It All Fits Together If You Know Where To Look thumbnail

It All Fits Together If You Know Where To Look

By Mark Wallace

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

During the Gilded Age of 1865 to 1900 — a moniker coined by Mark Twain — the United States was on the gold standard, government regulation was slim to none, federal government deficits were nearly nonexistent and economic liberty was paramount.  Consumer price inflation was essentially nonexistent.  There was no central bank.  And one of the results of all this was that real wages grew by about 40 percent between 1860 and 1890.  The country prospered as never before.

Now we have a central bank, we are off the gold standard, we have millions of federal government employees, federal regulations are piled to the sky, and federal government debts and deficits are spiralling up out of sight.  And how has the average guy fared after all these changes?  Very poorly indeed — real wages per hour for production workers and nonsupervisory employees in February 1973 was $23.24.  In March 2019 it was — get ready for it — $23.24.  So what all these changes have yielded us is a 46 year period where real wages for the average guy haven’t risen at all.

Since 2019, wages have risen a little, but hardly a windfall (see title chart).

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It may seem a bit of a stretch to say that the abolition of the gold standard, federal government debts and annual budget deficits, the existence of a central bank, floods of illegal immigrants providing cheap labor, stagnant real wages, declining birth rates, and the multiplication of government regulations and government employees are all related, but that is the essential fact of the matter: they are indeed all related.

The story begins in the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration.  FDR greatly increased the power of labor through the National Labor Relations Act and other legislation. Unionization of the economy jumped from about 10 percent to about 30 percent.  Real wages for the average guy grew.  I grew up during the late 1950s and the 1960s.   On our block, there wasn’t one mom who had to go to work for economic reasons.  The dads were all able to maintain a middle-class lifestyle for their families on just one income.

Then came the Vietnam War.  Lyndon Johnson refused to raise taxes or cut expenditures to finance the war.  A compliant Federal Reserve was happy to print all the money necessary for war finance.  Economists warned LBJ that he was going to create consumer price inflation because that’s what classical economic theory dictated: print money to finance budget deficits and you’ll get inflation. But LBJ didn’t care.  The war was so unpopular that raising taxes to pay for it was quite obviously political suicide. Had a gold standard been in effect domestically, the federal government would have run out of money because although you can print greenbacks, you can’t print gold.

And so the inflation came.  It continued on and off (but mostly on) for about 15 years, reaching the torrid level of 14 percent by the end of the hapless Carter Administration in 1980.  Finally, the Federal Reserve said “enough is enough” and raised interest rates to around 20 percent beginning in the fall of 1979.  Interest rates this high crushed the economy and caused a major recession, but inflation was, in fact, brought down in a big way.

There was a problem, though.  The medicine of ultra-high interest rates couldn’t be continued indefinitely — it spelled permanent recession, perhaps even depression.  Now, classical economic theory tells us that, as Milton Friedman famously said, inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon.  Print a bunch of money to fund budget deficits, and you will get inflation.

Nevertheless, a strange thing happened during the early 1990s and thereafter, all the way down to the 2020 Covid pandemic.  The federal government continued to run huge budget deficits, the Fed financed these budget deficits with printed money, yet consumer price inflation remained tame.  Using the Social Security cost-of-living adjustments as a proxy for consumer price inflation, we find that inflation remained below 4 percent from 1991 all the way through 2020 (with the twin exceptions of 2005, when it was 4.1 percent, and 2008 when it was 5.8 percent).  Indeed, it remained below 2 percent in 1998, 2002, 2009-2010, 2012-2016 and 2019-2020.  Yet it is clear that the federal government continued to run huge budget deficits in all these years, with nary a single exception.

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So how was this possible?  Is classical economics wrong?  Was Milton Friedman wrong?

No, classical economics remains correct, and Milton Friedman continues to be right.  The answer to this mystery is to be found in the suppression of wages and salaries of average Americans.  Keep the average American pinned to the mat economically, and the federal government can continue to run huge budget deficits with full financing from a compliant Federal Reserve for year after year.

Average Americans spend money differently than moguls.  Let’s run a thought experiment.  Imagine you have $1 billion and you have two choices:  (1) give $1,000 to one million average Americans, or (2) give the entire $1 billion to Bill Gates.  What are the different economic effects?  Average Americans are likely to spend their windfall in the consumer economy, buying big screen TVs, taking a vacation, dining out more often, etc.  How about Bill Gates?  Is he going to buy a big screen TV?  Not likely, he probably already owns as many big screen TVs as he cares to own.  No, Mr. Gates will probably invest the $1 billion in some fashion.  Now, there will be some leakage on either side:  some average Joes will save/invest all or a portion of their windfall, and Mr. Gates may put the money to work in one of his charitable causes where some will be spent in the consumer economy.  But you get the picture nonetheless:  Americans in the bottom 90 percent are more likely to spend their earnings in the consumer economy than those in the top 10 percent.

So how are average Americans kept pinned to the mat economically?  Answer:  by importing huge numbers of peons (otherwise known as illegal aliens), thereby reducing wages under the law of supply and demand; by exporting our good manufacturing jobs to China and India; by crippling small businesses with stifling government regulations (note here that big business can amortize the cost of compliance over hundreds or thousands of stores, so the cost of compliance, being lower on a per store basis, enables them to outcompete small business); by creating a large class of government apparatchiks who write these regulations and can be depended upon to support and vote for the Deep State.  When times get tough, birthrates decline because people can’t afford having children.  This, in fact, happened during the Great Depression.  Wages then rise in response to a reduced work force.  But this defense of the working class has been stripped by importing illegal aliens to augment the workforce. 

Politicians of all stripes love this arrangement, because it allows them to continue to spend like drunken sailors (apologies to all drunken sailors who are not this reckless), to finance their pet projects and to pass out government largesse to buy votes.  The whole rotten structure would immediately collapse if we ever returned to the gold standard because then it would be impossible to print money to fund the budget deficits.

It’s highly speculative, but there may be light at the end of the tunnel for the United States. If Trump is successful and real wages for average Americans rise because (1) expelling millions of illegals will put upward pressure on wages and salaries, and (2) high tariffs bring good manufacturing jobs back to the United States from China and India, the normal inflationary effect of such an increase in real wages may be offset by the contractionary effects of (1) firing millions of worse-than-useless government bureaucrats and (2) getting rid of one wasteful government project after another (less government spending in other words).

An important side effect of eliminating economy-crippling government regulations will be a huge boost to gross domestic product. Instead of wasting their time dealing with government apparatchiks like those who killed P’Nut, people can focus their efforts on good, solid work.

Admittedly, it’s a lot to hope for, but perhaps the surge in productivity and the boost to GDP will provide enough cushioning for the United States to return to a balanced budget, to begin paying off the national debt, to abolish the Federal Reserve and to return to the gold standard.  If the United States is able to return to the gold standard, the U.S. dollar will remain the world’s reserve currency not just for decades but, in all probability, for centuries. 

*****

Image credit: American Enterprise Institute,  other chart Statistica

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Trump’s FCC Must Smash Corporate Media’s ‘Censorship Cartel’ thumbnail

Trump’s FCC Must Smash Corporate Media’s ‘Censorship Cartel’

By M.D. Kittle

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

FCC chairman nominee Brendan Carr sounds like he means business in his vows to ‘reinvigorate’ broadcast TV and ‘smash the censorship cartel.’

Remember that time corporate media used its waning influence to interfere in a presidential election?  Yes, that did just happen.

But the leftists in charge of ABC News, CBS News, the Washington Post, and other major players in the accomplice media want you to forget about all of that. Move on. Pretend that they are legitimate and objective news sources, not the collective mouthpiece of the Democrat Party that they really are. 

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The folks at the Center for American Rights (CAR) don’t intend to let them forget.

The Chicago-based public interest law firm, “dedicated to protecting Americans’ most fundamental, constitutional rights,” has filed complaints with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Federal Election Commission asserting that the news outlets have violated broadcast and election law — and the public’s trust. And some important people are paying attention, too, including President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FCC.

‘A Hit-Job on Trump’

Following September’s presidential debate in which ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis stacked the deck for Democrat Vice President Kamala Harris while repeatedly “fact-checking” Trump, the center filed complaints alleging “clear sponsor favoritism.” ABC failed to uphold standards of fairness governing use of the public’s airwaves, the complaint contends.

“Slanting the debate could influence public opinion in ways that undermine democratic processes, which is why the FCC’s standards for candidates’ use of the airwaves are built on neutrality and fairness,” the law firm asserts in a press release.

ABC also violated federal campaign finance rules against corporate influence in elections, the complaint alleges. In essence, the network gave a very lucrative contribution to the Harris campaign through its biased debate without recording the in-kind expenditure.

“To avoid an illegal corporate contribution, a debate must provide ‘fair and impartial treatment of candidates.’ The debate was anything but ‘fair and impartial’ — it was designed and delivered as a hit-job on Trump, and thus was a campaign contribution to Harris,” the center states.

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‘Manipulate the News’

Days later, the law firm filed an FCC complaint against WCBS-TV, a CBS-owned station, for engaging in “significant and intentional news distortion” involving “60 Minutes’” infamous cut-and-splice interview with Harris. CBS viewers got two different answers in response to a foreign policy question: the standard Kamala Harris word salad garble in a promotional story on the Sunday morning “Face the Nation” and then a cleaned-up, more lucid response that aired on that evening’s “60 Minutes” broadcast. The center demanded CBC release the full, unedited transcript of the interview, which the network has to date refused to do. 

“I’m curious to see when their lawyers finally do submit their briefs, how are they going to explain to the [FCC], and really to the American people, that they have a right to hide key evidence on whether or not they’ve been actively manipulating the news,” Daniel Suhr, president of the Center for American Rights told me on the “Simon Conway Show” in Des Moines. “And just because the election is over, it doesn’t mean that this problem is going away.”

‘I’ve Got News for Them’ 

Then, less than a week before the election, the center filed an FEC complaint against The Washington Post related to the newspaper’s social media blitz pushing its Trump attack pieces. Apparently nothing on Harris. The barrage followed news that WaPo billionaire owner Jeff Bezos had decided the news outlet would stay out of the presidential endorsement business in the election. Not only did the Post’s leftist newsroom go apoplectic, the publication’s liberal reader base fled in droves.

While the Post is afforded a great deal of latitude under the freedom of the press umbrella, it’s one-sided Facebook campaign pushing anti-Trump stories runs afoul of the FEC’s campaign finance rules, according to the complaint.

“If you spend money on social media attacking a candidate in the days before an election, that’s campaign advocacy,” Suhr told me in the radio interview. “And the Washington Post seems to think that because it’s a media organization that somehow it’s special. I’ve got news for them, that’s not the case. The First Amendment protects you, it protects me, and it protects the Washington Post on an equal basis. And the same is true with the federal campaign finance law, which applies to us on an equal basis.”

And just a day before the election, the law firm filed an FCC complaint against WNBC, NBC’s flagship station, alleging a “willful violation of equal time.” The complaint was in response to Saturday Night Live’s horrendous opening skit featuring Harris, in effect a “free commercial promoting one candidate the weekend before the presidential election.”

Taking heat, NBC ran Trump campaign ads the next day during NASCAR coverage and at the end of Sunday Night Football reportedly in an attempt to fill the equal time gap.

‘Smash this Censorship Cartel’

Corporate media’s political games are not sitting well with members of the FCC, particularly the man likely to lead it.

A day before the election, FCC Republican member Nathan Simington on his X account urged the networks to “take these credible allegations seriously.”

Brendan Carr, top Republican on the commission and Trump’s selection for FCC chairman, has called on CBS to release the unedited transcript of the “60 Minutes” interview with Harris. 

