American workers at a manufacturing plant for long-lasting durable goods. (PHOTO: REUTERS)
U.S. stocks fell sharply Wednesday after a gauge of industrial orders unexpectedly fell last month. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that new orders for manufactured durable goods in February decreased $3.2 billion or 1.4 percent to $231.3 billion.
At 1:26 a.m. EDT (1515 GMT), the Dow Jones industrial average (INDEXDJX:.DJI) fell 220 points, or 1.23 percent, to 17,790, the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:.INX) lost 19 points, or .93 percent, to 2,072 and the Nasdaq Composite (INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC) dropped 87 points, or 1.76 percent, to 4,907.
A drop in durable goods orders pushed the dollar (USDUSD) down 0.2 percent after falling by as much as 0.7 percent, as it eases fears that the rally in the U.S. currency will hurt domestic corporate earnings.
“The dollar strength can sap earnings growth, but if you continue to see soft economic data here, a confirmation of decelerating growth, that will certainly affect the market,” said Chad Morganlander, portfolio manager at Stifel, Nicolaus & Co in Florham Park, New Jersey.
With the S&P 500’s forward price-to-earnings ratio over 17 and at its highest since late 2007, “you have to torture the numbers to make a bull case at this point.”
The dollar index <.DXY> was down 0.2 percent after falling earlier as much as 0.7 percent.
Meanwhile, Kraft Foods (NASDAQ:KRFT) shot up 42 percent to $86.90 after a merger agreement with ketchup maker H.J. Heinz Co, owned by 3G Capital and Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.A). Kraft Heinz Co will trade publicly and will be the third-largest food company in North America.
Internal Revenue Service Commissioner John Koskinen answers to the House Oversight Committee in the panel’s continuing probe of whether tea party groups were improperly targeted for increased scrutiny by the government’s tax agency, at the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, March 26, 2014. (Photo: AP/J. Scott Applewhite)
One of the new traditions at the IRS is an annual release of tax scams. It’s know as the “dirty dozen” list, and while it may exist mostly as a publicity stunt, it does contain some useful advice.
And that’s true of this year’s version. But I worry that the IRS is looking at a few trees and missing the forest.
The Washington Examiner was kind enough to let me write a cover story on the “dirty dozen” list. Here’s my effort to add some context to the discussion.
…our friends at the Internal Revenue Service have a relatively new tradition of providing an annual list of 12 “tax scams” that taxpayers should avoid. It’s an odd collection, comprised of both recommendations that taxpayers protect themselves from fraud, as well as admonitions that taxpayers should be fully obedient to all IRS demands. Unsurprisingly, the list contains no warnings about the needless complexity and punitive nature of the tax code. Nor does the IRS say anything about how taxpayers lose the presumption of innocence if there’s any sort of conflict with the tax agency. Perhaps most important, there’s no acknowledgement from the IRS that many of the dirty dozen scams only exist because of bad tax policy.
In the article, I list each scam and make a few observations.
But I think my most useful comments came at the end of my piece.
…maybe the tax system wouldn’t engender so much hostility and disrespect if it was simple, transparent, fair, and conducive to growth. And that may be the big-picture lesson to learn as we conclude our analysis. When the income tax was first imposed back in 1913, the top tax rate was only 7 percent, the tax form was only two pages, and the tax code was easily understandable. But now that 100 years have gone by, the tax system has become a mess, like a ship encrusted with so many barnacles that it can no longer function. …the bottom line is that the biggest scam is the entire internal revenue code. The winners are the lobbyists, politicians, bureaucrats and insiders. The losers are America’s workers, investors, and consumers.
In other words, if we actually want a humane and sensible system, we should throw the current tax code in the garbage and replace it with a simple and fair flat tax.
And that’s exactly the message I shared in this interview with C-Span.
Here are a few of the points from the discussion that are worth emphasizing.
P.S. I wrote last week that the Senate GOP put together a budget that is surprisingly good, both in content and presentation. A reader since reminded me that the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee was a sponsor of the “Penny Plan,” which would lower non-interest outlays by 1 percent per year.
Since Mitchell’s Golden Rule simply requires that spending grow by less than the private sector, Senator Enzi’s Penny Plan obviously passes with flying colors.
