBI agents and technicians testify falsely and cause the innocent to be convicted, incarcerated and, in some cases, executed?

In 2014, FBI agents in Las Vegas were on the trail of Wei Seng Phua, whom they believed was running an illegal gambling operation out of his hotel room at Caesars Palace. Instead of following him, asking questions about him and using other traditional investigative techniques, a few agents came up with the idea of planting a wiretap in Phua’s hotel room.

They bribed a hotel employee, who gave them access to a place in the hotel where they could disable the cable television wires to Phua’s room. When he called for repair, they showed up pretending to be cable guys, and he let them into his room. They repaired what they had disabled, but they also illegally wiretapped the phones in the room. Then they overheard his telephone conversations about his illegal gambling, and they arrested him. A grand jury indicted him based on what was overheard.

The grand jury was not told of the wire cutting and the con job, but a federal judge was. Last week, he criticized the FBI for conducting an illegal search of Phua’s room, in direct contravention of the Fourth Amendment, which the agents swore to uphold, and he barred the government from using the tapes of the telephone conversations as evidence against Phua. If the government can get away with this, he ruled, then constitutional guarantees are meaningless.

These lawless agents should have been indicted by a state grand jury for breaking and entering by false pretense, but Caesars declined to seek their prosecution. No surprise.

It was surprising, however, when the FBI was forced to admit last week that in the 1980s and 1990s, its agents and lab technicians who examined hair samples testified falsely in 257 of 268 cases that resulted in convictions. Of the convictions, 18 persons were sentenced to death, and of those, 12 have been executed.

Some of these cases were federal, but most were state prosecutions in which state and county prosecutors hired the FBI to perform lab tests and compare hair samples from a crime scene with a defendant’s known hair sample. The faulty lab work and erroneous testimony destroyed the freedom of hundreds and the lives of 12, squandered millions in tax dollars, and impaired the constitutional values we all embrace.

You probably did not hear about the FBI cable guys or the admitted 96-percent rate of false testimony in cases of conviction. That’s because the FBI skillfully diverted your attention.

In an effort to pick a front-page fight with the government of Poland, FBI Director James Comey revealed last week that the very concept of the Holocaust has moved him deeply — so deeply that he has ordered all new FBI agents to spend quiet time at the Holocaust Museum contemplating its horrors. He argued that the terror of Nazi agents became so commonplace that its wrongness was no longer apparent to them. That’s probably true. The Nazis did so much killing that their acts of killing innocents became commonplace to the killers. Then he blamed the Poles for their own victimization because of the few among them who collaborated with their invaders. This brought the hoped-for fierce blowback from the Polish government and top-of-the-fold criticism of Comey for two days.

Earlier this week, the FBI announced the arrest of eight persons for attempting to leave the United States in order to join ISIS. The actual charge is attempting to provide material assistance to a terrorist organization. These ISIS people are truly monsters. Yet, Americans have a natural right to travel where they want and associate with whomever they please. The test of a truly free country is the right to leave it.

Moreover, this was a controlled FBI sting. The defendants were instigated by and under the watchful eyes of FBI undercover agents. The FBI admits that the defendants never posed any harm. How can it be a crime — or harmful — for people to leave the U.S.? If people with evil inclinations want to leave, let them go; arrest them when they return if they cause harm.

For 600 years of Anglo-American jurisprudence, the definition of crime has included the element of harm. No one was harmed by this sting except the taxpayers. Yet, this announcement dominated the news cycle as hoped for.

Why chastise the Poles, who suffered egregiously under the Nazis, in 2015 for the few who collaborated with them in 1942? Why entrap losers who harmed no one into thinking they could freely leave the country and join an army of monsters and then announce their arrest during a bad week? To change the subject; that’s why.

Will FBI agents who lie, cheat, break the law and testify falsely be brought to justice? Will their superiors who condone this be made to answer? Does the FBI work for us, or do we work for it?

Judge Andrew Napolitano has written nine books on the U.S. Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty.

