Conservative chronicle for december 21 2016 0 by Mid-America Publishing Corporation

At Issue this week... December 21, 2016 California Saunders (24) Conservatism Will (20) Dear Mark Levy (19) Democratic Party Barone (1) Elder (8) Hollis (2) Dreamers Chavez (29) Dylan’s Nobel Prize Tyrrell (23) Will (23) Economy Lambro (12) Education Fields (25) Greenberg (22) Filibuster Harsanyi (13) Freedom Stossel (29) Humility Moore (13) ISIS Jeffrey (29) Israel Thomas (30) Left, The Bozell (30) Prager (27) Leslie’s Trivia Bits Elman (14) Liberals Goldberg (21) Limited Government Parker (24) Stossel (26) Media Bias Bozell (4) Minorities de Rugy (10) Obama Presidency Limbaugh (3) Massie (18) Political Correctness Malkin (5) Republican Party Lowry (9) Shapiro (26) Separation of Powers Napolitano (6) Societal Shift Barone (10) Buchanan (11) Cushman (18) Trade Williams (20) Trump Administration Buchanan (15) Lowry (17) Murchison (17) Saunders (4) Sowell (16) Trump, Donald Krauthammer (9) Thomas (14) VA McCaughey (31) Washington Establishment Coulter (7)

Democratic Party by Michael Barone

Free advice for the Democratic Party

erewith some unsolicited free advice for the Democratic Party. Whether it’s worth more than the price I leave up to Democrats to decide. The first thing to remember is that the Democratic Party is the oldest political party in the world. It’s had its ups and downs over many years. Under any fair reading of history, it has done many good things for this country and the world. It is not going away any time soon. BUT IT IS IN a bad way. Its chances of recapturing the presidency in 2020 depend largely on decisions by Republicans and on events outside anyone’s control. Democrats currently hold fewer House seats, governorships and state legislatures than at any time since the 1920s. And the signature policies of the outgoing Democratic president — Obamacare and the Iranian nuclear deal — are not political assets. The first thing Democrats need to do is to end the alibi game. Yes, it’s a shattering experience to lose a presidential election that, until the 9 o’clock hour on election night, you seemed sure to win. But alibis don’t help you win next time. Don’t blame “fake news” when your candidate had lots more money to spend delivering her message. Don’t blame the FBI director when your candidate violated criminal laws and the attorney general had to disqualify herself after revelation of her secret meeting with the candidate’s husband. Don’t blame the “racism” of an electorate that twice elected the first black president. Don’t blame the Electoral College when everyone knew beforehand that you need 270 electoral votes, not a popular vote plurality, to win. Blame instead the Clinton campaign’s “ascendant America” strategy — to reassemble the 2012 Obama coalition of nonwhites and millennials, on the assumption that the attitudes of other voters, notably white non-college graduates who cast critical Obama votes in the Midwest, would remain static. Exit polls showed that Donald Trump, supposedly toxic to nonwhites, ran slightly better among them than Mitt Romney did in 2012. Their apparent regression to the mean, to voting more like the national average, undercuts the theory that nonwhites, tormented by oppression and seething with grievance, will remain overwhelmingly Democratic forever.

To recover, Democrats need to take a look at the map. The relevant map in this election divides the nation between coastal America (the West Coast plus Hawaii, as well as the Northeast from Maine to Washington, D.C.) and heartland America (the South, the Midwest and the Mountain West, as well as energy states Alaska and Pennsylvania). Coastal America casts 31 percent of popular votes and 170 electoral votes. Heartland America casts 69 percent of popular votes and 368 electoral votes.

Michael

CLINTON EARNED all but one electoral vote (Maine’s 2nd Congressional District) in coastal America. But in heartland America — where Barack Obama lost the electoral vote narrowly, 206-162, in 2012 — Clinton got only 63 electoral votes, compared with Trump’s 305. Yes, Trump won the 46 electoral votes of Pa., Mich. and Wis. by a combined popular vote margin of only (at latest count) 77,193. But the fact is he didn’t need a single popular vote in coastal America to win. Democrats are even weaker in heartland down-ballot elections. In races for

the House of Representatives, Republicans won more than 200 seats there, compared with only 90 for Democrats. Democrats could win half of the Republicans’ 35 U.S. House seats in coastal America and still fall short of a House majority. In state legislatures, heartland Republicans outnumber Democrats by nearly a 2-1 ratio. My advice to Democrats is the advice Justice Louis Brandeis gave to young New Dealers in the 1930s. “Get out of Washington,” he said. “Go home, back to the states.” Leave the latte-soaked coastal cocoons. Return to your hometown or set down new roots, and run for office in the heartland — and not in university towns but in real America. THAT’S WHAT many young liberals did in the 1970s, shoring up Democratic congressional and legislative majorities for two decades, learning from constituents rather than instructing them, participating in local civic culture rather than lamenting it. The Democratic Party and the nation would be well-served if smart, ambitious young Democrats started packing their bags and competing where their party has been falling fatally short. December 9, 2016

Conservative Chronicle

DEMOCRATIC PARTY: December 8, 2016

The state of the Democrat Party ... and the states

n the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s loss and the Democrats’ failure to regain control of either house of Congress, the focus has since shifted to how the Democratic Party has been decimated at the state level. Since President Obama was elected in 2008, the Democrats have lost 919 seats in state legislatures, and Republicans now control 32 of 50 state legislatures, and hold 33 governorships.

EARLIER THIS week on CBS’ Face the Nation, USA Today’s Washington Bureau chief Susan Page said, “Democrats face a world in which they’ve been hollowed out. They have not had people in the pipeline as Republicans have so skillfully done for the past 20 years.” President Obama and newly reelected House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi both tried to chalk up the current situation to poor messaging. They can’t be serious. I’m not old enough to remember how Democrats marketed themselves when they were selling FDR or JFK. But what have they been “selling” lately? If you follow the news and the efforts of the Obama administration, you could be forgiven for thinking that the Democratic Party platform sounds like this:

— “We can have sex with whom- ries about why you are a bigot and a ever we want, and if you point out that hater, and if you object, too bad, bethis is often personally and societally cause they have tenure.” — “Laws should be passed that destructive, you’re a bigot and a hater.” — “We want you to pay for our con- criminalize your viewpoint. The fedtraception, and if you don’t want to, eral judiciary should uphold laws that force you to say you agree with us, and you’re a bigot and a hater.” — “A baby is only a baby if we want act like you agree with us. The execuit. If we don’t, it’s a ‘fetus,’ and we tive branch should use every departshould be able to kill it, even when it’s ment to ensure that you agree with us lose your federal full-term. If you dare to suggest that or you’ll funding, your land, an unborn huyour business, man being should your license and have some conyour tax-exempt stitutional rights, status. In short, you’re a bigot and (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate we believe that a hater.” — “We are whatever gender we de- the federal government should be allcide to be, and if you mention science powerful and able to shut you out of to prove otherwise, you’re a bigot and public life because you are a bigot and a hater.” a hater.” — “Our interpretation of ‘climate WE HEARD you loud and clear. change’ is the only real one, and if you Time selected Donald Trump as its point out any flaws in our data, or any data to the contrary, you’re a bigot and Person of the Year for 2016, but the cover’s subhead reads, “President of a hater.” — “If anything you say offends us, the Divided States of America.” File we can silence you. If you look like this under #FakeNews; we’ve been disomeone who did bad things in the vided for years. Yet Trump is drawing flak because past, you should pay for what they did. If you object to either, you’re a bigot no one was supposed to know that. The people upset with the direction of the and a hater.” — “We have academics who can country? We’re outliers. Pitiful, isolatproduce delightfully obscurantist theo- ed throwbacks. The rest of the country

Laura

Hollis

has left us behind. Virtually no one still thinks like we do. (“We’re all socialists now,” remember?) The left thought the battle inextricably won. Academia is doing yeoman’s work in indoctrination, the media will dutifully ignore our concerns, the entertainment industry will mock us and undermine our values, and the federal government will force our compliance with the new world order. Yes, they thought they had bloody well shut us up and shut us down. As it turns out, among the places conservatives could assert their influence was in state and local government. The Democrats have tended to ignore the states. Why? I submit it’s because they thought, “We’ll control the federal government and make state governments irrelevant.” It also explains their fury with the Electoral College, which — you guessed it — empowers the states. This is part and parcel of the country’s design (and further proof of the brilliance of the Founding Fathers). State governments are closer to the people, and more responsive to their will. State governments also act as de jure and de facto buffers against the excesses of the federal government. THIS SHOULD be further proof of the strength of the Constitution. The Democrats ignored this, to their chagrin. Republicans, now with the power of the federal government in their hands, should not fall victim to the same error.

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December 21, 2016 OBAMA PRESIDENCY: December 9, 2016

Obama’s national security report card — unsatisfactory

n his speech at MacDill Air Force action there, but only after Obama poohBase, President Obama bragged poohed the Islamic State, said it was conthat he has made America safer tained and then admitted he had no strategy — after saying he did. while preserving America’s values. His belated reversals on Iraq weren’t The incessant self-absorption is annoying enough, but the self-delusion puts in time to prevent the immeasurable it over the top. Whether he’s talking the damage occasioned by the manner of his economy or national security, he always withdrawal, which virtually beckoned the State and other terrorpaints a picture of his performance that Islamic ist groups to set up contradicts reality. shop there and orgaDo Americans nize global mischief actually feel safer and emboldened Isunder his watch lamists throughout than they did under (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate the world. that of President Would you rather talk about Libya George W. Bush? Has he inspired confidence that he is aggressively fighting ter- and Syria? I didn’t think so, but suffice rorism at home and abroad and that he is it to say Obama’s record with both takes administering a coherent foreign policy? “leading from behind” to a new level. Or does he come off more concerned with And the nuclear deal with Iran — couapologizing for America’s past “sins” and pled with turning hundreds of millions of dollars over to that sinister, terroristappeasing Islamists? sponsoring regime — was even worse. There is certainly room for reasonable OBAMA’S INFLEXIBLE ideology drove his obsession to withdraw disagreement on foreign policy among our troops from Iraq so precipitously as interventionists, isolationists and those to guarantee a void that would spawn who favor striking a balance between the likes of the Islamic State group. It those two approaches, using America’s explains his stubborn refusal until re- national security interests as the driving cently to do anything to violate his sacred yardstick. These disagreements transcend pledge not to place American boots on party lines. But what concerns me most about the ground. Obama boasts that he ended two wars Obama and the left on national security — Iraq and Afghanistan — but neither is their Pollyannaish attitude toward the his withdrawal of American forces from terrorist threats we face. Liberals alIraq nor his drawdown of our troops ways seem more concerned with making in Afghanistan ended a war. The wars America likable than with making us safe mushroomed rather than ended because — and they miserably conflate the two. We don’t hear enough from them about of his actions, and Iraq is still in far worse shape — by any measure — than when the importance of strength and vigilance. Obama took office. We are finally taking Instead, they talk about preserving our

David

Limbaugh

values, ending enhanced interrogation techniques and closing Gitmo, as if Islamic terrorists hate us because we aren’t kind and lawful. Seriously? On the heels of terrorist attacks by Islamists, whether on foreign or American soil, we rarely hear outrage or a commitment to redouble our effort to aggressively counter Islamic extremism. Rather, we are lectured not to discriminate against Muslims because of the attacks. And that’s only after liberals first deny terrorism was involved. Even when we have conclusive proof that Islamic terrorists caused the attacks, Obama et al. refuse to utter the words “Islamic terrorism.” A FEW OF Obama’s statements in the MacDill speech illustrate the problem. “No foreign terrorist organization,” he said, “has successfully planned and

executed an attack on our homeland. ... The most deadly attacks on the homeland over the last eight years have not been carried out by operatives with sophisticated networks or equipment directed from abroad. They’ve been carried out by homegrown and largely isolated individuals who were radicalized online.” The problem is that many national security threats we face are asymmetrical and unconventional. Terrorists don’t have to be attached to a major Islamic group to strike with deadly force. By dismissing these increasingly frequent attacks as isolated downplays their epidemic nature. To say these “lone wolfs” are unconnected with foreign terrorist organizations is inconsistent with saying they were radicalized online. Who do you think is doing the radicalizing? It implies that an otherwise innocent internet surfer turns to murderous activity after serendipitously clicking on a provocative website. What do we expect when we invite people into this nation who have no allegiance to — and sometimes even hatred for — America? Obama says, “People and nations do not make good decisions when they are driven by fear.” I’m tired of hearing such cliches from both parties. What’s wrong with a healthy fear of people who want to kill you? What is ignoble about recognizing deadly threats and preparing for them? We live in an increasingly dangerous world. The best way to counter that is through strength, not weakness and unilateral disarmament (and this is a cliche I’m not tired of). But Obama has downsized and degraded the military, increased burdens on American gun owners and vilified law enforcement, our first line of defense in all American cities. IT IS encouraging that Americans have voted to reverse these disastrous policies and to move America’s national security interests from the back burner to the front burner, beginning in January, which can’t come soon enough.

Conservative Chronicle

MEDIA BIAS: December 14, 2016

Whitewashing the black president’s legacy

Most spectacularly, Zakaria didn’t s President Barack Obama’s White House days run out, utter one word about the national debt. it’s time for his obsequious It almost doubled from $10 trillion to courtiers in the liberal media to an- an inconceivable $19 trillion in just Obama fans complain nounce his glorious “legacy.” On Dec. eight years. not all Obama’s 7, CNN devoted a two-hour prime- that it’s fault, but CNN time special to the and Zakaria didn’t Obama legacy. think that’s a legIt was hosted by acy, or at least as Fareed Zakaria, a much of a legacy journalist whom (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate as, say, Obama ure. He said: “I would argue that even Obama had invited to the White House so he could holding a “beer summit” with Harvard if Donald Trump finds a way to repeal and replace it, it remains a historic soak in Zakaria’s wisdom and exper- professor Henry Louis Gates. The dourest note that Zakaria hit achievement. Barack Obama did what tise — in other words, so he could flatter a journalist into giving him softball in the two hours was — you guessed seven presidents failed to do — he it — that troublesome President-elect made health care a fundamental right. coverage. Donald Trump. He may erase much of It’s the signature achievement of a conMission accomplished. what Obama thinks is his enormous sequential president.” This is socialist logic. Enshrining a JUST AS IT began nine years ago, legacy. Zakaria admitted that ObamZakaria started by celebrating the acare has problems, but so what? He right to health care never guarantees president’s race, the gauzy references is so pro-Obama that it doesn’t matter comprehensive health care. Ask the to Kenya and Kansas fusing into one whether it’s actually a complete fail- people of Fidel Castro’s Cuba. Hillary glorious body. Forget what Obama did. The first legacy was simply who he TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: December 13, 2016 represented. And for that he’d been victimized. In CNN’s eyes, Obama’s central crisis was the “fierce, unrelenting opposition” of Republicans and their latent racism. Obama’s former senior adviser ast week’s media chew toy in- during the contentious 2016 campaign, David Axelrod claimed, “It’s indisputvolved the number of former Trump frequently dismissed Obama’s able that there was a ferocity to the opgenerals President-elect Don- generals as underwhelming. position and a lack of respect to him ald J. Trump has nominated for his cabiDon’t underestimate anti-military that was a function of race.” CNN pun- net. The ABC News website announced sentiments. Democratic activist Jamal dit Van Jones agreed, saying, “I can’t Trump “would have the most generals Simmons tweeted there is “something name one thing that this Congress in the White House since World War wrong” with putting generals in charge supported this president on in eight II.” What is that near-record number? of foreign policy. Actually, Trump has years!” The left never had the intellec- Two. Yes, a whopping two among 14 named recent generals to head the Pentual nuance (or the political decency) announced cabinet-level picks. tagon and homeland security, not forto acknowledge that one could oppose Trump has nominated retired Gens. eign policy. While this country has a Obama because he’s a socialist. Period. James Mattis to be his secretary of de- proud tradition of civilian control over At the show’s end, Zakaria conclud- fense and John Kelly to head Homeland the military, there is much to be said for ed: “Presidential legacies also exist Security. That puts the number of for- giving military veterans a place at the above and beyond laws and policies. mer generals on a par with former doc- table when Washington considers sendWe remember John F. Kennedy for en- tors, Tom Price for Health and Human ing U.S. troops in harm’s way. ergy, vitality, elegance and intelligence Services and Ben Carson for Housing that he brought to the White House. and Urban Development. And in that sense, Obama has left an indelible mark. IF TRUMP chooses former Gen. “He and his family occupied the David Petraeus to become his secretary (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate White House with dignity, grace and of state, the number of former brass good humor. He ran an administration would spike to three. Trump also has that was largely scandal-free ... and did chosen three attorneys for his cabinet “AMERICA IS in no danger of beit all the while under a microscope be- — would-be Attorney General Jeff Ses- coming a Central-American-like junta,” cause he looked different.” sions, Labor Secretary Andrew Puzder observed Texas Public Policy Foundaand Environmental Protection Agency tion head Chuck De Vore, an Army ReAT A TIME when liberals are warn- head Scott Pruitt. I have heard no com- serve veteran and former foreign affairs ing about the democracy-gutting po- plaints about the number of attorneys. aide in the Reagan administration. “Citential of fake news, there is no faker Attorney and Afghan vet Tom Um- vilians vastly under-appreciate what it news than the declaration that Obama’s berg told me he would add Trump’s takes to be a senior general, three and time in office was largely scandal-free. national security adviser pick Lt. Gen. four star, in today’s military,” he added. In the two-hour special there was no Michael Flynn because of the access he You have to know how to manage large mention of Benghazi or IRS harass- will have. That method would bring the bureaucracies, inspire troops and put ment, and no time given to Solyndra total to three. the right people in the right place at the or Operation Fast and Furious. Some So why is this a media story? One right time. scandals — the failure of Obamacare, reason is that Trump’s military picks Before Bill Clinton won the White the courting of Islamist Iran — were are recent retirees. Congress has to pass House, a lack of military service countcast as “signature (achievements).” waivers to allow former brass to serve ed against would-be presidents. Clinton, How this network still includes the as civilians in government before a sev- who benefited from a draft deferment, at word “news” in the title is beyond us. en-year waiting period expires. Also, least picked Vietnam vet Al Gore as his

Brent

Bozell

Clinton lost in part because workingclass people couldn’t afford — (and didn’t want — Obamacare. That is his legacy, too. CONSERVATIVES WILL define Trump’s success by measuring how many of Obama’s failed policies are reversed, and whether untrammeled federal government overreach is slowed in any way. We can count on CNN to oppose that agenda every step of the way.

An over-general misunderstanding

Debra J.

Saunders

running mate. When George W. Bush ran, Democrats complained that he only served as pilot in the Air National Guard and that Bush running mate Dick Cheney enjoyed five draft deferments. That is, by the way, the same number of deferments that kept Obama veep Joe Biden out of service. Obama is the first post-Vietnam service age executive in the bunch. The older Trump received four student draft deferments, and another for bone spurs in his heels. With the U.S. military involved in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen and Africa, Americans should want officials who know the sacrifices made by those who serve and their families. Kelly’s son Robert paid the ultimate price in Afghanistan in 2010. This summer, Trump got in a Twitter war with Khazr Khan, whose speech to the Democratic National Convention highlighted the price Muslims in the military have paid in defense of this country. (Khan’s son was killed by a car bomb in Iraq in 2004.) WHEN IN reference to Khan, ABC News’ George Stephanopoulous asked Trump what sacrifices he made for America, the billionaire answered, “I think I’ve made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs, built great structures. I’ve had tremendous success. I think I’ve done a lot.” One advantage in picking former military, Umberg noted, is that “they would never make the mistake of equating the loss of a son or daughter with working long hours building buildings.”