SoHo in New York City is the archetypal example of inner-city regeneration and gentrification.
No matter what you do, modern liberals will tell you you’re wrong.
For decades, liberals complained that American society is segregated because rich, white people don’t want to live in ethnically mixed neighborhoods. Sometimes, liberals had a point.
From the 1930s to 1960s, as rich white people moved into New York City, urban planner Robert Moses got city bureaucrats to condemn and destroy busy black neighborhoods. The city called the neighborhoods “blighted” and moved many of the poor into rent-subsidized apartment complexes called “projects.” Many quickly became slums.
Now times have changed. Some rich, white people want to move into poorer, non-white neighborhoods because they like diversity (and cheaper real estate). So today the newcomers are attacked by liberals because they cause “gentrification.”
Movie director Spike Lee, who lives in Brooklyn, said gentrifiers behave almost like “Columbus and kill off the Native Americans.” Of course, the new gentrifiers don’t actually kill anyone, but because their arrival often leads to rising real estate values, critics complain that they drive poor people out of the neighborhood.
Two women in Brooklyn got so angry about it, they pulled out a gun, forced two white people out of an apartment and moved in (they were later arrested).
Columbia urban planning professor Stacey Sutton calls gentrification a “manifestation of inequality” that may “fundamentally alter the culture and character of the neighborhood” in ways that hurt the poor.
Yet her own school did something worse. Columbia colluded with politicians to use eminent domain law to take pieces of the Harlem neighborhood that surrounds Columbia. In court, the school argued that it had the right to take neighbors’ land because it would “benefit West Harlem.”
Who owns the land is something that ought to be decided not by government but by free people making their own decisions about where they wish to live. When gentrification happens that way, spontaneously, price rises are often accompanied by drops in crime, new job opportunities and better connections to the rest of the culture. What the left calls “gentrification” is often called “improvement” by people who live there.
Another Columbia urban planning professor, Lance Freeman, found to his surprise that gentrification didn’t even mean significant displacement of the previous population. In his book “There Goes the ‘Hood,” Freeman writes, “poor residents and those without a college education were actually less likely to move if they resided in gentrifying neighborhoods.”
That’s because gentrification often means the neighborhood gets safer and more interesting. That’s something the old residents enjoy as much as new ones.
The Economist reports that a 2008 study of census data found “no evidence of displacement of low-income non-white households in gentrifying neighborhoods” and found that black incomes “soared” in gentrifying neighborhoods.
That doesn’t stop some people — often rich, white liberals — from complaining that gentrification destroys the quaintness of the neighborhood. They sound almost like the people who think that the developing world should never be sullied by modern technology. Actually, sometimes the same people make both arguments.
In San Francisco, some longtime residents got so angry about Google employees moving in that they surrounded Google employee shuttle buses, waving protest signs.
It’s a fight between hippies and tech geeks, with the hippies calling for regulations to prevent change. Such regulations have perverse effects, however. They lead to long waits for building permits and subsidies for housing that end up getting used by the well-connected and rich.
When regulation makes it harder to build or to alter old buildings, the effect is higher costs and reduced choices, which only makes things harder for the poor. Regulation saves some old things people like, but those people will never even know what new things they missed out on.
If nothing like gentrification ever happened in the world, we all still would be living in the same caves our ancestors lived in thousands of years ago. I say, let free people keep transforming the neighborhood.
U.S. consumer prices increased in February as gasoline prices rose for the first time since June, a sign of inflation pressures and a future interest rate hike in June.
The Labor Department said Tuesday the Consumer Price Index (CPI) increased 0.2 percent last month after declining 0.7 percent in January, marking the end to three straight months of declines. In the 12 months through February, the CPI was flat after falling 0.1 percent in January.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected the CPI to rise 0.2 percent from January and slip 0.1 percent from a year ago.
Federal Reserve officials have held a 2 percent inflation target that has not been met, resulting in short-term interest rates remaining near zero since December 2008.
Fed Chair Janet Yellen said last week policymakers could raise interest rates when they had “seen further improvement in the labor market” and were “reasonably confident that inflation will move back to its 2 percent objective over the medium term.”