Judge Andrew Napolitano asks, "Does the FBI

Opinion

Boston-Globe-columnist-Dan-Shaughnessy

Boston Globe sports columnist Dan Shaughnessy speaks during a retirement dinner for 44-year Boston Globe sports writer Bob Ryan Thursday, January 17, 2013. (Photo: Courtesy of Celtics)

Now listen. We’re not going to work ourselves into a tizzy here in Cleveland because a columnist in Boston decided to launch his fiction writing career with a hit job on us.

OK, maybe we are, but let’s keep this meltdown brief, shall we? I love Boston and a few Boston sports fans, too, especially the one who is the father to two of our beautiful grandchildren. I’ve got the family peace to keep here. So go, Celtics — any time except right now.

After the Cleveland Cavaliers beat the Boston Celtics in Game 1 of the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy made fun of us. A lot.

Our confetti-drop at the end of the game struck him as “a little needy.” We do this after every game, which I guess makes us really, really needy. To someone who thinks confetti is a window into the soul, I mean. That’s deep, man.

Shaughnessy also called us “a hungry place, peppered with people with hungry faces.” I’m trying to imagine what a hungry face looks like. I keep seeing Joe McKenzie’s hound dog eyes as he tried to talk me into a kiss in the summer between sixth and seventh grades. I’m going with that one.

On and on Shaughnessy went, describing us as a “sad” and “quiet” town that is either “dead or dying.” Remind me never to count on him to call 911.

The “quiet” thing I don’t get. My husband and I are still popping our ears after Saturday’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductions. The partying was so raucous and loud that we kept misunderstanding each other. During Green Day’s performance, for example, I thought he turned to me and yelled, “Ice your fat hair.” Turns out he said, “This is so great.” If we were a quiet people, I would have known that.

Now, I imagine some of you readers who don’t live in Cleveland might wonder why you should care about yet another out-of-town journalist’s trash-talking our town.

This isn’t just about Cleveland. This is about every misunderstood city in America that’s had three professional sports teams without a national championship for more than 50 years.

Granted, that narrows the pool somewhat — to exactly one, maybe — but we’re Midwesterners, and to make it all about us would suggest we’re sports fans in Boston.

OK, I winced as I wrote that because I’m breaking rule No. 1 of the Manual of Midwestern Manners, which instructs us to smile on the outside even when our hearts are curdling with revenge fantasies on the inside. To assuage my guilt, I’m going to go bake a casserole for a potluck somewhere.

On Tuesday, Shaughnessy told Cleveland’s WKYC-TV that he was sorry if we were offended. “There’s no new ground in there,” he said, referring to his column. “Nothing that hasn’t been said before.”

That’s some standard you got going there, Dan.

What this is really about is what it means to be a columnist these days. We are so needy.

There was a time when we wrote our opinions and they were published for a single day in the print newspaper and that was that. We’d get some angry calls and maybe some mean mail, but no one posted the worst picture of us ever online for a caption contest.

And we’re just not special anymore. These days, anyone with an opinion and a keyboard is a “columnist.” Our job performance is now measured not by the depth of our intellect or the breadth of our brilliance but by the number of online clicks, comments and “unique visitors.”

By the way, dear readers, I want you to know I have always thought that each and every one of you is unique.

For most editors, any attention is better than being ignored. So we’re supposed to celebrate whenever the comments sections under our columns explode with stuff you wouldn’t say to a dog that has just lifted his leg over the toe of your Uggs. The new boots, the ones without the salt stains.

That stuff can play with your head. You might start to wonder: Maybe I do resemble my pug when I write about workers’ rights. Maybe my politics really have earned me the nickname Commie Connie. Maybe it’s true that I am a man-hating broom-flier with a closetful of sensible shoes.

Or not. Maybe you only worry about that if you’re a columnist in Boston.

Which brings us back to Shaughnessy for the most fleeting of moments. How time flies. As I write, the Cavs are now up 2-0 against Boston and are headed to the fine city that spawned our just-this-side-of-perfect son-in-law.

Grandma’s got her game on.

Go, Cavs.

