WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Europe’s Growth Problem in Italian The mandarins of Brussels pick the wrong fight with Rome.

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-growth-problem-in-italian-1540336936

There’s little new in the budget battle roiling Rome—but when did that ever stop the European Commission? The mandarins of Brussels on Tuesday issued an unprecedented demand that Italy rewrite its bad budget in line with Brussels’ bad fiscal principles. The tangle contributed to a selloff in global equities.

The Commission wants Rome to deliver a budget deficit equal to no more than 0.8% of GDP next year, a commitment made by the previous Italian government. In theory that discipline should matter to an Italian government whose debt is more than 130% of GDP. But elections have consequences, and one result of the winning coalition of the right-wing League and vaguely left-wing 5-Star Movement is a new budget with a deficit of 2.4% of GDP annually for the next few years.

Other European governments and their taxpayers—and investors—have cause to be wary about parts of the Italian plan. Tens of billions of euros in new spending are slated for welfare handouts and public works that Italy can’t deliver without waste and corruption. None of this will boost economic growth, potentially leaving other eurozone countries to bail out an insolvent Italian state down the road.

POLITICS Comments turned off

Battle of the Statehouses The policy stakes are wider than ever with Democrats set to gain.

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/battle-of-the-statehouses-1540336650

While the battle for Congress is the main event this election, the fight for control of 36 governorships may be as consequential for American politics. Opposition to Barack Obama’s policies galvanized conservatives during the 2010 midterms and ushered in GOP control of statehouses from Arkansas to Wisconsin. In 2010 Republicans held majorities in 15 legislatures and 24 governorships. Today the GOP controls 32 legislatures and 33 governorships.

The result has been a remarkable record of reform and economic revival in many states. Eight years of conservative governance have bolstered state budgets and economies. (See the nearby chart on job growth.) But this year Democrats are riding anti-Donald Trump sentiment in a bid to sweep most of the big state governorships and many legislative chambers and move in a far different policy direction. The stakes are worth highlighting.

Start with tax reform. In 2011 Michigan Republicans replaced the state’s onerous business tax with a flat 6% corporate rate while eliminating myriad carve-outs. The Wolverine State has led the Great Lakes region in GDP growth over the last seven years as business investment has surged, prompting other states in the Midwest to cut taxes to compete.

Indiana Republicans slashed the state’s corporate rate to 5.75% from 8.5% in 2011 and plan to reduce it to 4.9% by 2022. Republicans in Ohio have cut the state income tax by 16% across the board and reduced the top marginal rate to 4.997% from 5.925%.

Iowa has long been the New Jersey of the Midwest with the nation’s highest corporate rate and a punishing 8.98% top income rate. Republicans this year made the Hawkeye State more competitive by putting the top income tax rate on a path to 6.5% by 2023. Over the next three years, the state’s 12% corporate rate is set to decline to 9.8%—assuming GOP Gov. Kim Reynolds isn’t defeated. Her Democratic opponent Fred Hubbell has warned President Trump’s trade brawls may compel him to hit pause on the tax cuts.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

Why I Turned Down Ivy League Acceptances And Don’t Regret It One Bit As affirmative action court cases and skyrocketing tuition rates reveal, today’s Ivy League institutions put their own biases ahead of their students’ advancement.By Adam Barsouk

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

http://thefederalist.com/2018/10/23/turned-ivy-league-acceptances-dont-regret-one-bit/

Adam Barsouk is a cancer researcher, medical student, and science, medicine, and policy author. His work has been featured in Fox News, Newsweek, The Daily Caller, Business Insider and Reason, among others.

With college application season in full swing, many applicants hope that getting into one of the nation’s highest-ranked universities means learning skills meant for the best and the brightest. They would be wrong. As affirmative action court cases and skyrocketing tuition rates reveal, today’s Ivy League institutions have unfortunately strayed from their sacred mission, putting their own biases ahead of their students’ advancement.

As a valedictorian with a perfect SAT score, I was accepted to several Ivy League schools. After careful consideration, I turned them down in favor of my state school, which saved me over $200,000. Today, as a medical student and researcher, I have no regrets.
Tuition Dollars Don’t Go Toward Education

This past year, Ivy League tuition costs have grown an average of 4percent, raising the average “sticker-price” cost of attendance to $70,000 a year. Most of this money is not actually spent on improving the quality of education. While the University of Pennsylvania raised its tuition by 4 percent, it increased its financial aid by 5.25 percent. In other words, in a wonky, catch-22 redistribution scheme, Penn raised the tuition for some in order to lower it for others.