The so-called core CPI, which strips out food and energy costs, increased 0.2 percent in February, while during the 12 months through February the core CPI rose 1.7 percent, or the largest increase since November.
Last month, domestic gasoline prices rose 2.4 percent, which was the largest increase since December 2013, following a loss of 18.7 percent in January. Gasoline prices had declined for seven straight months.
Food prices increased 0.2 percent. Elsewhere, shelter costs increased 0.2 percent, which accounted for about two-thirds of the increase in the core CPI. Shelter costs had increased 0.3 percent in January.
Apparel prices rose 0.3 percent in February, as did airfares, new motor vehicle and used cars and trucks prices. Medical care services declined for the first time since 1975, though the data is expect to be an outlier.
Lee Kuan Yew, prime minister of Singapore from 1959 to 1990.
It is not often that the leader of a small city-state — in this case, Singapore — gets an international reputation. But no one deserved it more than Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of Singapore as an independent country in 1959, and its prime minister from 1959 to 1990. With his death, he leaves behind a legacy valuable not only to Singapore but to the world.
Born in Singapore in 1923, when it was a British colony, Lee Kuan Yew studied at Cambridge University after World War II, and was much impressed by the orderly, law-abiding England of that day. It was a great contrast with the poverty-stricken and crime-ridden Singapore of that era.
Today Singapore has a per capita Gross Domestic Product more than 50 percent higher than that of the United Kingdom and a crime rate a small fraction of that in England. A 2010 study showed more patents and patent applications from the small city-state of Singapore than from Russia. Few places in the world can match Singapore for cleanliness and orderliness.
This remarkable transformation of Singapore took place under the authoritarian rule of Lee Kuan Yew for two decades as prime minister. And it happened despite some very serious handicaps that led to chaos and self-destruction in other countries.
Singapore had little in the way of natural resources. It even had to import drinking water from neighboring Malaysia. Its population consisted of people of different races, languages and religions — the Chinese majority and the sizable Malay and Indian minorities.
At a time when other Third World countries were setting up government-controlled economies and blaming their poverty on “exploitation” by more advanced industrial nations, Lee Kuan Yew promoted a market economy, welcomed foreign investments, and made Singapore’s children learn English, to maximize the benefits from Singapore’s position as a major port for international commerce.
Singapore’s schools also taught the separate native languages of its Chinese, Malay and Indian Tamil peoples. But everyone had to learn English, because it was the language of international commerce, on which the country’s economic prosperity depended.
In short, Lee Kuan Yew was pragmatic, rather than ideological. Many observers saw a contradiction between Singapore’s free markets and its lack of democracy. But its long-serving prime minister did not deem its people ready for democracy. Instead, he offered a decent government with much less corruption than in other countries in that region of the world.
His example was especially striking in view of many in the West who seem to think that democracy is something that can be exported to countries whose history and traditions are wholly different from those of Western nations that evolved democratic institutions over the centuries.
Even such a champion of freedom as John Stuart Mill said in the 19th century: “The ideally best form of government, it is scarcely necessary to say, does not mean one which is practicable or eligible in all states of civilization.”
In other words, democracy has prerequisites, and peoples and places without those prerequisites will not necessarily do well when democratic institutions are created.
The most painful recent example of that is Iraq, where a democratically elected government, set up by expenditure of the blood and treasure of the United States, became one of the obstacles to a united people with the military strength to protect itself from international terrorists.
In many parts of the Third World, post-colonial governments set up democratically made sure that there would be no more democracy that could replace its original leaders. This led to the cynical phrase, “one man, one vote — one time.”
Democracy can be wonderful as a principle where it is viable, but disastrous as a fetish where it is not.
Lee Kuan Yew understood the pitfalls and steered around them. If our Western advocates of “nation-building” in other countries would learn that lesson, it could be the most valuable legacy of Lee Kuan Yew.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.
Hillary Rodham Clinton jokes during an interview after her keynote address at the Watermark Silicon Valley Conference for Women in Santa Clara, Calif., on Feb. 24, 2015.
It is amazing how a simple question can cause a complex lie to collapse like a house of cards. The simple question was asked by Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel, and it was addressed to two Democrats. He asked what has Hillary Clinton ever accomplished.