“I don’t think this needs to be a federal case because I think CBS should release it … then that would inoculate, entirely, CBS from that FCC complaint,” Carr told Fox Business in October.

More recently, Carr said the FCC could weigh the “60 Minutes” complaint in the agency’s review of liberal Skydance Media’s bid to acquire CBS parent Paramount Global. It’s a behemoth deal with a lot of tentacles, but the FCC does have to sign off on the transfer of CBS-owned stations, as TVTech recently reported.

Following the election, Carr told Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” that the status quo in the so-called legacy media has to change.

“Jeff Bezos just recently did an op-ed where he said that Americans don’t trust the news media. He said now they’re the least trusted of all. And I think he’s speaking a lot of truth there,” Carr said, adding that there’s much the FCC can do on that front.

“Broadcasters are differently situated than other speakers. They get free access to a valuable public resource, the airwaves. And they’re licensed by the FCC. And the exchange for that is they have to serve the public interest. I think it’s important that we take another look at that, and we reinvigorate it.”

Corporate media and fellow leftist outlets are shivering in their Birkenstocks over Carr’s planned review of broadcast television, and just how he’d like to reinvigorate it. In short, they see their dominance of the political narrative in America threatened by a force beyond the weight of their own arrogance and greed.

Carr this week sent a powerful message to social media giants that have played fast and loose with “disinformation,” vowing to break up the “censorship cartel.”

“I think Americans have been seeing an unprecedented surge in censorship, particularly over the last couple of years,” Carr said on NewsNation’s “Cuomo.” “It’s going to be one of my top priorities, is trying to smash this censorship cartel.”

Trump’s nominee has been highly critical of tech titans Alphabet, Google, Meta, and Microsoft and their partnerships with phony “fact-checker” NewsGuard, a federally funded company that, as my colleague Joy Pullmann reports, “works to eliminate readership and revenue for outlets that report information that contradicts Democrat narratives.” The Federalist, The Daily Wire, and the state of Texas have joined forces in suing the State Department for pumping counterterrorism cash into NewsGuard’s censorship tools, directly targeting The Federalist and The Daily Wire, among others.

‘Equality Principle’

Holding corporate media accountable for the politics they played in the most recent election is a good place to start for Trump’s FCC and FEC.

Suhr, of the American Rights Center, says much has changed since the founding of the republic when the press was literally a machine that pressed letters down on a broad sheet. The forms of communication were limited in 1787, so “the press” was protected as it was known.

“And somehow in the 1960s and ‘70s we got this idea that the press, as that phrase is used in the First Amendment, refers to this super special little clique of full-time journalists and major media outlets and that they get special First Amendment protection that the rest of us don’t get because they’re the press. And that’s just not true. It’s not true historically. It’s not true legally,” Suhr said. “And I think the Supreme Court as recently as 2010 in Citizens United made very clear there is an equality principle inherent in the First amendment that every speaker has the same rights, and every idea has the same rights, under the First Amendment.’

“So we need to stop this fiction that major mainstream legacy news media are special and instead start applying the law, including campaign finance law, to them as well as everybody else,” he added.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: YouTube Screenshot ABC Presidential Debate

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Tough Diplomacy, Not Invasion, Is the Way Forward With Iran thumbnail

Tough Diplomacy, Not Invasion, Is the Way Forward With Iran

By Mike Fredenburg

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Taking on the Islamic Republic militarily would be an enormous undertaking.

Back in September, Israel successfully destroyed a bunker buried 60 feet underground, killing virtually all of Hezbollah’s senior leadership. Executing the operation involved about a dozen F-15s, each carrying six 2000-pound GBU-31v(3) joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs) bunker-buster bombs. First the residential high rises over the underground bunker were systematically destroyed. Then a brilliantly planned operation was executed, involving dropping dozens of bunker-busters in a precisely timed pattern that eventually blasted through 20 yards of soil and rock to destroy the bunker. Only a few militaries in the world could have executed such an intricate and complex operation.

The point of the above description is not to praise Israeli military competence, but to show just how hard it is to destroy a bunker. This sheds concerning light on analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security that finds that two of Iran’s most important nuclear weapons facilities buried under at least 80 to 145 meters of rock (262 to 475 feet), with further protection from reinforced concrete that is very resistant to penetration and the ground shockwave produced by a bunker buster’s explosives. This makes taking them out problematic; the world’s most powerful conventional bunker buster, the United States’ 30,000-pound GBU-57 bunker buster can penetrate only about 40 meters of moderately hard rock.

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Still, multiple precision strikes by massive ordnance penetrators delivered by our B-2 stealth bombers could almost certainly severely damage or destroy Iran’s less deeply buried facilities. Even the more deeply buried facilities could be crippled by collapsing their main entrances, although such facilities almost certainly have backup entrances that would allow them to continue with some level of function.

But even if our B-2s can evade Iran’s Russia-supplied anti-stealth radars and deliver enough GBU-57s to damage or destroy all the known facilities involved with nuclear weapons production and delivery, we still don’t really, truly know how much weapons-grade enriched uranium or plutonium—which can be quickly made into implosion-type fission bombs—the Islamic Republic has been able to acquire and hide away in secret locations.

This all adds up to great uncertainty around the idea that simply applying American airpower can stop Iran from getting the bomb. If not airpower, then what?

Well, there is always diplomacy. But given that Iran’s primary leader, the Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, is filled with ideological zeal and hostility towards the West, it is hard to imagine a deal in which Iran would give up having nuclear weapons in its back pocket as the ultimate deterrent to being held accountable for being the world’s number one sponsor of terror.

This would seem to direct us to an unpleasant option—invasion and the defeat of Iran’s military, followed by scouring the country to remove every bit of equipment and material related to nuclear weapons production. Subsequent to the conquest, an agreement could be put in place that would set limits on Iran’s military, prohibit nuclear weapon development, mandate unrestricted inspection of nuclear power plants, and forbid the Iranian government from sponsoring terrorism under threat of immediate and overwhelming military force.

This rosy scenario may sound great, but talking about invading a heavily armed country with a population of 91 million that encompasses 636,000 square miles is much, much easier than executing such an invasion. Some analysts believe it would take 1.6 million troops and countless thousands of casualties to defeat and occupy Iran. Others note that Iran is one of the world leaders in producing the kind of drones that have proven so deadly in Ukraine and that the country has both ballistic and cruise missiles that pose a much greater threat to U.S. warships than even those successfully used by the Houthis to date.

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One could look back at all the dire predictions of mass casualties that U.S. and coalition forces were predicted to incur prior to both Operation Desert Storm and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Those never occurred, and it might be tempting to think that current dire predictions about taking on Iran are similarly flawed.

Yet there are some important differences between today and the early 90s and early 2000s. First, our depleted, DEI-weakened military is not nearly so powerful as it was heading into those conflicts. Second, putting together a coalition like we had back then is highly unlikely. Third, Iran’s large military is more technically sophisticated than Iraq’s ever was. Fourth, because we are waging a dangerous proxy war with Russia that has been responsible for killing many thousands of Russia’s young men, it would be foolish not to expect Russia to lend its considerable expertise and massive defense industrial base to help Iran deal casualties to U.S. forces in return. And finally, most analysts agree that Iran could in short order cobble together a number of fission bombs that would have a good chance of working even as it is defending itself from invasion.

This all adds up to making the invasion option a costly, unattractive and prohibitively risky option that a war-weary U.S. public will not support.

That brings us back to diplomacy and containment. While the chance to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power was fumbled by the Biden administration and may no longer be possible, it is still worth aggressively pursuing. And it is worth noting that the recently elected president of Iran, the cardiac surgeon and former health minister Masoud Pezeshkian, was the most moderate of the presidential candidates and has a history of advocating for more engagement with the West in order to obtain sanctions relief.

In parallel to the above efforts, the Trump administration will of course be working to expand the Abraham Accords to other Arab nations to further isolate Iran.

And finally, sometime in the not-too-distant future the elderly ayatollah will die, giving moderate Iranians an opportunity to decisively show they want to end the rule of anti-West radical Islamists and inaugurate a better, sanctions-free life for their children.

*****

This article was published by The American Conservative and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

‘A Very Special Day For All’: Trump Returns To World Stage, Joins Reopening Celebrations At Notre Dame Cathedral thumbnail

‘A Very Special Day For All’: Trump Returns To World Stage, Joins Reopening Celebrations At Notre Dame Cathedral

By The Daily Caller

President-elect Donald Trump embarked on his first foreign trip since his November 2024 electoral victory, joining Saturday’s reopening ceremonies for Paris’s famous Notre Dame Cathedral.

The weekend’s celebration, which drew an estimated 50 world leaders and high security, kicks off an octave of events marking the restoration of the famous twelfth-century Gothic church to its place in Catholic liturgical life and French tourism following a devastating April 15, 2019 fire. Firefighters stood helpless as the blaze — believed to have been accidentally ignited by an electrical failure or a lit cigarette — consumed the roof and spire of the UNESCO World Heritage SiteThwarting their efforts to douse the flames with water was a centuries’ old waterproofing technique involving covering the roof with a lead sheet.

NEW: Donald Trump and French president Emmanuel Macron meet up in France with multiple very intense handshakes.

The two men were seen handshaking before returning for another intense handshake.

The meeting comes during Trump’s visit to France for the reopening ceremony for the… pic.twitter.com/XBa9LOZvlX

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 7, 2024

Nearly $1 billion in pledges from 150 countries was raised within days of the devastation to launch the ambitious five-year rebuilding effort, itself a point of national pride. Approximately $148 million of the funds remained unspent as of November 2024, The Associated Press (AP) reported.

Notre Dame’s resurrection: Its chief architect on rebuilding France’s ‘heart’ in 5 years https://t.co/5JWh17VbIi

— The Associated Press (@AP) December 5, 2024

Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and French President Emmanuel Macron at Élysée Palace prior to departing for the events at Notre Dame.

President Zelenskyy arrives at Élysée Palace to meet with President Trump and President Macron 🇺🇸🇫🇷🇺🇦 pic.twitter.com/pOypNfYAFY

— Margo Martin (@margomartin) December 7, 2024

The reopening service was presided over by the archbishop of Paris, Laurent Ulrich, and observed by French government officials, world leaders, donors and representatives of Parisian clergy and laity, according to Notre Dame’s announcement of the ceremonies. During the rite of the opening of the cathedral’s doors, the archbishop struck the closed door with his liturgical staff — the crosier — crafted from charred remains of the roof, prompting attendees to respond with the thrice singing of Psalm 121:

How joyful it was when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’
Now our feet are standing within your gates, O Jerusalem!
Jerusalem, built as a city, that is bound firmly together.

Incredible evening in Notre Dame 🇫🇷 pic.twitter.com/kLz7xxz7cN

— Margo Martin (@margomartin) December 7, 2024

After the doors’ opening and before an address by Macron, those who responded to the 2019 fire and assisted with the restoration were honored. The archbishop then blessed the 8,000-pipe Great Organ of Notre Dame to symbolically end the silence imposed upon the cathedral. In addition to the singing of hymns, a series of prayers was offered for the world and in thanksgiving to God for the successful rebuilding effort. A star-studded concert was also scheduled for Saturday evening.

Following the events at Notre Dame, Trump met with William, the Prince of Wales, at the British ambassador’s residence in Paris.

The Prince of Wales met with President-elect Donald Trump tonight in Paris at the British ambassador’s residence.
They joined other world leaders at the reopening ceremony for Notre Dame cathedral pic.twitter.com/7mxtwoElu1

— Kate Mansey (@KateMansey) December 7, 2024

The inaugural Mass will occur Sunday with the consecration of the cathedral’s high altar. A “fraternal buffet” will then be offered “to welcome the most disadvantaged and those who support them daily.” Notre Dame expects to welcome 15 million visitors annually following the reopening, three million more than before the disaster, according to AP.

