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A Time for Reckoning

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By Antony Davis

Consumer prices are up almost nine percent from where they were a year ago. For the median U.S. household, that’s equivalent to an almost $6,000 pay cut. Politicians have blamed corporate greed, the Ukraine war, and the supply chain because they are keen to get voters to latch on to any explanation as long as it isn’t the correct explanation.

The correct explanation implicates the entire political class.

For four decades, economists have warned, and warned, and warned again that the federal government should not spend money it doesn’t have. But during each of a string of crises, politicians insisted that a “temporary” bout of deficit spending was necessary to get us through to the other side. Deficit spending was needed, politicians said, to deal with the Soviet threat in the 1980s, then the Savings and Loan crisis in the 1990s, then 9/11 in the 2000s, then the housing crisis in the 2010s, then COVID in the 2020s. If they have their way, next up will be more deficit spending in the 2030s to deal with the looming Social Security insolvency crisis. In today’s dollars, politicians added $3 trillion to the debt in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. They added $6 trillion in the 2000s, then almost $10 trillion in the 2010s. According to the Congressional Budget Office, we can expect politicians to add more than $17 trillion in the 2020s. Each generation of voters has complained about the debt, and each generation of politicians has kicked the can down the road, despite knowing that future generations would have to deal with the consequences.

We are that future generation and the inflation we’re seeing today is just one of the consequences.

Today, the federal government collects, from all taxes combined, around $4 trillion per year. But it owes $30 trillion and has committed to paying another $100 trillion to $250 trillion (beyond what it collects in future payroll taxes) to future Social Security and Medicare recipients. For perspective, that’s like a household with a $60,000 income being $450,000 in debt, and then promising to pay for 18 kids to attend four-year private colleges. If that sounds unsustainable, you’re beginning to understand economists’ concerns over the past forty years.

What happened?

Despite all this borrowing, inflation has been very tame for a very long time. What changed is that the debt has become so large that the government is now running out of places on planet Earth to borrow more. American citizens, businesses, and state and local governments lend money to the federal government. So too do foreign citizens, businesses, and governments. Until recently, the largest lender was the Social Security trust fund. Until 2010, Social Security collected more in payroll taxes than it paid out in retirement benefits and loaned the difference to the federal government. But around 2010, the surplus dried up. For the past decade, not only has Social Security had nothing to loan to the government, it’s been needing back money it previously loaned.

As the government has needed to borrow more and more, and the Social Security trust fund has been able to lend less and less, the Federal Reserve has had to take up the slack. But, unlike any other lender, when the Federal Reserve loans money, the money supply increases. And if the money supply increases faster than the economy grows, we get inflation.

The cure for inflation is to contract the money supply, but contracting the money supply raises interest rates. That’s good news for lenders and bad news for borrowers – and the single largest borrower on the planet is the federal government. At $30 trillion, just a one-percentage-point increase in interest rates would cost the federal government an additional $300 billion annually. A two-percentage-point increase in interest rates would cost the federal government almost as much as the entire Department of Defense – every year.

The growth in the federal debt has painted the Federal Reserve into a corner. The Fed must now choose between preserving the purchasing power of the dollar and preserving the financial stability of the federal government. If the Fed contracts the money supply, it keeps inflation down but interest rates go up. If the Fed expands the money supply, it keeps interest rates down but inflation goes up.

But if it’s true that printing money causes inflation, why has it taken so long for the inflation to materialize? The lion’s share of the recent bout of money printing occurred in 2020 when the Fed increased the money supply by a whopping 20 percent. Over just four months, from March to July 2020, the Fed increased the money supply by as much as it had over the prior five years. Yet, inflation remained low through January of 2021. Where was the inflation?

For a clue, notice something strange. From April through August of 2020, the S&P 500 rose 60 percent, more than reversing the plunge it took at the start of the lockdowns. What’s strange is that the S&P 500 was showing a strong recovery during the same period in which the economy was suffering its worst contraction since the Great Depression. Large swaths of the economy were shut down, unemployment peaked at 14 percent – quintuple what it had been just a few months earlier. No one knew how long any of this was going to last, nor what condition we’d be in when it finally did end. Yet, here was the stock market chugging along at a dot-com era pace.