As tuition goes up, the number of people paying the full cost actually goes down. Financial aid uses the tuition dollars of the well-off upper class (a quarter of the U.S. population) to cover the tuition of the poor.

Of course, society should strive to ensure equal opportunity for all. Merit scholarships do just that–they allow the brightest individuals to attend university regardless of their parents’ income. All the Ivy Leagues have abandoned merit scholarships in favor of financial aid. Financial aid rewards students not on their ability, but on their circumstance.

POLITICS Comments turned off

ELECTIONS ARE COMING: ARIZONA Martha McSally for Senate

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/martha-mcsally-for-senate/

Representative Martha McSally began her career in public service not as a politician but as a fighter pilot in the U.S. Air Force, serving in Iraq, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan. In 2001 she fought a Department of Defense policy that required women in combat to wear body coverings while serving in Saudi Arabia, and she has remained an outspoken critic of the woeful state of women’s rights in that part of the world ever since. Since taking office in 2015, McSally has been an exponent of center-right positions on foreign policy, immigration, and social issues. Now Arizonans have the opportunity to elect her to fill Jeff Flake’s soon-to-be-empty Senate seat.

McSally is facing Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema, and the contrast between their résumés is conspicuous. Sinema was a prominent anti-war activist in the 2000s, handing out material that criticized “U.S. terror” in the Middle East and appearing on radio shows with assorted crackpots. When one libertarian activist said that he ought to be permitted to join the Taliban if he so pleased, Sinema responded on air, “Fine. I don’t care if you want to do that, go ahead.” She passed out flyers that denounced President Bush as a “fascist” and an “imperialist” and once said the Bush administration was waging war for the purpose of expropriating oil.

That Sinema was once a left-wing activist is no secret. In the 2010s she said she had changed her mind about military intervention, and she has compiled a legitimately moderate voting record on many issues since taking office. She is one of a dwindling few Blue Dog Democrats and often votes with Republicans on issues pertaining to foreign policy and immigration. Coming to a new, more reasonable point of view shouldn’t be disqualifying; indeed, it is commendable if it is honestly accounted for and explained.

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

The White-Privilege Tedium By Victor Davis Hanson

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/10/white-privilege-debate-elizabeth-warren/

It’s not a coincidence that many of the loudest critics decrying white privilege are . . . privileged whites.

“I’m a white woman. . . . And my job is to shut other white people down when they want to interrupt. My job is to shut other white people down when they want to say, ‘Oh no I’m not prejudiced, I’m a Democrat, I’m accepting.’”
— Sally Boynton Brown, erstwhile candidate to head the Democratic National Committee

“These white men, old by the way, are not protecting women. They’re protecting a man who is probably guilty.”
— Joy Behar, cohost, The View

“Are white people genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins? . . . Oh man it’s kind of sick how much joy I get out of being cruel to old white men.”
— Sarah Jeong, newly appointed editorial board member, the New York Times

Why are current monotonous slogans like “white privilege” and “old white men” finally losing their currency?

Who exactly is “white” in a multiracial, intermarried, and integrated society? How do we determine who is a purported victim of racial bias — relative degrees of nonwhite skin color, DNA badges, an ethnicized last name, or nomenclature with two or three accent marks?

The reason that Arab-, Greek-, or Italian-Americans are more likely to be branded or to self-identify as “white” than Brazilian-, Argentinian, Spanish-, or Mexican-Americans doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with appearance or their DNA or their ancestors’ or their own historical experience in America. It has everything to do with the perversities of the devolving diversity industry in which claims to victimization bring greater careerist advantage or at least psychological satisfaction.

The recent farce involving Elizabeth Warren’s “ancestry” has not only probably aborted her presidential aspirations, but — along with the Asian-American lawsuit against Harvard’s admission practices — also reminded us of the growing corruption of race-based set-asides. Warren’s desperate gambit was simply a response to the new reality that minority status often has little relation with appearance. (Many Latinos — a term never adequately defined — look “whiter” than Italian Americans or Greek Americans who have been absorbed as “white” long ago.)