Trump announced his intention to join Notre Dame’s reopening celebration in a Truth Social post Monday.

“It is an honor to announce that I will be traveling to Paris, France, on Saturday to attend the re-opening of the Magnificent and Historic Notre Dame Cathedral, which has been fully restored after a devastating fire five years ago,” the president-elect wrote. “President Emmanuel Macron has done a wonderful job ensuring that Notre Dame has been restored to its full level of glory, and even more so. It will be a very special day for all!”

President Macron, whose government collapsed Wednesday, extended the invitation to attend to Trump, sources told Fox News. First lady Jill Biden, joined by her daughter, Ashley, attended as part of her final solo foreign trip which included stops in Italy, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. President Joe Biden was also invited but did not attend due to a “scheduling conflict,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday.

Trump spoke with Macron as well as Pope Francis in the aftermath of the “horrible and destructive fire” and “offered the help of our great experts on renovation and construction,” according to a pair of April 17, 2019 social media posts. He suggested the utilization of “water tankers” to stop the fire from above, a method a French civil agency which deals with disasters dismissed.

Just had a wonderful conversation with @Pontifex Francis offering condolences from the People of the United States for the horrible and destructive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral. I offered the help of our great experts on renovation and construction as I did….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 17, 2019

So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 15, 2019

#NotreDame @PompiersParis Le largage d’eau par avion sur ce type d’édifice pourrait en effet entraîner l’effondrement de l’intégralité de la structure.
Aux côtés des #sapeurspompiers qui font actuellement le maximum pour sauver #NotreDame.

— Sécurité Civile (@SecCivileFrance) April 15, 2019

Macron was the first U.S. ally to congratulate Trump on his successful bid to return to the White House, according to Politico.

Pope Francis, who suffered a facial injury Friday morning, did not attend Saturday’s service — attributed to a scheduling conflict — but sent a message acknowledging the occasion.

In the weeks following an assassination attempt at a July 13, 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump posted to social media at least three references to significant Catholic figures: one honoring Mary, the mother of Jesus, and another for martyred Polish priest Jerzy Popiełuszko; a famous prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, as well as an image honoring the Nov. 1 Solemnity of All Saints. Catholics subsequently expressed delight and speculated as to the motivation of the posts.

Happy Birthday Mary! pic.twitter.com/d1nwHWTk2b

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 9, 2024

Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about… pic.twitter.com/Z3RoeGUslh

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2024

Wishing everyone a Blessed and Happy All Saints’ Day! pic.twitter.com/5VlPkCJ7M5

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2024

Trump, speaking with “The World Over” host and Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo following the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York on Oct. 17, denied he was “telling voters something about [his] spiritual journey.”

“No, I don’t think so, it’s just beautiful to me,” Trump said. “I look at the whole thing: the words and the pictures — the pictures are so beautiful. Yeah, I put up some stuff … it’s really that I think it’s really beautiful.”

Catholics, an estimated 22% of the 2024 electorate, broke for Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris 58%-40%, according to a CNN exit poll. Among Latino Catholics, Trump secured a seven-point lead, 53%-46%. He performed better among white Catholics, whose support he drew 61%-35%, a 26-point lead.

Donald Trump didn’t just win white Catholics.

Donald Trump won Hispanic Catholics 53% to 46%. https://t.co/tWbJcTdMRJ

— CatholicVote (@CatholicVote) November 7, 2024

The reopening of Notre-Dame de Paris, which translates to “Our Lady of Paris,” coincides with the Dec. 8 Catholic feast of the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception which honors Mary, the mother of Jesus and serves as the patronal feast day for the United States. While Notre Dame honors Mary’s role in the Christian religion, Catholics do not worship her.

France was estimated to have a self-identifying Catholic population of 37.9 million, or 60% of the 2010 national population, 65 million, according to Pew Research. While that figure has significantly decreased with the rise in both secularism and Islam, the country seemingly retains some of its identity as “the eldest daughter of the Church.”

The Daily Caller reached out to Notre-Dame de Paris, the Archdiocese of Paris, the Apostolic Nunciature in the United States, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, the Embassy of France in the United States, and the Office of Melania Trump for comment but received no response before publication.

Editor’s note: This report has been updated with additional details surrounding the reopening of Notre Dame.

AUTHOR

Thomas Wong

Associate weekend editor.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The New Left’s Total Victory in 2024 thumbnail

The New Left’s Total Victory in 2024

By Ken Braun

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

Editors’ Note: The title of this excellent essay seems paradoxical. What victory? Well, the radical progressive ‘New Left’ really did capture the Democrat party in recent decades and their hold on the party led to a solid rejection of the woke, absurd and destructive ideology detached from reality by American voters with a strong mandate for Donald Trump to return to common sense, civil society and governance by We the People. Political clowns like Kamala Harris and AOC and their ilk indeed represent the New Left’s Total Victory in 2024. We should celebrate loudly the rejection of their victory by decent and liberty-loving Americans in a stunning defeat of the radical Left’s ideology.

So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot.

George Orwell

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According to exit polling from Blueprint, a firm built to assist Democratsthe Trump campaign’s decision this fall to hit Kamala Harris on her transgender agenda provided Trump a 25-percentage-point advantage with swing voters. And for the swing voters who ended up swinging to Trump, the gap was a thunderous 28 points.

Few issues swung voters harder against Harris. While Trump was the primary beneficiary, the triumph also belonged to the New Left.

In 2019 the American Civil Liberties Union sent volunteers to public forums to ask difficult questions of the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates. This was augmented by an ACLU candidate survey covering several woke concerns. Without this, Harris might never have so publicly pinned herself to such extreme positions as supporting taxpayer-funded transgender surgeries for federal inmates.

Race vs. Class

Like most of the supposedly left-leaning nonprofits, the ACLU has clearly been captured by New Left identity politics. But it wasn’t always so. In 1969, as the name implies, the public interest law firm was more likely to promote the civil liberties of Americans, including criminal defendants, labor union members, and communists. Instead of New Left, the ACLU was once decidedly old left, prioritizing the interests of workers, not the woke.

The New Left was still pretty “new” when the annual (and, as it transpired, final) convention of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) occurred in June 1969. A direct ideological/historical line connects that long ago dispute with the defeat of Kamala Harris in 2024.

The victorious faction in the 1969 SDS battlespace would soon morph into the domestic terrorist sect known as the Weather Underground. The Weather faction was New Left, aligned with what we now call “identity politics” or “woke-ism.” Their founding document, the “Weatherman Manifesto,” promoted an alliance with black communist revolutionaries, such as the Black Panthers, as the proper path to ousting capitalism and imperialism. They were militantly opposed to police, the Vietnam War, and the military. One of their role models was John Brown, the violent abolitionist and insurrectionist.

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Race trumped class as the animating force of the Weather Underground, and—if they were white—even Marx’s “workers of the world” could be the enemy. According to the Manifesto, “virtually all of the white working class also has short-range privileges from imperialism . . . which give them an edge of vested interest and tie them to a certain extent to the imperialists.”

The Weather agenda was opposed within SDS by the Progressive Labor (PL) Party, which considered the white working class as the natural allies of the revolutionary left.

The PL faction in 1969 was a communist revolutionary sect that was old left, committed to the “workers of the world, unite!” message. They were highly critical of the Weather faction’s fixation on race-based disputes. Then as now, the class-based Marxists believed identity politics was—at best—a distraction from the working-class issues and—at worst—an obsession that would actively alienate the white working class.

Remnants of the dispute still exist within the communist left today. In 2019, the Trotskyist World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) was one of the most strident and effective critics of the New York Times’1619 Project, a historically inept portrayal of the American founding as a triumph for slavery.

In one essay about the 1619 Project a pair of WSWS writers noted that the “historical slogan of the socialist movement is ‘Workers of the World, Unite!’ not ‘Races of the World, Divide!’” “The racial narrative is intended to replace one that is based on the analysis of objectively existing social and class interests,” they wrote. “The New York Times . . . has a very real political agenda, which is closely coordinated with the Democratic Party.”

Warnings

Not communist, but no less concerned with the Democratic Party’s discounting of the working class is Ruy Teixeira. A former staffer at the left-leaning Center for American Progress, he is the co-author of Where Have All the Democrats Gone?—a book that profiles the Democrats’ abandonment of the working class. At his Substack newsletter, The Liberal Patriot, he spent most of the last two years before the election warning Democrats to turn from the woke identity politics brainworm.

In 2022, he posted an analysis urging the Democrats to distance themselves from radical climate groups such as the Sierra Club, promoters of “defund the police,” and nonprofit advocates of other woke obsessions.

“Moreover, to the extent Democratic politicians want to move in a more moderate direction and get closer to the sweet spot of American public opinion, progressive organizations, as currently constituted stand in the way,” he wrote. “From cracking down on criminals and putting public safety first and foremost to securing the border and containing illegal immigration to pursuing a clean energy transition that includes an “all of the above” approach to meeting America’s current energy needs to keeping abortion safe, legal and rare but accepting some restrictions, particularly past the first trimester, progressive organizations persistently pressure Democratic politicians not to move in these directions that are clearly called for by public opinion and common sense.”

Democrats didn’t listen.

Political Autopsy

“Democrats have lost the plot in the view of more and more nonwhite, especially nonwhite working-class, voters,” wrote Teixeira, in a political autopsy following the 2024 vote. “How can they find it again? The obvious answer would be to sever the party’s connection to unpopular and unworkable social policies and re-establish a focus on the material welfare of working-class voters.”

That Teixeira had to write these obvious sentences even once, let alone over the course of years and in a whole book, demonstrates just how total the New Left victory has been. The Weather Underground once had to hide from the law, let alone respectable Democrats. Today, the woke New Left tells Democrats what the laws should be.

*****

This article was published by Capital Research and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Mike Benz: At Core Of Censorship Industry Is The Lie That Public “Faith And Confidence” In Institutions Is A National Security Issue thumbnail

Mike Benz: At Core Of Censorship Industry Is The Lie That Public “Faith And Confidence” In Institutions Is A National Security Issue

By Tim Hains

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes

“Foundation For Freedom Online” founder Mike Benz discusses Arizona State University’s federally funded “multi-million dollar censorship center” researching disinformation online during an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast.

“They’re saying the simple act of ‘diminishing public faith and confidence’ in the news media, government, and science is an attack on democracy,” Benz said. “The purpose of the program is to protect their assets. And legacy news media is one of those assets.”

“If you on social media undermine public faith in the New York Times as a credible institution, you are attacking democracy, and the white blood cells of the blob, these disinformation centers being run out of our NGOs and universities and for-profit private sector, censorship mercenary firms, will scan and ban you off the internet.”

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“The ghost of John McCain, the founder of the CIA side of the GOP… has been caught basically conflating anything that’s pro-Trump with being pro-Russia and going after rank-and-file right-wing populists and conservatives because that’s who the never-Trump side of the GOP — the Mitt Romney, John McCain side of the GOP — is trying to take out.”

MIKE BENZ: Harvard’s misinformation review, disinformation studies is “too big to fail.” They’re so deeply ingrained in the private sector interstitials, working with all the trust and safety people at every platform. They’re so deeply funded by 12 different government departments and 50 different government programs. There’s no way to get rid of us even if you want to.That’s what they were stunting on, right before Elon Musk finished the acquisition of X and Republicans won the House in 2022. And all this went in reverse. And now you’ll see just this, you know, just this week in the news that there, you know, there are quotes about them wanting to flee the country and that the whole field is potentially in disarray if Trump does indeed go forward and defund this, because now you’re going to have 100 university centers gone. There goes your State Department funding. There goes your NSF funding.

And I have a great example of that, by the way, that’s pretty eye-opening on our topic of institutions. That’s a that’s a quick receipt, if you’re interested.