December 21, 2016 POLITICAL CORRECTNESS: December 14, 2016

A new victim in the war on small-biz bakeries

t is not enough for family-owned to him as he bolted. Gibson got whacked pastry shops to bow to the gay in the face with his own phone. Aladin marriage mob. Now, they’re be- then reportedly ran while throwing the ing targeted by the social justice mafia. two bottles of wine on the floor, becomAt my alma mater, radical Oberlin ing “violent” and “grabbing and hitting College in Ohio (which boasts hapless Allyn.” Aladin ran out with two females Baltimore mayor and rioters’ champion who were with him in the store. Gibson Stephanie Rawlings Blake and bizarro followed and tried to detain the alleged feminist actress and fake rape accuser shoplifter again on the street. Lena Dunham as Gibson’s right as graduates), the opa shop employee to erators of a smalldetain a suspected business bakery thief with probable are under siege by cause until police (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate vengeful students arrive is protectand administrators trying to crush them ed under Ohio statute. As the females under the wheels of the race-baiters’ punched and kicked him, police officers bandwagon. The true victim in this who had arrived on scene during the latest tale of political correctness run beating wrote: amok is Gibson’s Bakery — a quaint “Allyn had several abrasions and mishop founded in 1885 that still bakes all nor injuries including what appeared to its goods using original recipes. be a swollen lip, abrasions to his arms and wrists and a small cut on his neck.” ON NOV. 9, according to the city poAladin was charged with robbery and lice report I obtained, shop employee Al- inflicting harm and faces a court hearing lyn Gibson caught a 19-year-old Ober- in the case this week. The two females, lin College student allegedly stealing Endia Lawrence and Cecelia Whetttwo bottles of wine and hiding them un- stone, were charged with assault. der his shirt. As officers approached the You can guess what happened next. area, Oberlin Police Sgt. (Victor) Ortiz, Aladin, who is black, became the new and Officer (Raymond) Feuerstein both poster boy of institutional racism and stated they observed Gibson lying on oppression. Students organized protests his back with several individuals kneel- and shrieked about “racial profiling,” ing over him punching and kicking him claiming that the bakery had a history with several other individuals in the im- of discriminating against customers “of mediate area. Officers attempted to gain color.” control of the situation and were met It gets worse. Leading the charge several times with resistance from sev- in the latest War on Small-Biz Bakereral different individuals.” ies is the Oberlin College dean of stuAllyn Gibson attempted to stop the dents, Meredith Raimondo, who joined alleged thief, Jonathan Aladin, from the baying mob in bullying the Gibson leaving the store and tried to take a pho- family. She disseminated flyers libel-

Michelle

Malkin

ously asserting that Gibson’s is a “racist establishment with a long account of racial profiling and discrimination.” Convicted in the crazy Oberlin College court of public opinion, the school refused to renew its longstanding daily order of donuts and bagels. For a small business with razor-thin margins, losing that order could be devastating. NEVER MIND that the “racism” charge is a brazen lie. As the police department pointed out, since 2011, there had been four robberies at the store including Aladin, “and he was the only black person. There were 40 adults arrested for shoplifting in five years, and 32 were white. There were six adult black suspects arrested and two Asians, and 33 of the 40 were college students.”

And never mind that Trey James, a Gibson’s employee who is himself black, bluntly told the student newspaper that race had nothing to do with the incident. “If you’re caught shoplifting, you’re going to end up getting arrested,” he told the Oberlin Review. “When you steal from the store, it doesn’t matter what color you are. You can be purple, blue, green, if you steal, you get caught, you get arrested.” Never mind, either, that Oberlin is ground zero in fake hate crime claims — from the notorious 2013 sighting of a “KKK robe-wearing” menace on campus who turned out to be a female student wearing a blanket to Lena Dunham’s disgraceful attempt to blame a college Republican for sexually assaulting her. She retracted the story after Breitbart.com blogger John Nolte and others in new media exposed the hoax. Back in the 1990s, Asian-American students claimed that a phantom racist had spray-painted anti-Asian racial epithets on a campus landmark rock. It turned out that it was a warped AsianAmerican student who perpetrated the dirty deed. During my time there, a black student accused the elder Mr. Gibson of racism after he told the student she was not allowed to sit at an outside table because she hadn’t purchased any items from his store. Ohio talk radio host Bob Frantz, who has rallied sane, decent and hardworking members of the community to support the Gibson family, told me a Facebook page supporting the bakery had been censored by Facebook. (No surprise: Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a fervent, darn-thefacts supporter of Black Lives Matter.) IT IS TIME for real justice to prevail over truth-sabotaging, violence-stoking, thug-coddling social justice. If you are not actively fighting the mob, you’re enabling it.

Conservative Chronicle

SEPARATION OF POWERS: December 8, 2016

Are sanctuary cities legal? Diffusion of powers

ast week, President-elect Don- and put the enforcement of others on the ald Trump re-emphasized the back burner. Over time — and with more than approach he will take in enforcing the nation’s immigration laws, 4,000 criminal laws in the United States — Congress and the courts which is much different from the man- Code simply deferred to the ner of enforcement utilized by President h a v e president and permitBarack Obama. ted him to enforce The latter pointwhat he wants and edly declined to not enforce what deport the five he doesn’t want. million undocu(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate Until now. mented immiEarlier this year, two federal courts grants in the United States who are the parents of children born here — children enjoined President Obama — and the who, by virtue of birth, are American Supreme Court, in a tie vote, declined to citizens. Trump has made known his in- interfere with those injunctions — from tention to deport all undocumented peo- establishing a formal program whereby ple, irrespective of family relationships, undocumented people who are the parstarting with those who have committed ents of natural-born citizens may lawfully remain here. It is one thing, the crimes. courts ruled, for the president to prioriIN RESPONSE to Trump’s stated in- tize federal law enforcement; it is quite tentions, many cities — including New another for him to attempt to rewrite the York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San laws and put them at odds with what Francisco — have offered sanctuary to Congress has written. It is one thing for those whose presence has been jeopar- the president, for humanitarian reasons dized by the president-elect’s plan. Can or because of a lack of resources, to look the other way in the face of unenforced they do this? federal law. It is another for him to claim Here is the back story. Under the Constitution, the president that by doing so, he may constitutionally is the chief federal law enforcement of- change federal law. Trump brilliantly seized upon this ficer in the land. Though the president’s job is to enforce all federal laws, as a — and the electorate’s general belowpractical matter, the federal govern- the-radar-screen disenchantment with ment lacks the resources to do that. As it — during his successful presidential well, the president is vested with what campaign by promising to deport all 13 is known as prosecutorial discretion. million undocumented immigrants curThat enables him to place priority on rently in the United States, though he the enforcement of certain federal laws later reduced that promise so as to cover

Andrew

Napolitano

only the two million among them who have been convicted in the United States of violating state or federal laws. Enter the sanctuary cities. These are places where there are large immigrant populations, among which many are undocumented, yet where there is apparently not a little public sentiment and local governmental support for sheltering the undocumented from federal reach. Trump has argued that these cities are required to comply with federal law by actively assisting the feds — or at least not aggressively resisting them. Thus the question: Are state and local governments required to help the feds enforce federal law? In a word: No. THE TERM “sanctuary cities” is not a legal term, but it has been applied by those in government and the media to describe municipalities that offer expanded social services to the undocumented and decline to help the feds find them — including the case of Chicago’s offering undocumented immigrants money for legal fees to resist federal deportation. As unwise as these expenditures may

be by cities that are essentially bankrupt and rely on federal largesse in order to remain in the black, they are not unlawful. Cities and towns are free to expand the availability of social services however they please, taking into account the local political climate. Enter the Supreme Court. It has required the states — and thus the municipalities in them — to make social services available to everyone resident within them, irrespective of citizenry or lawful or unlawful immigration status. This is so because the constitutional command to the states of equal protection applies to all persons, not just to citizens. So the states and municipalities may not deny basic social services to anyone based on nationality or immigration status. The high court has also prohibited the federal government from “commandeering” the states by forcing them to work for the feds at their own expense by actively enforcing federal law. As Ronald Reagan reminded us in his first inaugural address, the states formed the federal government, not the other way around. They did so by ceding 16 discrete powers to the federal government and retaining to themselves all powers not ceded. If this constitutional truism were not recognized or enforced by the courts, the federal government could effectively eradicate the sovereignty of the states or even bankrupt them by forcing them to spend their tax dollars enforcing federal law or paying for federal programs. Thus the Trump dilemma. He must follow the Constitution, or the courts will enjoin him as they have his predecessor. He cannot use a stick to bend the governments of sanctuary cities to his will, but he can use a carrot. He can ask Congress for legislative grants of funds to cities conditioned upon their compliance with certain federal immigration laws. ALL OF THIS is part of our constitutional republic. By dividing powers between the feds and the states — and by separating federal powers among the president, Congress and the courts — our system intentionally makes the exercise of governmental power cumbersome by diffusing it. And since government is essentially the negation of freedom, the diffusion of governmental powers helps to maximize personal liberty.

December 21, 2016 WASHINGTON ESTABLISHMENT: December 7, 2016

How the establishment will try to destroy Trump He was a good prognosticator! ConShortly before Thanksgiving, New York Times columnist Frank Bruni gress did exactly as he’d anticipated. wrote a column that should chill you to But instead of saying “no,” Bush caved. That betrayal cost the GOP its most the bone. Titled “Donald Trump’s Demand for popular issue. As the Times’ Michael Love,” Bruni said: “I had just shaken Wines put it (shortly before Bush prethe president-elect’s normal-size hand dictably lost his re-election bid), with and he was moving on to the next per- the president’s sellout, Republicans son when he wheeled around, took a half gave up “a political weapon so fearthat it had destroyed step back, touched my arm and looked s o m e three Democratic me in the eye presidential candianew. ‘I’m going dates in 12 years.” to get you to write The Times had some good stuff spent months hecabout me,’ Donald (c) 2016, Ann Coulter toring Bush about Trump said.” Bruni is a fabulous writer, but if he the “yawning deficit,” denouncing his ever writes good stuff about you, Mr. “obdurate refusal” to raise taxes, and President-elect, YOU WILL HAVE promising “political popularity” for the “needed” tax hike. But the moment FAILED. Bush raised taxes, the Times couldn’t I ASSUME this was just our presi- stop crowing about his broken promise. That was always the whole point. dent-elect doing something he gets the least credit for, which is being nice. But Not the “yawning deficit.” Not raising revenue. But to get the GOP to give up you can never be too careful. The Times is in total opposition to its most potent issue. Trump has just annihilated 16 far Trump’s stated goal to make America great again. Trump has got to know — more experienced Republican rivals, not next year, but by 5 p.m. today — the Clinton machine and the entire methat anyone pursuing his agenda will dia/Hollywood/Wall Street complex by incite rage, insanity and spitting blood raising the one issue no other politician would touch: Putting America’s interfrom that newspaper. There’s a long and tragic history of ests first on immigration. What promise do you think they Republicans who won the war but lost the peace by trading results for respect- want Trump to break? Luckily for the country, Trump ability. The first President Bush not only doesn’t seem obsessed with what the promised not to raise taxes, but also laid elites think of him. But his advisers out the steps Democrats would take to include just the type of Republicans get him to break that promise. “And the whose second-tier law schools make Congress will push me to raise taxes,” them particularly susceptible to the he said in his iconic 1988 convention cheap respectability of establishment speech, “and I’ll say no, and they’ll media approval. Trump has been a politician for only push, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push again, and I’ll say to them, ‘Read my a little more than one year. He has no experience with the tricks that will be lips: No new taxes.’”

Ann

Coulter

played to get him to betray voters on his signature issue. The first president Bush knew what was coming — and he still broke his promise. Manifestly, if anyone in Washington seriously wanted to build a wall, deport illegals, return criminal aliens to their own countries, end the anchor baby scam and prevent jihadists from immigrating here to kill Americans, it would have been done already. Nearly every promise Trump made on immigration is 100 percent within the power of the president. For example: It is already the president’s job, as commander in chief, to protect the borders. It is already the Department of Defense’s job to build border walls.

licans, the permanent bureaucracy, the Chamber of Commerce, George Soros, the Wall Street Journal — in fact, the entire media, except four webpages, six bloggers and five talk-radio hosts — and hundreds of taxpayer-funded immigrant grievance groups. And that’s just off the top of my head. He’ll even be opposed by his own hand-picked U.N. ambassador! (It is an amazing fact that at the 2016 State of the Union, both the Democratic president’s address, and the Republican governor’s response, attacked candidate Trump’s immigration proposals.) There’s a reason millions of Americans were showing up at Trump’s rallies chanting, “Build the Wall!” and not, “End Obamacare!” “Cut taxes!” “Save the Second Amendment!” — or any other slogan that could have been chanted just as easily at a Jeb! rally. There are only a handful of people in the entire country with the knowledge and ability to enforce our immigration laws. Any Cabinet appointees likely to impress the New York Times aren’t going to get it done. They won’t have to expressly defy Trump. They just won’t do it. Perhaps they’ll make some showy effort at deporting illegals — and then back down at the first La Raza lawsuit. Or they will allow career government lawyers to submit briefs in court that cite all the wrong cases. Or they’ll wait for Speaker Paul Ryan’s approval to do anything. Or they’ll be moved by a Nikki Haley speech about the vibrant diversity of Somali refugees. Or they’ll be scared off by Washington bureaucrats who say, You can’t do that! But if Trump chooses from among the few people who know how to get it done (Kris Kobach, Kris Kobach or Kris Kobach), his promises will be kept. He can relax. He can spend all his time playing golf, living in Trump Tower, yelling at American CEOs trying to outsource jobs — and engaging in appalling conflicts of interest with his businesses. He could even shoot someone on Fifth Avenue. (I propose GOP consultant Rick Wilson!)

IT’S ALREADY the law that citizenship is not acquired by being born on U.S. soil to an illegal alien. (No Congress has ever passed such a law, nor has the Supreme Court ruled that they are.) It is already the secretary of state’s duty to rescind visas from countries that refuse to take their criminals back. It is already the president’s job to prohibit the entry of any class of immigrants he deems “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” It is already the president’s job to remove immigrants who commit crimes, entered our country through fraud (i.e., every single refugee), are in the country illegally or who become public charges. None of those things have ever been done before for one reason: The entire Washington establishment is unalterably opposed to enforcing our immigration laws. Trump will have no trouble enacting the rest of his agenda. If congressional Republicans are good for anything, it is to repeal Obamacare, cut taxes and regulation, confirm good judges and protect the Second Amendment. No one but Trump would have done it, but not even Nancy Pelosi is going to attack Trump for keeping jobs in America. Only when it comes to immigration will Trump be Gary Cooper, out there alone against every powerful entity in America. Just as he was during the TRUMP IS down to his last wish campaign. from Aladdin. He can impress the New On immigration, Trump will be furi- York Times, or he can make America ously opposed by: Democrats, Repub- great again. But he can’t do both.

Conservative Chronicle

DEMOCRATIC PARTY: December 8, 2016

Democrats: From temper tantrum to self-delusion

Astonishing. ard to believe, but Hillary Fact: Based on exit polls, Trump got Clinton’s campaign team thinks they lost because Don- a lower percentage of the white vote ald Trump ignited America’s inner big- than Mitt Romney did in 2012, and a ot, which caused the KKK and Aryan higher percentage of the black vote and Brotherhood members and sympathizers the Hispanic vote than Romney. Initial post-election tabulations find that to show up in droves and vote Trump. wide, Trump won 209 Following Mitt Romney’s 2012 de- n a t i o n of the 676 counties feat, Democrats that voted for Barack and pundits preObama twice — in dicted GOP deboth 2008 and feats as far as the 2012. And he won eye could see, be(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate another 194 of the cause there aren’t 207 counties that enough white voters for Republicans to win. But now the Obama took only once — in either 2008 narrative is, “Trump won by appealing or 2012. Did a raft of white supremato white voters.” Could they please pick cists move in and change the vote? Or did the voters’ latent racism suddenly one and stick to it? erupt in 2016? Fact: When Barack Obama took ofTHAT’S THE takeaway from the Harvard quadrennial postmortem in fice in 2009, he had, with the exception which the two campaign camps partici- of John F. Kennedy, the highest approvpated. About Steve Bannon, Trump’s al ratings, 68 percent, of any elected campaign CEO, Clinton communica- president since Dwight D. Eisenhower tions director Jennifer Palmieri said, “If in 1953. It certainly appears that Obama providing a platform for white suprema- was black or biracial back in 2009, just cists makes me a brilliant tactician, I am as he was black or biracial when his poll glad to have lost. ... I would rather lose numbers declined. Fact: In a nation that the Clinton camp than win the way you guys did.” To this Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s believes teems with white supremacists, campaign manager, angrily responded, Obama, in 2008, got a higher percentage “No, you wouldn’t. That’s very clear ... of the white vote than Democratic canrespectfully. No, you wouldn’t. ... Jenn didate John Kerry in 2004. But in 2016, ... do you think I ran a campaign where whites came down with an acute case of white supremacists had a platform? Are what CNN’s Van Jones called “whitelyou going to look me in the face and tell ash,” a reaction against, as he put it, “a changing country” and “a black presime that?” “It did, Kellyanne. It did,” countered dent.” Now it is true that Obama did not get a majority of the white vote. But the Palmieri.

Larry

Elder

last presidential election in which Democrats won the white vote was in 1964. The majority of voting white Americans don’t want a white Democrat or a black Democrat sitting in the Oval Office. THIS ASSUMPTION of vast American white supremacy mirrors the exceptions of many black politicians when, back in the ‘90s, the Supreme Court struck down and demanded redistricting of Southern congressional districts that had been specifically designed to increase black representation in the House of Representatives. Elaine Jones of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund said, “Once this decision goes through, you’ll be able to hold

the Black Congressional Caucus in the back of a taxicab.” But contrary to the dreary predictions, every black Southern congressperson who decided to run for re-election — despite having to try and retain a seat in a much more white congressional district — won his or her race. Early in the 2008 Democratic primary race, a black South Carolina state lawmaker, Robert Ford, refused to support Obama. He argued that a black presidential candidate would not only lose badly but would trigger such white racism that down-ballot Democrats would suffer: “It’s a slim possibility for (Obama) to get the nomination, but then everybody else is doomed. ... Every Democrat running on that ticket next year would lose, because he’s black and he’s top of the ticket. We’d lose the House and the Senate and the governors and everything. ... I’m a gambling man. I love Obama. ... But I’m not going to kill myself.” Memo to the “racism, racism everywhere” crowd: Whites are as proud of slavery and Jim Crow as Germans and Austrians are of Adolf Hitler. If Democrats truly believe that racism carried the day for Trump, they’re even more out of touch than initially thought. Given that line of reasoning, they will be hard-pressed to get back the middle-class and working-class Americans they lost this cycle. If Democrats think Trump won by “catering to racists,” just wait until the economy improves under Trump, and more Latinos and blacks stop voting like victicrats. Just wait until blacks and Hispanics start voting to continue the policies that caused an improvement in their economic conditions and for education policies like Trump’s provoucher stance. THEN DEMOCRATS will really start losing.

December 21, 2016 DONALD TRUMP: December 9, 2016

Tweets/theater entertain, but Congress is main event

he most amusing part of the Trump transition has been watching its effortless confounding of the media, often in fewer than 140 characters. One morning, after a Fox News report on lefty nuttiness at some obscure New England college — a flag burning that led a more-contemptible-than-usual campus administration to take down the school’s own American flag — Donald Trump tweets that flag burners should go to jail or lose their citizenship.

AN EPIDEMIC of constitutional chin tugging and civil libertarian hair pulling immediately breaks out. By the time the media have exhausted their outrage over the looming abolition of free speech, judicial supremacy and affordable kale, Trump has moved on. The tempest had a shorter half-life than the one provoked in August 2015 by a Trump foray into birthright citizenship.

Trump so thoroughly owns the po- Japanese investment in the U.S. Calllitical stage today that the word Clin- ing for cancellation of the new Air ton seems positively quaint and Barack Force One to be built by Boeing. Pretty small stuff. It has the feel Obama, who happens to be president of the United States, is totally irrelevant. of a Cabinet undersecretary haggling Obama gave a major national security with a contractor or a state governor address on Tuesday. Lt. Gen. Michael drumming up business on a Central Asian trade mission. Or of Flynn’s son got more attention. candidate Trump sellTrump has ing Trump steaks mesmerized the and Trump wine in national media that bizarre vicnot just with his tory speech after elaborate Cabi(c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group the Michigan prinet-selection promary. duction, by now Presidents don’t normally do such Broadway-ready. But with a cluster of equally theatrical personal inter- things. It shrinks them. But then again, ventions that by traditional standards Trump is not yet president. And the point here is less the substance than seem distinctly unpresidential. It’s a matter of size. They seem the symbolism. small for a president. Preventing the THE CARRIER coup was meant shutdown of a Carrier factory in Indiana. Announcing, in a contextless to demonstrate the kind of concern for 45-second surprise statement, a major the working man that gave Trump the

Charles

Krauthammer

REPUBLICAN PARTY: December 8, 2016

GOP — the party of workers

n the course of a couple of tweets, Donald Trump may have ended the image of the GOP as the party of corporate America. After striking a Carrier deal to preserve about 800 jobs, the president-elect slapped the Indiana company Rexnord on Twitter for “rather viciously firing” its workers and then went after Boeing for ripping off the public on a $3 billion Air Force One deal. Just like that, and in less than 280 characters, Trump had established more distance from big business than the GOP had in a generation. In his frenetic way, he is forcing a reorientation of the Republican Party’s economics, a change that is welcome in its broad contours, even if his methods are dubious and the potential pitfalls considerable.

the deficit; and made workers and their jobs his most prominent theme. Of course, Republican politicians always talk about jobs and the economy, although usually in the bloodless context of gross domestic product growth. Obviously, we want the GDP to grow, but it can be an empty metric for average workers. In fact, it’s possible to pursue policies that increase the GDP — for instance, growing the labor force through higher immigration — while harming the interests of workers. Trump hammered away at what’s the true bottom line of the economy for most people — their wages.