A possible explanation for the missing inflation is that it was hiding in financial markets. If those trillions of dollars the Fed pumped into the money supply landed in financial markets, rather than goods and services markets, then we’d expect to see prices of financial assets rise while prices of goods and services remained steady. Since prices of financial assets aren’t included in inflation calculations, official inflation numbers would remain low despite the massive increase in the money supply. And, if indeed the inflation were hiding in financial markets, then when the covid crisis subsided, that money would start to move out of financial markets and into goods and services markets, causing stock prices to top-out or even fall, while goods and services prices skyrocketed.

And that’s exactly what happened.

In September of 2020, the stock market’s steady upward march faltered, and at the same time, inflation numbers, which were already showing signs of rising, broke out into territory not seen since the 1980s.

A comparison of money growth to prices over the past decade appears to show no link between the money supply and inflation. It appears that it didn’t matter for inflation whether money growth was large or small.

But, if we add together inflation and the growth in the S&P 500 (understanding that the combination is an ad hoc measure), the expected relationship emerges. On average, as the money supply has risen, the sum of inflation and stock price growth has risen also. This suggests that inflation can hide in financial markets, making it appear that increasing the money supply has no deleterious effects.

What comes next?

Defenders of large government will argue that the COVID crisis is simply a hiccup. They will argue that we have a long history of deficit spending combined with low inflation and that, once the supply chain and Ukraine problems are sorted out, we’ll be able to return to business as usual. They’ll argue that we can keep kicking the can down the road.

That’s incorrect. We’ve reached the end of the road, and that end is Social Security. The Social Security board of trustees estimates that Social Security will be insolvent thirteen years from now. At that point, one (or a combination) of three things must happen if Social Security is to continue: (1) payroll taxes must rise by 25 percent; or (2) retiree benefits must be cut by 20 percent; or (3) the Federal Reserve must print an additional $250 billion per year, which, other things equal, would permanently boost inflation even further. 

Social Security’s looming insolvency is a financial fork in the road. One path, increased taxes, leads to more pain for workers. Another path, cutting benefits, leads to more pain for retirees. The third, printing money, leads to more pain for consumers as we all struggle to afford things that were once affordable.

What went wrong?

What went wrong is that we allowed the limited federal government the Founders created to escape its limits. First, politicians discovered that they could win elections by paying off voters with other people’s money. And so modern elections have become contests in which politicians vie with each other to offer “free” stuff to their constituents. “Free” phones, housing, health care, and education are free only to the recipients. Politicians simply force others to pay the bill.

Second, the Supreme Court decided that its job was to “rewrite” the Constitution by reading all manner of things into the document that the plain words on the page didn’t say. Ironically, this began at the same place that the story will ultimately end: Social Security. Politicians and voters wanted Social Security, yet nowhere in Article I, Section 8’s list of federal powers was any mention of establishing a national retirement and disability program. The Supreme Court shot down Social Security. Politicians tried again. The Supreme Court shot it down again. This continued until the Supreme Court finally gave in and concluded that despite the plain words on the page, the Constitution did, after all, empower the federal government to create Social Security. From there, it was simply more of the same to get the CDC, the FDA, the EPA, ATF, and the thousands of federal departments, agencies, programs, and initiatives we have today.

Third, we abandoned the gold standard. Because the quantity of gold is (largely) fixed, when dollars are tied to gold, the quantity of dollars is fixed also. And when the quantity of dollars is fixed, not only can the Fed not wantonly print money, but also the federal government is restrained because the only way it can grow is by taxing the people more. This gives voters an incentive to apply the brakes to runaway government. 

The inflation we feel today is the beginning of the end of a century-long experiment in unlimited government. By kicking the cost of government down the road, generations of politicians have managed to make it look like unlimited government is affordable – possibly even “free.” But we’ve reached the end of the road and found that the people who must ultimately pay for unlimited government is us. Whether through taxes or inflation, pay we will.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

This Flag Day Remember How High The Stars and Stripes Have Flown! thumbnail

This Flag Day Remember How High The Stars and Stripes Have Flown!

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By Editors of CFACT

One of the most iconic images from the Apollo 11 mission is of Buzz Aldrin saluting the American flag on the surface of the Moon. The decision to plant the American flag on the Moon was made rather late in the lead-up to the mission. NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine created the Committee on Symbolic Activities for the First Lunar Landing and appointed Willis H. Shapley, NASA Associate Deputy Administrator, as its chair on Feb. 25, 1969. The committee received advice from the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the Archivist of the United States, the NASA Historical Advisory Committee, the Space Council, and congressional committees. The most common suggestion received was to carry an American flag and plant it on the Moon, and that is what the committee recommended to Administrator Paine.

