Displaying posts published in

November 2018

POLITICS Comments turned off

Bloomberg Eyes 2020, But Would Dems Warm to Him? . By Adele Malpass –

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/11/17/bloomberg_eyes_2020_but_would_dems_warm_to_him_138681.html

The new hero of the Democratic Party is Mike Bloomberg. The former three-term New York City mayor, through his Independence USA PAC, put $110 million into 24 suburban House district races with the goal of flipping the chamber’s majority to the Democrats. The investment apparently paid off: 21 out of the 24 candidates he supported won, in most cases by defeating incumbent Republicans, who were outspent by at least 2-to-1.

One of the most effective parts of his strategy was a $45 million “surprise attack” in television ads over the last two weeks of the midterms in expensive media markets such as Atlanta and Miami. He also spent $5 million the weekend before Election Day airing a two-minute ad of himself talking directly into the camera about the importance of voting for Democrats to send Donald Trump a message.

Those efforts were appreciated. Nancy Pelosi, the once and likely next House speaker, made a special visit to New York City to personally thank him and other donors for their efforts in helping Democrats retake the majority.

What’s Mike Bloomberg’s end game here? His high-profile role has raised speculation that he’s contemplating a 2020 presidential run. At 76, he’s announced he’ll make a decision about 2020 sometime in January or February. It’s no secret that he wanted to run in 2016, but took a pass after realizing it would be impossible to win as an independent.

With his eye still on the Oval Office, he’s switched parties — for the third time in 18 years. Bloomberg’s now gone from being a Democrat to a Republican to an Independent and back to a Democrat. This lack of allegiance to any party will most likely not play well with Democratic base voters, who want to know that candidates are true believers. “Democrats will see him as using their party as his own means to an end, as he did with the Republican Party. It’s all about him,” said Joe Borelli, a Republican City Council member from Staten Island.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Watch Dan Crenshaw Beat Down Media’s Wild Hyperbole About Trump ‘Undermining Democracy’

By on November 19th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/video/rep-elect-dan-crenshaw-r-tx-dismantles-dem-reps-who-claimed-trump-is-literally-attacking-freedoms/
Crenshaw exposed the bankruptcy of wild and never-ending claims that President Trump is a threat to democracy, enemy of the press, fascist dictator, yadda yadda yadda. Incoming members of Congress Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Joe Neguse (D-CO), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), and Deb Haaland (D-NM) appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation with moderator Margaret Brennan on Sunday. When the roundtable discussion veered into a gripe session about how dastardly President Trump was “undermining our democracy,” particularly the freedom of the press, Crenshaw — outnumbered four to one — nimbly embarrassed the liberal panelists.

Continue reading →
POLITICS Comments turned off

Rep-Elect Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) Dismantles Dem Reps Who Claimed Trump Is ‘Literally Attacking Freedoms’ By Debra Heine

By on November 19th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/video/rep-elect-dan-crenshaw-r-tx-dismantles-dem-reps-who-claimed-trump-is-literally-attacking-freedoms/

Incoming members of Congress Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Joe Neguse (D-CO), Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA), and Deb Haaland (D-NM) appeared on CBS’s Face the Nation with moderator Margaret Brennan on Sunday. When the roundtable discussion veered into a gripe session about how dastardly President Trump was “undermining our democracy,” particularly the freedom of the press, Crenshaw — outnumbered four to one — nimbly embarrassed the liberal panelists.

At the beginning of the clip, Neguse, speaking the language of “the Resistance,” declared: “I think some of our freedoms and the principles that we live by have been under attack for the better part of the last two years.”

Asked to respond to Neguse, Crenshaw wanted specifics. “I always ask the question — ‘like what?’ What is he undermining exactly? What democratic freedoms have been undermined? We just had an election where we switched power in the House. Democracy is at work. People are voting in record numbers.”

Crenshaw suggested they cite examples that could be examined “one by one,” rather than make “broad brush” accusations that the president is somehow undermining our democracy.

The liberal members of the panel began talking at once, all of them indicating that the president was undermining the free press, among other things.

Crenshaw was ready for that discussion. “Obama indicted — had many press members under investigation,” he pointed out. “Trump has not. So what is the difference here?”

Neguse replied: “Just last week, one of the largest media publications in the United States had to go to a federal court in order to essentially regain access to the press room.”

Crenshaw corrected the Democrat. “That was one reporter — not the whole organization.”

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

What the Prescription Drug Debate Gets Wrong Price controls on pharmaceuticals might save Americans money in the short term—but at the potential cost of millions of lives. John Tierney

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.city-journal.org/price-controls-on-pharmaceuticals

The American pharmaceutical industry is the most innovative in the world and saves more lives than any other institution. So, of course, it is also the national villain.