Jamie, if you go to the Arizona State University Global Security Initiative, I’m going to show you some of this in action a little bit… Google “Arizona State University Center on narrative disinformation and strategic influence.”

Arizona State University is basically John McCain University. Now, this is significant because John McCain was the founding president of the IRI (International Republican Institute).

Arizona State University, its current president, Michael Crow, is now and has been since the day it was born in 1999, the chairman of In-Q-Tel. In-Q-Tel is the CIA’s venture capital arm. This is literally the CIA’s proprietary investments in early-stage technology companies. And the head of Arizona State University, its president, is the chairman of In-Q-Tel. And has been for 25 years.

Arizona State University has these very deep partnerships with John McCain, who was the senator from Arizona. John McCain, who ran for president against Barack Obama in 2008, was the, before he ran for president in 2008, for 25 years, he was the founder and the president of the IRI, the CIA wing of the Republican Party. Again, the IRI is that, is the GOP side of the National Endowment For Democracy. That’s effectively a self-declared CIA cutout. And in fact, Arizona State University has a John McCain Center on disinformation that that that works in tandem with this one. But I just wanted to show that you’ll see this is technically it’s Arizona State University, but you’ll see that it is an Intelligence program…..

*****

Continue reading this article at Real Clear Politics.

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TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

[AZ] Prop 140 Committee Burns Millions in a Failed Attempt to California Our Arizona thumbnail

[AZ] Prop 140 Committee Burns Millions in a Failed Attempt to California Our Arizona

By Arizona Free Enterprise Club

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

How do you waste $15 million? Just ask the folks over at the Make Elections Fair Committee. Last week, their insane attempt to force a California-style elections system of ranked choice voting and jungle primaries went down in flames. Prop 140 failed miserably with nearly 60 percent of the electorate voting “No.” And it wasn’t for lack of funding.

With a huge amount of money coming from the pockets of out-of-state billionaires, the Make Elections Fair Committee spent at least $15 million—giving them a 20:1 spending advantage. That’s right. For every $1 spent trying to defeat the initiative, the Prop 140 committee spent $20 trying to pass it! And they still lost by a wide margin!

That’s legendary. If any business idea ever failed that badly, it would be banished and never spoken of again. And that’s exactly what should happen with ranked choice voting and its ugly cousin jungle primaries (which was already overwhelmingly rejected by Arizona voters back in 2012).

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Prop 140 was one of the worst ideas ever to be proposed in our great state, and it is fitting that it met its demise from a vast majority of Arizonans. Radical leftists, out-of-state billionaires, and scheming consultants tried to hoodwink voters into adopting this failed system. They spent millions. They potentially misused taxpayer dollars to support the initiative. And they even had to resort to duplicating signatures to qualify for the ballot in the first place.

But voters did their homework. They saw through the misleading and manipulative ads pushing Prop 140. And they said “hell no” to this failed power grab. In fact, our efforts to dismantle Prop 140 were so effective that the Make Elections Fair Committee actually sent an email earlier this week admitting as much. This is a testament to over a year of hard work educating voters on ranked choice voting and why these radical schemes must be defeated.

But it wasn’t just Arizona that rejected this nonsense. Our state joined several other states throughout the country in overwhelmingly rejecting both ranked choice voting and jungle primaries:

On top of this, Measure 2 in Alaska, which repeals the state’s ranked choice voting system, appears to be headed toward passage. And in Missouri, Amendment 7, which proactively prohibits ranked choice voting, passed with almost 70 percent of the vote.

So, how much did all this losing cost? Nationally, groups pushing ranked choice voting spent over $100 million in seven states—only to see it fail in every single one. Could you imagine spending over $100 million without even seeing a hint of a victory?

Clearly, the people have spoken. Ranked choice voting and jungle primaries would be a disastrous transformation of our elections system. Nobody wants it. Now, it’s time for California to keep its destructive policies and systems on their side of the state line.

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*****

This article was published by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

California: Man shoots and critically wounds two kindergarten children as ‘countermeasure’ to U.S. ‘involvement with genocide of Palestinians’ thumbnail

California: Man shoots and critically wounds two kindergarten children as ‘countermeasure’ to U.S. ‘involvement with genocide of Palestinians’

By Jihad Watch

The rhetoric about the actually nonexistent genocide of “Palestinians” is so overheated that it is driving the psychically marginal to violence. 

“Mentally ill Calif. school shooter fired at kids as ‘countermeasure’ for US involvement in ‘genocide of Palestinians’: note,” by Alex Oliveira, New York Post, December 5, 2024:

The mentally ill gunman who shot and wounded two kindergarteners at a small California school Wednesday wrote that he was deploying a “countermeasure involving child executions” in response to “America’s involvement with genocide and oppression of Palestinians,” in a twisted note he left behind.

The shooter who turned the gun on himself after opening fire in the playground of the Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists was identified Thursday as Glenn Litton, a 56-year-old homeless man who was sprung from jail just two days before the shooting, according to police.

Litton, who was pronounced dead at the Oroville school, had a long history of mental health issues, alarming criminal behavior, and past stints in prison, Butte County officials said at a press conference Thursday.

Glenn Litton, 56, was identified as the shooter who opened fire at a playground at the Feather River School of Seventh-Day Adventists, shooting two kindergarteners before turning the gun on himself.

Cops believe his deranged writings — in which he called himself a lieutenant of “the international alliance” — stemmed from his compromised mental state.

“Countermeasure involving child executions has now been imposed at the Seventh Day Adventist school in CA, U.S. by the international alliance,” he wrote in the disturbing note recovered by investigators.

“I, Lieutenant Glenn Litton of the alliance carried out countermeasure in necessitated response to America’s involvement with genocide and oppression of Palestinians along with attacks towards Yemen.”

Butte County Sheriff Kory Honea characterized those writings as delusions coming from his mental illness, saying he “pulled information from various sources, and it all came together in his mind to create a reality that is false.”

Litton – who attended a separate Seventh Day Adventist school when he was young – critically wounded two boys, 5 and 6, who attended the school of just 35 students.

Days before the attack, the shooter had scheduled a meeting with the Feather River School’s principal and arrived for the meeting Wednesday using a false name under the pretense of enrolling his grandson in the school.

But he had no grandson, police noted, and shortly after the meeting he stormed into the school’s playground and opened fire on students as they returned to class….

AUTHOR

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Alert regarding Pittsburgh Imam who preaches, “To Kill The Jews Oh Allah Annihilate The Israelis.”

Click here to send your email to express concern to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Homeland Security department regarding Imam Amro Elaswalli’s dangerous message that is posted on YouTube for all Islamists and unhinged leftists to be inspired by.

Click here to share at X.


EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: What To Expect — Trump Admin First 100 Days thumbnail

PODCAST: What To Expect — Trump Admin First 100 Days

By Family Research Council

Host Joseph Backholm is joined by FRC Action’s Matt Carpenter as they discuss what we can expect to see from the Trump administration’s first 100 days in office.

Everyone knows that Trump is a man with a plan, but what does that plan entail?

Joseph and Matt discuss Trump’s priorities, his recent admin and cabinet picks, and the role Congress will play throughout his presidency.

Make America Great Again and give this episode a listen!

HOSTS:

Joseph Backholm

Matt Carpenter

Resource: Trump Administration Accomplishments

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand podcast is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Javier Milei’s ‘Shock Therapy’ Is Working thumbnail

Javier Milei’s ‘Shock Therapy’ Is Working

By Michael N. Peterson

Editors’ Note: While the US has not yet reached Argentina’s extremes in terms of inflation and welfare dependency, we are headed in that direction. Therefore, the Milei approach in Argentina is worth noting. A significant overhaul of the US regulatory state, tax simplification, and budget control are needed. Trump has never been a budget cutter. However, with the Musk-Ramaswamy duo heading up DOGE or Department of Government Efficiency, it will be interesting to see what they can do. More than just theory, we all will be looking to see the level of resistance from established recipients of waste and fraud and the level of determination on the part of the new Trump Administration. This will be both a major philosophical battle and a major political battle. Sadly, if we can’t tame the swamp monster after this most recent election, the odds of ever defeating the beast will be low.  In terms of both policy and political acumen, Milei is showing some success that deserves our attention.

Last week, Argentina President Javier Milei dissolved the Administración Federal de Ingresos Públicos (AFIP), the nation’s largest tax bureau. Argentina’s presidential spokesperson Manual Adorni announced that a new agency will replace the AFIP, eliminating nearly 3,100 public employees and saving Argentine taxpayers 6.4 billion Argentine pesos (roughly $6.5 million). While this measure will reduce bureaucratic inefficiencies, it’s largely symbolic and part of Milei’s broader mission to credibly cut government spending and liberalize Argentina’s institutions.

Overhauling the nation’s largest tax agency is particularly significant because it shifts attention away from government bureaucrats and celebrates the importance of private entrepreneurs. As Adorni explains in his statement, “What belongs to each Argentine is theirs and no one else’s. No state bureaucrat should be delegated the power to tell an Argentine what to do with his or her property.”

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After decades of socialist policies, Argentina is currently undergoing the most severe economic adjustment since the 2001 currency crisis, when the nation abandoned its fixed exchange rate, sinking the peso’s value and Argentines’ savings with it. El corralito, which means “animal enclosure,” refers to the stifling measures imposed by Economy Minister Domingo Cavallo in 2001 to prevent bank withdrawals. Within hours, millions of Argentines had lost up to 75 percent of their cash deposits, sparking widespread riots and unrest nationwide.

“Of the 77,000 dollars I had in the bank, I lost 40,000 in the ‘corralito,’” recalls computer scientist Ricardo Lladós in an interview 20 years later.

Unlike the 2001 convertibility crisis, which could have been avoided with better monetary policy, Argentina’s current economic troubles are inescapable. And unlike his past predecessors, Milei is attempting to reform Argentina’s institutions and credibly commit to protecting property rights. This is why his ability to follow through on his promises is so critical to economic success.

What Milei’s administration is hoping to achieve through liberalization is nothing short of extraordinary, and it represents the perennial challenge nations have faced since Western Europe’s miraculous growth in the 18th century. Douglass North, a Nobel laureate economist, illustrated this challenge through the lens of institutions and credible commitments. In a famous paper co-authored with Barry Weingast, North attributes England’s economic success to the 1688 Glorious Revolution, when the Crown made credible commitments to protect property rights and not expropriate private wealth whenever they wanted. “Free markets must be accompanied by some credible restrictions on the state’s ability to manipulate economic rules to the advantage of itself and its constituents,” they write.

A classical liberal economist, Milei understands the importance of credibly committing to economic reforms. He’s furiously slashing needless government programs, which have metastasized over decades of Peronist rule. In shocking style, he has closed 13 government ministries and laid off more than 30,000 public workers, or about 10 percent of federal employees.

Milei’s raft of budgetary cuts have generated eye-popping fiscal results. With less than a year into his presidency, Milei has posted Argentina’s first budget surplus in 12 years. He has rapidly decreased the nation’s country risk by 10.4 percent, as measured by the interest rate spread between US and Argentine government bonds. Even real wage rates are up. And of course, Argentina’s monthly inflation has plummeted from a peak of almost 26 percent in December 2023 to 3.5 percent in September.

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Argentina’s “shock therapy” hasn’t been tried since Russia and its post-Soviet satellite states embarked on major liberalization reforms in the 1990s. However, contrary to Milei’s credible commitment strategy, Russia and its Eastern European neighbors reneged on their promises to respect property rights, instead using rent-seeking and non-market exchanges to artificially support unproductive sectors within the economy. This “virtual economy” actually shocked Russia’s post-Soviet ambitions into submission by choking competition and incentivizing corruption. When Boris Yeltsin vowed to enact serious market reforms in the early ‘90s, price controls remained in place for many products and black markets flourished.