The two Democrats immediately sidestepped the question and started reciting their talking points in favor of Hillary. But O’Reilly kept coming back to the fact that nothing they were talking about was an accomplishment.
For someone who has spent her entire adult life in politics, including being a Senator and then a Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton has nothing to show for all those years — no significant legislation of hers that she got passed in the Senate, and only an unbroken series of international setbacks for the United States during her time as Secretary of State.
Before Barack Obama entered the White House and appointed Mrs. Clinton Secretary of State, Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq had notified their higher ups, stationed in Pakistan, that their cause was lost in Iraq and that there was no point sending more men there.
Hosni Mubarak was in charge in Egypt. He posed no threat to American or Western interests in the Middle East or to Christians within Egypt or to Israel. But the Obama administration threw its weight behind the Muslim Brotherhood, which took over and began terrorizing Christians in Egypt and promoting hostility to Israel.
In Libya next door, the Qaddafi regime had already given up its weapons of mass destruction, after they saw what happened to Saddam Hussein in Iraq. But President Obama’s foreign policy, carried out by Secretary of State Clinton, got Qaddafi removed, after which Libya became a terrorist haven where an American ambassador was killed, for the first time in decades.
The rationale for getting rid of Middle East leaders who posed no threat to American interests was that they were undemocratic and their people were restless. But there are no democracies in the Middle East, except for Israel. Moreover, the people were restless in Iran and Syria, and the Obama-Clinton foreign policy did nothing to support those who were trying to overthrow these regimes.
It would be only fair to balance this picture with foreign policy triumphs of the Obama-Clinton team. But there are none. Not in the Middle East, not in Europe, where the Russians have invaded the Crimea, and not in Asia, where both China and North Korea are building up threatening military forces, while the Obama administration has been cutting back on American military forces.
Hillary Clinton became an iconic figure by feeding the media and the left the kind of rhetoric they love. Barack Obama did the same and became president. Neither had any concrete accomplishments besides rhetoric beforehand, and both have had the opposite of accomplishments after taking office.
They have something else in common. They attract the votes of those people who vote for demographic symbolism — “the first black president” to be followed by “the first woman president” — and neither to be criticized, lest you be denounced for racism or sexism.
It is staggering that there are sane adults who can vote for someone to be President of the United States as if they are in school, just voting for “most popular boy” or “most popular girl” — or, worse yet, voting for someone who will give them free stuff.
Whoever holds that office makes decisions involving the life and death of Americans and — especially if Iran gets a nuclear arsenal — the life and death of this nation. It took just two nuclear bombs — neither of them as powerful as those available today — to get a very tough nation like Japan to surrender.
Anyone familiar with World War II battles in the Pacific knows that it was not unusual for 90 percent of the Japanese troops defending Iwo Jima or other islands to fight to the death, even after it was clear that American troops had them beaten.
When people like that surrender after two nuclear bombs, do not imagine that today’s soft Americans — led by the likes of Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton — will fight on after New York and Chicago have been reduced to radioactive ashes.
Meanwhile, ISIS and other terrorists are giving us a free demonstration of what surrender would mean. But perhaps we can kick the can down the road, and leave that as a legacy to our children and grandchildren, along with the national debt.
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His website is www.tsowell.com.
Rep. David Jolly, R-FL, and Ryan Pate with his fiancee, Jillian Cardoza. (GoFundMe)
Seminole, FL – Rep. David Jolly, R-FL, has confirmed that a Florida man who was jailed in the United Arab Emirates for a Facebook post will arrive home Tuesday.
Ryan Pate, 30, a contractor for the Abu Dhabi-based company Global Aerospace Logistics, has departed the United Arab Emirates and will be arriving at Tampa International Airport on Tuesday. Cyber slander charges were dropped against Pate last week shortly after Rep. Jolly met with UAE Ambassador Al Otaiba to discuss the arrest and incarceration.
Rep. Jolly had worked for weeks to get the charges dismissed. Pate was arrested for “cyber slander against the UAE and his Employers” after he vented over a dispute with the company in a Facebook post that appeared on a mechanic group’s social media page. The Facebook comment was posted while Pate was on U.S. soil.
The freshman Republican congressman has been informed by Pate’s fiancée, Chief Petty Officer Jillian Cardoza, that the United Arab Emirates has dropped their charges of cyber slander against him.