In this autumn’s election, once again, voters say that one of the top issues—the top issue, in some polls—is lowering the price of prescription drugs. Politicians of both parties ritually denounce Big Pharma for profiteering. In his first press conference as president, Donald Trump accused drug companies of “getting away with murder,” and Bernie Sanders has called the industry’s greed a “public-health hazard to the American people.” A central plank in the “Better Deal” that Democrats are promising in the midterm elections is for the federal government to “negotiate” drug prices, and some progressives don’t even make that semantical pretense. They call for outright price controls, if not the “deprivatization” of the industry, on the grounds that Big Pharma is too powerful to be constrained by market forces.

At one level, this is just political opportunism. Big Pharma is easy to resent because its products are so essential, and it’s easy to attack because it’s actually not so big. Of every dollar that Americans spend on health, only a dime goes for prescription drugs. The lion’s share of health spending goes to hospitals and people in the health-care professions, whose relatively high fees and salaries are largely responsible for Americans bearing the world’s highest health-care costs. But how many politicians want to go after doctors and nurses? What Democrat would dare arouse the ire of the health-care unions? Much easier to scapegoat the greedy drug companies.

The critics do get one thing right: the pharmaceutical industry is no paragon of free-market capitalism. Companies spend much of their time appeasing regulators instead of satisfying customers. The bureaucratic delays and complexities discourage innovation and competition, allowing some firms to profit by gaming the rules rather than developing new drugs. The system is so opaque and convoluted that both parties agree that it needs to be reformed.

For Democrats, the answer is a system modeled on Canada and European countries with nationalized health systems that use their monopoly power to dictate which drugs are available at what price. On average, Americans spend more money on prescription drugs than people do in those other countries, a favorite talking point for Democrats advocating price controls and “Medicare for All.” As a candidate, Trump endorsed the big-government approach to controlling prices, and, as president, he has personally bullied pharmaceutical executives into rolling back some prices. But so far, thanks to some smart appointments, his administration is pursuing more sensible reforms. Instead of joining the march toward nationalized health care, it is focused on reviving market competition.

These reforms are moving forward at a remarkably brisk pace (for Washington), but there’s always the danger that Trump’s populist instincts and a resurgent Democratic Party could prevail. Politicians of both parties know how popular Democratic ideas on drugs are—and how unpopular Big Pharma is. Public-opinion polls by the Kaiser Family Foundation show that most Republicans as well as Democrats support tighter regulation of prescription-drug prices. Three-quarters of Americans favor outright price controls on some drugs, and more than 90 percent want the federal government to “negotiate” lower prices across the board.

Continue reading →
IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Forbes Mag: Illegal Immigrants Cost Taxpayers $18.5 Billion/Yr. In Health Care Costs by Warner Todd Huston

By on November 19th, 2018

https://lidblog.com/illega
Illegal immigrants cost the U.S. billions a year in health care costs that the illegals never pay for, a Forbes Mag. report says. And that is even though federal law supposedly prohibits this spending.

Federal law claims that no federal dollars can go to pay for health care for illegals. Unfortunately, this is a smoke screen because literally BILLIONS of our tax dollars go to fund medical care for illegals anyway.

Forbes magazine’s Chris Conover recent ran the numbers and came up with at least $18.5 billion of our tax dollars wasted on health care for illegal immigrants.

Connor noted:

“rough estimates suggest that the nation’s 3.9 million uninsured immigrants who are unauthorized likely receive about $4.6 billion in health services paid for by federal taxes, $2.8 billion in health services financed by state and local taxpayers, another $3.0 bankrolled through “cost-shifting” i.e., higher payments by insured patients to cover hospital uncompensated care losses, and roughly $1.5 billion in physician charity care. In addition to these amounts, unauthorized immigrants likely benefit from at least $0.9 billion in implicit federal subsidies due to the tax exemption for nonprofit hospitals and another $5.7 billion in tax expenditures from the employer tax exclusion.”

“All told, Americans cross-subsidize health care for unauthorized immigrants to the tune of $18.5 billion a year,” Connor said adding, “federal taxpayers provided $11.2 billion in subsidized care to unauthorized immigrants in 2016.”

Connor went on to describe how federal law is meant to prohibit the use of U.S. tax dollars to fund medical care for illegals. But all those laws are bent into pretzels as our taxes go to support precisely what it is supposed to leave unpaid.

“Specifically, in 2013 (the latest available such figures), America’s uninsured generated $84.9 billion in uncompensated care costs,” Connor wrote.

Of those costs:

39% was covered by various federal programs (e.g., disproportionate share payments to hospitals);
23% by state and local governments (e.g., via taxpayer support of state and locally owned hospitals);
12% came in the form of physician charity care covered;
25%–was covered by hospitals (arguably by “cost-shifting,” i.e., higher charges to privately insured patients that effectively cross-subsidize care for patients who do not pay full freight, etc.). An unknown fraction of this stems from EMTALA–the Emergency Treatment and Active Labor Act–a federal law that requires hospitals to treat emergency patients regardless of their ability to pay. EMTALA is an example of “taxation by regulation” insofar as the same outcome might have been achieved by using tax dollars to pay hospitals to treat such patients voluntarily.