Robert L. Gilruth, Director of the Manned Spacecraft Center, now the Johnson Space Center in Houston, selected Jack A. Kinzler, Chief of the Technical Services Division, to design a flag and mechanism to allow it to “fly” in the airless lunar environment. With less than three months before the first Moon landing flight, Kinzler, assisted by Deputy Division Chief David L. McCraw, designed the mechanism in just a few days. The flag itself was a standard 3-by-5-foot nylon flag, with the only modification being a hem sewed along its top edge to allow a metal rod to slide through – that gave the flag rigidity in the windless environment so that it appeared to wave. The flag was attached to an 8-foot flagpole that the astronauts planted into the lunar soil.  The vertical and horizontal poles were gold-anodized aluminum tubes. The overall Lunar Flag Assembly (LFA), including a stainless steel case to protect the flag against temperature extremes, weighed 9 pounds 7 ounces. Thomas L. Moser of the Structures and Mechanics Division performed the analysis that showed it would be safe to attach it to the forward landing leg of the Lunar Module (LM) and that it would withstand the heating from the LM’s descent engine during the landing. Moser, Kinzler, and William E. Drummond of the Parachute Support Section carefully folded the flag into its case. Kinzler hand-carried the flag assembly to the Kennedy Space Center where workers attached it to the LM Eagle’s landing leg just three days before launch.

Watch a video of Apollo 11 astronauts Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. “Buzz” Aldrin deploying the American flag on the lunar surface on July 20, 1969. The split screen shows the live TV downlink on the left, synchronized with film taken by an automatic camera set up inside the LM on the right. The photograph above is superimposed in the video at the time that Armstrong took it.

    

Left: The Lunar Flag Assembly prior to assembly and installation on the LM Eagle. Middle: Folding the flag, (left to right) Moser,

Drummond, and Kinzler. Right: McCraw demonstrating how the LFA was attached to the LM’s landing leg.

Over the next three years, five more flags joined the one left by Apollo 11. Photographs taken in recent years by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) show that the flags left by Apollo 12, 16, and 17 appear to be still standing. The first flag left by Apollo 11 cannot be seen and is presumably no longer standing. The film taken from inside the LM as the astronauts lifted off from the Moon begins after the LM is already airborne and the flag cannot be seen, but Aldrin claims he caught a glimpse of the flag getting knocked over during liftoff. On the later landings, astronauts planted the flags farther from the LM. The status of the Apollo 14 and 15 flags cannot be determined conclusively, although it looks like the Apollo 14 flag took quite a beating from the LM engine exhaust during liftoff. The flag that Apollo 17 left on the Moon was somewhat unique. It was a flag that went to the Moon and back on Apollo 11, hung on the wall in Mission Control until it made a return trip to the Moon, this time to stay. An identical flag made a round trip on Apollo 17 and now hangs in Mission Control.

  

Left: Apollo 12 Commander Conrad holding the flag at the Ocean of Storms landing site.

Right: Orbital view of the Apollo 12 landing site from LRO taken in 2012 shows the shadow of

the flag (at upper left), indicating that our flag is still there.

  

Left: Apollo 14 Commander Shepard holding the flag at the Fra Mauro landing site.

Right: Apollo 15 Commander Scott saluting the flag at Hadley-Apennine, with the LM Falcon

and Lunar Rover.

  

Left: Apollo 16 Commander Young giving a leaping salute to the flag at Descartes, with the

LM Orion and Lunar Rover in the background. Right: Apollo 17 Commander Cernan holding

the flag at Taurus-Littrow, with the Earth in the background.