“I want to thank those who have worked with us to defend Ryan Pate’s constitutional rights, including our U.S. Ambassador to the U.A.E. I have always believed because Ryan’s actions occurred on American soil, he was protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution,” Rep. Jolly said. “I now look forward to Ryan being reunited with his family and friends back home in Florida.”
Following the news last week that the charges were being dropped, Cardoza and Pate issued a joint statement.
“We want to thank Global Aerospace Logistics for working with Ryan and his attorney to clear him of all charges. Ryan’s attorney, Nasser, has been nothing short of outstanding during this and we are grateful for him and his team. We also want to thank the government and people of the United Arab Emirates for their understanding and hearing Ryan’s plea for forgiveness. Our immense gratitude goes out to Congressman David Jolly and his office for working tirelessly to ensure Ryan was cared for and never letting him feel forgotten,” the statement read.
In a letter dated Feb. 23, 2015, Rep. Jolly urged Secretary of State John Kerry to intervene on Pate’s behalf, and reached out to Emirate officials in a letter dated three days later.
“Congressman Jolly has been a rock for not only Ryan, but for his family and friends and we will never forget what he has done for us. Lastly, but certainly not least, we want to thank everyone, including the media, for being there for Ryan. We have found friends in many places and are grateful for every last one of them,” the two added.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at the OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) at their headquarters in Paris during its 50th anniversary summit on May 25, 2011. (Photo: REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen )
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) is a Paris-based international bureaucracy with the self-proclaimed mission to “promote policies that will improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.”
But if there was a truth-in-advertizing requirement, the OECD would instead say that its mission is to “promote policies that will increase the size, scope and power of government.”
Itsupports Obama’s class-warfare agenda, publishing documents endorsing “higher marginal tax rates” so that the so-called rich “contribute their fair share.”
The OECDadvocates the value-added taxbased on the absurd notion that increasing the burden of government is good for growth and employment.
And, most recently, the OECD published a report suggesting numerous schemes to increase national tax burdens.
And here’s the insult on top of injury. You’re paying for this nonsense. American taxpayers finance the biggest share of the OECD’s budget.
And I’m sure you’ll be happy to know that the OECD is now pushing for a massive energy tax.
Here are some relevant passages from an article in the OECD Observer.
…it’s prime time to introduce a tax on carbon… “Every government will need to explain how their policy settings are consistent with a pathway to eliminate emissions from fossil fuel combustion in the second half of the century,” says OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría. This means looking at all policy measures to assess if they are effective in reducing CO2 emissions and in line with governments’ climate change objectives. An OECD report, Climate and Carbon: Aligning Prices and Policies outlines specific actions.
By the way, you can access the Climate and Carbon report by clicking here. But since I assume few if any people will want to read a turgid 57-page paper, let’s stick with excerpts from the short article in the OECD Observer.
All you really need to know is that the OECD (like the IMF) wants governments to boost energy prices, both explicitly and implicitly.
Explicit carbon pricing mechanisms, such as carbon taxes… other policies affect a country’s CO2 emissions and can effectively place an implicit price on carbon. …It’s time for governments to ramp up the development of alternative energies and to nail a price onto every tonne of CO2 emitted.
The article also includes other recommendations that are very worrisome. It suggests other fiscal changes that would boost taxes on the energy sector.
Needless to say, this means higher costs on energy consumers.
…carbon pricing should also include a review of the country’s fiscal policy to ensure that budgetary transfers and tax expenditures do not, directly or indirectly, encourage the production and use of fossil fuels.
By the way, when the OECD talks about “budgetary transfers” and “tax expenditures,” that’s basically bureaucrat-speak for back-door tax hikes such as changes to depreciation rules in order to force companies to overstate their income.
And since we’re deciphering bureaucrat-speak, check out this passage from the article.
…compensatory or other measures to mitigate the regressive impacts of reforms without losing the incentive to reduce emissions.
What the OECD is basically saying is that an energy tax will be very painful for the poor. But rather than conclude that the tax is therefore undesirable, they instead are urging that the new tax be accompanied by new spending.
Maybe this means higher welfare payments to offset increased energy prices. Maybe it means some sort of energy stamp program.