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Midterms: Sorry Democrats, voters reject your political correctness for good reason Glenn Harlan Reynolds

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/10/23/political-correctness-college-campuses-democrats-voters-midterms-progressive-activists-column/1726496002/
Democrats push for political correctness, Republicans mock them for it, and most Americans are uncomfortable with it. No one wins with PC culture.

Democrats are hoping to administer a tough midterm-election blow to the Republicans — akin to the “shellacking” President Barack Obama got from the Tea Party in 2010 — as a means of shutting down President Donald Trump. But it’s looking iffy now, post-Kavanaugh, and if they fail, they’ll have the politically correct culture that has moved from college campuses into the Democratic Party to blame.

As I wrote in these pages back before the 2016 election, opposition to PC culture was a major source of Trump’s appeal to voters. While most politicians, even Republican politicians, were afraid to challenge it head-on, Trump was unafraid, mocking the PC social justice warriors even on their own ground.

Since Trump’s election, the response among Democrats has been to double down. After all, if Trump’s against politically correct culture, then they have to be for it. But that puts them right where Trump wants them to be, because PC culture is highly unpopular.
Most Americans don’t want to be ‘woke’

Don’t just take my word for it. Here’s what a recent article in The Atlantic, with the title “Americans strongly dislike PC culture” says:

“Among the general population, a full 80 percent believe that ‘political correctness is a problem in our country.’ Even young people are uncomfortable with it, including 74 percent ages 24 to 29, and 79 percent under age 24. On this particular issue, the woke are in a clear minority across all ages. Youth isn’t a good proxy for support of political correctness — and it turns out race isn’t, either. Whites are ever so slightly less likely than average to believe that political correctness is a problem in the country: 79 percent of them share this sentiment. Instead, it is Asians (82 percent), Hispanics (87 percent) and American Indians (88 percent) who are most likely to oppose political correctness.

HOMELAND SECURITY Comments turned off

Chicago-Area Man Charged With Running Pro-ISIS Media Operation By Patrick Poole

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/homeland-security/chicago-area-man-charged-with-running-pro-isis-media-operation/

The Justice Department has charged a Chicago-area man, Ashraf al-Safoo, with conspiring to materially support ISIS, saying that he led a pro-ISIS media operation.

Al-Safoo, a 34-year-old native of Mosul, Iraq, moved to the U.S. in 2008 and later became a naturalized citizen.

He took orders directly from ISIS officials. Through social media, he spread propaganda on behalf of the terror group, helping ISIS to recruit and encouraging supporters to conduct terror attacks.

A Justice Department press release describes the extent of his online activity:

According to the complaint, Al Safoo is a member of Khattab Media Foundation, an internet-based organization that has sworn an oath of allegiance to ISIS and created and disseminated ISIS propaganda online. Al Safoo and other members of Khattab have created and posted pro-ISIS videos, articles, essays and infographics across multiple social media platforms, at the direction and in coordination with ISIS, the complaint states. Much of the propaganda created and distributed by Khattab promotes violent jihad on behalf of ISIS and ISIS’s media office, the complaint states.

On Nov. 4, 2017, according to the complaint, Al Safoo reposted in a social media application for Khattab members an encouragement for people to help ISIS in any way possible, including by offering money or themselves. Al Safoo wrote, “Thus, it was incumbent on us to support them verbally and with money and soul and by inciting others to target the tyrants and expose the evil scholars and the Saudi rulers,” the complaint states. On May 23, 2018, according to the complaint, Al Safoo posted on multiple social media groups directions and encouragement for Khattab’s ISIS propaganda efforts: “Brothers, roll up your sleeves! Cut video publications into small clips, take still shots, and post the hard work of your brothers in the apostate’s pages and sites. Participate in the war, and spread fear.” CONTINUE AT SITE

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Official School Records Support Claims That Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) Married Her Brother By David Steinberg

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/davidsteinberg/official-school-records-support-claims-that-rep-ilhan-omar-d-mn-married-her-brother/

Minnesota state Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-60B) currently leads the race to fill the federal House seat being vacated by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN). Immediately after being elected to her current seat in 2016, Omar faced allegations — soon backed by a remarkable amount of evidence — that she had married her own brother in 2009, and was still legally his wife. They officially divorced in December 2017.

The motivation for the marriage remains unclear. However, the totality of the evidence points to possible immigration fraud and student loan fraud.