The first American flag to leave Earth was aboard Alan B. Shepard’s Mercury-Redstone 3 flight in May 1961. The success of this flight that placed the first American in space inspired President John F. Kennedy to commit the nation to landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth before the end of the decade. The 23- by 36-inch cloth flag came from Cocoa Beach School located near Cape Canaveral, Florida, and was rolled up and stowed in a wire bundle in the Freedom-7 spacecraft. Shepard was not aware the flag was there until after his mission was over. The same flag flew into space again in 1995 aboard the STS-71 Space Shuttle flight, the 100th American crewed mission that also marked the first docking of a U.S. space shuttle to Russia’s Mir space station. After returning from space for a second time, the flag was presented by Shepard and STS-71 commander Robert L. “Hoot” Gibson” for display at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in the Kennedy Space Center’s Visitor Complex, where it remains today.  John H. Glenn’s Friendship-7, the first Mercury orbital flight, was the first spacecraft to have an American flag painted on its outside.

  

Left: The first American flag in space carried aboard Freedom-7 in 1961, on display at the Astronaut

Hall of Fame. Right: The first American flag painted on a spacecraft, Glenn’s Friendship-7, in 1962.

Credits: Smithsonian.

In addition to the American flags carried into space and to the Moon by astronauts, the Stars and Stripes have travelled to all eight planets as well as dwarf planets, asteroids, and comets, carried there by an extensive fleet of robotic explorers. The first flag on the surface of Mars arrived on the Viking 1 Lander, which made its touchdown on the red planet on July 20, 1976, exactly seven years after the Apollo 11 Moon landing, and during America’s Bicentennial year. Five American flags are leaving our solar system, aboard Pioneer 10 and 11, Voyager 1 and 2, and New Horizons. The farthest of those, the one aboard Voyager 1, is currently 11.7 billion miles from Earth.

  

Left: First US flag on Mars in the Viking 1 Lander in 1976. Right: Project Manager John Casani displays

one of the U.S. flags that were placed aboard the two Voyager spacecraft.

With NASA’s plans to go forward to the Moon by 2024, American flags will be returning to the lunar surface, carried there by the next man and the first woman to land on the Moon. And soon thereafter, astronauts will hopefully be carrying American flags to the surface of Mars.

John Uri

NASA Johnson Space Center

This article originally appeared at NASA.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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A Conversation About Gun Violence

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By Charles M. Strauss

We need to have a conversation about gun violence!

OK, you start.

You hate children!

That’s slander, not a conversation, but go ahead.

Schools should be Gun-Free Zones.

Those signs have been up since 1990. I said then that Gun-Free Zones wouldn’t work, and I was right, wasn’t I? What else?

Background checks!

We’ve had background checks since 1985. I said then that background checks wouldn’t work, and I was right, wasn’t I? Almost all of the mass shooters passed background checks. So, you want to do even more of what hasn’t worked; got it. What else?

Ban assault weapons!

We did that for 10 years; and as I predicted, it didn’t work, did it?

Yes, it did! The president said so!

The president also said he drove an 18-wheeler, graduated at the top of his class, hit a baseball off the wall in Nationals Stadium, was recommended for the Naval Academy, and was arrested in South Africa while protesting apartheid. The president is one of those people who say things that are not true. There is a word for such people; the president is a … you know, the thing. The Department of Justice study concluded the Assault Weapons Ban didn’t do a damn thing. What else do you want to have a conversation about?

If the shooter had not had an AR15, he would not have killed so many children.

Yes, he would have. In most mass shootings, the shooters have used handguns, shotguns, and hunting rifles. When victims are trapped and helpless, weapon type is irrelevant, because the shooter can take his time. What else?

Then ban all guns!

Yeah, that would work as well as banning alcohol did, and how is that War On Drugs coming along? Lots of people have been killed in those noble, well-meaning experiments. Anyway, when psychos don’t have guns, the body count goes up… way up. They use truck bombs (Murrah Building), pressure cooker bombs (Boston Marathon), fire (Happyland Social Club), and vehicles driven into crowds (Waukesha). Why are you proposing something that would cause more people to be killed? Whose side are you on? What else?

Red Flag Laws!

Those have failed just like background checks have. Many of the mass shooters and school shooters were already on the police radar with red flags flying all over the place. Many states already have red flag laws, and mostly they get used by vengeful ex-spouses and co-workers trying to make trouble with false accusations. Because (as you probably don’t know), the essence of a red flag law is taking somebody’s guns away without due process — just an accusation, no hearing, no right to deny the accusation or show exculpatory evidence. Somebody makes an accusation and that automatically makes someone guilty.

But we have to Do Something!

Something stupid and counterproductive, or something that might actually help?