GONE IS the vaguely Randian emphasis on “makers vs. takers,” with anyone who doesn’t earn enough to make a net contribution to the funding of the federal government considered a parasite on the body politic. Gone is the obsession with the federal deficit that has long been the King Charles’ head of Republican policymakers. Gone is the difficulty of conceiving of people as anything other than consumers or budding entrepreneurs who care only about the top marginal tax rate. Contradicting these tropes, Trump bragged about taking even more people off the tax rolls; paid only lip service to

IF YOU squint just right, you can see a Trump economic strategy. It is to increase growth through traditional Republican means (i.e., tax reform and deregulation), at the same time he aims to directly create a tighter labor market. To that end, he wants to soak up labor with an infrastructure program and to reduce foreign competition by discouraging outsourcing and squeezing immigration. Ultimately, wages grow when productively increases, but a tighter labor market helps. One way to look at trade and immigration policy over the past several decades is that the political class has decided that less-educated Americans should have to compete more with

Rich

less-educated foreigners, who either work in factories overseas where U.S. concerns relocate, or come here themselves to live and work. This has to be at least part of the picture of relatively stagnant wages, and declining labor-force participation. Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies crunched the numbers for the third quarter of 2016. While overall unemployment has been falling, the labor-force participation rate for working-age natives without a bachelor’s degree is still lower than it was before the recession, just 70.4 percent now, compared with 74 percent before the downturn. The ultimate metric for success for Trump will be whether he can get wages reliably increasing, and pull more of these people back into the workforce. All that said, there is much to worry about in Trump’s approach. A president of the United States calling out individual companies is inherently arbitrary and subject to abuse. There is a lot of room between being deficit-obsessive and acting as though we don’t have to pay for anything. And a blowout $1 trillion infrastructure program would, inevitably, be politicized and wasteful. IN ALL THESE areas, one hopes Trump will be more restrained — and constrained, particularly by Congress. But the party should accept the new terms Trump has set out for its economic worldview, and focus on workers and their wages more than it has any time in memory.

Rust Belt victories that carried him to the presidency. The Japanese SoftBank announcement was a down payment on his promise to be the “the greatest jobs president that God ever created.” (A slightly dubious claim: After all, how instrumental was Trump to that investment? Surely a financial commitment of that magnitude would have been planned long before Election Day.) And Boeing was an ostentatious declaration that he would be the zealous guardian of government spending that you would expect from a crusading outsider. What appears as random Trumpian impulsiveness has a logic to it. It’s a continuation of the campaign. Trump is acutely sensitive to his legitimacy problem, as he showed in his tweet claiming to have actually won the popular vote, despite trailing significantly in the official count. His best counter is approval ratings. In August, the Bloomberg poll had him at 33 percent. He’s now up to 50 percent. Still nowhere near Obama’s stratospheric 79 percent at this point in 2008, but a substantial improvement nonetheless. The mini-interventions are working but there’s a risk for Trump in so personalizing his coming presidency. It’s a technique borrowed from Third World strongmen who specialize in demonstrating their personal connection to the ordinary citizen. In a genuine democracy, however, the endurance of any political support depends on the larger success of the country. And that doesn’t come from Carrier-size fixes. It comes from policy — policy that fundamentally changes the structures and alters the trajectory of the nation. “I alone can fix it,” Trump ringingly declared in his convention speech. Indeed, alone he can do Carrier and SoftBank and Boeing. But ultimately he must deliver on tax reform, health care, economic growth and nationwide job creation. That requires Congress. The 115th is Republican and ready to push through the legislation that gives life to the promises. On his part, Trump needs to avoid needless conflict. The Republican leadership has already signaled strong opposition on some issues, such as tariffs for job exporters. Nonetheless, there is enough common ground between Trump and his congressional majority to have an enormously productive 2017. The challenge will be to stay within the bounds of the GOP consensus. TRUMP WILL continue to tweet and the media will continue take the bait. Highly entertaining but it is a sideshow. Congress is where the fate of the Trump presidency will be decided.

Conservative Chronicle

SOCIETAL SHIFT: December 9, 2016

A tough decade: The collapse of the political left

t’s been a tough decade for the political left. Eight years ago, a Time magazine cover portrayed Barack Obama as Franklin Roosevelt, complete with a cigarette and holder and a cover line proclaiming, “The New New Deal.” A Newsweek cover announced, “We Are All Socialists Now.” Now the cover story is different. Time has just announced — inevitably, though a bit begrudgingly — that its person of the year for 2016 is Donald Trump. No mention of New Deals or socialism.

IT’S NOT surprising that newsmagazine editors expected a move to the left. The history they’d been taught by New Deal admirers, influenced by the doctrines of Karl Marx, was that economic distress moves voters to demand a larger and more active government. There was some empirical evidence in that direction, as well. The recession triggered by the financial crisis of 2007-08 was the deepest experienced by anyone not old enough to remember the 1930s. Obama was elected with 53 percent of the popular vote — more than any candidate since the 1980s — and Democrats won congressional elections with similar majorities, just as they had in 2006. Things look different now, and not just because Trump was elected president. It has been clear that most voters have been rejecting big-government policies, not only in the United States but also in most democratic nations around the world. Leftist politicians supposed that ordinary voters with modest incomes facing hard times would believe that regulation and redistribution would help them. Evidently, most don’t. The rejection was apparent in the 2010 and subsequent House elections; Republicans have now won House majorities in 10 of the past 12 elections, leaving 2006 and 2008 as temporary aberrations. You didn’t hear Hillary Clinton campaigning on the glories of Obamacare or the Iranian nuclear deal, and her attack on “trumped-up trickle-down” economics didn’t strike any chords in the modestincome Midwest. Republican success has been even greater in gubernatorial and state legislature elections, to the point that Democrats hold both the governorship and legislative control only in California, Hawaii, Delaware and Rhode Island. After eight years of the Obama presidency, Democrats hold fewer elective offices than at any time since the 1920s. Things look similar abroad. Britain’s Conservatives, returned to power in 2010, are in a commanding position over a left-lurching Labour Party. France’s Socialist president, with single-digit approval, declined to run for a second term. European social democratic parties have

Obama doesn’t seem to have noticed this, though maybe he did at some point between 9 and 10 o’clock on election night. Shrewder center-left politicians who have shown they know how to OVERALL, HISTORY is not win elections have. Bill Clinton urged bending toward happy acceptance of his wife’s campaign managers to put in rural areas so she ever larger government at home, nor her out could speak to votis it moving toers’ concerns there. ward submersion The 30-something of national powgeniuses she iners and identities stalled in her into large and in(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate trendy Brooklyn herently undemocratic international organizations. The headquarters thought they knew better. Former British Prime Minister Tony nation-state remains the focus of most people’s loyalties, and in a time of eco- Blair, speaking in Washington this week, nomic and cultural diffusion, as Yuval said, “We have to pay attention to culLevin argues in his recent book The ture and identity.” He argued that in reFractured Republic, big-government sponse to Islamic extremism, “political policies designed for an age of central- correctness can’t get in the way.” Such advice suggests a sharp shift in ization have become increasingly dyscurrent leftist strategy, which includes functional. been hemorrhaging votes and got walloped in Sunday’s Italian referendum. In Latin America and Asia, the left is declining or on the defensive.

Michael

Barone

“identity politics” appeals to minorities at home and obeisance to the wisdom of supranational entities, such as the Paris climate change conference and the European Union. What’s missing in that is a concentration on the interests of one’s own citizenry. To the left, that smacks of nationalism, which some seem to regard as only a baby step away from Nazism. It’s not. The United States Constitution was designed to provide a framework in which rights are guaranteed and voters in states can choose policies in line with their different backgrounds and beliefs. DONALD TRUMP’S victory means the left can’t jam its policies down on the whole nation — and gives it the incentive to develop policies acceptable to not only its own base but also voters among whom it fell agonizingly short this year.

MINORITIES: December 8, 2016

A few ways to help minorities

epublicans running for president haven’t done very well with minority voters, and although President-elect Donald Trump fared slightly better this year than Mitt Romney did in 2012, the numbers still show that the GOP has a long way to go to make inroads with black and Hispanic voters. According to the Pew Research Center, Trump received only eight percent of the black vote and 28 percent of the Hispanic vote. With demographic trends projecting that the share of non-Hispanic whites will continue to drop, it would be wise for the incoming Trump administration to pursue sound policies that have the additional benefit of helping minorities.

FIRST, SUPPORT the decriminalization of drug possession and the complete legalization of marijuana. Like alcohol prohibition, the federal government’s war on drugs has been a costly failure. In 2015, only 16 percent of drug arrests were for manufacturing and sale; the clear majority were for mere possession. Drug usage rates are similar between whites and minorities, with blacks representing about 14 percent of regular drug users. But blacks account for 37 percent of drug arrests. Marijuana, which is arguably safer than alcohol, account for almost 43 percent of drug arrests, and of those, 90 percent are for marijuana possession. Again, even though usage across the races is similar, blacks are almost four times as likely to be arrested for marijuana as whites.

Second, pardon all nonviolent drug offenders in federal prisons. A whopping half of those in federal incarceration are there for drug offenses, and a disproportionate share of the federal prison population is nonwhite. According to The Sentencing Project, African-Americans serve almost the same amount of time in prison for drug offenses as whites do for violent offenses. Indeed, the federal government’s draconian drug policies have led to the highest incarceration rate in the world. The United States

Veronique

has five percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of the world’s incarcerated population. In addition to being wildly expensive to taxpayers, the mass incarceration of drug offenders has destroyed families and ruined the job prospects of young minorities. THIRD, ELIMINATE the federal minimum wage. Minimum wage laws are intended to help put more money in the pockets of workers, but the unintended consequences of these laws on minorities are problematic. Government-imposed wage floors artificially inflate the cost of labor. Businesses might respond by seeking cost reductions in other areas. For workers, that could translate into fewer hours, reduced benefits and even termination. For example, raising the minimum

wage to $15 an hour wouldn’t help a worker if his company decided it would be more economical to replace the worker with an automated kiosk. Lower-skilled workers, who are likelier to be minorities, are the first on the chopping block when labor costs are higher than what the market can bear. Fourth, target federal regulations that inhibit job creation. It’s interesting that many of those advocating a higher federal minimum wage are often the same people in favor of the federal government’s piling regulation after regulation onto businesses. Like the federal minimum, artificially higher costs resulting from regulations cause businesses to seek savings elsewhere, including cutting the labor force or, worse, closing the doors. According to my colleagues at the Mercatus Center, if federal “regulation had been held constant at levels observed in 1980, the U.S. economy would have been about 25 percent larger than it actually was as of 2012. ... This amounts to a loss of approximately $13,000 per capita, a significant amount of money for most American workers.” I HAVE listed four ways the incoming Trump administration could help minorities, but there are more. And while these policy prescriptions would be of particular help to blacks and nonwhite Hispanics, they would benefit all Americans — men and women, young and old, rich and poor — well, perhaps not those in the prison business or the government employees responsible for drafting the reams of regulations.

December 21, 2016 SOCIETAL SHIFT: December 9, 2016

Has the Trumpian revolution begun?

In 1950, literary critic Lionel Trilling wrote, “In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation.” The rise of the conservative movement of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan revealed liberalism’s hour to be but a passing moment. Yet, today, something far beyond conservatism seems to be afoot. As Hegel taught, in the dialectic of CLEARLY, THOUGH his victory was narrow, Donald Trump remains history the thesis calls into existence the contemptuous of political correctness antithesis. What we seem to be seeing is a rejection, and a counterreformation and defiant of liberal ideology. For environmentalism, as conser- against the views and values that came vative scholar Robert Nisbet wrote in out of the social and political revoluthe 1960s. 1982, is more than the “most important tions of Consider the setsocial movement” o f tled doctrine Trump the 20th century. disrespected with It is a militant and Pruitt. dogmatic faith We have long that burns her(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate been instructetics. ed that climate “Environmentalism is well on its way to becoming the change is real, that its cause is manthird great wave of redemptive struggle made, that it imperils the planet with risin Western history,” wrote Nisbet, “the ing seas, hurricanes and storms, that all first being Christianity, the second mod- nations have a duty to curb the release ern socialism.” In picking a “climate of carbon dioxide to save the world for denier” to head EPA, Trump is rejecting future generations. This is said to be “scientific truth,” revealed truth. Yet, as with his choices of Steve Ban- and “climate deniers” are like people non as White House strategist and Sen. who believe the earth is flat and the sun Jeff Sessions as attorney general, he has revolves around it. Some hold the matshown himself to be an unapologetic ter to be so grave that climate deniers should be censored for promoting soapostate to liberal orthodoxy. Indeed, with his presidency, we may cially destructive falsehoods. Yet, the people remain skeptical. be entering a post-liberal era.

he wailing and keening over the choice of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the EPA appears to be a lead indicator of a coming revolution far beyond Reagan’s. “Trump Taps Climate Skeptic For Top Environmental Post,” said the Wall Street Journal. “Climate Change Denial,” bawled a disbelieving New York Times, which urged the Senate to put Pruitt in a “dust bin.”

Pat

Buchanan

THEIR WORRY is not that the rising waters of the Med will swamp the Riviera, but that tens of millions of Arabs, Muslims and Africans may be coming across to swamp Europe, and that millions of Mexicans may cross the Rio Grande to swamp the USA. Call them climate deniers or climate skeptics, but they see the establishment as running the Big Con to effect a transfer of wealth and power away from the people — and to themselves. Across the West, establishments have lost credibility. The proliferation of minority parties, tearing off pieces of the traditional ruling parties, points to a growing distrust in ruling regimes and a return to identifying with the nation and tribe whence one came.

A concomitant of this is a growing disbelief in egalitarianism and in the equality of all races, creeds, nations, cultures and peoples. The Supreme Court may say all religions are equal and all must be treated equally. But do Americans believe Christianity and Islam are equal? How could they, when Christians claim their faith has as its founder the Son of God and God himself? After calling for a ban on Muslim immigration, Trump was elected president. After inviting a million refugees from Syria’s civil war into Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel admits having made a mistake and is now in favor of letting German cities and towns decide if women should be allowed to wear burqas. A sea change in thought is taking place in the West. Liberalism appears to be a dying faith. America’s elites may still preach their trinity of values: Diversity, democracy, equality. But the majorities in America and Europe are demanding that the borders be secured and Third World immigrants kept out. The next president disbelieves in free trade. He wants a border wall. He questions the wisdom of our Mideast wars and the need for NATO. He is contemptuous of democratist dogma that how other nations rule themselves is our business. He rejects transnationalism and globalism. “There is no global anthem, no global currency, no certificate of global citizenship,” said Trump in Cincinnati, “We pledge allegiance to one flag, and that flag is the American flag. From now on, it’s going to be America first. ... We’re going to put ourselves first.” That’s not Adlai Stevenson or Jimmy Carter or Barack Obama. NOTHING SEEMS settled or certain. All is in flux. But change is coming. “Things are in the saddle, and ride mankind.”

Conservative Chronicle

ECONOMY: December 8, 2016

Economy ready to take off under Trump/GOP Congress

arack Obama’s presidency is business channel to reveal an aggressive going out with a whimper and pro-growth, pro-investment, pro-jobs tax Donald Trump is coming in reform legislation that Congress will take up next year. with a roar of economic approval. It’s a plan that frustrated Republican After eight underperforming years of sluggish economic growth and frighten- lawmakers have been working on for the ing, roller-coaster stock markets, Wall past three to four years — only this time Street sent a bullish message this week there will be someone in the White House that the anemic economy is about to end, ready to sign it into law next year. After eight years of economic lethargy years of business uncertainty are over President Obama’s and American prosperity is being reborn. u n d e r fierce anti-tax-cut, The Dow Jones anti-growth and industrial average anti-wealth creation and Standard & policies, the DemPoor’s 500 index ocrats got what shot up Wednesday (c) 2016, United Media Services they deserved in to their strongest gains since the presidential election, hit- November: A political shellacking. Although former Democratic presiting record highs. dents have shown that lower tax rates HISTORIC GAINS were made unlock capital investment and lead to across the nation’s markets, including much stronger economic growth — John technology, industrials, airlines, rail- F. Kennedy ran on across-the-board tax roads, the trucking industry, real estate cuts, and Bill Clinton cut capital gains tax rates — their party still worships at the companies and retail firms as well. The markets were already rising in altar of higher taxes. I will never forget a political gathering fits and starts as the result of Trump’s election. But as the president-elect has sponsored by the Democratic National begun nominating members of his Cabi- Committee in Washington during the net and preparing for a new government 2008 presidential campaign where the to take over, a renewed confidence has party’s candidates pitched their agendas seized Wall Street, and overseas markets, to the party faithful. One of them was Gov. Bill Richardson too, that America was open for business again, and the place to invest in the global of New Mexico, who talked about how he had cut taxes in his state to build up economy. That was not only the message com- its economy and better compete with his ing from the incoming administration, neighboring states where tax rates were but also from Capitol Hill, which will be much lower. Richardson was hissed by the Demoputting together the economic legislation crats who packed the room, and some needed to get America moving again. Early Wednesday morning, House booed him, just at the thought of tax cuts, Speaker Paul Ryan went on CNBC’s no matter how sensible.

Donald

Lambro

OBAMA, ON THE other hand, was cheered when it was his turn to address the gathering, selling his plan to raise taxes on the wealthy, and to devote nearly a trillion dollars on infrastructure spending, just as Franklin D. Roosevelt had done during the Great Depression. In the end, Obama’s “shovel-ready” jobs agenda didn’t work much better than FDR’s make-work programs. The Great Depression lasted 10 years until the war. The 2008 Great Recession lingered for years, with the economy unable to grow above two percent over the past eight years. Apparently, liberal Democrats haven’t learned anything from the sorry economic record Obama is leaving behind. House Democrats, who are gluttons for punishment, have re-elected Nancy

Pelosi to another term as their leader, after her party’s humiliating losses in the past three elections. A quick scan of her resume shows she’s never uttered a discouraging word about the Obama economy. In the Senate, Democrats have voted to promote New York Sen. Charles Schumer to replace retiring Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. He has been one of Obama’s stalwart defenders as a downthe-line believer that raising taxes is the cure-all for our economic ills. Meantime, while Trump continues to put the finishing touches on his White House staff and Cabinet nominees, Republican leaders are fine-tuning the rest of their reform agenda. From here on out, the hard work of repairing the damage that Obama has inflicted on our economy will take place in Congress. And it is encouraging to hear, as Speaker Ryan said this week, that he has been talking to Trump almost every day lately — coordinating their work, setting priorities, and sending a message that both branches of government are moving toward common goals. Speaker Ryan says that Obamacare will be first on their to-do list, and he spent a fair amount of time detailing what needs to be done to throw out what’s bad in the so-called “Affordable Care Act,” and why there needs to be a period of transition to protect the most vulnerable as changes are implemented over a period of years. Sweeping tax reforms will probably be taken up by next spring, along with budget overhauls in defense spending and much else. SOME ISSUES may take a lot longer to work out, and, as always in the democratic process, others may die for lack of a majority vote. Don’t expect any major legislative changes on immigration reform any time soon, for example, if it happens at all.

December 21, 2016 FILIBUSTER: December 9, 2016

Did Dems learn from their attack on the filibuster?

won’t lie. After reading the CNN piece titled “Senate Dems, powerless to stop Trump nominees, regret ‘nuclear option’ power play,” I experienced some deeply satisfying schadenfreude. Feel free to keep President Barack Obama, Sen. Harry Reid and those who implored Senate Democrats to blow up the filibuster a few years ago in your thoughts as President-elect Donald Trump names his Cabinet and judges. But be sure to remember how recklessness begets recklessness in Washington, D.C. “I DO REGRET that,” Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democrat who voted to weaken the filibuster three years ago, tells CNN. “I frankly think many of us will regret that in this Congress because it would have been a terrific speed bump, potential emergency brake, to have in our system to slow down nominees.”