Peter J. Boettke, an economist at George Mason University and scholar of the Soviet Union, summed up Russia’s post-perestroika failures: “Even under Yeltsin’s post-Soviet experiment in free market shock therapy, the new government failed to establish the sort of binding political and legal commitments required [for economic growth].”

Poland, on the other hand, successfully liberalized because it eliminated the impulse for the government to print money and arbitrarily intervene in the private sector. In October 1989, newly appointed Polish Finance Minister Leszek Balcerowicz embarked on a spate of free-market reforms, including reducing government spending, privatizing state-run industries, and eliminating state subsidies, among others. While inflation and unemployment immediately shot up, the country stabilized within two years. Between 1992 and 2019, Poland enjoyed an average annual growth rate of 4.7 percent, and never once experienced economic decline, placing it among Australia as the only OECD nation to experience 28 consecutive years of economic growth. Entrepreneurship blossomed in the wake of the reforms, ultimately ending Poland’s decades of endemic shortages in a matter of days.

Like Balcerowicz, Milei inherited a macroeconomic mess. When he assumed office, Argentina’s public debt to GDP ratio exceeded 60 percent. The exchange rate gap, which measures the difference between the country’s official and unofficial exchange rates, hovered at around 200 percent. And the core inflation rate was 230 percent and climbing.

And like Poland, Argentina is facing acute economic challenges following its shock therapy measures. More than 50 percent of Argentines are living in poverty. Unemployment stands at 7.7 percent. Many citizens are struggling with food insecurity, with an estimated 1.5 million children missing at least one meal daily.

But these figures only add to the importance of Milei’s credible commitment to liberalizing his country. Not only does he need to continue his reform agenda, he also needs to credibly signal to Argentines that his policies will stick. His reforms must outlast his successors, and they must ensure that private property will be respected far into the future.

Milei has kept most of the promises he made on the campaign trail, but much work remains. His vow to dollarize the economy hasn’t materialized. Instead, US dollars are exchanged alongside Argentine pesos, but the former can’t be used as legal tender in the payment of taxes or debts. Milei also hasn’t fully shuttered the Argentine central bank, something he said was “non negotiable” when he took office. And the currency controls that remain in place continue to artificially depress inflation numbers.

But Milei’s overall commitment to liberalizing the nation has transformed the country’s economic potential. When Milei repealed rent control in January, housing supply soared by almost 200 percent and rent prices fell by 40 percent in Buenos Aires, a clear sign that free market reforms benefit those most at risk in society. Argentina’s EMBI index, a measurement of country risk conducted by JPMorgan Chase, has dipped by almost 1,000 points, from 1,920 when Milei took office to 984 in October. And most significantly, GDP is expected to grow by between five and six percent next year, fueled by increased investment and consumption, as well as monetary stability and labor market reforms.

So when he announced the overhaul of the nation’s largest tax agency, he was not just pledging to cut government spending. He is credibly committing to the country’s liberalization by firing tax-hungry bureaucrats whose mission it was to punish entrepreneurs and wealth generators. By credibly committing to transforming Argentina’s economic institutions, Milei is setting the stage for economic revival and entrepreneurial explosion. Just as Poland’s liberalization program sparked miraculous growth, so too will Milei’s reforms if he fulfills his promises to scale back government involvement and unleash market forces.

*****

This article was published by AIER, the American Institute for Economic Research, and is reproduced with permission.

Image Credit: Shutterstock

CNN And MSNBC Repeatedly Reassured Viewers Biden Wouldn’t Pardon Hunter thumbnail

CNN And MSNBC Repeatedly Reassured Viewers Biden Wouldn’t Pardon Hunter

By Harold Hutchison

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

Hosts and guests on CNN and MSNBC repeatedly told viewers that President Joe Biden would not grant his son, Hunter Biden, a pardon before he reversed course and did so on Sunday.

Biden announced the pardon in a statement released Sunday night, claiming Hunter had been “singled out” due to being the president’s son while alleging that “political opponents” were seeking to “break” both him and his son in the statement. The hosts and guests on the left-leaning networks touted Biden’s “major commitment” to viewers, calling it “presidential” and an example of “decency.” (RELATED: Here Are Times Biden, KJP Promised President Wouldn’t Pardon Hunter Before Breaking His Word)

“The president has ruled out pardoning his son,” CNN host Abby Phillip told a guest who predicted a pardon for Hunter Biden in a montage posted on X by Grabien founder Tom Elliot.

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“A major commitment from the president, accepting the outcome of the trial, and also pledging not to pardon his son,” CNN host Kaitlan Collins said later in the video.

WATCH:

Other hosts and guests on the liberal-leaning networks praised Biden for the pledge not to pardon his son, contrasting it to President-elect Donald Trump’s criticism of the criminal cases against him.

“The contrast is profound. To sit there and say, well, I’m not going to intervene in the legal process, and I wouldn’t pardon my son,” CNN analyst S.E. Cupp said. “One side, Democrats and Joe Biden protecting the justice system, and on the other, Republicans and Trump protecting Trump.”

“He is not pardoning his son, which he could do. These are federal charges,” former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann told MSNBC host Nicolle Wallace in the montage, adding, “He is not doing that. He is not doing it because he is living what it means to have a rule of law in this country.”

A jury in Delaware convicted Hunter Biden on three felony gun charges in connection with the purchase of a Colt .38-caliber revolver in 2018. The president’s son entered a guilty plea on federal tax charges in September in a federal court in California.

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“I think Joe Biden has a chance here to stand up for the rule of law to say the rule — the law is the law, no matter who it is, no matter if it’s Trump or Biden,” MSNBC guest Molly Jong-Fast said later in the montage. “And remember, part of Trumpism’s dangerousness is that it tears down institutions, important institutions of our democracy. So there is an opportunity here for Biden to say, you know, the jury found him guilty. This is how it’s supposed to work. Period. Paragraph. End of story.” (RELATED: ‘Legal Death Wish’: Jonathan Turley Says Hunter Biden Likely Headed To Jail)

““For years, these conservatives have been crowing about a politicized Justice Department, Biden politicizing it and so on. What happened today? The Justice Department convicted the president’s own son, his only living son. You heard the president say he would accept the outcome of the case. I know no other word for that, but presidential.” Neal Katyal told MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart during an MSNBC appearance in the montage, with Capehart responding, “Mm-hmm. He even went so far as to say he wouldn’t pardon his son. That’s how much respect he has for the system.”

The video ended with MSNBC contributor Mike Barnicle praising Biden’s vow to not pardon his son as a “gift to democracy.”

*****

This article was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Nice Work If You Can Get It? What a New Report Reveals About Federal Employees thumbnail

Nice Work If You Can Get It? What a New Report Reveals About Federal Employees

By The Daily Signal

Bring on the DOGE revolution.

An explosive new report from Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who chairs the Senate DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) Caucus, notes that fewer than 1 of out every 10 federal employees (6%) work in an office full time, citing an April survey.

“If you exclude security guards & maintenance personnel, the number of government workers who show up in person and do 40 hours of work a week is closer to 1%!” posted Elon Musk, the billionaire entrepreneur leading DOGE with fellow billionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, in response to the report. “Almost no one.”

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, only 3% of federal government workers did remote work. Now, an astonishing 30% never come into the office, according to an April survey from Federal News Network.

Two-thirds of federal employees alternate between working at home and in the office—even as taxpayers remain on the hook for insanely expensive office building costs.

An August report from the Office of Management and Budget showed different numbers than the April survey, however. The OMB report found that 54% of civilian federal employees worked fully on-site, and that employees eligible for telework spent on average 61% of their work hours on site.

The “Out of Office” report details reasons for concern about the overall productivity of federal employees. Just consider these clear failures by various government agencies:

  • 74% of calls to the Department of Education during the recent FAFSA debacle, with parents and students having questions about the new financial-aid application, were not answered, according to the Government Accountability Office.
  • An Indiana man employed by the Social Security Administration was paid from 2019 to 2022 as a full-time teleworking employee “when in reality he was earning income working as a home inspector for his personal business.” (His mother and wife used his computer to send emails to make it look like he was working.)
  • Don’t expect to get any customer service from the IRS. Only two of the 76 local IRS offices picked up their phones to answer questions, according to a July 2024 report.

Meanwhile, veterans in Atlanta faced significant hurdles to getting responses to their mental health calls. Out of the roughly 22,000 calls placed over 12 months in the 2022-2023 period, about 7,200 weren’t answered, according to a whistleblower cited in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW: Screenshot from “Out of Office” report released by Sen. Joni Ernst

At about the same time, in March 2022, an employee at the Atlanta Veteran Affairs Medical Center’s community care office decided to post on social media about taking a bubble bath while “working.”

“The Instagram story shows him in a bathtub, legs kicked up with a federal government-issue laptop propped on the ledge. The computer is open to a March 17 staff meeting and the post’s caption reads, ‘My office for the next hour,’” reported WSB-TV, an Atlanta ABC affiliate.

What a workplace.

Sure, federal employees in many roles can be productive at home. But the report from Ernst, an Iowa Republican, raises serious questions about whether there is any real culture of accountability at federal agencies. Occasional work from home is a privilege—and federal agencies should be careful to limit it to good employees and regularly be tracking performance and productivity metrics.

Yet the IRS allowed 138 poor performers to work remotely, despite its own policy prohibiting that.

Ernst also recommends the commonsense policy of agencies avoiding blanket policies regarding telework, and allowing managers and supervisors to make those calls.

There’s also questions about just how occasional the work from home is. “[P]ublic reporting indicates telework-eligible managers and supervisors at the USDA’s D.C. headquarters have been required to be in the office five days per two-week pay period—which is less than three days a week—since September 10, 2023,” states the Ernst report. Coming in only half the time is wildly different from coming in, say, 70% to 80% of the time.

Meanwhile, over at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, 90% of employees only have to show up one day a week to work.

At the same time that federal employees are getting able to dodge horrific D.C. traffic and work from their comfort of their homes, taxpayers continue to fund huge, underutilized offices.

“Not a single headquarters of a major government agency or department in the nation’s capital is even half full. Yet it’s costing $8 billion every year to maintain or lease government office buildings. Another $7.7 billion is being expended annually for the energy to keep them running. And billions more are being spent buying brand-new furnishings for the largely abandoned offices inside them,” states the report.

That’s insanity.

To realize just how ludicrous that is, consider that it costs “more than $182,000 per employee a year to cover operating and maintenance expenses at the Department of Labor headquarters,” according to the report.

“On an average day, fewer than 500 employees are reporting to work at the building, which costs nearly $60 million a year to rent, operate, and maintain.”

Say, maybe that money could be used to help the hurricane victims in North Carolina and Florida? Or to repair crumbling roads? Or, well, a thousand other things?

Nor is that the only outrageous expense the report identified.

The federal government pays employees based on localities they work in. It’s a good-faith effort to recognize that different areas have different costs of living.

But there’s reason to believe a significant portion of government employees are getting paid the salaries for a different area than the one they actually live in. Ernst’s audits “are finding as many as [23% to 68%] of teleworking employees for some agencies are boosting their salaries by receiving incorrect locality pay.”

Nice work if you can get it.

Clearly, there is room for reform here. Ernst’s report offers a slew of practical suggestions, from moving more federal work outside of the Washington, D.C., area to tracking, as some private employers do, workers’ time spent on their work laptops and in offices.

I’d also suggest that local D.C., Virginia, and Maryland governments should immediately invest in a dramatic expansion of the local highways. In-person work and collaboration is valuable, but spending time parked on a highway, as D.C. area drivers do during commute hours, is not. The region’s myopic focus on public transit and green fantasies has led to a situation where people regularly miss time with their families and friends just because local officials won’t build enough lanes and bridges to keep up with the demand.