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

Who Gains from the US Withdrawal from the Nuclear Arms Treaty? by Stephen Blank and Peter Huessy

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13296/nuclear-inf-treaty-withdrawal

Russia has violated not only the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), but, according to former senior White House nuclear arms official Frank Miller, every major arms-control agreement it has signed with the United States.

The same kind of deception has been characteristic of China.

The truth is that there is no INF arms-control regime to be saved. It is senseless to pine for a treaty that only one power — the United States — observes. Self-abnegation here only enables others to shoot first and make threats that the US cannot answer.

The US renunciation of the 1987 United States-Soviet Union Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) has generated much skepticism in the arms-control community — particularly in much of Europe, and from Japan.

These countries hoped not only to keep Russia and the United States in the 1987 treaty (despite Russia’s major violations of the INF treaty), but persuade China to become a party to the treaty and thus be forced to eliminate the hundreds of INF-range missiles China has deployed in Asia and ranged against US and its allied interests.

Critics have presented the following five main arguments against the US move:

It enables Russia to build as many INF missiles as it likes, while simultaneously allowing Moscow to blame Washington for reneging on the treaty.

It imperils the entire structure of arms control, including the possible 2021 extension of the United States-Russia 2010 New START Treaty.

It would require extensive consultation with Europe or risk undermining allied cohesion and offering Moscow new targets in its campaign of political warfare against the NATO alliance.

It is unnecessary — despite Russian violations — because the US has adequate conventional air-launched and sea-launched cruise missiles to keep Russia at risk and defend Europe, and presumably America’s Pacific allies, against China.

It concedes a strategic advantage to Russia, since no INF-equivalent missile is in production by the United States to match Russian INF missile deployments.

These arguments, however, do not hold up to scrutiny.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Palestinians Arresting Women; Where are the Media? by Bassam Tawil

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13313/palestinians-arresting-women

Mahmoud Abbas does not want his people and the rest of the world to know that his security forces are arresting women for criticizing a social security law or providing financial aid to Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip.

Unlike Jbara and Marab’eh, Ahed Tamimi was lucky to be arrested by Israel. Had she been arrested by the Palestinian Authority, no one would ever have known.

This attitude is another example of the anti-Israel bias of the international media and community. It is yet another example of how the West gives the Palestinians a pass to violate human rights and crack down on dissent.

Last August, the Palestinian Authority (PA) protested because Israel arrested a Palestinian woman from Hebron on charges of incitement and affiliation with Hamas. The 42-year-old woman, Lama Khater, is also known as a strong critic of the President Mahmoud Abbas and his Palestinian Authority.

Khater’s scathing attacks on Abbas and his government, however, did not stop the Palestinian Authority from condemning Israel and demanding her immediate release.

This was not the first time that the Palestinian Authority has condemned Israel for arresting a Palestinian woman who voiced criticism of Abbas and his policies. Last year, the Palestinian Authority condemned Israel for arresting Khaleda Jarrar, a senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, one of several PLO terrorist groups. Jarrar was arrested by Israel for membership in a terrorist group and incitement.

Continue reading →
IMMIGRATION, POLITICS Comments turned off

Kamala Harris’ Tirade Against ICE Compares perceptions of ICE to fears of the KKK. Joseph Klein

By on November 19th, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271988/kamala-harris-tirade-against-ice-joseph-klein

Democrat Senator Kamala Harris of California, a former prosecutor and attorney general no less, tweeted last year: “An undocumented immigrant is not a criminal.” She is wrong. Any alien who enters or attempts to enter the United States at any time or place other than as designated by immigration officers has committed an illegal act that carries criminal as well as civil penalties. It is no wonder that Senator Harris, who is considering a run for president in 2020, thinks that enforcement of U.S. immigration laws to ensure the security of the American people is somehow racist. Senator Harris displayed her utter contempt for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) during a congressional hearing last week. She used a confirmation hearing for President Trump’s nominee to head ICE, its current acting director Ronald Vitiello, to place ICE on the same level as the Ku Klux Klan.