It always was a terrific speed bump, litical gains that no one will remember. senator. One of the reasons we value Does any Democrat believe helping tradition, norms and process is that we Obama name some left-wing populists don’t know what the future holds. But, to run the Consumer Financial Protecyou’ll note, these Democrats don’t retion Bureau (which didn’t even exist gret their vote for majoritarianism or until 2011) and the National Labor Repower grabs. They regret that Trump lations Board was worth it? (and it would be the same for Mitt SEN. JEFF MERKLEY, D-Ore., Romney or any moderate Republican, for that matter) will now be able to op- another leading proponent of destroying and balances, charged erate under the rules they set for them- c h e c k s at the time that withselves. out the nuclear opIt’s worth retion Republicans membering that were “going to Democrats didn’t disable” the execused a parliamen(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate utive branch. “It’s tary procedure to come into a realm change the rules so that federal judicial nominees and ex- where it’s just unacceptable because ecutive-office appointments can move if the executive branch can’t function, to confirmation votes with a simple then the nation can’t respond to the big majority for some grand ideological challenges it faces,” he explained. He purpose. They did it for short-term po- seemed to be under the impression that

David

Harsanyi

HUMILIITY: December 13, 2016

We need the gift of humility “Expert, texpert choking smokers. Don’t you think the joker laughs at you?” -- John Lennon, “I Am the Walrus” On election night, at around 6 p.m., a Hillary Clinton political operative went on TV and smugly opined that she believed they had a 95 percent chance of winning. Wow, 95 percent. In statistics we call that a very high level of certainty. But of course, five hours later the woman was in tears, and the 1-in-20 long shot named Donald Trump came in. Throughout the race, the betting odds gave Hillary Clinton an 80 percent likelihood of winning. That was never the case. This race was always a toss-up, with slight odds leaning toward Clinton. But several months ago my friend Jonah Goldberg, who is a very smart guy, insisted over and over on Fox News that Trump had no chance of winning the race.

MY POINT is experts are surprisingly wrong surprisingly often. The large majority of political experts and polls in Britain predicted that Brexit would lose. Oops. A few years before the housing meltdown and the more than $100 billion taxpayer bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and the future Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag wrote a research paper concluding that “the risk to the government from a potential default on GSE debt is effectively zero.” So either the housing bust was a one-in-a-million event or they had no idea what they were talking about.

Remember Long-Term Capital Management? This company was said to have a computer model developed by Nobel laureates and other mathematical geniuses, a magical moneymaking machine. And it made money year after year, until it crashed and went bankrupt. Paul Krugman writes twice a week for the New York Times as its economic sage. The night of the election, when stocks briefly fell off, Krugman mused to himself: “When might we expect them to recover? If the question is when markets will recover, a first-

Stephen

pass answer is never.” A few hours later, the market went on a massive bull-market run, giving stocks one of their best months ever. A FEW YEARS ago the dietary experts said fat would kill you, and now it’s said to be good for you. In 2004 National Geographic ran a cover story titled “The End of Cheap Oil.” A few years later we had the shale oil and gas revolution, and now the planet is drowning in cheap energy. My point isn’t to thumb my nose at people who get it wrong. I’ve made many predictions that have been wrong, too. But I rarely predict things with the sense of virtual certainty that many “experts” do. So this is a plea for humility by the experts and a healthy dose of skepti-

cism from the public. Economists say they can predict what job growth and employment will be next year and five years from now. Budget experts predict what the budget deficit will be in five years. Guess what? They have no idea. The climate change fanatics say that there is no doubt about global warming and its coming catastrophic effects. They say that the science is “settled.” Of course it’s not. How is shutting off debate good for scientific inquiry? How about admitting that you may be wrong? Young people today treat experts as if they are godly. On campuses I always have to tell students, “Don’t believe everything the teachers tell you. A lot of it is false.” As Napoleon Bonaparte once asked: What is history but a fable agreed upon? I spent the early years of my career working for the great myth-buster Julian Simon. Julian challenged almost all of the conventional wisdoms of the 1970s: That the earth was overpopulated, that we were running out of energy, that food shortages would lead to mass starvation and that air pollution would get worse. He was mostly right, the scientific consensus was often wrong. Yet many of those who have gotten the story consistently wrong still make predictions with absolute certainty. WISDOM IS knowing what you don’t know, which for all of us, especially the so-called experts, is a lot. This Christmas is a good time to remember that the only person who was ever flawless was hung from a cross.

presidents make laws — or maybe just liberal presidents. The liberal punditry hammered the filibuster back then the same way it’s hammering the Electoral College today. In 2010, Paul Krugman wrote a column in the New York Times claiming that the filibuster would destroy America. I do not exaggerate. He wrote: “We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic. What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce.” The idea that Democrats hadn’t been able to function was a myth. Obama, supposedly powerless to face America’s “big challenges,” had already passed a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus, a restructuring of the entire health care system and a tangled overhaul of financial regulation. The president also appointed two wholly liberal Supreme Court justices with no meaningful opposition. The American people then said, “That’s enough.” For Merkley, Krugman, Coons, Reid and others, that wouldn’t do. When Reid’s party was in the minority, he warned that weakening the Senate filibuster would “destroy the very checks and balances our Founding Fathers put in place to prevent absolute power by any one branch of government.” He was right. With his party’s attainment of a Senate majority, Reid’s reverence for the Founding Fathers rapidly faded, so much so that he used the nuclear option to eliminate the filibuster from some Senate debates. As a practical matter, these changes will likely never be reversed. What kind of majority is going to restore the filibuster to its opponents? What kind of majority wouldn’t use the same process to roll back the previous Senate’s abuses? (And the latter makes complete sense.) After all, the Chris Coons of the world will never be courageous enough to stand for process and stability over partisanship gain. In a Republican environment where winning itself is the ideology, it becomes even less likely. ALTHOUGH EACH party detests the filibuster when it is in power, progressives hold an enduring contempt for it because they hold an enduring contempt for federalism in general. Even today, some liberals are trying to figure out ways to work Senate procedure to put Chief Judge Merrick Garland on the Supreme Court. As if Republicans wouldn’t then simply turn around and load the court themselves. This kind of arms race sets dangerous precedents. It’d be nice if the nation realized it.

Conservative Chronicle

DONALD TRUMP: December 13, 2016

Mike Pence says Trump has a mandate

400,000 Hoosiers who are at, or near, the poverty level making a monthly contribution to a health savings account. They have an incentive to engage in preventive medicine. They’re ACCORDING TO Pence, Trump out of emergency room care and into is “passionate about health savings ac- primary care. ... The long-term proslowering the cost of counts and the notion of giving peo- pect for care in America is ple more ownership over their health h e a l t h a healthier Americare.” He beca.” lieves “consumWhat about er-directed health the “nevercare is the wave (c) 2016, Tribune Media Services Trumpers” and of the future. It their refusal to bends the cost curve, in some cases, very dramati- accept him as president? “I think the cally.” He added, Indiana “is the first president-elect has the leadership state to scale consumer-driven health qualities and the strength to meet this care into Medicaid (which a Trump ad- moment in our national life,” he said. Pence promised a repeal of the TO HELP Trump accomplish his ministration will propose block grantlegislative goals, Pence plans to attend ing to the states). “We now have over “Lyndon Johnson” IRS regulation that the weekly luncheon meeting with senators and meet on occasion with memLESLIE’S TRIVIA BITS: December 12, 2016 bers of the House where he spent more than a decade as a representative from Indiana. “My years on Capitol Hill have convinced me that it is often the informal olar bear paws can measure 12 performances. Davis was sick for much settings where you can learn where inches across, with sharp claws of the run, and she’d never be mistaken the opportunities are, what challenges nearly four inches long. Their for a singer, but audiences did enjoy need to be met. The agenda we are laying out is as energetic as the man who natural nonskid surface helps the bears seeing the silver screen queen on the was elected president. We have a 100- run on ice and snow. Despite the fact Great White Way. Each year, worldwide, about half a that they typically weigh about half a day agenda, a 200-day agenda.” I asked about Trump’s pledges to ton, polar bears are remarkably speedy. trillion dollars worth of imported goods spend on infrastructure, rebuild the They’ve been known to clock 30 miles are found to be counterfeit. In 2014, Samsung, Adidas and Nike suffered the military, the option of private care for per hour. Thanks to Shakespeare, we’ll never most documented cases of counterfeitveterans, paid for by the government. All of these will cost money and add forget that Julius Caesar was warned to ing, and a multinational customs task beware the Ides of March. That would force called Gol 14 (Spanish for “goal”) to the debt. Pence responds: “The president- be March 15, the day Caesar was as- intercepted more than half a million elect, I think, believes everything be- sassinated in 44 B.C. In the ancient Ro- counterfeit sports logo items headed for gins with growth.” Trump, he says, is man calendar, every month had a day the 2014 soccer World Cup in Brazil. counting on economic growth from re- designated as the Ides. Originally, it It’s no secret that top brands are plagued pealing and replacing Obamacare and was pegged to the appearance of a full by counterfeiters but, as the World Cusliberating corporations from unneces- moon. Later it simply marked the mid- toms Organization will tell you, counsary regulations. He foresees a wave of point of the month. In March, May, July terfeiters will fake just about anything: prosperity that will not add to the debt, and October, the Ides fell on the 15th of motor oil, chewing gum, deodorant, but produce more tax revenue, even as the month. In the remaining months, the musical instruments, crayons, even tea bags. taxes are cut for individuals and busi- Ides fell on the 13th. nesses. He adds that in the case of inSTARTING AS early as 1898, frastructure, “encouraging public and private partnerships” will reduce the Canada, Austria and Brazil issued postage stamps with designs that could be cost to government. “The president-elect is absolutely considered Christmas themes. By most (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate committed to scrubbing the federal collectors’ estimations, however, the NEW YORK CITY saloon owner budget with the eye of a businessman,” world’s first official Christmas postage Pence said, “looking for efficiencies in stamps — depicting the Message to the Jerry Thomas was the first person in the every industry and looking for ways to Shepherds, the Nativity and Adoration United States to compile a recipe guide eliminate waste, fraud and abuse and of the Magi — were issued in Hungary for mixing cocktails. His “Bar-Tenders in 1943. The U.S. Postal Service is- Guide,” also known as “How to Mix All really meaning it.” Like the issue of Boeing and the sued its first official Christmas stamp in Kinds of Fancy Drinks,” was published new Air Force One planes, which 1962: A four-cent stamp with a wreath in 1862 and updated numerous times. It Trump has said he would cancel, un- and candles image. The first run of 350 promised “clear and reliable directions less the costs come down? Trump and million sold out in a flash and started a for mixing all the beverages used in the United States. Embracing Punches, Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing chairman tradition that continues to this day. Playing way out of type, Bette Da- Juleps, Cobblers, Cocktails, etc. etc. in and CEO, spoke by phone and Muilenburg reportedly said he is committed to vis starred in a Broadway musical re- endless variety.” TRIVIA vue called Two’s Company that had her controlling costs. 1. “Southpaw” describes a boxer who Pence laughed, “Of course you can singing and dancing on-stage. The show (control costs), if someone asks you to. opened, Dec. 15, 1952, and ran for 90 has what distinction? hen Mike Pence becomes the 48th vice president of the United States next month, he will take on the role of a political lobbyist for Donald Trump’s activist agenda. In an interview I conducted with Pence in his transitional office next to a sandwich shop in Washington, he said he believed voters gave Donald Trump a “mandate.” How can that be when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote? “Trump won 30 out of 50 states. He won more counties than any Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan, and he undeniably reached Americans that Republican candidates haven’t been reaching on the national level.”

Washington, D.C., is not accustomed to having someone in the Oval Office who actually asks people to sharpen their pencils.”

Cal

Thomas

Leslie’s Trivia Bit

Leslie

Elman

has been interpreted to mean pastors cannot talk about political issues, or risk losing their tax exemptions. He acknowledges the rule is unevenly applied and needs to be eliminated. “Most of the public speeches at America’s founding were sermons,” he said, allowing that many of those who led civil rights movement were preachers whose churches never had their tax status challenged. IS MIKE PENCE ready to be president should circumstances dictate? “I pray that I’m ready to be vice president,” he responds. We’ll soon know how that prayer is answered.

A) Fighting his or her first bout B) Being from the southern United States C) Being left-handed D) Being undefeated 2. Julius Caesar’s successor was his great-nephew Octavian, who’s better known by what name? A) Augustus B) Claudius C) Nero D) Tiberius 3. Who or what was pictured on the postage stamp that traveled more than three billion miles into space aboard the New Horizons spacecraft? A) Neil Armstrong B) Dwarf planet Pluto C) Elvis Presley D) Space Shuttle Challenger 4. On Three’s Company, Jack was a chef, Janet worked in a flower shop and what was Chrissy’s job? A) Accountant B) Hairdresser C) Romance novelist D) Typist 5. Only six countries have hosted and won the FIFA World Cup in the same year. Which nation accomplished this most recently? A) Brazil B) France C) Germany D) Uruguay 6. What old-style winter cocktail is made with rum and brandy stirred into a mix of eggs, sugar and hot milk? A) Glogg B) Hot toddy C) Tom and Jerry D) Wassail (answers on page 19)

December 21, 2016 TRUMP ADMINISTRATION: December 13, 2016

Will Donald Trump defy McCain & Marco?

hen word leaked that Exx- dorsed by Condi Rice and Robert Gates. Dr. Samuel Johnson’s observation — on CEO Rex Tillerson, a holder of the Order of “A man is seldom more innocently ocFriendship award in Putin’s Russia, was cupied than when he is engaged in makDonald Trump’s choice for secretary of ing money” — may be a bit of a stretch state, John McCain had this thoughtful when it comes to OPEC and the global oil market. response: Yet there is truth to it. Most business“Vladimir Putin is a thug, a bully, and a murderer and anybody else who men are interested in doing deals, makdescribes him as anything else is lying.” ing money, and, if the terms are not met, ing away, not starting Yet, Putin is something else, the lead- w a l k a war. er of the largest And here is the nation on earth, a heart of the objecgreat power with tion to Tillerson. enough nuclear He wants to end weapons to wipe (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate sanctions and the United States partner with Puoff the face of the tin’s Russia, as does Trump. But among earth. And we have to deal with him. many in the mainstream media, think MCCAIN WAS echoed by the se- tanks, websites and on the Hill, this is nior Democrat on foreign relations, Bob craven appeasement. For such as these, Menendez, who said naming Tillerson the Cold War is never over. The attacks on Tillerson coincide secretary of state would be “alarming and absurd ... guaranteeing Russia has with new attacks on Russia, based on a willing accomplice in the (Trump) CIA sources, alleging that not only did Cabinet guiding our nation’s foreign Moscow hack into the Democratic Party and Clinton campaign, and leak what it policy.” Sen Marco Rubio chimed in: “Be- found to hurt Hillary Clinton, but Rusing a ‘friend of Vladimir’ is not an at- sia was trying to help elect Trump, and tribute I am hoping for from a Secretary succeeded. Why would Moscow do this? of State.” Monday’s editorial in the New York If just three GOP senators vote no on Tillerson, and Democrats vote as a bloc Times explains: “In Mr. Trump, the Rusagainst him, his nomination would go sians had reason to see a malleable podown. President Trump would sustain a litical novice, one who had surrounded himself with Kremlin lackeys.” major and humiliating defeat. Backed by Democratic leader Sen. Who is Tillerson? A corporate titan, he has traveled the world, represented Chuck Schumer, McCain has anExxon in 60 countries, is on a first-name nounced an investigation. The goal, basis with countless leaders, and is en- said the Times, is to determine “whether

Pat

Buchanan

anyone within Trump’s inner circle coordinated with the Kremlin and whether Moscow spread fake news to hurt Mrs. Clinton.” What is going on here? More than meets the eye. THE PEOPLE who most indignantly condemned Trump’s questioning of Obama’s birth certificate as a scurrilous scheme to delegitimize his presidency, now seek to delegitimize Trump’s presidency. The Times editorial spoke of a “darkening cloud” already over the Trump presidency, and warned that a failure to investigate and discover the full truth of Russia’s hacking could only “feed suspicion among millions of Americans that ... (t)he election was indeed rigged.”

Behind the effort to smear Tillerson and delegitimize Trump lies a larger motive. Trump has antagonists in both parties who alarmed at his triumph because it imperils the foreign policy agenda that is their raison d’etre, their reason for being. These people do not want to lift sanctions on Moscow. They do not want an end to the confrontation with Russia. As is seen by their bringing in tiny Montenegro, they want to enlarge NATO to encompass Sweden, Finland, Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. They have in mind the permanent U.S. encirclement of Russia. They want to provide offensive weapons to Kiev to reignite the civil war in the Donbass and enable Ukraine to move on Crimea. This would mean a war with Russia that Ukraine would lose and we and our NATO allies would be called upon to intervene in and fight. Their goal is to bring down Putin and bring about “regime change” in Moscow. In the campaign, Trump said he wanted to get along with Russia, to support all the forces inside Syria and Iraq fighting to wipe out ISIS and al Qaeda, and to stay out of any new Middle East wars — like the disaster in Iraq — that have cost us “six trillion dollars.” This is what America voted for when it voted for Trump — to put America First and “make America great again.” But War Party agitators are already beating the drums for confrontation with Iran. Early in his presidency, if not before, Trump is going to have to impose his foreign policy upon his own party and, indeed, upon his own government. Or his presidency will be broken, as was Lyndon Johnson’s. A GOOD place to begin is by accepting the McCain-Marco challenge and nominating Rex Tillerson for secretary of state. Let’s get it on.

December 21, 2016

Where are we? Outgoing Obama, incoming Trump

e are now in a kind of shows the continuing efforts of the popolitical no-man’s-land litical left to stifle free speech in the between an administra- country at large, as they already have tion on its way out and a new admin- on academic campuses. These are just some of the opportuistration taking shape. Predictions are always risky — and nowhere more so nities the incoming administration has, now that the Republicans finally have than in times like these. What we can do, however, is assess control of both Houses of Congress where we are, and what some of the and the White House — which is to say, now that they no longer have any opportunities and dangers are. for not doing what The opportunities are many, which e x c u s e s they said they were is to say that many going to do, when things are in desthey were running perate need of for election. changing, beginOpportunities ning with rebuild(c) 2016, Creators Syndicate are of course also ing our dangerchallenges, and ously neglected and undermined military forces. The few of these challenges can be met monstrosity of Obamacare needs to be without paying a price. Will the slim gotten rid of, not just cosmetically ad- Republican majority in the Senate put bipartisan cooperation ahead of the justed. Our fundamental freedoms under Constitution, when it comes to choosthe Constitution are at stake in the ing a Supreme Court Justice based on choice of the next nominee to become principles, rather than on avoiding a a Justice of the closely divided Su- nasty fight with the Democrats? The same question arises when it preme Court. We need someone with both the depth and the strength to re- comes to repealing Obamacare. Demosist the pressures and the temptations crats threw bipartisanship to the winds that have seduced too many suppos- when it came to passing Obamacare. edly “conservative” justices, over the Republicans who wanted to have an years, into betraying Constitutional input on this sweeping legislation were bluntly reminded of the outcome of the principles. elections. “I won,” President Obama THE CURRENT hysteria over told them. Now that the Republicans have won “fake news” — including hysteria by people who have done more than — not only the presidency but also the their own fair share of faking news — Congress, as well as most governor-

Thomas

Sowell

ships and state legislatures across the bold assertion: “Read my lips, no new country — do they have the guts to do taxes!” what they were elected to do? What do we know, at this point, about the people being tapped as nomiSURELY NO one can be unaware nees for key positions in the incoming that one of the reasons why such an Trump administration? By and large, unorthodox outsider as Donald Trump they are of a higher caliber than usual, won the Republican nomination, and especially General James N. Mattis then the election, is that Republican who has been selected to become Secvoters were fed up with the repeated retary of Defense. betrayals by the Republican establishThe love of rhetoric by both the ment, going all the way back to Presi- media and Donald Trump has caused dent Bush 41 and his betrayal of his General Mattis’ nickname of “Mad Dog Mattis” to become a distraction from the facts about a man of both high intellect and a great concern for the troops he commanded. He has, for example, taken it upon himself to personally visit many families of those who died fighting in the battles he led. As a personal note, I have had the privilege of having discussions with many military people who have visited the Hoover Institution over the years, and have been impressed with officers of many ranks, including General Mattis. The young officers I have encountered are head and shoulders above so many young people of similar ages who are graduates of even our most prestigious colleges and universities. The liberal media are already expressing worry about the number of military people being considered for key positions in the new administration. They would be worried about anyone who has not been brainwashed in the political correctness that reigns among the intelligentsia. THE KEY individual in any administration, however, is the President — and that remains the key mystery in the new administration. December 13, 2016

This Week’s Conservative Focus

Trump Administration

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming!

t’s time, if you please, just to get on with the Trump administration. Part the curtains and let’s see what happens, as possibly contrasted with the awfulness said to lie in wait for the world: Government by military officers; environmental degradation; the bullyragging of American corporations; and not least, the referral of U.S. foreign policy aims to the judgment of the Kremlin.