Meanwhile, government agencies need to provide some accountability to taxpayers.

Right now, the average salary for government employees is $106,000, according to Zip Recruiter. (It’s even higher in Washington, D.C.: $120,000.) The average American salary is $59,000.

“One of the first things that I think you’ll see is a demand from the new administration, from all of us in Congress, [that] the federal workers, return to their desks,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Thursday, according to the New York Post.

Musk and Ramaswamy signaled in a November column for The Wall Street Journal that they would oppose allowing federal employees to work remotely. “Requiring federal employees to come to the office five days a week would result in a wave of voluntary terminations that we welcome: If federal employees don’t want to show up, American taxpayers shouldn’t pay them for the COVID-era privilege of staying home,” the DOGE duo wrote.

When it comes to federal employees, the taxpayers are the bosses—and the taxpayers elected Donald Trump, whose allies are signaling it’s a new day in Washington for federal employees. It’s about time.

AUTHOR

Katrina Trinko

Katrina Trinko is the editor-in-chief of The Daily Signal. Send an email to Katrina. Katrina on X: @KatrinaTrinko

Related posts:

Does DOGE Need Congress for Massive Budget Cutting?

‘Accountability Is Coming’: Iowa’s Ernst Sends Musk’s DOGE $2T Worth of Ways to Gut Government Spending 

Trump’s Efficiency Department Secures Support From Dem Lawmakers

RELATED VIDEO: Congress will require all federal employees to return in-person to work

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

Trump Reportedly Has Ace Up His Sleeve For Countries That Refuse To Take Back Their Illegal Migrants thumbnail

Trump Reportedly Has Ace Up His Sleeve For Countries That Refuse To Take Back Their Illegal Migrants

By The Daily Caller

The incoming Trump administration is reportedly devising a plan to remove illegal migrants from the United States, even if their home countries refuse to accept them.

Illegal migrants that have been ordered deported by an immigration judge, but hail from a country that refuses to take them back, may be sent to Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, Grenada, Panama or possibly elsewhere once President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House, according to NBC News. Such a plan, which has yet to be confirmed by the transition team, could prove to be a game-changer in the president-elect’s promised goal of conducting the largest deportation initiative in U.S. history.

It’s not immediately clear if these illegal migrants would be allowed to remain and work in the countries in which they are deported, or what type of pressure Trump officials are applying to these host governments. A spokesperson for the Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Foreign governments that refuse to take back deportees have long frustrated federal immigration authorities in multiple administrations. In lieu of remaining in detention indefinitely, many of these individuals may simply be released back into the U.S., even if an immigration judge has ordered them to be removed.

Under the Biden administration, federal immigration authorities and major cities across the country experienced an unprecedented illegal immigration crisis. Management of this crisis was made more difficult when Venezuela, the second-highest source of illegal immigration into the U.S., stopped accepting deportation flights in February.

Nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country under Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a leftist authoritarian who has overseen rampant inflation, economic turmoil and political repression. Trump is reportedly being pushed to make a deal with Maduro’s government, which would involve them accepting deportees again in exchange for an easing of U.S. sanctions, but it’s not clear if the incoming president is receptive to such an idea.

In the past, the Chinese and Cuban governments have also proven uncooperative with deportation flights from the U.S. However, both countries have begun accepting more flights from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) once again.

During Trump’s first White House term, he secured safe third country agreements with El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, which were intended to keep asylum seekers at bay by forcing them to seek refuge in those countries first before applying in the U.S. However, the Biden administration suspended those deals immediately upon entering office — part of a massive unraveling of Trump-era immigration policies by President Joe Biden that helped spark the current southern border crisis.

Trump plans to enter office and begin to not only conduct the largest deportation program ever witnessed in U.S. history, but he has also vowed to resume border wall construction, end birthright citizenship for those born to illegal migrant parents, restart the travel ban and bring back the Remain in Mexico program — which kept asylum seekers waiting in Mexico while their claims were adjudicated in immigration court.

AUTHOR

Jason Hopkins

Immigration reporter.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Laken Riley’s Illegal Migrant Killer Demands New Trial

President Trump Creates New SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL ENVOY FOR HOSTAGE AFFAIRS

Biden Regime Weighing Preemptive Pardons for Adam Schiff, Dr. Fauci, Liz Cheney, and Other Trump Saboteurs

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

REPORT: 94% of Federal Employees Do Not Report to Work Regularly, a Blatant Disregard of Duty thumbnail

REPORT: 94% of Federal Employees Do Not Report to Work Regularly, a Blatant Disregard of Duty

By Martin Tribe

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

A sobering report by the Public Building Reforms Board paints a grim picture of federal employees’ blatant disregard for duty.

The report found that 94% of federal workers do not show up in person regularly, highlighting the poor service delivery and complacency in government offices.

The Department of Energy, the Agency for Global Media, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture topped the list of absentee/absconders with abysmal occupancy rates of 0%, 2%, and 6%, respectively.

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The Department of Veterans Affairs (7%), the Environmental Protection Agency (8%), the Department of Labor (9%), and the Nuclear Regulation Commission (9%) followed closely with their appalling numbers.

Federal agencies with the highest office occupancy rates include the Department of Commerce, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Office of Personnel Management, each with an attendance rate of a measly 11%.

The “94%” figure is a conservative estimate, considering when you factor out jobs like security, where it’s impossible to work from home, only 1% of federal workers actually go to work.

Trump’s efficiency czars, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, have promised to end government bloat by streamlining government operations by 80%. With over 90% of federal employees not showing up for duty, Musk and Ramaswamy have more than enough room to wiggle.

Trump’s efficiency czars have alluded to the fact that politicians have shied away from making the federal government more efficient by cutting back the bureaucracy while saving taxpayers’ money.

Considered outsiders, Musk and Ramaswamy have the best chance to introduce sweeping changes in the change-resistant federal bureaucracy.

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“Politicians have talked for a long time about cutting the size of government,” Ramaswamy said. “But when they get inside, they go native. If we’re ever going to crush the bureaucracy, it’s going to happen from the outside.”

Trump has proposed confronting the bureaucracy in Washington D.C. by reintroducing Schedule F, which would allow him to directly fire federal employees.

Continue reading at ThePopulistTimes.com…

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

REPORT: 94% of Federal Employees Do Not Report to Work Regularly thumbnail

REPORT: 94% of Federal Employees Do Not Report to Work Regularly

By Martin Tribe

Estimated Reading Time: 2 minutes

A sobering report by the Public Building Reforms Board paints a grim picture of federal employees’ blatant disregard for duty.

The report found that 94% of federal workers do not show up in person regularly, highlighting the poor service delivery and complacency in government offices.

The Department of Energy, the Agency for Global Media, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture topped the list of absentee/absconders with abysmal occupancy rates of 0%, 2%, and 6%, respectively.

ADVERTISEMENT

The Department of Veterans Affairs (7%), the Environmental Protection Agency (8%), the Department of Labor (9%), and the Nuclear Regulation Commission (9%) followed closely with their appalling numbers.

Federal agencies with the highest office occupancy rates include the Department of Commerce, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the Office of Personnel Management, each with an attendance rate of a measly 11%.

The “94%” figure is a conservative estimate, considering when you factor out jobs like security, where it’s impossible to work from home, only 1% of federal workers actually go to work.

Trump’s efficiency czars, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, have promised to end government bloat by streamlining government operations by 80%. With over 90% of federal employees not showing up for duty, Musk and Ramaswamy have more than enough room to wiggle.

Trump’s efficiency czars have alluded to the fact that politicians have shied away from making the federal government more efficient by cutting back the bureaucracy while saving taxpayers’ money.

Considered outsiders, Musk and Ramaswamy have the best chance to introduce sweeping changes in the change-resistant federal bureaucracy.

ADVERTISEMENT

“Politicians have talked for a long time about cutting the size of government,” Ramaswamy said. “But when they get inside, they go native. If we’re ever going to crush the bureaucracy, it’s going to happen from the outside.”

Trump has proposed confronting the bureaucracy in Washington D.C. by reintroducing Schedule F, which would allow him to directly fire federal employees.

Continue reading at ThePopulistTimes.com…

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

DOGE Zeroes in on $150 Billion Spent on Illegal Immigration in Single Year thumbnail

DOGE Zeroes in on $150 Billion Spent on Illegal Immigration in Single Year

By Family Research Council

As the U.S. continues to accumulate debt at a record pace, entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy of the newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are calling attention to tens of billions of taxpayer dollars being spent on illegal immigrants.

Citing a Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) study, DOGE posted on X Monday, “In 2023 alone, illegal immigration cost taxpayers $150.7 billion. To put this in context with other costs (adjusted for inflation): World War I: $334 billion[;] Apollo Space Program: $257 billion[;] Manhattan Project: $30 billion[;] Panama Canal: $15.2 billion[;] Hoover Dam: $1 billion.”

The FAIR study, which was released in March of last year, combined estimated expenditures by the federal government ($66 billion) with state and local costs ($115 billion), minus $31 billion in estimated tax contributions from migrants. The money was spent to cover schooling, health care costs including uncompensated hospital expenses and Medicaid, law enforcement costs including incarceration, removal, and border protection, and welfare costs including food and housing assistance, among other expenses. The $150 billion total equaled a $35 billion increase from a previous estimate of $116 billion in 2017.

The sharp acceleration in spending has coincided with the largest surge in illegal immigration ever seen in the U.S., which has occurred as a result of a series of open-border policies implemented by the Biden administration beginning in 2021. The total number of encounters with illegal border crossers as of June was 8.2 million more than in the entire first Trump administration.

The spending on migrants is part of a four-year federal spending spree never before seen in American history. Biden has overseen annual budget deficits of $2 trillion, and by the time he leaves office next January, it is estimated that he will have overseen a net increase of over $9 trillion in the national debt, a record-setting amount for a single term.

FAIR Executive Director Julie Kirchner told Fox News on Tuesday that the total amount of taxpayer dollars spent on illegal immigrants is likely much higher than their original estimate. “The population we cited in the study was 15.5 million. We now estimate that it’s over 16.8 million, and we’re in the process right now of doing another estimate on the illegal alien population, and I’m sure it will be higher. So, we know the costs are going to go up.” She also noted that their report did not include state and local costs associated with sheltering migrants.

In New York City, where there are currently over 58,000 illegal immigrants facing criminal charges, almost 100,000 migrants seeking asylum have moved there over the last two years, and the city estimates it will spend over $12 billion through fiscal year 2025. Meanwhile, Chicago has spent over $400 million on migrants over the past two years.

“The scale of spending on illegal immigration boggles the mind!” Musk observed Monday in response to DOGE’s highlighting of the FAIR report.

Kirchner expressed confidence that DOGE’s efforts could save “billions and billions of dollars each year” in taxpayer money by ending government-subsidized health care plans as well as income and child tax credits for illegal immigrants.

AUTHOR

Dan Hart

Dan Hart is senior editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.


The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Tennessee AG Says SCOTUS Could Pave Way To Ending Child Sex Changes And Saving Women’s Sports With Just One Ruling thumbnail

Tennessee AG Says SCOTUS Could Pave Way To Ending Child Sex Changes And Saving Women’s Sports With Just One Ruling

By The Daily Caller

The Supreme Court’s forthcoming ruling on state child sex change bans could impact a range of issues related to gender identity, Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The justices heard oral arguments Wednesday on Tennessee’s law banning medical procedures intended to help a child live as an identity “inconsistent” with their sex, which the Biden administration argues violates the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

“There’s been no constitutional analysis of gender identity issues from the court prior to this,” Skrmetti told the DCNF on Thursday. “In the Bostock case, they were looking at statutory language.”