The details aren’t important at this point, particularly since the OECD isn’t making a specific proposal.
But what is important is that the OECD is using our tax dollars to advocate bigger government. So maybe the moral of the story is that we should stop subsidizing the OECD.
P.S. On a related topic, and in the interest of fairness, I have to give the OECD credit for being willing to publish an article on tax competition by my Australian friend, Professor Sinclair Davidson.
Sinclair points out that the OECD’s anti-tax competition campaign is based on the premise that bad things happen if labor and capital have some ability to migrate from high-tax nations to low-tax jurisdictions.
Yet the OECD has never been able to put forth any evidence for this assertion.
High income economies have tended to follow irresponsible fiscal policies over an extended period of time. …governments have been trying to access new sources of revenue. …The OECD has been campaigning on “harmful tax practices” since the late 1990s. …The report itself was a somewhat wordy affair that actually failed to define what ‘harmful tax practices’ constitute. …Most damning of all, however, is that the OECD was unable to produce any actual evidence of these dire consequences, arguing instead: “A regime can be harmful even where it is difficult to quantify the adverse economic impact it poses”. The dog had eaten their homework.
What’s really going on, as Sinclair explains, is that politicians want a tax cartel to enable bigger government.
It turns out that governments and politicians, like business, don’t always appreciate having to work at improving themselves and offering a more attractive mix of services and taxation in order to attract business. …It is perfectly understandable why governments would want to establish a tax cartel. …countries, rather than respond to such competition by competing themselves, have chosen instead to engage in fiscal imperialism – bullying and cajoling sovereign nations to change their domestic policies.
Again, kudos to the OECD for allowing a contrary viewpoint.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, gets ready to give his speech at Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA.
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-TX, became the first Republican to officially announce his 2016 presidential bid, voicing his opposition to a litany of President Obama policies. He promised a roaring crowd Monday to return to a constitutional government by, for, and of the people that will “stand for liberty.”
Cruz made the announcement during a speech at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va, where he touted his campaign’s theme of “courageous conservatism.” He earlier declared his candidacy via a Twitter post early Monday, becoming the first major candidate to officially declare. Liberty University is not only the largest the Christian university in America, but the world.
“I believe God is not done with America yet,” Sen. Cruz said. “I believe in you and the power of millions of courageous conservatives rising up to reignite the promise of America, and that is why today I am announcing that I’m running for president of the United States.”
Sen. Cruz noted it was the 240th anniversary of Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty Or Give Me Death Speech,” as well as the 5th anniversary of ObamaCare, which he vowed to repeal. In fact, the Texas senator vowed to abolish the IRS.
The 30-second video accompanying the tweet featured Cruz speaking over a montage of farm fields, city skylines and American landmarks and symbols, calling on “a new generation of courageous conservatives to help make America great again.”
“I’m ready to stand with you to lead the fight,” Cruz says as the video concludes. Shortly after midnight Monday, the campaign had launched its website.
(UPDATE: Because of the extraordinary amount of ignorance, we are forced to update this article with following information, which addresses the “Birther” issue. We hope these two Justice Department authorities satisfy some of your concerns.)
In recent weeks, and more so following the speech on social media, a question of Cruz’s own citizenship arose. Two former Justice Department lawyers said just last week there is no doubt the Canadian-born senator is eligible to run for the White House.
“There is no question that Senator Cruz has been a citizen from birth and is thus a ‘natural born Citizen’ within the meaning of the Constitution,” Neal Katyal, acting solicitor general in the Obama administration, and Paul Clemente, solicitor general in the President George W. Bush administration, wrote in a joint article.
Anti-Cruz “birthers,” ignorant of federal law, challenged his citizenship status because he was born in Canada. It was two years ago when Cruz released his birth certificate showing his mother was a U.S. citizen born in Delaware, satisfying the requirements for presidential eligibility as a “natural born citizen.”
Last month, Cruz again addressed the citizenship issue during a question-and-answer session with moderator Hannity at the Conservative Political Action Conference. “I was born in Calgary. My mother was an American citizen by birth,” Cruz said. “Under federal law, that made me an American citizen by birth. The Constitution requires that you be a natural-born citizen.”
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