IN OTHER words, the shock of Donald Trump’s electoral victory festers. It will be another five weeks before we can talk about what he’s done as president. So we talk, accordingly, about the horror show awaiting us. The Trump-Putin nexus — marked by what the New York Times calls “overwhelming circumstantial evidence”

of Vladimir Putin’s attempt to “put a good for but righteous declarations of thumb on the scale for Mr. Trump” — uninformed opinion on all sides of the is the latest public diversion from the issue? Can we not wait to insert the new realities Trump brings into play. topic and its urgency — of whatever Did Putin, or did he not, work to elect dimension — into the post-Jan. 20 Trump by the release, as well as the lineup? Nope. non-release, of Democratic and Republican emails placed at his disposal NOR CAN WE WAIT, it seems, by Russian hackers? The question has obvious relevance to find out what the number of retired insofar as it concerns the state of our generals in Trump’s cabinet, starting Defense Secretaryrelationships with a playfully mali- w i t h designate James cious national “Mad Dog” Mattis, leader resentful means for civilian of U.S. power. control of the miliYet in the interval tary. We have to between election (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate wring our hands and inauguration, now. We must also with anti-Trump news outlets beating the signal drums wring them over questions of continu(bum-bubba-bum), what’s the topic ing U.S. commitment to controlling

William

Murchison

It’s not a junta: Be rational

resident-elect Donald Trump has already committed a grave offense against our system of government by forming a “junta,” according to his critics. The Trump junta consists of three former generals whom the presidentelect has tapped for top national-security positions, with others still under consideration. Like much of what Trump does, the military selections have inflamed people who pride themselves on their knowledge and discernment into flights of self-discrediting outrage.

THERE ARE only a few problems with the charge Trump is creating a junta, a term associated with Latin America and which the Cambridge dictionary defines as “a small group, especially of military officers, that rules a country after taking power by force.” Namely, Trump didn’t seize the government by force; he himself is not a general (although he went to the New York Military Academy for high school); and the three generals he has tapped for top posts are all retired and therefore civilians. (Michael Flynn will be national-security adviser, and Trump has nominated James Mattis as defense secretary and John Kelly as homeland-security secretary.) The Trump cabinet, in other words, bears about as much resemblance to a junta as the Supreme Court does to the College of Cardinals because it has five justices who are Catholic and wear robes. To call the connection superficial is to understate how absurdly inapposite it is.

If the presence of three retired military leaders is enough to tip an otherwise duly-elected, civilian-led government into quasi-military rule, we already experienced it at the outset of the Obama administration. As the Washington Examiner pointed out, President Barack Obama had three military leaders as part of his initial team, a retired Marine general (Jim Jones as national-security adviser), an Army general (Eric Shinseki at Veterans Affairs) and a Navy admiral (Dennis Blair as director of national intelligence). The republic survived.

Rich

Worse, the United States has repeatedly had retired generals not merely as cabinet secretaries, but as commander in chiefs, from George Washington, to Andrew Jackson, to U.S. Grant, to Dwight Eisenhower. No one seriously considered their presidencies affronts to the principle of civilian rule. NONE OF THIS will dissuade the journalists and analysts who have been throwing around the “junta” charge, though. Much of the left and the press has taken Trump’s election as a license to suspend rational thought. They like the delegitimizing sound of the word “junta,” and that’s enough for them to use it, never mind that it renders the term meaningless.

The fact is that Trump is a civilian leader who is impressed by people who once served at the top levels of the military. This is understandable, given how the stereotype of the general as the thoughtless, buzz-cut warmonger is — if it ever applied — less relevant than ever. The best generals are worldly, capable, and tend to be realistic about the limits of military power. Despite the nickname “mad dog,” which he dislikes, Gen. James Mattis is hardly Gen. Curtis LeMay, the cigarchomping Air Force general who notoriously talked of bombing the North Vietnamese “back into the Stone Age.” Mattis is noted for his bookishness and traveling with a 6,000-book library. It was important that, after his election, Trump reach outside his inner circle (Michael Flynn is firmly ensconced within it) to impressive public servants, and Mattis and John Kelly both fit the bill. They are more likely to be restraining influences rather than enablers. Trump has credited Mattis with changing his view of waterboarding, which Trump casually endorsed throughout the election campaign. IF THERE are legitimate worries about how Trump will govern, the alleged junta is more of a commentary on his detractors than on his choices for his cabinet. But don’t worry. As soon as this charge is dropped, another equally over-the-top one will take its place, in this, the season of the left losing its mind. December 12, 2016

climate change. (“Controlling” is a curious word in this context. Who “controls” nature?) Such are the anxieties that beset a country expecting change but not knowing what kind: “Are the Russians coming to get us?!” “Do we still know how to duck and cover?” “Is our incoming president a Manchurian candidate?” We’ve got too much to talk about and too much time to talk about it. That is my own verdict on these burning, or merely smoldering, questions. Twitter and Facebook have us desiring instant answers, even to presently unanswerable questions. The Trumpiness of Trump will not seem everyday to us for a long time. I will add, it was so with Obama — a president who quickly morphed from reconciler to Democratic drumbeater. What Trump’s cheering and jeering sections alike must come to terms with is the short-term nature of political moments. It has always been thus. Trump will discover that particular problems change shapes; he will lose interest in certain issues as altogether new challenges emerge. The hiss-boo-and-holler faction over on the left will discover that normal, mainstream people have some good ideas — such as making energy supplies larger and cheaper rather than smaller and costlier. They may not appreciate such a discovery, but it could cause them to pipe down a little. In the meantime, I would like to say a word about Trump’s cabinet choices. (I write without knowing whether or not he wants Rex Tillerson for secretary of state.) His cabinet choices seem, for the most part, splendiferous: For secretary of defense, a smart tough-guy general (how can you not love a warrior nicknamed “Mad Dog?”); a secretary of education who believes in choice for unsatisfied public-school customers (Betsy DeVos); and for attorney general, a man unvaccinated against trusting honorable folk at the state and local levels (Jeff Sessions). I COULD easily go on. The point is, for all the transitional anxieties stretching from here to Inauguration Day, numerous signs are positive. Non-positive ones may not amount to much in the short or the long run. If, say, we find out in January that Vladimir Putin harbors unseemly affection for Trump, we can install Elizabeth Warren as ambassador to Moscow. That ought to cool things off fast. December 13, 2016

Conservative Chronicle

OBAMA PRESIDENCY: December 11, 2016

It’s Obama that veterans want to ‘get over it’

eretofore it would have been inconceivable to think of an American president publicly telling America’s military veterans their loss of life in defense of their country meant nothing to him. Now, to be fair, the words I’m about to share came out of the mouth of Obama spokesman Josh Earnest. But, to be factual, nothing comes out of the mouth of a White House Obama spokesman, which doesn’t first come from the mind, and mouth of the president; sadly in this case, said president is Obama. ERGO, WHEN Earnest said: “So yes, there may be some who feel personally embittered, but I’m confident that many will set aside their personal bitterness, not because they’re personally satisfied by the words of the [Japanese] prime minister but because they recognize how important this moment is for the United States. And that’s certainly why they qualify to be described as the Greatest Generation;” He spoke Obama’s words. This was not the first time that Obama has been brazenly cavalier in his open disdain for the citizens of the country that has provided him and his family everything they have. In April 2008, as a snot-nosed Senator from Illinois, of questionable lineage, whose claim to fame was that he had been a community extortionist, (albeit he called it community activist), was only marginally less insulting to the American people. At that time he blamed the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations for failing to “regenerate” communities as they had promised. So as only his kind could assess it, Obama said: “It’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.” Specifically Obama was saying that small town residents in Pennsylvania and areas of the Midwest were angry poor white people who were bitter “Bible clingers” and country bumpkin rednecks clinging to guns. It would not be the last time we witnessed such insults by a loathsome heel attempting to belittle those he believed to be beneath him. That said, his telling veterans they were “just bitter” because of the loss of life and carnage perpetrated on American soil in an unprovoked sneak attack, they needed to “get over” what happened that early morning 75 years ago is beyond condemnable. Obama’s commitment to deconstruct and abolish the traditions America was founded upon plus his wife’s “ghetto fabulous” abuse of usufruct have offended and insulted the citizenry the whole of his time in office. The “just get over it” attitude for an act of war

him the opportunity to make something of himself. When has he said black hatemongers need to “get over” slavery NO ONE IN his family paid for the “because they [should] recognize how price of freedom with their life or with important this moment [would be] for physical and emotional injuries. His the United States?” The answer to the question is that he mother, if we are to believe the words in his books, was given to capricious hasn’t. Indeed he personally has condisplays of wanton commonality, drugs, tributed massively to fomenting disharevery opportunity. He and a Communist ideology who aban- mony at bows before petty doned her childictators and terrordren. Obama’s ists but he makes it a grandfather literpoint to curse the ally handed him American people over to be “men(c) 2016, Mychal Massie by words and actored” by a known tions. pedophile and raSlavery ended 151 years ago. The unbid Communist. Still it was America, the nation he provoked attacked on Pearl Harbor was treats with raw contempt that provided 75 years ago. There are people alive tocommitted on American soil deepens the disrespect for him and his family.

Mychal

Massie

day who either fought in World War II or had family who fought and/or died in that war. And Obama has the unmitigated audacity to tell them to “just get over it.” HE SHOULD be reminded that it is he America wants to “get over.” That is why America rejected his handpicked stooge to replace him and continue his desecration of America. That is why America selected President-Elect Donald Trump. And that is why Americans in months and years to come will curse Obama’s name when we consider everything he destroyed and everyone he insulted. And as he runs to media to whine his discontent with what President Trump is doing, We the People of America will be sure to tell him to “just get over it.”

SOCIETAL SHIFT: December 8, 2016

Wow, what a change in direction

eality has set in, Hillary Clinton is (mostly) out of the news and President-Elect Donald Trump has been named Time Magazine’s man of the year. Ignore the snarky line labeling him “ the Presidentelect of the divided States of America.” What a difference a month and an election make! Stocks are up, business creation is celebrated, America is in vogue and the president-elect is on a thank you tour rather than an apology tour.

SINCE THE election, the stock market (based on the Dow Jones Industrial Average as of December 6) has risen more than five percent. Stock prices are a reflection of beliefs regarding a firm’s future performance, but they are also driven by predictions. The election of Trump brings with it the potential for lower corporate taxes and less regulation — both of which make stocks more attractive. In addition, the election of a businessman (who made his money in real estate rather than industry) brings with it the potential, once again, to encourage and promote those individuals who create companies, jobs and business. This shift toward individuals differs markedly from Obama’s focus on the importance of collective, government action. As a reminder, Obama gave a speech on July 13, 2012, in Roanoke, Virginia, where he said, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” While Obama was referring to roads and bridges, which are funded by government, his overall message was that businesspeople don’t build the economy, the government does.

This week, in contrast to Obama’s 2009 apology tour to the Middle East, (which included Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Iraq, while skipping Israel, our strongest ally in the region), Trump and his vice-president elect, Mike Pence, are in the middle of a thank you tour in the United States, visiting Ohio, N.C., Iowa and Mich. Internationally, there are signs of rapid change. Germany, which has recently had a rather open-door policy toward migration of people from the war-torn Middle East, is beginning to tighten its rules and change its language.

Jackie

THIS WEEK, the Washington Post ran an article, “Angela Merkel calls for widespread ban on ‘full veil’ Islamic coverings,” by Anthony Paiola. “German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who last year opened the door to nearly one million mostly Muslim migrants, staked out a tough new stance on conservative Islam on Tuesday by making her first direct call for a widespread ban on ‘full veil’ religious coverings,” Paiola wrote. “Her comments also came as German social media buzzed following the arrests of two asylum seekers in five days in connection with three sexual assaults, including the brutal rape and murder of a 19-year-old medical student in the picturesque southern city of Freiburg. Right-wing politicians are openly blaming Merkel’s policy for what they decry as a migrant-fueled crime wave.” Merkel took a clear and tough stance regarding the veils, “We don’t want any

parallel societies ... our law takes precedence before tribal rules, codes of honor and sharia.” As I wrote last week, there was a stark contrast in how Trump and Obama responded to the death of Fidel Castro. President Obama’s statement was without emotion, worded not to offend anyone, (except those who had endured hours under Castro), and did not acknowledge the horrors that Fidel Castro and his brother Raul inflicted on the Cuban people. Trump’s words provided a more direct, emotional statement on the death of Fidel Castro. “Today, the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades,” he said. The small business people whom I have talked to since the election are thrilled at the prospect of less business regulation and changes to health care policies. Small business has been in decline for decades and needs reviving. According to the Commerce Department, 16 percent of private U.S. firms were less than a year old in 1977. By 2014, that figure had been cut in half. During that same time frame, the percentage of U.S. workers who work at new firms fell from almost six percent in 1977 to 2.1 percent in 2014. It will be interesting to see if enthusiasm from the election translates into more overall activity, more small businesses, more hiring and more productivity in the economy. IT’S ONLY been a month since he won the election, and he has not yet taken office, but President-elect Donald Trump has already made himself a force, politically, socially and financially.

December 21, 2016 DEAR MARK: December 9, 2016

Fake news, crybabies and goodbye Harry DEAR MARK: I’ve had my fill of these whiny Democrats crying about why they lost the election. They’re blaming the Russians, FBI director James Comey, racism, sexism, and now Hillary Clinton is blaming fake news stories on the internet. If I was a Democrat, and thank goodness I’m not, I would lick my wounds and focus on how to obstruct President Trump after January. Why are liberals such sore losers? — Boo Hoo Hoo Dear Boo Hoo: You are actually half right. All of this liberal moaning and groaning is part of The Democrat’s plan to delegitimize Donald Trump’s presidency before he even spends one night in the White House. It’s easy to see why liberals are such sore losers — liberals just can’t comprehend that anyone might reasonably disagree with them. When liberals are confronted with facts and figures contradicting their wacky beliefs, they short circuit causing them to grasp at ridiculous straws full of pixie dust. Today fake news headlines flying across the internet is the latest concept libs are throwing against the wall. As for “fake news,” Democrats along with their cohorts in the media are the masters at manufacturing and then trying to legitimize spurious stories. Remember all of the phony Obamacare promises? What about President Obama telling us terrorism is on the run? Barack Obama won a second term by proclaiming he saved the United States from the worst economy since the great depression, even concocting the term “great recession.” “Hands up don’t shoot” was crammed down our throats to purposely create a

false racial divide even after Michael Brown’s killing was proven to be a warranted police action. Who can forget the media encouraging the narrative that men are Neanderthals by promoting a Rolling Stone magazine story on a phony gang rape at a University of Virginia fraternity house? The bottom line is that there are gullible people on both sides of the political aisle and there always will be. After all it was Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber who famously stated that the administration counted on “the stupidity of the American voter” to get the Affordable Care Act passed. Hillary Clinton demanding congressional action against “fake news” is a publicity stunt at best, or maybe this is all she could come up with after a month of coloring books and playing with puppies.

Mark

DEAR MARK: Hillary Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri is still crying that Donald Trump won the election because he “provided a platform for white supremacists.” That’s as bad as Hillary calling us deplorables. Why are they holding onto that ridiculous argument? — Happy in Missouri Dear Happy: Please see the above email as to liberal thinking. Ms. Palmieri is your typical liberal crybaby. Once again the facts don’t support her contention that racists and misogynists won the election for President elect Trump. According to exit polls

conducted by CBS and NBC 29% of Hispanics, 8% of blacks, and 42% of all women including 53% of white women voted for Trump. Back to liberal la la land for Ms. Palmieri

DEAR MARK: This is a sad day for me. Not only did that racist pig Donald Trump win the presidency but the Senate Harry Reid is retiring. Senator Reid was a fighter and who will go down in history as one of the legends of the senate. He held Republicans at bay for years while constantly fighting for the middle class. I only hope his replacement Senator Chuck Schumer can accomplish half the things Senator Reid did during his tenure. — Blue Man in a Red State Dear Blue Man: What a glorious trifecta of liberal icons biting the dust — first Hillary Clinton loses, then Fidel Castro dies and now Harry Reid retires. As you can imagine I disagree with your assessment of Dirty Harry completely. If by the term “fighter” you mean lying jerk, then you’re correct. However Senator Reid was nothing more than a Democrat hack more famous for his vitriolic personal attacks from the Senate floor than for actually passing meaningful legislation. Other than changing Senate voting rules to ram rod Obamacare through, I challenge anyone to name another accomplishment of Reid’s. By the way Jessie James was considered to be a legend so I guess we’re in agreement. E-mail your questions to marklevy92@aol.com. Follow Mark on Twitter @MarkPLevy

CONTACT INFORMATION Individual Contact Information Fields - Suzanefields2000@gmail.com Greenberg - pgreenberg@arkansasonline.com Krauthammer - letters@charleskrauthammer.com Levy - marklevy92@aol.com Lowry - comments.lowry@nationalreview.com Malkin - malkinblog@gmail.com Massie - mychalmassie@gmail.com Napolitano - freedomwatch@foxbusiness.com Saunders - dsaunders@sfchronicle.com Thomas - tmseditors@tribune.com Will - georgewill@washpost.com Contact through Creators Syndicate Michael Barone, Austin Bay, Brent Bozell, Pat Buchanan, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, Larry Elder, Leslie Elman, Erick Erickson, Suzanne Fields, David Harsanyi, Laura Hollis, Terry Jeffrey, Larry Kudlow, David Limbaugh, Dick Morris, William Murchison, Star Parker,Dennis Prager, Ben Shapiro, Thomas Sowell Contact - info@creators.com Contact through Universal Press Ann Coulter or Donald Lambro Contact by mail : c/o Universal Press Syndicate 1130 Walnut Street Kansas City, MO 64106 Answers from page 14

TRIVIA ANSWERS T rivia B I T S

ANSWERS 1) Southpaw refers to a left-handed athlete, particularly boxers and baseball pitchers. 2) After Julius Caesar’s death, his great-nephew Octavian became Augustus, founder of the Roman Empire. 3) A 29-cent stamp with a picture of dwarf planet Pluto traveled more than three billion miles into space aboard the New Horizons spacecraft. 4) On Three’s Company, Chrissy Snow, played by Suzanne Somers, was a typist. 5) France hosted and won the FIFA World Cup in 1998. 6) A Tom and Jerry is a classic winter cocktail made with rum, brandy, eggs, sugar and hot milk.

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Conservative Chronicle

CONSERVATISM: December 8, 2016

Carrier ploy was a repudiation of conservatism

o, this is the new conservatism’s recipe for restored greatness: Political coercion shall supplant economic calculation in shaping decisions by companies in what is called, with diminishing accuracy, the private sector. This will be done partly as conservatism’s challenge to liberalism’s supremacy in the victimhood sweepstakes, telling aggrieved groups that they are helpless victims of vast, impersonal forces, against which they can be protected only by government interventions.

RESPONDING TO political threats larded with the money of other people, Carrier has somewhat modified its planned transfers of some manufacturing to Mexico. This represents the dawn of bipartisanship: The Republican Party now shares one of progressivism’s defining aspirations — government industrial policy, with the political class picking winners and losers within, and between, economic sectors. This always involves the essence of socialism — capital allocation, whereby government overrides market signals about the efficient allocation of scarce resources. Therefore it inevitably subtracts from economic vitality and job creation. Although the president-elect has yet to dip a toe into the swamp, he practices the calculus by which Washington reasons, the political asymmetry between dispersed costs and concentrated benefits. The damages from government interventions are cumulatively large but, individually, are largely invisible. The beneficiaries are few but identifiable and their gratitude is telegenic. Mike Pence said, “The free market has been sorting it out and America’s been losing,” Trump chimed in, “Every time, every time.” When Republican leaders denounce the free market as consistently harmful to Americans, they are repudiating almost everything conservatism has affirmed: Edmund Burke taught that respect for a free society’s spontaneous order would immunize politics from ruinous overreaching — from the hubris of believing that we have the information and power to order society by political willfulness. In an analogous argument, Friedrich Hayek warned against the “fatal conceit” of believing that wielders of political power can supplant the market’s “efficient mechanism for digesting dispersed information.” The Republican Party is saying goodbye to all that. Indiana’s involvement in the Carrier drama exemplifies the “entrepreneurial federalism” — states competing to lure businesses. This is neither new nor necessarily reprehensible. There are, however, distinctions to be drawn between creating a favorable climate for business generally and giving direct subsi-

His book has often been misread as primarily about the toll taken by economic forces — globalization, automation, etc. Actually, Vance casts a cool eye on the theory that “if they only had better access to jobs, other parts of their lives would improve as well.” His primary concern is with “lack of agency” and “learned helplessness” — the passive acceptance of victim status. O n e theory of the 2016 elecTHE MOST widely discussed and that the white workproperly praised book germane to to- tion is ing class rebelled day’s politics is not just against J.D. Vance’s Hilleconomic disapbilly Elegy about pointments but also the sufferings and against condepathologies of the (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group scension, demandwhite working class, largely of Scots-Irish descent, in ing not just material amelioration but, Appalachia and the Rust Belt. This co- even more, recognition of its dignity. It hort, from which Vance comes, is, he is, however, difficult for people to besays, one of America’s most distinctive lieve in their own dignity when they besubcultures, particularly in its tenacious lieve that their choices are powerless to clinging to traditional mores, many of alter their lives’ trajectories. Eventually, they will detect the condescension in them destructive. dies to alter the behavior of businesses already operating in the state. And when ad hoc corporate welfare, including tariffs, becomes national policy, it becomes a new arena of regulation, and hence of rent seeking, which inevitably corrupts politics. And by sapping economic dynamism, it injures the working class.