In the high court’s 2020 Bostock v. Clayton County decision, the majority held that discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity equates to sex discrimination in the employment context.

“So potentially, there could be language in the opinion that significantly impacts not just the protection for kids from gender related procedures with life-altering impact,” Skrmetti said. “There could be an impact on litigation about women’s sports teams, about bathroom privacy, potentially other areas of law.”

Tennessee lawmakers William Lamberth and Jack Johnson, who are behind the bill at the heart of today’s Supreme Court case, speak outside the court after oral arguments. @DailyCaller pic.twitter.com/axy3SLopRC

— Katelynn Richardson (@katesrichardson) December 4, 2024

Skrmetti believes his team did a great job defending the case before the court but acknowledges “you never want to predict” what is going to happen. Win or lose, the court could opt to issue a narrow ruling, or something broader and precedent-setting.

“The court asked a lot of brilliant questions,” he said. “It was a long argument because I think they recognize this could be a significant case precedentially, and they have months now to think about it and work through it, so there’s a long way to go before we get a decision.”

Several conservative justices pointed to European countries limiting gender transition procedures for children. Justice Samuel Alito questioned why the government claimed that overwhelming evidence supports the use of puberty blockers and hormone therapy while failing to acknowledge studies indicating otherwise, such as the Cass report commissioned by the National Health Service (NHS) England.

Meanwhile, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson drew a parallel between banning child sex changes and bans on interracial marriage. “I’m worried that we’re undermining the foundations of some of our bedrock equal protection cases,” she said.

Tennessee contends its law does not draw lines based on sex, but based on medical purpose. Giving testosterone to a girl will have vastly different effects than giving it to a boy, the state argues.

Nearly half of all U.S. states have passed laws like Tennessee’s. Skrmetti is certain that this won’t be a decision of “no consequence.”

“The risks to kids are profound. You’re talking about potential lifelong loss of the ability to have children, the lifelong loss of the ability to have sexual function, a life of dealing with tumors and blood clots, bone density disorders, cognitive impairments,” he said. “So it’s not something to be taken lightly.”

AUTHOR

Katelynn Richardson

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Supreme Court Tips Its Hand on Transgender Procedures for Minors

SCOTUS Conservatives Seem Ready To Uphold Child Sex Change Bans — But One Justice Is A Wild Card

As SCOTUS Considers Major Trans Case, Pleas for Children to Be Protected Abound

DOJ Doubles Down on Gag Order of Surgeon Who Blew Whistle on Child Sex Changes

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.


All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Commentary Supreme Court Case Exposes Medical Scandal of Epic Proportions thumbnail

Commentary Supreme Court Case Exposes Medical Scandal of Epic Proportions

By Tyler O’Neil

Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes

It’s hard to wrap your head around just how grotesque it is that many medical associations and the federal government have adopted the idea that it’s healthy to sterilize children in an attempt to “affirm” a stated transgender identity. On Wednesday [12/4/24], the Supreme Court will shed much-needed sunlight on this medical scandal of epic proportions.

Tennessee Solicitor General Matt Rice will explain how activists conspired to flip the Hippocratic Oath on its head. Meanwhile, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar and American Civil Liberties Union lawyer Chase Strangio—a female who says he identifies as male—will argue that Tennessee’s law banning Frankensteinian medical experiments on kids violates federal law by discriminating on the basis of sex.

The Supreme Court is hearing the case because of this discrimination argument. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit upheld Tennessee’s law, finding that it doesn’t entail discrimination. But the Biden-Harris administration appealed that decision, and the Supreme Court took up the case—now known as U.S. v. Skrmetti after Jonathan Skrmetti, the Republican attorney general of Tennessee.

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I will briefly address the logic behind the pro-transgender case, then explain the medical scandal that will emerge in Wednesday’s oral arguments.

The Transgender Discrimination Logic

The Biden-Harris administration’s convoluted logic goes something like this: Males who claim to be female really are female on some metaphysical plane (never mind biology, tradition, and common sense), so taking experimental hormones and undergoing surgical removal of their male organs is healthy for them.

Any law preventing minors—who can’t possibly give informed consent for experimental “treatments” that may leave them stunted, scarred, and infertile—from accessing this “health care” constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex, the logic goes. Why? Because such a law theoretically applies only to males who express a desire to be female and females who express a desire to be male.

The discrimination angle is laughable on its face. Discrimination on the basis of sex entails different treatment based on a person’s sex, namely male or female.

Tennessee’s law bans experimental transgender medical interventions for all minors, regardless of their race, creed, national origin, or biological sex. “Transgender” is not a protected category under federal civil rights statutes—even though federal agencies in the Biden-Harris administration have attempted to redefine discrimination on the basis of sex to include discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.

When previous Congresses crafted civil rights law, they did not mean—and could not have meant—to protect gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals by barring discrimination “on the basis of sex.” Instead, the lawmakers meant to extend to women the rights enjoyed by men.

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Democrats inherently understand this, and it explains why they support the Equality Act, a bill that would expand “discrimination on the basis of sex” in federal law to include gender identity and sexual orientation.

The Supreme Court majority in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) used convoluted logic to rule that federal civil rights employment law bars discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation, but the decision also painstakingly argued that this only applies to employment law, not other forms of federal civil rights law.

The Biden-Harris administration has attempted to twist Bostock, essentially rewriting federal civil rights law to include discrimination on the basis of gender identity. The Justice Department and Department of Education have established rules that aim to effectively enshrine the Equality Act into law without a vote by Congress, in the name of “implementing Bostock.”

As I explain in my forthcoming book “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government,” the Human Rights Campaign—a leading LGBTQ activist group—likely inspired this move.

The ACLU and the Biden-Harris administration want this Supreme Court case to be about “discrimination,” not the actual medical value of the procedures in question.

The Scandal of Transgender ‘Health Care’

So what, exactly, are the “treatments” that Tennessee sought to ban minors from accessing? Transgender advocates euphemistically refer to these interventions as “gender-affirming care” to cloak their true nature under a false pretense of compassion.

Some medical professionals prescribe gender-confused children who are nearing puberty GnRH agonists, which stands for “Gonadatropin-releasing hormone agonists.”

David Gortler, a pharmacologist and pharmacist who previously was a senior adviser to the Food and Drug Administration commissioner on policy and drug safety, previously told The Daily Signal that physicians developed GnRH agonists to help treat certain cancers that depend on estrogen or testosterone.

Removing estrogen and testosterone from cancer patients to prolong their lives makes sense, Gortler said, because it prevents the progress of an invasive, malignant disease. But giving these drugs to physiologically and genetically healthy kids is a completely different story.

“This drug was tested, designed, and FDA-approved for use in an older, cancer-afflicted population,” Gortler, a doctor of pharmacy, said.

He compared so-called puberty blockers to the outdated, dangerous Chinese custom of foot binding, in which a young girl’s feet would be tightly wrapped to keep them from growing naturally.

“Similarly, GnRH agonists block a normal, healthy development process from occurring,” Gortler said. “Just because it’s not something that isn’t directly and obviously visible doesn’t mean that it’s any less clinically, scientifically, or ethically dangerous.”

Activists claim that GnRH agonists, which they dub “puberty blockers,” are temporary and reversible, but those claims remain unproven.

Most patients who take these “blockers” will go on to take cross-sex hormones (estrogen for males and testosterone for females).

“The human body has around 100 trillion cells,” Gortler noted. “High school biology taught us that in each of those nucleated cells, there are either XX or XY chromosomes denoting a female or male sex, respectively. No drug or medical procedure will ever be able to fight 100 or so trillion cells, and trying to do so would be a fool’s errand.”

Naturally, “puberty blockers” and cross-sex hormones lead to the most controversial intervention: the surgical removal of sex organs and the attempt to replace them with facsimiles of the organs of the opposite sex.

An activist organization masquerading as the authority on transgender health, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, doesn’t recommend “bottom surgery” for minors, but some minors do go under the knife. An estimated 3,678 minors have undergone surgical alterations in the past five years (including 405 minors between the ages of 12 and 18 who underwent genital surgery).

Transgender Exception to ‘Do No Harm’

Activists argue that minors undergo these interventions only if they really need them, and that doctors and therapists must diagnose children with gender dysphoria (the painful and persistent condition of identifying with the gender opposite their biological sex) before any interventions.

Yet many states ban “conversion therapy,” and many statutes apply such bans to a therapist who would counsel a male minor who thinks of himself as female from identifying with his biological sex (and vice versa). This prevents therapists from addressing the psychological roots of gender dysphoria and instead directs them to merely “affirm” gender confusion.

Furthermore, doctors know that medical interventions involve serious side effects.

Leaked documents from WPATH reveal that even pro-transgender doctors repeatedly acknowledged disturbing side effects of “gender-affirming care.” Doctors revealed that cross-sex hormones appeared to have caused liver cancer in teens and atrophy of sex organs that reduces sexual function.

Although some acknowledged that it is problematic to require informed consent from minors for procedures with lifelong impacts, others said the ideal time for removing female sex organs is 16 or 17 years old.

Even “puberty blockers” are far from safe. Gortler, the former FDA adviser, analyzed the federal agency’s Adverse Event Reporting System, or AERS, a database of reactions to certain drugs that users report to the Food and Drug Administration.

“GnRH agonists account for 70,000 adverse reports,” Gortler told The Daily Signal. “While these reports still need to be reviewed, it is a remarkable number of adverse events for what should be a niche, otherwise rarely clinically indicated, class of drugs.”

Yet the FDA often dismisses these reports as “not confirmed,” “not establishing causation,” “no definitive proof,” and “not establishing a rate of occurrence.”

Gortler slammed the FDA for hypocrisy, noting that the agency relied heavily on the reporting system’s data to declare that hydroxychloroquine was unsafe after finding only a few hundred reports of adverse events.

According to his analysis, AERS reports 70,000 adverse reactions to GnRH agonists, 2,510 of them involving children age 14 or younger.

Adverse reactions include hallucinations, bone disorders, cardiac arrest, abdominal pain, migraine, mood alterations, a clot in the heart, pelvic pain, seizures, abnormal skin odor, and blindness. Among patients ages 4 to 13, a total of 21 had thoughts of suicide.

An FDA official admitted that a study found “puberty blockers” led to increased thoughts of suicide among minors, but the official recommended approval for the drugs, anyway.

Eunuchs

As if these side effects weren’t enough, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health’s Standards of Care 8—the document activists present as the gold standard for transgender “health care”—endorses the idea of “eunuch” as a gender identity and claims that castration is “medically necessary” for those who identify as eunuchs.

WPATH describes “eunuchs” as “individuals assigned male at birth” who “wish to eliminate masculine physical features, masculine genitals, or genital functioning.” Because eunuchs “wish for a body that is compatible with their eunuch identity,” WPATH recommends “castration to better align their bodies with their gender identity.”

The state of Alabama submitted a “friend of the court” brief highlighting this issue in the Skrmetti case now before the Supreme Court. The brief notes that WPATH leaders admitted “that no diagnostic manual recognizes ‘eunuch’ as a medical or psychiatric diagnosis’” and that many authors of the Standards of Care 8 didn’t even read the chapter and some criticized it internally.

“No matter: The guideline the United States says States must adopt officially recommends castration for men and boys who identify as ‘eunuch,’” Alabama’s brief notes.

Where does the idea of “eunuch” as a gender identity come from? SOC-8’s own archive includes thousands of stories that “focus on the eroticization of child castration” and “involve the sadistic sexual abuse of children.” Yes, it seems this “gender identity” traces back to the most disgusting forms of pedophilia.

Perverse Incentives of ‘Gender-Affirming Care’

How did such a horrific ideology capture the American medical establishment?

Jennifer Bilek has done yeoman’s work unearthing how billionaires who made their fortune in medicine have backed the LGBTQ movement, particularly the “T.”