Rep. Omar has stated that she did marry “British citizen” Ahmed Nur Said Elmi in 2009, though the allegation that he is her brother is “absurd and offensive.”

Below, exclusive new evidence — from official archived high school records and corroborating sources — strongly supports the claim that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi is indeed her brother.

As this implicates Rep. Omar in multiple state and federal felonies, I have contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota to submit all other information uncovered during our investigation.

———————

According to official student enrollment records archived by St. Paul Public Schools and the state of Minnesota, an “Ahmed N. Elmi” was enrolled as a senior in the Class of 2003 at Arlington Senior High School in St. Paul, MN, from September 6, 2002, until June 10, 2003. He graduated and received a diploma.

The enrollment record states that “Ahmed N. Elmi” was born on April 4, 1985.

Both Ilhan Omar’s 2009 marriage documents and her 2017 divorce proceedings state that Ahmed Nur Said Elmi was born on April 4, 1985. CONTINUE AT SITE

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Pueblo de los Santos By Pedro Gonzalez

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

https://amgreatness.com/2018/10/22/pueblo

Among the signs carried by the northbound invasion, one in particular stands out: “Pueblos Sin Fronteras.” This is the name of a group that organizes the so-called migrant caravans, but it also doubles as the raison d’être of the mob itself. They are not marching north to become good little capitalist “Americans,” much less citizens of the United States. In fact, they hate capitalism, bellowing socialist chants of: “We are international workers!”

They do not march because they look fondly upon our country, its institutions, its values, or its culture. And, no, they are not “fleeing” the violence and poverty of the pueblo. Rather, what they want is to bring the pueblo to us. They are convinced that it is their manifest destiny to do so.

Americans tend to think only we put stock in our destiny, and we don’t like to think of ourselves as conquerable—and certainly not already conquered. But if we cannot control our borders, let alone have a say in who may live among us, what might we call that condition?

Who Are the 14,000 and Counting?
As it has done in so many other Western nations, neo-Marxist education has stripped us of our ability even to conceive of anyone other than ourselves as conquerors (which, ironically, is rather condescending and paternalistic!). We learn to see only the evil in ourselves, and the “good” in everyone else—even those who would destroy our civilization. No people but us hateful and sinful Americans has the capacity to carry out something so incorrigible as “manifest destiny” anyway.

It is beyond the comprehension of our moral betters in the media, academia, entertainment, and government, that Third Worlders are even capable of doing harm—perennially “oppressed,” as we are assured they are, by white men in the midwest who have never even so much as seen the blood soaked streets of Guatemala on TV.

Yet here they come. As of Monday, they were 14,000-strong and screaming: “No one will stop us, only God.” And those Mexicans who we think only wish us well? They’re helping the invasion along, even joining it. Why wouldn’t they? Their president-elect told them that they have a “right” to violate our sovereignty. Moreover, “It’s solidarity,” Maria Teresa Orellana tells a journalist. Orellana handed out free sandals to the the swarm as it passed through her neighborhood. “They’re our brothers,” she said.

IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

The Impending Alien Invasion How the Left plays the “compassion card” for destructive ends. October Michael Cutler

Posted By on October 23rd, 2018

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/271692/impending-alien-invasion-michael-cutler

Headlines have been written proclaiming that a “caravan of migrants” is heading for the U.S./Mexican border. Sometimes the people who are heading north through Central America are referred to as “refugees” or “immigrants.”

Those terms are designed to downplay the threat that these individuals pose and assuage the fears that this may understandably engender in Americans. Words do matter.

In point of fact, the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) defines an alien simply as being, “Any person, not a citizen or national of the United States.”

There is no insult in the term “alien” or in its definition, but there is clarity. The obvious goal of the radical Left is to obfuscate the truth through Orwellian use of language that has been mis-portrayed as “political correctness.”

Shortly after President Trump was elected I wrote about this intentional misuse of language in my article, The Left’s Orwellian Tactics.

Remarkably, the radical Left had no problem using the term “alien” when they needed a word that began with the letter “A” for the DREAM Act, an acronym for Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors.

While we are on the topic of words, perhaps the term “invasion” should be substituted for “caravan.”

Invasion is defined, in part, as an incursion by a large number of people or things into a place or sphere of activity or an unwelcome intrusion into another’s domain.

It is therefore important to note that Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution provides:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic violence.