George

Will

the government’s message that their fortunes are determined not by things done by them but by things done to them. Such people are susceptible to charismatic presidential leadership, with its promise that executive power without limits can deliver them from unhappiness by delivering to them public goods. In contrast, there was dignity in the Joad family (of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath). When the Dust Bowl smothered Oklahoma, the Joads were not enervated, they moved west in search of work. WHAT FORMERLY was called conservatism resisted the permeation of society by politics, and particularly by the sort of unconstrained executive power that has been wielded by the 44th president. The man who will be the 45th forthrightly and comprehensively repudiates the traditional conservative agenda and, in reversing it, embraces his predecessor’s executive swagger.

TRADE: December 14, 2016

Please, no more miracles

resident-elect Donald Trump has warned companies that they are not going to leave the United States anymore “without consequences.” He has lived up to his threat by pressuring Carrier to give up its planned move to Monterrey, Mexico, in exchange for a taxpayer handout. It is a safe bet that other U.S. companies will be descending on Washington looking for handouts in the name of “fair trade” and “leveling the playing field.”

PART OF Carrier’s problem is the congressional miracle created for the U.S. metal industry. Import restrictions placed on steel, copper tubing and aluminum extrusions benefit American producers of those products. Not having to worry about foreign steel, copper tubing and aluminum extrusions, American producers of those products can charge higher prices and maintain higher employment. The real cost of import restrictions is the harm they do to steel-, copper- and aluminum-using manufacturers. Companies can escape some of those U.S. government-imposed costs simply by moving across the border. There are other government-imposed costs that can be avoided through relocation. The U.S. corporate income tax is the highest in the world. Slashing the U.S. corporate income tax would reduce incentives to relocate. While we’re at it, there should be an elimination of the taxation of foreign earnings when they are repatriated into the U.S. Finally, we should apply reasoning to the onerous

regulations emerging from unelected bureaucracies such as the Environmental Protection Agency. If you’re looking for a good example of the effect of a nearly completed congressional miracle, it would be the U.S. candy manufacturing industry. American Sugar Alliance spends millions of dollars lobbying Congress to impose restrictions on foreign sugar, in the form of tariffs and quotas. That means the American sugar producers can charge higher prices, create more jobs

Walter

and have higher profits. But that’s just stage one of the effect of the congressionally created miracle. CHICAGO USED to be America’s candy capital. Today it’s a mere shadow of its former self. Brach’s used to employ about 2,300 Americans; now most of its jobs are in Mexico. Ferrara Candy Co. has also moved much of its production to Mexico. Wages are indeed lower in Mexico, but wages are not the only factor in candy manufacturers’ flight from America. Life Savers, which manufactured in America for 90 years, moved to Canada, where wages are comparable to ours. By moving to Canada, Life Savers became more competitive because it saved itself a whop-

ping $10 million a year in sugar costs. Family-owned Bobs Candies Inc., which makes candy canes, moved half of its manufacturing to Mexico. Regarding the 250 jobs left in Albany, Georgia, after the company was sold to Farley’s & Sathers Candy Co., which is now Ferrara, CEO Greg McCormack said, “No one cared if (the candy canes) were made in the USA. They just cared if they were cheaper.” He pointed out that he didn’t want to lay off workers, “but it was the medicine you had to take to stay in business.” Sugar is the primary ingredient in candy. Some candy manufacturers use 2.5 million pounds a week. What about jobs saved through sugar import restrictions? According to a 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Commerce, for each “sugar growing and harvesting job saved through high U.S. sugar prices, nearly three confectionery manufacturing jobs are lost.” Trade barriers do not increase employment; they just shift the composition of jobs away from competitive industries and toward those favored by the government. SOME AMERICANS support trade restrictions because they think there is a problem with having a trade deficit, i.e., buying more from foreigners than they buy from us. Concern about a trade deficit is much ado about little. It turns out that we’ve had a trade deficit in all but 12 years from 1900 to 2016. In fact, our longest sustained trade surplus was during the Great Depression.

December 21, 2016 LIBERALS: December 13, 2016

What if conservatives behaved like SF liberals?

wonder if our liberal friends have picked up on the irony that some of their trendiest progressive values, especially now that Donald Trump has been elected president, have a pedigree they’d rather not acknowledge — a pedigree that goes back to the days of slavery and segregation. Let’s start with their efforts to secede from the union. Yes, there are efforts, meager as they may be, to secede from the union. There was a short-lived ballot proposal in Oregon called the Oregon Secession Act which was drawn up as a response to President-elect Trump. As one proponent explained it, “Oregon values are no longer the values held by the rest of the United States.” THEN THERE’S The People’s Republic of California, where liberals opposed to Donald Trump have taken to Twitter to register their unhappiness, using supposedly witty hashtags like #Calexit and #Calleavefornia — and where a venture capitalist says he’ll fund “a legitimate campaign for California to become its own nation.” If there was Twitter in 1861, the confederates might have used it, too, to express their discontent over the North not sharing their Southern values: #GoDixie! Ah, but there’s a big difference, our progressive friends would tell us. We’re good people who have values and ideals that simply don’t fit in with those of less enlightened folks in the rest of America. I’m pretty sure that’s what the die-hards

in the Old South would have said, too. (For the record, conservatives can be just as annoying. After Barack Obama was elected president, detractors in Texas and several other states also filed petitions to leave the Union.) And I’m pretty sure progressives don’t see any historical connection between their noble sanctuary cities policies and the segregationist policies of the American South of the 1960s. Today, liberals in hundreds of cities have decided that “unfair” federal immigration laws don’t apply to them; that it’s their moral obligation to “protect” illegal immigrants from federal agents who might deport them. Sound familiar? George Wallace and other segregationists also thought they were upholding morality when they tried to “protect” white southerners by keeping black Americans permanently ensconced as second-class citizens. Keeping the races segregated is the moral thing to do. If we don’t want them to vote or eat at our restaurants or go to school with our children that’s up to us, not the federal government. But sanctuary cities are helping people, progressives would say, and segregation was hurting people. FAIR ENOUGH. Sanctuary city progressives don’t inhabit the same moral universe as slaveholders. Nor are they as malevolent as the segregationists of more recent history who disregarded what they considered unfair federal laws in order to keep black people “in their

place.” The differences are both obvious and important. But even after we acknowledge the obvious differences, there are inconvenient questions that won’t go away: Do we really want local officials to pick and choose which federal laws they like and which ones they don’t? Which ones they’ll enforce and which ones they’ll ignore? “What would San Franciscans do if conservative counties and towns followed their lead?” is what Victor Davis Hanson asks in a piece for National Review. “Perhaps a rural Wyoming sheriff can now look the other way when he spots a cattleman shooting a federally

protected grizzly bear or predatory timber wolf — or at least shield the cattleman from federal officials. Should public schools in Provo, Utah, start the day with school-wide prayers?” And remember that evangelical county clerk in Kentucky who wouldn’t issue marriage licenses to gay couples, despite the Supreme Court decision declaring that laws against gay marriage were unconstitutional? Is that OK with progressives? After all, like sanctuary city liberals, she was only doing the right thing — as she saw it. While we’re on the subject, that’s something conservatives who tried to turn that woman into a national hero might also want to ponder. If a conservative in Kentucky can do what her conscience dictates, why can’t a liberal in San Francisco do the same? Proponents of sanctuary cities — and even backers of the loony notion of modern-day secession — are free, of course, to make their case. But opponents ought to remind our progressive friends that they’re not the only ones who have been certain in their convictions when it comes to matters of right and wrong. Every day I hear some liberal somewhere expressing fear over the soon-tobe Trump presidency. Who knows what he’ll do, they say. What if he decides that he only wants to follow the laws he happens to support? WHAT IF, to pick just one example, he decides that “unfair” federal environmental laws are bad for business and just plain ignores them? You can’t pick and choose which laws you’ll obey, they would scream. You can’t decide which laws are “fair” and which are “unfair.” What kind of country would we have then? Bingo, my progressive fellow Americans. Written by Benard Goldberg

Conservative Chronicle

EDUCATION: December 12, 2016

Betsy DeVos is a fighter and a winner

ong before there was a Depart- from generation to unfortunate generament of Education, with all tion. Or, as Betsy DeVos told an interviewits rules and regs and general rigmarole, there was an institution that er in 2013: “What we are trying to do is combined all those functions and did it tear down the mindset that assigns stuwith a devotion no government agency dents to a school based solely on the ZIP could match. It was and still is called the code of their family’s home. We think of American family, and the incoming sec- the educational choice movement as inmany parts: Vouchretary of education believes in giving v o l v i n g ers and tax credits, it free rein over certainly, but also where and how it virtual schools, chooses to edumagnet schools, cate its kids. home schoolIt’s not that (c) 2016, Tribune Media Services ing and charter Betsy DeVos is schools.” Whatever opposed to public education. On the contrary, she just works, she’s all for it. So reach for the sky and forget about aims to make it accountable by giving it freedom of choice — instead of arbi- teachers’ unions’ contracts full of claustrarily assigning kids to pre-designated es and sub-clauses, sections and subschools, as if they were pegs to be fit- sections, all of which are just a cover ted into holes. Even if those are fail- for make-work. American pragmatism ing schools and should have been shut remains, well, pragmatic. And effective down long ago like any other tried-and- as ever. Much like Sovmedicine or Sovscience, make-work is an inferior imitafailed enterprise. tion of the real thing, and nobody underTHAT’S THE public’s money these stood as much as the hapless subjects of schools are wasting and our kids’ lives the late and unlamented Soviet empire. Anybody who’s ever had the time that are being ruined generation after generation. For instead of judging kids’ and courage to look over the classperformance by the test scores they’re room teachers’ calcified union rules will achieving on a uniform, nationally com- know what is meant by bureaucratic parable scale, the country has been stuck bungling poorly disguised as quality with a one-size-fits-all system. And that education. You might as well judge a not very systematical system works on shoemaker not by how well his product the basis of seniority, connections and fits but whether it comes in the same other irrelevancies that have nothing to size, style and other unchanging categodo with achieving real quality. For it’s ries year after year with no variations still who you know, not what you know. at all. Think of the spirit of American Not since old England’s rotten boroughs pragmatism, and also European didactihas so corrupt a tradition been passed on cism. One works, the other doesn’t. It’s

Paul

Greenberg

as simple as that no matter how much calls Ms. DeVos as “one of the first our bureaucrats try to confuse the issue. people in ed-reform to understand that we weren’t going to beat the teachers’ BETSY DEVOS never accepted the unions with op-eds and policy papers” status forever quo but fought back, first that no one bothered to read or take seriin now-Republican Michigan and soon ously. Instead of collaborating with the enough across the country. The idea that unions, she “pushed the private schoolteachers should not be judged by how choice movement to invest in serious well their students do but by how well political giving much earlier than the those same teachers conform to union mainstream reform groups did, and, rules is lunacy codified. And endlessly so far, with far greater success.” More repeated. To do the same thing over and power to her. over again but expect different results is, In this year’s election cycle, Betsy to put it concisely, madness. Not since DeVos’ well-named American FederaRonald Reagan’s era have prospects for tion for Children invested in 121 races a new beginning in American education for school-related candidates or issues, seemed so bright. and won close to nine out of 10 of those Michael Petrilli of the Thomas B. electoral contests, or 89 percent of them. Fordham Institute, and before that of The lady not only fights back but wins. George W. Bush’s administration, re- And if she’s no favorite of the vested interests, the voters seem all for her. And why not? These are their kids whose future is at stake — and it’s worth fighting for. And winning. Our current president has invested endless time and effort, not to mention public funds, to seeing to it that bad schools stay bad, but, what th’ heck, the voters’ will be damned. In dramatic and welcome contrast, Betsy DeVos — soon to be Secretary DeVos if all goes well — should be not just Donald Trump’s secretary of education but the people’s and taxpayers’. It’s now likely that freedom of choice for families with school kids is now to become national policy, and not a year too soon. Those states that would like to expand freedom of choice for poor families can proceed with a national administration for instead of against them. How ‘bout that? Hell’s bells, hooray and Hallelujah! IT’S TIME to celebrate, however long this happy interlude lasts. Who knows, it may be just the beginning of a bright new era in American education instead of the end of one. Keep the good thought and work to make it a new and better reality.

December 21, 2016 DYLAN’S NOBEL PRIZE: December 11, 2016

A Nobel laureate of 2016 revisited

here has been ferment among the literati since Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Many say that however well Dylan does what he does, it is not literature. Dylan did not go to Stockholm Saturday to collect his prize, which the Swedish Academy says was awarded “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.” Well, then: “God said to Abraham, ‘Kill me a son’ Abe says, ‘Man, you must be puttin’ me on’” or: “Einstein, disguised as Robin Hood With his memories in a trunk Passed this way an hour ago With his friend, a jealous monk He looked so immaculately frightful As he bummed a cigarette Then he went off sniffing drainpipes And reciting the alphabet

Now you would not think to look time than to be that turning point.” But Dylan should not be blamed for at him the hyperventilating caused by DSD But he was famous long ago — Dylan Derangement Syndrome. For playing the electric violin Besides, Dylan has collected a PulitOn Desolation Row” The New York Times primly notes zer Prize for “lyrical compositions of that the academy is famous for “its at extraordinary poetic power,” so there. times almost willful perversity in pickNOW 75, he was born Robert Ziming winners.” Scottish novelist Irvine Welsh (Trainspotting) professes him- merman in Duluth, Minnesota, and self “a Dylan fan” but tweeted that the lived in Hibbing, Minnesota, 150 from Sauk Centre, Nobel is “an ill-conceived nostalgia m i l e s Minnesota, home award wrenched of Sinclair Lewis, from the rancid who won the 1930 prostates of seNobel for literature nile, gibbering (Babbitt, Elmer hippies.” Strong (c) 2016, Washington Post Writers Group Gantry). This letter to follow. was evidence of One critic says that the more than 150 books on abruptly defining literature down: Dylan are “a library woozy with hu- Thomas Mann won in 1929. If you mid overstatement and baby boomer recognize even one-third of the 113 mythology.” A sample of the humid- literature prize winners since 1901, ity is: “Dylan seemed less to occupy you need to get out of the house more. a turning point in cultural space and Philip Roth has not won, a fact that

George

Will

DYLAN’S NOBEL PRIZE: December 8, 2016

Bob Dylan cops a Nobel

hen I heard that Bob Dylan had received the Nobel Prize for literature, I was mildly surprised. He writes music — popular music. As did George Gershwin and Irving Berlin, both of whom almost certainly wrote better music. I have nothing against Dylan’s music, except that it was written by a scruffy young man who has remained a scruffy young man all his life. At least that is an achievement. As the years accumulate around him, Dylan is still a scruffy young man, even when he recently bewildered the Nobel committee, whose members did not know what he was going to do about their award. Was he yucking it up with his pals while the committee awaited his decision?

HE IS NOT known for his sense of fun, or for having many pals. I think the committee might have done better had they given him a Nobel Prize for music, though they do not recognize music. Is it because they agree with Jacques Barzun, one of the great thinkers of the last century who lived on into the 21st century? Barzun wrote that literature was the greatest of all the arts, for it appealed only to one’s intellect. It could not appeal to one’s aural sense or visual sense, or even to one’s sense of touch. Beethoven and Mozart and Bach could arguably command the attention of a chimpanzee through their work for at least a little while. Think of

one of Beethoven’s fortissimos. Surely, a chimpanzee would take note of it. And Michelangelo or Rodin might snag the chimp’s attention with one of their huge sculptures. Even a painting might attract the transient notice of an anthropoid. But not even a book of poetry by Shakespeare or a novel by Dostoyevsky could fetch the interest of the most intelligent anthropoid for a moment — unless the creature was hungry or needed a projectile to heave.

R. Emmett

The literary mind has only its imagination to work with, and the reading mind has only its imagination to appreciate the literary mind’s output. This, I believe, explains why so many dull minds have turned to television. THERE YOU will find the clang and bang presented to the TV audience by cameras and microphones and some emotional television personality. If you look long enough, you will find Dylan, not reading from any of his infantile writings but strumming his guitar and occasionally blowing on his harmonica. In his nasal twang he is singing: “The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind,/ The answer is blowin’ in the wind.” What is the answer? For that matter, what is the question?

His music is OK. He has been called a troubadour, and that is OK, too. But it is not great art. And when the Nobel committee members gave their peace prize to President Barack Obama they did not give it to a great statesman, or even a statesman. They gave it to a fixture of popular culture. Obama, the first black man to be elected president, is only half black. His mother was white. Popular culture is not very exacting. Perhaps someday the people of Norway will be as tolerant as the people of America, or even more tolerant. They might elect a full-blooded black as their leader. For years now, the Nobel committee has seen its standards impinged upon by popular culture. Thus, a pop singer wins an award for literature. If juggling were popular in society, a juggler might have won the award. As I say, I have nothing against Bob Dylan. In fact, I even admire the fact that a scruffy 75-year-old man was able to keep the committee guessing — will he acknowledge the award, or will he not? He acknowledged it eventually. Will he show up to accept the award? It was revealed Monday that he will not. GIVEN THE fact that the committee has acted as irresponsibly as it has, I am glad Bob Dylan is putting it on, though I fear he will make another one of his cosmic statements about it. Will he find it blown in the wind?

would cost the Swedish Academy its reputation for seriousness, if it had one. The Weekly Standard’s Andrew Ferguson would win the Nobel Prize for Common Sense, if there were one. He notes that by not taking himself too seriously or encouraging others to do so, Dylan has “proved two propositions that seemed increasingly unlikely in the age of media-saturation: You can shun publicity and still be hugely famous, and you can be hugely famous and not be obnoxious about it.” For this, Dylan deserves some sort of prize. Ferguson laments that it is evidently impossible to take Dylan “for what he is, an impressive man worthy of admiration, affection and respect, and leave it at that.” Impossible. In an age of ever-moreextravagant attention-getting yelps about everything, people have tumbled over one another reaching for encomia, such as this from a Harvard professor: “Dylan has surpassed Walt Whitman as the defining American artist.” (Hawthorne, Melville, Dickinson, Wharton, Fitzgerald, Faulkner?) If song lyrics are literature, why did the academy discover this with Dylan and not Stephen Sondheim (from West Side Story on)? Last year, the literature prize was won by Belarusia’s Svetlana Alexievich whose specialty is interviews woven into skillfully wrought books (e.g., Secondhand Time). They are highly informative, even moving, but are they literature? Sean Wilentz, Princeton professor of American history, grew up in New York City near the end of its red-tinged folk revival and was 13 when he attended Dylan’s 1964 concert at Manhattan’s Philharmonic Hall. Wilentz’s book Bob Dylan in America, which would better have been titled America in Bob Dylan, interestingly locates him in the stream of American culture and celebrates him for expanding his range as relentlessly as he has toured — more than 1,400 shows in this century. Wilentz recalls how Dylan “going electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival scandalized “the fetishists of authenticity,” but Dylan did not look back. “He sees,” Wilentz says, “a kind of literature in performance.” If that is so, then is Mike Trout, baseball’s best performer, doing literature for the Los Angeles Angels? Literature is becoming a classification that no longer classifies. NEVER MIND. Just enjoy the music of the surprising man who in 1961 arrived in Greenwich Village and who once said “my favorite politician was Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater.”

Conservative Chronicle

LIMITED GOVERNMENT: December 14, 2016

Less, not more, government will help labor

ith the nomination of business executive Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants, to be labor secretary, president-elect Donald Trump has picked a businessman who is economically literate and who understands the power of freedom and capitalism. This is good news because the best thing that can happen for those that want a job and who want to work under the best economic circumstances, is a growing, prosperous, competitive, jobgenerating economy. In other words, exactly the opposite of what we’ve had in recent years.