Senator Harris began her exercise in moral equivalence by asking Mr. Vitiello about a joke he had made three years ago referring to the Democratic Party, with its pro-segregationist past, as “neo-Klan.” Mr. Vitiello said in response that his joke had been inappropriate. When Senator Harris asked Mr. Vitiello to explain why he thought so, Mr. Vitiello replied that the KKK was “a domestic terrorist group” which “tried to use fear and force to change the political environment” based on “race and ethnicity.” However, Senator Harris was not just looking for an apology. In a display of crass sophistry, she tried to create a false comparison. She badgered Mr. Vitiello with questions seeking to equate the legitimate fears and anxieties stirred in minority communities by the KKK, an abhorrent hate group that peddles in racism, with illegal aliens’ fears of being apprehended by a government agency fulfilling its obligation to enforce the nation’s immigration laws. In Senator Harris’s mind, clearly identifiable government officers following the law in stopping and detaining people who are not supposed to be in this country in the first place are as much to be legitimately feared as white-robed Klansmen with a history of lynching and shooting African-Americans, burning crosses, and firebombing African-American churches.

As Fox News Channel’s Jeanine Pirro said in her brilliant “Opening Statement” segment last Saturday night, which she addressed to Senator Harris: “What you are doing is planting seeds of fear, resistance and resentment against ICE among people who have no right to come here, who have already broken our laws to get here.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

There Is No ‘Surge’ in White Supremacy By Julie Kelly

By on November 19th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/19/there-is-no-surge

This has been a particularly violent year for Republicans across the country. Candidates were assaulted and Republican campaign offices were vandalized. U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and his wife were chased out of a restaurant; Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and his family were harassed by Democratic activists and reporters up until Election Day. Trump Administration officials were publicly intimidated and humiliated, and a leading Democratic congresswoman called for more aggression against Trump aides.

Republican senators were verbally accosted in elevators and on the streets of Capitol Hill during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation process; a female Republican senator received death threats and a suspicious package at her home after she voted to confirm his appointment. Of course, this is all on top of the mass murder attempt against several Republican congressmen that nearly killed a top House lawmaker in the summer of 2017.

One would assume that any post-election analysis by a self-styled “conservative” about the menacing atmosphere on the Left would harshly condemn the incoming Democratic House majority for condoning such destructive behavior, and warn Democrats to clean up their act for the sake of the country. That sort of tongue-lashing by a leading outlet on the Right is not just appropriate, but essential.

But David French at National Review has other post-election targets in mind—namely, the imaginary cabal of white supremacists taking over the Republican Party.

Outlandish Claims, Distorted Evidence
French’s November 15 column, “The White-Supremacy Surge,” is more cowbell to amplify the media’s nonstop drumbeat that Donald Trump and his supporters are bigots, anti-Semites, and neo-Nazis. (A despicable Washington Post column over the weekend suggested that massacres and death squads might be in the offing because of Trump.)

Sadly, French’s incendiary analysis wasn’t far from that Post screed. It is a literary junk drawer of anecdotal evidence and conjecture scattered with overworn insults about Trump supporters.

In an attempt to boost his inaccurate claim that white supremacy is surging, French cited a sketchy study while overlooking exculpatory data in the very same report, and he mentioned random racial crimes that are vile but no indicator of a coordinated white supremacist movement. “Trump’s words have emboldened white supremacists,” French outlandishly declared, again without evidence.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The Progressive Synopticon By Victor Davis Hanson

By on November 19th, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/18/the-progressive-synoptic

In the post-election aftermath, Republicans are wondering about how they can capture that missing 2-5 percent of the electorate that lost them the House of Representatives.

Could they pry away 40 percent of the institutionalized Democratic Latino vote on delivery of a full-employment economy of rising wages? Can they win over 20 percent of the African-American electorate on the basis of more jobs and less competition from illegal immigrants?

Can Trump tone down his ad hominem invective and tweeting to reassure an additional 10 percent of independent and middle-class suburban women that his national security agenda, free-market prosperity, traditionalism, law-and-order, and national sovereignty policies ensure greater tranquility, safety, and opportunity—even if they are not packaged in the manner of his more mellifluous and vacuous “presidential” predecessor?

No Escaping the Culture Wars
Republicans, in deer-in-the-headlights-style, appear shocked that they are increasingly prone to winning the vote on Election Day only to lose it in the ensuing weeks when absentee ballots and what-not filter in with astounding Democratic majorities. Someone is spending a lot of money to get the absentee voting ballot out, correctly marked, and returned. And whatever that “lot” is, it is killing Republican candidates.

Yet there is a larger obstacle to achieving that long-term 51 percent Trump solution along with the shorter-term strategy of matching Democratic absentee ballots with Republican absentee ballots. Conservatives have lost entirely the culture and establishment wars. The result is that they are besieged by a circle of hostile progressive, but quite establishment institutions that are relentless.

Imagine the traditionalist as living in synopticon—a suspect that is the target of 24/7 viewing, indoctrination, and conditioning by progressive auditors. In other words, a 40-45 percent minority of Americans is relentlessly lectured, sermonized, demonized, and neutered by a 360- degree ring of prying institutional overseers.

There is no escape. There is no respite. There is no quarter given.

Continue reading →