Connie Schultz is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist and an essayist for Parade magazine. She is the author of two books, including “…and His Lovely Wife,” which chronicled the successful race of her husband, Sherrod Brown, for the U.S. Senate.

Pulitzer Prize winner Connie Schultz takes on

Policy

obama-income-inequality-speech-2013

President Barack Obama called income inequality the “defining challenge of our time” in a speech in Washington, D.C. on December 4, 2013. (Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

I don’t understand the left’s myopic fixation on income inequality. If they genuinely care about the less fortunate, they should be focused on policies that produce higher incomes.

But instead, they agitate for class warfare and redistribution, which leads me to believe that many of them hate the rich more than they love the poor.

And while it’s surely true that governments can harm (or worse!) the financial status of folks like Bill Gates, that doesn’t help the poor.

Indeed, the poor could be worse off since statist policies are linked to weaker economic performance.

So relative inequality may decline, but only because the rich suffer even more than the poor (as Margaret Thatcher brilliantly explained).

That’s a bad outcome by any reasonable interpretation.

But let’s set aside the economic issues and contemplate the political potency of so-called income inequality.

Writing for the Wall Street Journal, William Galston of the Brookings Institution (and a former adviser to Bill Clinton) opines that income inequality isn’t a powerful issue in America.

Hillary Clinton was reportedly struck that no one had asked her about inequality. She shouldn’t have been surprised… Recent opinion surveys show inequality well down the list of public concerns. In a February CBS News poll, for example, only 4% of Americans named income disparities as the most important problem facing the country. In March only 2% told Gallup that the income gap was at the top of their list.

Galston cites a couple of studies of public opinion trends.

In…Public Opinion Quarterly in 2013, Matthew Luttig also found that rising inequality has failed to boost support for redistribution and may actually have the opposite effect. What is going on? The authors of the Brookings paper found that the principal beneficiaries of government programs—especially the elderly—have become increasingly resistant in recent decades to additional redistributive policies. During that period, just about every new cohort entering the ranks of the elderly has been less supportive of redistribution than its predecessor.

He doesn’t think voters necessarily are becoming libertarian or conservative.

But he does think leftists are deluding themselves if they think more propaganda will sway voters in favor of redistribution.

Many Democratic activists believe that the weakness of public support for redistribution rests on ignorance: Give them more information about what is really happening, and their policy preferences will be transformed. But a recent paper for the Washington Center for Equitable Growth reported that while survey respondents “who view information about inequality are more likely to believe that inequality is a serious problem, they show no more appetite for many interventions to reduce inequality.” The best explanation for this apparent anomaly: rising mistrust of government, especially the federal government. Many people who think inequality is an important problem don’t believe that Washington’s political institutions can be trusted to fix it.

Gee, I wonder why people think the federal government is incompetent in helping the poor?

Could it be that voters are slowly but surely realizing that P.J. O’Rourke was right?

In any event, Galston concludes with some very sound recommendations.

What matters most is growth that includes everyone. To get that kind of growth, we will have to act on a broad front to expand opportunity for those who now lack it—and ensure that workers earn enough to provide opportunity for their children. These measures will reduce inequality, all the more so if they are financed by linking real wages to productivity gains and terminating tax preferences that don’t promote growth while benefiting mainly the wealthiest Americans.

To be sure, Galston’s embrace of growth instead of redistribution doesn’t mean he has good ideas on what causes growth.

But at least he understands that the goal should be to make the pie bigger.

And that’s the point I made in this CNN interview (VIEW BELOW), which took place via Skype since I was at a conference in Brussels.

Though you may notice that I mangle my metaphor at the end of the interview, switching from pie to cake.

But setting aside that one glitch, I hopefully got across my main point that the focus should be growth rather than inequality.

P.S. It’s worth noting that states with the most support for class warfare and redistribution also are the states with the most inequality. Maybe they should experiment with bad policy inside their own borders before trying to foist such policies on the entire nation.

P.P.S. I wrote last year about six remarkable examples of leftist hypocrisy. Make that seven.

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If the Left genuinely cared about income

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