AS PUZDER points out in a column he wrote for the Wall Street Journal last year, “Businesses create jobs; labor unions do not.” Economic growth proponent John Cochrane of the Hoover Institution has pointed out that economic growth in the U.S. since 2000 has been half what it was from the end of World War II to 2000. It has dropped from 3.5 percent per year to 1.75 per year. This means both lower wages and a lot of people not working that otherwise would be. Cochrane notes that if the U.S. economy grew at the same rate from 1950 to 2000 that it has grown since 2000 to now, incomes today would be half what they are now. According to Puzder, “about 2.5 million more people are working than were employed when the Great Recession began in December 2007. However, the employable population has increased by about 18 million people — seven times the number of people who found jobs.” What has been going on is that rather than government policy focusing on ensuring a free and secure economy in which entrepreneurs can create, in which businesses can grow, the focus has been on larding down businesses with regulations and larding down the nation with social programs and government spending. The Fraser Institute in Vancouver produces annually an Economic Freedom of the World Index. It measures economic freedom — the extent to which individuals and businesses can freely conduct their economic affairs without government interference — using 42 different factors. From 2000 to 2014 the U.S. dropped from being No. 3 in the world to No. 16. President Obama has explained the anemic economic recovery because he inherited an economy that had already entered into a severe recession. But Harvard economist Robert Barro reports from his research that, historically, the stronger a recession, the stronger the economic recovery that follows.

What is happening now, the very weak recovery following a strong recession, is unusual. Why? Again because rather than Washington serving up more freedom and capitalism to reinvigorate our economy, we got more regulations, more government.

BARRO NOTES that federal social benefits — Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, including disability insurance, food stamps and unemployment insurance — increased from 8.7 percent of GDP in 2007 to 11.7 percent in 2010. And in the middle of all this businesses were hit with Obamacare. According a Heritage Foundation study, in the first six years of the Obama administration, 184 major new regulations were imposed on businesses and the private sector, each with an impact of at least $100 million. And per a Mercatus Center report, the Dodd-Frank law passed in 2010 added 27,669 new regulatory restrictions on financial markets. Productivity, per Barro — economic output per worker — dropped to a third from 2010 — 2015 from what is was from 1949-2009, as result of this economic strangulation.

Puzder wrote last year “... if a politician wants to help workers win a raise, he should help businesses add jobs by simplifying the tax code, enacting regulatory reform, and replacing Obamacare with something that works.” It should also be noted that research shows that when incomes rise, they rise across the board — for low-income workers as well as high-income workers.

If we want to restore robust job and income growth, we need more economic freedom not more government. GIVEN ALL this, Andy Puzder appears to be a great pick for labor secretary. Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education.

CALIFORNIA: December 8, 2016

One-party state, meet party of one

onald J. Trump did America a huge favor by winning the White House in November. If Hillary Clinton had won, there would have been little stopping America from turning into a one-party country, a national political equivalent of California. As it is, California is turning into San Francisco, where outsiders stand zero chance of penetrating the liberal-only wall that surrounds City Hall. WHAT DOES it mean to live in a one-party state? Donors and insiders decide elections and stack the decks. Consider the only statewide office for which Californians voted this year — the U.S. Senate seat won by state Attorney General Kamala Harris. That race was decided in January 2015 when Sen. Barbara Boxer announced her retirement and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom phoned Harris to inform her he would not run for Boxer’s seat because he plans to run for governor in 2018. Harris enlisted a crack team of political consultants (who also have worked for Newsom and Gov. Jerry Brown) and she owned the field. Harris now likely owns that seat for life. Many tried to unseat Boxer and

Sen. Dianne Feinstein since they first won their seats in 1992, but no rival came close.

IN A ONE-PARTY state, elections are boring and fewer people vote. In 2014, with Democrats only running for top state offices, California saw a record low electorate turnout of 42 percent. Mindy Romero, director of the California Civic Engagement Project at UC Davis, crunched the numbers and found that only 8.2 percent of Californians age 18-24 cast a ballot in November 2014.

Debra J.

In a one-party state, there is no such thing as a “temporary” tax hike. In 2012, Brown brought before voters a ballot measure to raise income and sales taxes designed to balance a state budget burdened with a $25 billion shortfall. He promised the measure would not be permanent. This year the usual big government groups put Proposition 55 on the ballot to extend the

2012 tax hike for the state’s 1.5 percent highest income earners. Because only a sliver of Californians make enough to feel that squeeze, it was no surprise that 63 percent of voters approved the measure. In a one-party state, the party in power stacks the deck in its favor. In 2011, the Legislature and the governor determined that ballot measures would no longer go before voters in June, but in November only. Voters have to wade through the ballot measures all at once because crammed voting benefits Democrats in the Capitol. The air of unaccountability permeates everything. For example, this year Brown signed a bill that allowed felons to vote from jail while serving their felony sentence. Hmm. I wonder which party expects to benefit. ON PAPER, a Trump presidency with a GOP Senate and House may look like one-party rule — except that Trump has no problem messing with his party’s leaders or cozying up across the aisle. He has written checks for the campaigns of Harris, Newsom and Brown. Before he is a Republican, you see, the showman is a party of one. And that’s not all bad.

December 21, 2016 EDUCATION: December 9, 2016

Shakin’ up the little red schoolhouse

he little red schoolhouse, fa- he couldn’t come close to doing that. mous in the lore of the early Thirty-three years later we continue the days of the republic, is long “unthinking, unilateral educational disgone, but the memory of it is a nostal- armament.” Test scores confirm grave weakness gic reminder of how the education of children was once the local responsi- in schools. This week, for example, a bility of the town. As public education sweeping survey of scholastic perforhas grown into extensive public school mance in mathematics, science and ing among half a systems in towns big and small, the r e a d million 15-yearschoolhouse is no olds in about 70 longer the source nations and eduof civic pride. cational systems Restoring the (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate reveals declining importance of the math scores and public schools has become a cliche of our politics. Every- stagnant performances in science and one knows that schools are failing large reading of schoolchildren in the United numbers of children. Parents quail, poli- States. The influential Program for Interticians rail, teachers’ unions squeal, and nothing much changes from election to national Student Assessment, or PISA, election. There’s a growing demand for which conducted the survey, concludes that our children’s underperformance is shaking things up. especially dramatic when compared to THE CONCERN is not new. A loud their peers in several Asian nations and alarm was sounded in 1983 with a report a few in Europe. President-elect Donald entitled “A Nation at Risk,” and Ronald Trump needs to know that keeping jobs Reagan held it up at a press conference, in America isn’t just a cost-effective decrying the substandard performances problem but an academic one, too. “We’re losing ground — a troubling of school children across America. The report concluded: “If an unfriendly for- prospect when, in today’s knowledgeeign power had attempted to impose on based economy, the best jobs can go America the mediocre educational per- anywhere in the world,” said Education formance that exists today, we might Secretary John B. King Jr. “Students well have viewed it as an act of war. As in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Minit stands, we have allowed this to hap- nesota aren’t just vying for great jobs along with their neighbors or across pen to ourselves.” President Reagan wanted to get rid state lines, they must be competitive of the Department of Education and with peers in Finland, Germany, and Jareturn education to local control, but pan.”

Suzanne

Fields

AMERICAN STUDENTS scored below the international average in math and merely average in science and reading. Singapore topped the list in all three, and the United States fell far below Japan and nations in East Asia. Especially troubling is the suggestion of superficiality in the teaching. High performers in math exhibit an appreciation for rigor, focus and coherence, the survey found, but students in the United States have trouble after they finish solving the first layer of a problem. “As soon as students have to go deeper and answer the more complex part of a problem, they have difficulties,” says Andreas Schleicher, director of educa-

tion and skills at the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which coordinated the test. American students were behind 36 nations in math, 18 in science and 14 in reading. We’re sometimes quick to suspect that socioeconomic backgrounds and digital abilities affect disparities in reading, but results of the test suggest that’s not necessarily so. Students with good reading skills did well no matter their class or status, or whether they work with pencil and paper or abacus or electronic devices. Reading skills underlie digital literacy — which ought to be written in large letters on the wall in every classroom. One BBC News correspondent in Britain — where school improvement on the PISA tests was a priority and still fell short — observes that when The Beatles were singing “We Can Work it Out” in England, Singapore, which only became an independent nation in 1965, has, in fact, worked it out. “There’s no failed policy more in need of urgent change than our governmentrun education monopoly,” Presidentelect Donald Trump said during the election campaign. He has nominated Betsy DeVos as his secretary of education, who likes charter schools and vouchers to give parents greater choice in their children’s education. But her approach requires a careful analysis of strategies, an informed public, interested parents and a strong push for change. CLEARLY, CERTAIN Asian nations are doing something many Western countries are not. But tests don’t tell the whole story. Donald Trump can shake up the education establishment, which sorely needs it. Jerry Lee Lewis famously sang that there’s a “whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on.” But it’s going to take more than a lot of shaking to actually move our kids to the head of the class.

Conservative Chronicle

LIMITED GOVERNMENT: December 7, 2016

A strong leader: Leave us free to lead our own lives

resident-elect Donald Trump’s first decisions were exciting. His new team seems to include good people like Betsy DeVos, Andy Puzder and Paul Atkins. It’s refreshing to watch Trump mock the media and political correctness. How dreary the world would be today if we faced four more years of condescension from Hillary Clinton and her apparatchiks. But I worry.

MANY OF Trump’s supporters like him because they say he’s a leader who will “get things done.” That’s not necessarily a good thing. Recently, my Twitter feed contained Trump saying: “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag — if they do, there must be consequences — perhaps loss of citizenship or a year in jail!” Yikes! Mr. President, burning a flag is free speech. And don’t we have property rights? If I buy the flag, it’s mine. No one has a right to tell me what I can do with it. Recently, Trump bullied and bribed executives from the Carrier air conditioner company into withdrawing plans to move a factory to Mexico. “Like a despot drunk and delirious with power,” wrote economist Don Boudreaux, Trump “bellowed that ‘(c)ompanies are not going to leave the U.S. anymore without consequences.’” Those are the kind of things socialist dictators say. Trump’s no socialist. He is obviously a businessman who loves making money. But that doesn’t mean he understands the conditions necessary for other people to prosper. Trump proposes some bad socialist policies: A $10 minimum wage, restrictions on imports and travel, and tougher libel laws. These are terrible ideas. I think about how “strongmen” leaders have worked for other parts of the world. Venezuela voted in a strong leader. Now the country’s collapsing into economic chaos: Looting, shortages of food, riots. That’s what an autocrat can do. Venezuela was once the most prosperous country in South America. Then Venezuelans elected Hugo Chavez. He promised to throw out the establishment and make Venezuela ... well, better, if not “great.” American celebrities loved Chavez. Oliver Stone made a movie praising him and then invited the tyrant to join him at the film’s premiere. After Chavez’s death, Stone released an even more absurd documentary called My Friend Hugo. STONE’S OTHER friend, actor Sean Penn, called Chavez a “fascinating guy” who does “incredible things.” Model Naomi Campbell called Chavez

an “angel.” A hack at Salon wrote about Chavez’s “economic miracle.” This was ludicrous, as the chaos in Venezuela now makes clear. But many Americans still want a leader who offers similar solutions. Thousands backed Bernie Sanders’ call for a socialist America. Celebrities led the way. Actors Will Ferrell and Mark Ruffalo, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, comedian Margaret Cho, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Jackson Browne and many others got behind Bernie’s plan for “democratic socialism.” Why?! I naively assumed that the collapse of the Soviet Union would make it obvious to everyone that socialism kills both prosperity and freedom. If that didn’t, then the poverty in Cuba, Cambodia, Tanzania, Somalia, North Korea, etc. would convince them. But no! People still think socialism will make a country more “fair” or “equal” by punishing the rich. British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn praised Venezuela’s strongman, saying he was “conquering poverty by

emphatically rejecting the neoliberal policies of the world’s financial institutions.” By “neoliberal,” Corbyn didn’t mean left-wing. He meant support for global trade. Donald Trump wants to rein that in, too. In Venezuela, Chavez cut off foreign trade. When shortages occurred, his successor blamed an “economic war” waged by capitalists. Trump often blames China — although economists estimate 12 million U.S. jobs depend upon our trade with China. He mocks NAFTA, our trade agreement with Mexico and Canada, but economists call that a job creator, too. What Donald Trump and Bernie Sand-

ers don’t realize is that commerce is not zero-sum — trade with China does not mean China wins and we lose. In most cases, we both win. Wealth is created when governments get out of the way and let people trade as they please, within borders or across borders. I DON’T want a “strong leader.” I want a president of this constitutional republic to preside over limited government and leave us free to lead our own lives. John Stossel is the author of No They Can’t! Why Government Fails — But Individuals Succeed.

REPUBLICAN PARTY: December 14, 2016

‘But the Democrats are hypocrites!’

his week, the Washington Post reported that the CIA now believes that Russian-supported hacks of the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta were designed to boost Donald Trump’s election prospects. The FBI apparently disagrees; it believes that the Russian intervention was designed to undermine faith in the election system generally. But all intelligence agencies agree that there was Russian support for the hacks themselves. DEMOCRATS HAVE fallen all over themselves to claim that this means that Russian President Vladimir Putin shifted the results of the election to Trump. But there’s no evidence of that. Clinton was deeply unpopular for the entire election cycle — a January 2016 YouGov/ The Economist poll showed unfavorable ratings at 56 percent; in November, that same poll found her unfavorable ratings to be — you guessed it — 56 percent. It wasn’t WikiLeaks that destroyed Hillary Clinton. It was Hillary Clinton. Even FBI Director James Comey’s announcement that he would be reopening the investigation into Clinton’s emails came courtesy of Anthony Weiner’s laptop, not WikiLeaks. Republicans, in response, have noted that Democrats’ hysterics over Russian manipulation seems hypocritical. After all, Democrats had no problem whatsoev-

er with President Barack Obama offering Putin “flexibility” in 2012 in exchange for a promise to loosen his pressure tactics. They cheered when Obama told Mitt Romney that he was delusional for embracing anti-Putin politics more appropriate to the 1980s. Now, Democrats are all hot and bothered about Putin’s regime — the same regime that Hillary Clinton handed a reset button, the same regime Obama allowed to take the lead in Syria, the same regime with which Obama meekly complied after Putin’s takeover of Crimea. Republicans are right: Yes, Democrats are awful hypocrites on Russia.

Ben

HERE’S THE problem: So are Republicans. Trump questioned whether the Russians were behind the hacks at all. That’s no surprise — he spent most of the election cycle lathering up Putin’s bare chest, congratulating him for his strength and equating his murder of journalists with some unspecified American sins. Trump then nominated Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state, a man who received the Order of Friendship from Putin in 2011. So, what are Republicans doing during all of this? Capitulating. Former

House Speaker Newt Gingrich calls the Tillerson pick wonderful — the same Newt Gingrich who said in 2012 that Putin “represents a dictatorial approach that’s very violent.” (Of course, Gingrich now gives a lecture to the Heritage Foundation on the principles of Trumpism, so that’s not much of a surprise.) Sean Hannity has accused anyone with questions about Russian hacking of simply wanting to undermine Trump. He said, “If all of these people care so much about these Russian allegations, then why didn’t they feel the same way about Hillary Clinton’s private server scandal?” We did! In fact, we spent years ripping Clinton apart. And now we’d like to know why Putin’s hacking is all right. By the way, Hannity used to care about Russian interference and aggression. In March 2012, he called Putin a “huge problem,” and in June 2013, he lamented that Putin was “laughing at the Obama admin’s request to extradite Snowden back to the U.S.” Now he wants Julian Assange, who is allegedly working with Putin, freed (in 2010 he wanted him jailed). HERE’S THE problem with the hypocrisy argument: You have to be nonhypocritical in order to make that charge. So long as Republicans are so intent on backing Trump’s play that they act like hypocrites, it’s going to be difficult to point out just how hypocritical Democrats are.

December 21, 2016 THE LEFT: December 13, 2016

On men viewing women as sex objects

4. Every normal heterosexual man y last column was titled “Is Donald Trump a Misogy- who sees a woman as a sexual object nist?” After reading reac- can also completely respect her mind, tions throughout the internet, I realize her character and everything else nonhow important it is to elaborate on the sexual about her. Men do this all the time. subject of how men view women. 5. Most heterosexual women also One of the proofs that higher education makes those who attend college see sexy women as sex objects, and hardly misogynists. more foolish, more naive and often even they are Ask your wife or more ignorant girlfriend which about life than would turn her on those who never more: Watching a attended college male strip show in is the widespread (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate front of a female belief among the well-educated that when men sexually audience, or a female strip show in front objectify women it means that they are of a male audience. 6. Lucky is a couple if the man can misogynists, haters of women. sexually objectify his partner. The lonSO, HERE is a list of eight truths ger a husband can at least occasionally about males and sexual objectification regard his wife as a sex object, the better for those who have a degree in any of their marriage. It is not always easy to see the woman you see every day, the the “social sciences.” 1. It is completely normal for hetero- mother of your children, as a sex object. 7. The whole purpose of lingerie and sexual men to see women they are sexuother sexual attire is to render the womally attracted to as sex objects. 2. That such sexual objectification is an a sex object in her partner’s eyes. normal and has nothing to do with mi- Are all the women who wear lingerie, sogyny is proved, among other things, bikinis, cheerleading outfits or whatever by the fact that homosexual men see else turns their partner on — and hopemen to whom they are sexually attracted fully them as well — haters of women? 8. If your husband denies these asseras sex objects. If heterosexual men are misogynists, homosexual men are man tions, he is lying to you because he is afraid that you will react angrily or that haters. 3. One reason for this is the almost- he will hurt your feelings. He may also unique power of a visual to sexually be lying to himself — after all, he, too, arouse men. Men are aroused just by went to college and reads liberal opinglancing at a woman’s arm, ankle, calf, ion pieces on misogyny; and he wants thigh or stomach, even without ever see- to be an “enlightened” male. It is a sign of the times that these eight ing her face. Those legs, calves, arms, etc. are sexual objects. That’s why there points need to be written. The question are innumerable websites featuring them. is, why are any of these points — known

Dennis

Prager

to just about every woman and man who ever lived prior to the 1960s — controversial to so many well-educated people today? The answer is leftism and its offshoot: Feminism. Leftism is first and foremost a denial of reality. LEFTISTS DENY reality for two reasons. One is that leftism is a religion (a secular one), and therefore it has dogmas that supersede truth. The other reason is that reality is filled with disappointment and pain, and avoidance of pain is the central psychological impetus of leftism. This explains the infantilizing safe rooms at the institutions the left controls most: The

universities. These rooms exist to protect students from hearing an idea with which they differ (recall reason one) and from hearing an idea that causes them pain. Name the left-wing position, and in almost every case you will see how it exemplifies either or both of these reasons. It is reality that human nature is not basically good. But since the French Enlightenment, the left has affirmed that people are basically good. That’s why leftists blame violent crime on poverty and racism, not on the violent criminal. It is reality that the higher the minimum wage, the fewer new workers will be hired. But because of dogma, the left denies it. (In 1987, when the New York Times editorial page was not as pure left as it is today, one editorial was titled “The Right Minimum Wage: $0.00.”) It is reality that Islam means “submit,” but this meaning conflicts with left-wing wishful thinking that all cultures are morally equal. Thus, virtually every left-wing professor and publication says that Islam means “peace.” (To the extent that it has any connection to the Arabic word for “peace” — “salaam” — it is the peace that ensues after all of humanity has submitted to Islam.) The amount of left-wing denial of reality concerning the Islamic world is about equal to the number of assertions leftists make about it. (Thus, the Obama administration labeled the Fort Hood massacre of 13 people by a radical Muslim as “workplace violence.”) IT IS ALSO reality, not an expression of misogyny, that men see the objects of their sexual desire as sexual objects. But this is too painful for feminists and other leftists. And it violates feminist theory, which says that men and women are essentially the same, and seeing a woman as a sexual object is misogyny. Therefore, this reality is rejected.

Conservative Chronicle

ISIS: December 14, 2016

Will anti-ISIS strategy backfire at an open border?

n combatting the Islamic State, we estimate that over the past eleven has the current administration months we’ve killed about 25,000 enpursued a strategy that increases emy fighters,” McFarland said. “When or decreases the terrorist threat to peo- you add that to the 20,000 estimated killed prior to our arrival, that’s 45,000 ple in the United States? taken off the battleThe U.S.-led military campaign e n e m y field.” against “ISIL” In response to a in Iraq and Syria follow-up question began in August about the number 2014. of ISIL fighters “First, we will (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate killed, McFarland conduct a systematic campaign of airstrikes against these sounded a note of caution. “Yes, and you know the thing about terrorists,” Obama explained in a Sept. these numbers is they are pretty soft, 10, 2014 speech. pretty squishy,” he said. “It’s why we A REPORT the next day in the don’t typically quote them a lot.” Last week, an unnamed “senior miliWashington Post quoted a CIA spokesman: “CIA assesses the Islamic State of tary official” told reporters, the coaliIraq and the Levant (ISIL) can muster tion had now killed 50,000 ISIL fighters between 20,000 and 31,500 fighters in Iraq and Syria. “The U.S.-led coalition has killed an across Iraq and Syria, based on a new review of all-source intelligence re- estimated 50,000 Islamic State fighters ports from May to August, an increase since President Barack Obama first orfrom our previous assessment of at least dered military action against the group in August 2014, according to a senior 10,000 fighters.” Brett McGurk, the president’s special military official,” the Voice of Amerienvoy for the coalition, said this Tues- ca reported. “The official, speaking on day: “The number of battle-ready fight- condition of anonymity, told reporters ers inside Iraq and Syria is now at its the number was considered a ‘conservalowest point that it has ever been. We tive estimate.’” estimate about 12,000 to 15,000.” IN SUM: The CIA estimated there The Department of Defense, meanwhile, has made some public estimates was a maximum of 31,500 ISIL fighters of the number of ISIL fighters killed by in Iraq and Syria at the beginning of the campaign in 2014. DOD estimated last the coalition in Iraq and Syria. Lt. Gen. Sean MacFarland, who com- week the coalition had killed 50,000. manded the coalition campaign from The White House said this week there September 2015 to August 2016, gave might be as many as 15,000 left in Iraq a press briefing on Aug. 10 of this year. and Syria. Obviously, the number and location “And although it’s not a measure of success and it’s difficult to confirm, of ISIL fighters is not static.