Transgender “treatments” also reap rewards for Big Pharma. When a male patient takes cross-sex hormones to appear female, that’s a lifelong prescription. When patients get surgery to remove their sex organs and replace them with a facsimile of the opposite sex’s organs, that’s not just a one-and-done surgery. Not only are there often complications—which can be deadly—but these new organs often require grotesque forms of maintenance. All of this keeps patients coming back.

Although Tennessee’s law should have gone into effect without a legal battle in the courts, the oral arguments at the Supreme Court will shine a spotlight on this horrific scandal.

According to recent polling, 72% of Americans oppose these grotesque medical experiments on kids. This case gives Rice, who will argue it as Tennessee’s solicitor general, the chance to show why most Americans are right.

Correction: This article has been updated to correctly reflect the gender identity of the ACLU lawyer.

*****

This article was published by the Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Here’s How To Actually Reverse The Baby Bust thumbnail

Here’s How To Actually Reverse The Baby Bust

By Jay P. Greene and Lindsey M. Burke

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes

The best way to promote fertility isn’t funding parenthood. It’s stopping the government programs that discourage people from having babies.

Birth rates are plummeting in the United States and globally, forecasting a political and financial crisis. The most recent estimate predicts the average American woman will have 1.6 children in her lifetime, far below the rate of 2.1 required to maintain a steady population and even further below the 2.5 rate observed in the United States as recently as 1970.

Many cultural and technological factors have contributed to this dramatic decline, and public policies play a role in shaping people’s decisions about whether to have children and how many. Finding the right policy levers for influencing fertility rates, however, has proven very difficult.

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Countries such as Hungary and South Korea, operating on the assumption that fertility is primarily constrained by the costs of raising children, have offered very generous government subsidies for families having children to offset those costs. Unfortunately, their fertility rates haven’t risen, so these large expenditures clearly haven’t helped.

But it’s unlikely they would have anyway, as child-rearing expenses do not appear to be the main obstacle to people choosing to have more children. Remember, fertility rates used to be much higher even when people had significantly less money than they do now.

For example, in 1970, when the U.S. fertility rate was at 2.5, per-person gross domestic product was almost one-third what it is today. Somehow, people with a lot less money managed to have many more kids.

Can Policy Affect Fertility?

If we can’t effectively pay people to have more children, some may despair that there is nothing public policy can do to alter fertility rates. In a society where birth control is widely available and children are not needed to work on the farm, some have resigned themselves to the idea that perhaps people just don’t want to have enough children to sustain populations.

But it is worth remembering that, in 1970, few children were needed to work on farms, and the birth control pill had been around for a decade, yet fertility rates were much higher than they are now. In addition, creating new financial incentives for people to have children is not the only arrow in the policy quiver. We need to consider how existing government programs may be suppressing fertility rates and how reforming or eliminating those programs could make a significant difference.

Government policies often produce unintended consequences that promote behaviors that are antithetical to family formation. If we simply stop putting the government thumb on the scale in favor of policies that push people into life paths that postpone or disincentivize starting and growing families, fertility rates will rise.

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Education policy offers two prime examples of how government programs suppress fertility rates. People are more likely to have children if they start having families earlier and if they have religious convictions that make them think differently about the costs and benefits of raising children. Yet current education policies push people to delay having families until they are much older and impose barriers to accessing religious education, both of which significantly reduce fertility rates.

Higher Education Policies and Fertility Rates

U.S. higher education policies provide enormous incentives for more people to attend universities, take longer to complete their degrees, select degrees with negative returns on investment, and pursue advanced degrees at much higher rates than if we did not have such programs. In particular, highly subsidized student loans encourage more people to enroll and remain in higher education longer than they would if they fully bore the cost of their schooling.

The Grad Plus program, which offers unlimited loan amounts for graduate school, induces more people to remain even longer in school for graduate degrees. And government occupation licensing with ever-expanding educational requirements push people to take these loans and remain in school for many years.

That has created an artificially extended adolescence for the bulk of American young people. They remain in school much longer, often into their thirties, before they feel equipped to pursue real careers and assume adult roles, including getting married and having children.

Alexander Hamilton was 22 when he became George Washington’s aide-de-camp and helped direct the war of independence. Albert Einstein was 26 when he published a paper on his special theory of relativity. Yet we deem our 20-somethings unqualified to do much of anything and expect them to remain in school for years, accumulating credentials with the help of government subsidies before we let them tackle real adult responsibilities.

Extended Adolescence Reduces Fertility

The effect of this greatly extended adolescence is reduced fertility. In 2021, the median age of women in the United States who have a child for the first time was 27.3, up from 21.4 in 1970. The median age of men when they first become fathers is also increasing, as is the average age at which people get married.

In 1960, the median age for first marriage was 20.3 for women and 22.8 for men. By 2022, the median age for first marriage had risen to 28.6 for women and 30.5 for men. Much of that increase has come during the past decade, with the median age of first marriage increasing more than two years for women, up from 26.5, and nearly two years for men, up from 28.7.

This delayed start to family formation is largely driven by people spending much longer in school. Among women with a post-secondary degree who have children, 42.9 percent have their first child when they are 30 or older. Among women with only a high-school degree who have children, only 8.5 percent wait until they are older than 30 to have their first child. Among women with a bachelor’s or higher degree, nearly twice as many (21.8 percent) will never have children, compared to who ended their formal education with a high-school diploma (11.5 percent).

Obviously, higher education can have significant economic and social benefits. But it does not follow that we should push everyone to go to university and remain in school indefinitely. There are diminishing returns to education. Ever-expanding educational attainment—often the result of government credentialing requirements—comes at the expense of fertility.

Good things can become bad when pursued in excess. Believing that government subsidies for higher education have induced harmful over-consumption of schooling is no more against higher education than fighting obesity is against caloric intake.

Religion and Fertility

Education policy also suppresses fertility by discouraging parents from choosing religious education in K-12 schools. Children who receive a religious education are more likely to hold stronger religious beliefs when they grow up. And adults who are more strongly attached to religion tend to have many more children.

But in most states, tax dollars can only be used to support a secular public education. If parents wish to provide a religious education to their children, they have to pay private tuition for that in addition to paying taxes for a secular public education they are not using. This extra financial burden on those who prefer religious education pushes many to remain in secular schools, artificially reducing the religiosity of future generations.

Public policy that discourages religious education suppresses fertility rates because religious people tend to have more children. Among people who attend religious services at least once per week, fertility rates show no evidence of a long-term decline, fluctuating between two and 2.4 children per woman since 1982.

Among the non-religious, however, fertility rates are significantly lower, and the proportion of Americans who do not engage in any weekly religious activity has been growing dramatically. According to Lyman Stone at the Institute for Family Studies, these two factors—low fertility rates among the non-religious and their growing share of the population—account for “virtually 100% of the decline in fertility in the United States from 2012 to 2019.”

Religious belief appears to encourage fertility by altering the cost-benefit calculations of having children. Religious people see stronger benefits in having children and are less bothered by its expense, allowing religious parents more easily to redirect their limited funds away from other types of consumption and toward larger families.

If we empowered parents to direct public funds for K-12 education so they could choose equally among secular and religious options, many more would choose religious schools, increasing the religiosity of the next generation. That would raise future fertility rates.

The Stop-Digging Approach to Family Policy

Government policies to promote fertility don’t have to mean paying families to have more children. It is much cheaper and much more likely to be effective to alter or discontinue existing government policies that unintentionally push people into paths in their lives that make having children less likely.

Just as the best way to stop getting deeper in a hole is to stop digging, the best way to promote fertility is to stop the government programs that discourage having babies. The first two policies we could discontinue are those that push people to remain in school longer than they otherwise would and those that burden religious beliefs that make having babies more likely.

*****

This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.

Time to Ditch the Diamond Lanes thumbnail

Time to Ditch the Diamond Lanes

By Bruce Bialosky

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

When you are in business it is essential to try innovations for enhancing your success.  Some of those innovations work, but some do not.  Some that work do so for a time and then stop working.  As a business operator, it is vital to recognize when to terminate your project and move on.  However, the government doesn’t often know when to move on from a promising idea.  Diamond lanes have outlived their benefit and should be retired.

The first diamond lane (actually known as “high-occupancy lane” or “HOV”) was introduced in 1976.  It was on the Santa Monica (I-10) freeway in California.  The lane was dedicated to buses and cars with three or more passengers. 

There are now HOV lanes in 20 states covering thousands of miles of highways.  They operate under different rules depending on the state.  One of the annoying rules in California is you can only merge into the lane at specific points that often don’t make sense.  That causes many people to merge in and out against the rules, breaking a law that is never enforced.   

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Why is it time to ditch them?  The simple answer is they don’t work.  

It is rare to see the traffic pattern significantly different with a diamond lane compared to the normal traffic flow in the other lanes.  Yes, there are times when you are clogged up in traffic in the left-hand lane while cars are passing you in the diamond lane.  You feel a little bit of envy.  You wish you had a mannequin next to you with a baseball cap on so you can veer left and speed ahead.  Those times are rare.   

There are times when you are in the HOV lane, and it is moving better than the other lanes, only to have it clog up, and now the other lanes are moving much better. You exit the HOV lane and move over. You notice that the reason the HOV lane is clogged is that people who should be driving in lane four (the right lane for slow drivers) are clogging up things by barely driving the speed limit while everybody else is zipping by. The diamond lane provides no flexibility.  

That is the problem.  It has been fifty years, and these lanes have not gotten close to what they were designed to do. The people who want to design our lives have tried to get us to be in our cars with one or more other people.  

Most of the time we don’t arrange our lives to have multiple people in the car.  You go to work where you are with people who live nowhere near you.  You then go to a business meeting, and you are the only one needed at the meeting.  Or you are meeting a friend for lunch, and they are coming from a different direction.  Then you go to a family dinner and the four of you come from four distinct locations.  That is how life often works, and the state planners have been unable to change that.  People get into cars together when it is convenient and/or it makes sense for their daily activities.

In the minds of those planners, people who drive in a car by themselves are doing two things.  First, they are clogging the highways.  Second, they are destroying the environment with their single-occupancy vehicles.  I am sure that is why they maintain these lanes today because they have all become climate change evangelists.  

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A recent proposal for the 605 freeway actually planned to remove the HOV lane and replace it with the bucolic ExpressLane, which is a fee lane. Instead, a proposal was made to add an HOV lane. The entire project was scrapped.  

If the HOV program had been working and people had heeded the guidance of the government wonks pushing this program, it seems to me that they would have been forced to add a second diamond lane after all this time.  I have only seen two diamond lanes in limited applications where there are freeway transitions.  Virtually no one has changed their behavior because of this program in the past 50 years because it was ill-conceived in the first place.  Maybe they were fans of Field of Dreams.  You know, “If you build it, they will come.”  It worked out much better for Kevin Costner. 

The people overseeing this program have already admitted defeat for the purpose of getting people to double up in their cars.  They have authorized EVs to use the HOV lane.  I am sure they would authorize self-driving vehicles also.  At least a dozen states now allow EVs in the diamond lanes.  That is a terrible reason to pay extra for a vehicle that has a shorter lifespan.  

The question for California is what are they going to do with the diamond lanes when all these new EVs are mandated with 35% of sales in just two years, increasing to 68% by 2030?  Whether you believe that will happen or not, they certainly are going to need to add a lane or junk the program.  

The program was another well-meaning attempt by our enlightened overseers that never came to fruition. Much like all those bicycle lanes.  If they were really enlightened, they would put the program in the trash heap and admit defeat.  

*****

This article was published by Flash Report and is reproduced with permission from the author.

TAKE ACTION

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Harris/Obama/Biden leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

Please click the following link to learn more.