Terry

Jeffrey

So, back to the question: Has the current administration followed a strategy that increases or decreases the terrorist threat to people inside the United States? “(T)he group’s foreign branches and global networks can help preserve its capacity for terrorism regardless of events in Iraq and Syria,” CIA Director John Brennan told the Senate intelligence committee in June. “In fact, as the pressure mounts on ISIL, we judge that it will intensify its global terror campaign to maintain its dominance of the global terrorism agenda.” “ISIL has a large cadre of Western fighters who could potentially serve as operatives for attacks in the West,” Brennan said. “And the group is probably exploring a variety of means for infiltrating operatives into the West, including refugee flows, smuggling routes, and legitimate methods of travel.”

FBI Director James Comey presented a similar assessment to the Senate Homeland Security Committee in September. “There will be a terrorist diaspora sometime in the next two to five years like we’ve never seen before,” Comey said. “Because when ISIL is reduced to an insurgency and those killers flow out, they will try to come to Western Europe and try to come here to kill innocent people,” he said. “We have to keep our eye on it and be ready for it.” Special Envoy McGurk made yet another similar point at his White House briefing. “But their desire to inspire attacks around the world as they lose their territory is something that we expect will probably increase,” McGurk said. “How do they want to stay relevant? They want to spark and inspire attacks around the world.” He summarized the last message top ISIL propagandist Abu Mohammad alAdnani delivered to would-be jihadists before he was killed in August: “If you can’t come (to the caliphate) — because you can’t, because it’s hard to get in here now — stay home, pick up a knife, and attack someone down the street.” McGurk also argued that the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria, which he estimated had been “almost 40,000,” had been curtailed by better border security — over there. “That’s really thanks again to our efforts on the ground and our special operators have done an incredible job to clear out that area of the border just south of Turkey,” he said, “and now the intervention from Turkey to protect its border — to make sure that these terrorists cannot get in and out.” BUT THE ultimate question is not: How many Islamic State fighters are killed over there or stopped as they enter Syria? It is: How many do we let in here?

December 21, 2016 FREEDOM: December 14, 2016

Skating to freedom: Attempts at regulation My last Fox Business Network TV show airs Friday. That news pleases some people, like internet trolls who write that they are happy to be “rid of that noted LIAR and falsifier of news” who produces “hit pieces.” Another wrote, “Hopefully the cancer came back to finish him off.” To be clear, I’m not ending Stossel because I have cancer. I don’t have cancer. I had a small tumor removed, and, best we can tell, it’s gone. I didn’t even have chemo or radiation. I’M MOVING on because I want to create a new libertarian internet-based platform with Reason TV and become an educator with the Charles Koch In-

stitute’s new Media and Journalism Fellowship program. I will still make appearances on Fox News. I had a good time hosting my own show for seven years, trying to find new ways to simplify economics and demonstrate the benefits of free markets. Unfortunately, economic freedom can be hard to demonstrate. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is, well, invisible. How do I explain it on TV? Friedrich Hayek’s phrase “spontaneous order” is clearer but still hard to show. I was stumped until I read Rinkonomics: A Window on Spontaneous Order by George Mason University’s Dan Klein. That inspired me to rent a skating rink.

Why? Well, imagine you’ve never seen a rink, and you are the government regulator who approves new businesses. I tell you: I will flood that arena, freeze the water and then charge people money to strap sharp blades onto their feet and zip around on the ice. I will have few rules. Anyone can skate: Young and old, skilled and unskilled. Most any regulator would resist my bizarre skating idea. Hillary Clinton might say that for my rink to be approved it must have stoplights, skating police and barriers between skilled and unskilled skaters, adults and children. I must have someone with a megaphone direct the skaters to make sure they don’t smash into each other.

DREAMERS: December 9, 2016

Some hope for dreamers

f there has been one issue on which President-elect Donald Trump has been loud and clear, it is his desire to end illegal immigration and deport immigrants here illegally. Every time he has seemed to soften his stance, his most outspoken supporters have jumped in to make sure he clarifies that he has no intention of modifying that position. So what will happen with Trump’s latest indication that he will “work something out” for those 750,000 young people who were brought here illegally by their parents when they were children and were granted temporary legal status by executive action during the Obama years? “On a humanitarian basis, it’s a very tough situation,” he told Time in an article for the edition in which he was named the magazine’s person of the year. “We’re going to work something out that’s going to make people happy and proud. But that’s a very tough situation,” he said. I hope this signals a new approach.

ONE THING Trump could do is support legislation that would grant relief to these so-called dreamers, named for the original, GOP-sponsored legislation that would have granted legal status to those whose parents brought them here when they were younger than 15, who have stayed in school and who have committed no crimes since. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and others are working to put together a version of the former DREAM Act that will be introduced in the new Congress. If Trump were to throw his weight behind this bill, it would go a long way to ensuring its passage. And doing so wouldn’t require him to break his promise to rescind the executive actions he intends to abrogate as his first order of business af-

ter the inauguration. He could make the revocation of the executive order contingent on the passage of legislation so that dreamers wouldn’t be left in limbo. For those critics who say that this would be just another amnesty, I’d say we shouldn’t — to use an apt metaphor — throw the baby out with the bathwater in this instance. Yes, the rule of law is important, and some form of penalty is due for those who broke the law knowingly, which is why any legislation that supports legal status for undocumented immigrants must include fines or other measures to ensure that individuals don’t get off without some consequences. But with the dreamers, we’re talking about children who, in most cases, had no say in whether they crossed the border. I know some of these people, and their stories are heartbreaking.

Linda

I MET A woman named Ana shortly after I moved to Colorado. I needed help unloading boxes because my husband had broken his foot just before we moved and I was also taking care of my 90-year-old mother. I placed an ad for temporary help, received lots of replies and set up times for applicants to come to my house. After more than a halfdozen people failed to show up, most without even bothering to call, Ana came to the house on time and started helping. I didn’t know her legal status, because the job was temporary and nonrecurring and didn’t meet the threshold requiring paperwork to find out. She spoke perfect

English and talked about her desire to go to college and about her family back in Arizona. It was only when I asked her why she had moved to Colorado that I learned her story. Ana’s parents brought her to the United States from Mexico when she was two years old. The parents ultimately received permanent legal status and applied for hers, as well, but the old Immigration and Naturalization Service lost the paperwork, a phenomenon I’ve encountered many times. The parents didn’t bother to file again, and their lives in the U.S. went along happily. Both parents worked and eventually bought a home. Ana’s siblings were born here, and Ana attended high school. The whole time, Ana assumed that she had the same legal right to be here as her parents and siblings. But after graduation, she discovered she couldn’t get a Social Security card, which she needed to get work, because she lacked legal status. When Arizona passed a referendum making it exceedingly difficult for those who lack legal status to obtain jobs, get driver’s licenses or even rent homes, she decided she had to move.

So, I actually tried that. I rented a rink and bossed people around: “You, turn left, you slow down.” Of course, the skaters hated that. And it didn’t make skating safer. Some people, responding to my instructions, lost their balance and fell. THERE IS spontaneous order on a normal skating rink. Skaters make their own decisions. No regulator knows the wishes, skills and immediate intentions of individual skaters better than skaters themselves. Regulators might say my attempts to direct skaters failed because I’m not a skating “expert.” On my TV show, one guest said regulation must be done “by technocrats with expertise.” So I hired an expert, an Olympic skater. She did no better with the megaphone. No “technocrat” has enough expertise to direct the skaters on the ice. For safety, rinks usually just have a few employees who police reckless skaters and simple rules like “skate counterclockwise.” That’s enough! Good thing rinks were invented before the modern regulatory state took over. Leave people free to make their own choices and a spontaneous order arises. Skaters find their own path. Buyers and sellers adjust to changing prices. Families raise kids. Musicians create jazz. That’s what I’ve tried to demonstrate on my show. Control freaks have criticized such spontaneity for at least 2,400 years. Plato warned that music should be simple so that it does not stir up passion. In America, Ladies Home Journal once warned that jazz would lead “to a breaking away from all rules.” Lucky America didn’t have a Department of Music Safety then or jazz would have been banned. Over seven years on the Stossel show, I’ve done all sorts of stunts, trying to explain the benefits of liberty. I’ve dressed as a Founder and Santa and Uncle Sam, begged for money on Manhattan streets, broken windows, collected signatures on petitions to ban “dangerous” chemicals like dihydrogen monoxide (that’s water), stolen things from children, held a racist (that is, affirmative action) bake sale, smashed cars with a sledgehammer (inspired by the “cash for clunkers” government program) and cut the federal budget with a chain saw.

ARIZONA’S LOSS was Colorado’s gain. Ana applied for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and compiled hundreds of pages of records showing she had paid taxes, had a clean criminal record and was an upstanding member of her community. But she and some 750,000 others could be sent back to countries they’ve never known unless Trump delivers on this new glimmer of IF IT HELPS explain the benefits hope he’s offered. Trump prides him- of freedom, I’ll try it. self in standing up for the little guy; let’s hope he follows through on standing up John Stossel is the author of No for young people whose fates are in his They Can’t! Why Government Fails — hands. But Individuals Succeed.

Conservative Chronicle

THE LEFT: December 9, 2016

Hollywood ponders America’s hatred of Muslims

n Dec. 4, the second Sunday of fears.” Gordon says he wants to create Advent on the Christian calen- an atmosphere of — get this — “vigilant dar, Fox’s Family Guy mocked empathy.” Joshua Safran, the creator of ABC’s two-thirds of the Holy Trinity as only Fox can. In atheist Seth MacFarlane’s gag, Quantico, told of crying for hours in the Jesus Christ had a human son who he writing room over Trump getting elected. mocked for being bullied at school, com- He added: “For me, it was important to paring that to the horror of the Crucifix- not ever put a Muslim terrorist on our ion. When his son called him a “dick,” he show. There hasn’t been one. This year appearance of one — suggested that God the Father was a big- we have the which is a spoiler. But it’s not ger “dick” for sending him to his death. true.” On that same But slander day, the New York Catholics? ABC Times ran an enordoes that regularly. mous article that What the Hollysprawled over (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate wood left wants to three pages of the Arts & Leisure section with the headline make is propaganda that apologizes for America. Aasif Mandvi, a former Daily “Can TV Be Fair to Muslims?” Show correspondent and Muslim activist, JUST TRY to imagine Muslims be- explained at one point that “As an artist, ing mocked on American television as you want to stay true to the narrative, and Christians are on Family Guy or South sometimes that goes against your activist Park. ABC’s The Real O’Neals is orga- agenda, which is to promote this positive nized entirely around bigotry against the image of Muslims.” Catholic Church, as is HBO’s forthcoming The Young Pope. But Hollywood’s ISRAEL: December 8, 2016 treatment of the Christian majority never bothers the New York Times, which only obsesses over religious minorities, like the 0.9 percent of Americans who identify as Muslim and have never suffered a he consensus in Israel is that fraction of the insults aimed at Christians the relationship between the on television. Jewish state and the United Times correspondent Melena Ryzik began by complaining about the ab- States is going to improve in a Trump sence of Muslim characters on shows administration, says former Israeli amother than those focused on terrorism or bassador to the U.S., Zalman Shoval. On a recent visit to Washington, D.C., “terrorist-adjacent” storylines. She said: “Could that change now, after a divisive Shoval told me that he believes Donald presidential campaign that included vows Trump and his cabinet picks so far have by Donald J. Trump to stop Islamic im- a more “realistic” view of the Middle migration? Or will it be more difficult East than President Obama, who from his first days in office, “perhaps before, than ever?” Did we mention that Muslims com- believed it was his calling to fix once prise less than one percent of the Ameri- and for all, all matters between the U.S. can population? Exactly what is the mar- and the Arab and Muslim worlds, as ket for a Muslim show? And while we’re expressed in his Cairo speech. ... This at it, where is there a market for an anti- gives Trump in the hearts and minds of Catholic comedy series (other than the more than a few Israelis a head-start.” staff at ABC, of course). SHOVAL SAID he believes the isTo the New York Times, radical Islamic terrorism is a smaller problem than Islam- sue of a Palestinian state — the objecic representation on entertainment TV. tive of U.S. foreign policy over several Ryzik assembled a gaggle of exquisitely administrations — has become less Islamosensitive TV writers and showrun- concerning than the regional and interners to ponder how to create better pro- national threat posed by a nuclear Iran. He likes recent statements by secretary Muslim TV shows in the Trump era. of defense-designate Gen. James Mattis RYZIK ASKED: “The FBI has said about the way forward in dealing with that attacks against Muslims were up 67 an unstable Iran, believing Mattis recpercent last year. Do you have any anxi- ognizes that as important as it is to deety about your shows being fodder for feat ISIS, the real threat in the Middle that?” Howard Gordon, who’s running a East is Iran. It’s not only the nuclear deal that reboot of 24 for Fox, said, “Absolutely, bothers Shoval, though he believes yes.” He reported that Muslim Americans trashed his show the first time around. Iran will eventually have a bomb, unThey said, “Hey, I like your show, but less it is stopped. It is also bothersome you have to understand that you’re conthat Iran continues with its terrorist actributing to this xenophobia by traffick- tivities, subsidizing anti-American and ing in this worst fear, this sort of basest anti-Israel groups around the world be-

Brent

Bozell

THE ENTIRE panel assembled by the Times agrees that the Trump presidency means the stakes are “higher than ever” to make pro-Muslim shows to fight the new administration’s alleged Islamo-

phobia. They don’t find any cognitive dissonance in seeing it go side by side with shows that stereotype Christians as psychotic power-crazed hypocrites or mock the Christian God as a trinity of dicks.

U.S.-Israel relations set to improve

cause radical mullahs think their god has ordered them to do so. That makes any kind of diplomatic agreement with nations Iran regards as “infidels” impossible. Even when the battle for Mosul is over and victory has been declared over that ISIS stronghold, Shoval believes, “what it really will mean is that the Iranians and the Shia are going to be the real victors. They will

Cal

continue their attempts to build a territorial corridor all the way to the Mediterranean along with Hezbollah, which is not only a threat to Israel, but also something the so-called moderate Arab states look at with a great deal of concern.” SHOVAL SAYS he hopes the incoming Trump administration realizes that Iran cannot be a partner with the United States in the Middle East “even if from time to time it seems like that because of what’s happening in Syria. Ultimately, Iran is a great danger.” People like former President Jimmy Carter have a different worldview. In a recent op-ed for the New York Times, Carter called on President Obama to recognize a Palestinian state before he leaves office. Carter also called on the UN to pass a resolution setting the pa-

rameters for “resolving the conflict.” I believe in miracles, but for the UN, or anyone else, to resolve a conflict in which one side thinks it has a heavenly mandate to destroy the other is not where most people would see as a good starting point for conflict resolution. Carter continues to trade off his one success — the peace agreement between Egypt and Israel. But getting one thing right with a unique combination of leaders, one of whom — Anwar Sadat — was assassinated by Islamic fanatics for making peace with Israel, is like an astrologer wanting credit for one prediction that came true while ignoring hundreds that didn’t. Shoval disagrees with those who think the Israel-Palestinian status quo is not sustainable. He believes it is, otherwise a Palestinian state “would mean Hamas and Hezbollah would be just 20 minutes away” from Jerusalem and in a position to overwhelm Israel. In his book, The Field of Fight, Michael Flynn, Trump’s pick to head the National Security Council, writes about President Obama: “I find it simply incredible that an American president should believe a strategic alliance with Iran to be more attractive than our traditional embrace of Israel. Our new leaders need to reverse that, pronto. We will need Israel if we’re going to defeat the radical Islamists, and above all, the Iranians.” THIS IS THE opposite of wishful thinking.

December 21, 2016 VA: December 14, 2016

Donald Trump’s urgent job: Clean up the VA

by President-elect Donald Trump. His yet to be named VA secretary has opportunities to make improvements quickly, circumventing VA obstructionists and their Democratic enablers. When the VA’s secret five-star rating system was exposed last week in USA Today, McDonald whined the news might “dissuade veterans from coming to VA for care.” You bet. Who would entrust their life to a one-star hospital? The VA hospitals in New York and IN 2014, the nation was horrified Jersey get mostly to learn that vets were dying while N e w three or four stars, waiting for medibut Montrose, cal appointments, New York, gets and VA staff were five stars. Other concealing wait top hospitals intimes. Now new (c) 2016, Creators Syndicate clude Boston, patients are waitCleveland, Mining even longer. Recently, a vet with heart troubles neapolis and West Haven, Connectidied while waiting for a cardiology cut. The Phoenix VA, where vets died appointment at the Washington, D.C. VA. Investigators concluded he would while their names languished on wait likely have survived had he been seen. lists, was rated one star in 2014 and Meanwhile Democratic senators is still one star. No progress there, but are still blocking a bill to hold VA ex- the Obama administration is fighting ecutives accountable for these deadly to enable its director, Sharon Helman, failures. What’s wrong with firing liars to keep her job. In response to the Phoenix scandal, and incompetents? Democrats would rather side with the public service Congress requires the VA to particiunions that fill their campaign coffers pate in a rating website called Hospital Compare, which also posts data on ciand turn out the vote. Even so, the VA can be fixed. Doing vilian hospitals. So vets could decide right by vets was a core promise made where to go. ast week, Veterans Affairs got caught covering up the quality ratings of its 146 medical centers. VA Secretary Robert McDonald insists. “No VA medical facility is bad or failing.” Really? Not even a hospital that earns only one star out of five? McDonald denies he’s hiding anything. But he and other VA brass have plenty to hide.

Betsy

McCaughey

But the VA is hiding its failures by It’s not a money problem. Congress refusing to post the information. VA appropriated a record $163 billion to hospitals are no longer on Hospital the VA in 2016, more than the departCompare, so vets have to fly blind. ment requested. The real problem is a lack of disciON THE other hand, the data we pline at all levels. Consider the alarmdo have is not a pretty picture. Longer ing increase in central line infections wait times for patients needing pri- — a key indicator of hospital quality. mary care, specialty care, and mental These lethal infections are totally prehealth care are hardly evidence of the ventable, if medical staff rigorously “irrefutable progress” McDonald tries follow protocols. Some civilian hosto brag about. pitals have reduced them to zero. The VA has no excuse. Whomever Trump appoints as VA secretary will face a hostile and legally entrenched bureaucracy determined to protect its own cushy jobs, instead of serving vets. Even so, Trump’s VA secretary can succeed. Here’s one quick fix that could save many lives and cost taxpayers almost nothing. An amazing 47 percent of VA users are 65 or older and already on Medicare. They need bypass surgery, and hip and knee replacements, like other seniors. Often they use the VA to avoid Medicare’s out of pocket expenses. Their average household income is $36,000. Enabling them to use Medicare without copays could cut VA waiting lists by nearly half. That will make room for younger vets, who need specialized war-related care, where the VA excels. Fully 58 percent require mental health treatment for combat trauma and suicide risk, and 62 percent have muscular and skeletal injuries. TRUMP’S NEW secretary can’t delay. Forget about more commissions or reports. Action is needed now. Thousands of vets’ lives depend on it.

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Michael Barone, Austin Bay, Brent Bozell, Pat Buchanan, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, Ann Coulter, Jackie Gingrich Cushman, Veronique de Rugy, Larry Elder, Leslie Elman, Suzanne Fields, Paul Greenberg, David Harsanyi, Laura Hollis, Terence Jeffrey, Charles Krauthammer, Larry Kudlow, Donald Lambro, David Limbaugh, Rich Lowry, Michelle Malkin, Mychal Massie, Stephen Moore, Dick Morris, William Murchison, Andrew Napolitano, Marvin Olasky, Star Parker, Dennis Prager, Debra J. Saunders, John and Andy Schlafly, Ben Shapiro, Thomas Sowell, Cal Thomas, Matt Towery, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., George Will, and Walter Williams.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2016 • Volume 31, Number 51 • Hampton, Iowa