Well, what are your child-hating ideas, you child-hater? Arming teachers?

Glad you have an open mind. Not “arming” teachers, but “allowing” teachers to carry guns if that is their choice. (You’re in favor of choice, right?) Take down those stupid Gun-Free Zone signs, and assure teachers they will not be arrested and fired if they are serious adults who actually want to protect their students.

You are crazy! What other crazy ideas do you have that I have already decided not to listen to?

Long-term, work toward encouraging families with fathers. Almost every mass shooter has come from a family with no father, an absentee father, or a father who was abusive and/or a criminal. There is no correlation between mass shooters and any particular gun or gun law, but there is a strong correlation with fatherlessness.

You hate children! Also, you are a racist.

Thanks for the conversation.

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Cheney Seals Her Doom With Wyoming Voters at Jan 6 Show Trial thumbnail

Cheney Seals Her Doom With Wyoming Voters at Jan 6 Show Trial

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By Bob Adelmann

Liz Cheney effectively ended her political career in Wyoming Thursday evening. As co-chair of the January 6 committee (which Democrat lawyer Alan Dershowitz dismissed as a “kangaroo court”), she called the January 6, 2021 protest and riot an “invasion” of the Capitol aided and abetted by President Donald Trump. She said Trump “claim[ed] that the election was stolen,” which justified the “invasion.”

Two recent polls have revealed the growing support among Wyoming Republican voters — who make up three-quarters of the electorate in the Cowboy State — for Cheney’s opponent in the August 16 Republican primary, Harriet Hageman. The latest, conducted by Tony Fabrizio with results released on Monday, reported:

Over the past six months, Harriet Hageman has become known to nearly all Wyoming [Republican Primary Voters], and as she has done so, her net favorable image has increased from +21 to +29.

A 58% majority now view her favorably while just 29% have an unfavorable opinion.

The incumbent, four-term representative Cheney, on the other hand, has lost what little ground she previously occupied among those voters:

Conversely, the already unpopular Congresswoman Liz Cheney has become even more disliked, with her net favorable falling from -40 to -47.

A whopping 73% of GOP primary voters have an unfavorable view of Cheney, including 66% who view her very unfavorably.

Fabrizio allayed any fears that Cheney could somehow pull out a victory in the primary by appealing to the few Democrats and Independents in the state to change their party affiliations and register as Republicans the day of the election:

Hageman has successfully captured the bulk of these anti-Cheney voters by winning over undecideds and some Bouchard [third candidate running] voters, leaving little doubt as to whom will win this race….

Harriet Hageman is now the overwhelming favorite to remove Liz Cheney from Congress.

The disaster awaiting Cheney in August could be even worse. Fabrizio’s survey occurred before Cheney’s remarks on Thursday night. And, when asked, “Do you approve or disapprove of the job Liz Cheney is doing as Congresswoman?” 70 percent of those polled by Fabrizio disapproved.

A straw poll conducted by the Wyoming State Central Committee in January showed Hageman winning 59 votes and Cheney only six.

*****

This article was published by The New American and is reprinted with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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Disney Doubles Down On LGBTQ Programming With ‘Lightyear’ And More

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By Josh Sheperd

Same-sex romance is prominent in the latest ‘Toy Story’ entry, and Disney Plus has several LGBTQ-themed films and series coming out.

Disney is going all-out in joining leftists’ June celebration of Pride Month, making same-sex themes central to a new “Toy Story” feature film spin-off, and adding more than 100 hours of LGBTQ titles to family-targeted streamer Disney Plus. 

After advance screenings, critics say animated space adventure “Lightyear” — opening in theaters on June 17 — “takes queer representation to infinity and beyond,” to quote USA Today, highlighting that a lesbian couple “at one point [greets] each other with a kiss on the lips.”

Following backlash over Disney creative executives discussing their ongoing efforts at “queering” children’s entertainment, it seems Disney has decided to dismiss the concerns of many conservative parents. That collective shrug in Hollywood could be missing the big picture. A Harris Poll released in late May ranking the nation’s Top 100 brands found that The Walt Disney Company dropped from 37th to 65th place in reputation just since last year. 

“Disney’s about-face shows the reputational hit that comes when the public perceives you as being calculating rather than clear in what you believe in and stand for,” said Harris Poll CEO John Gerzema. Disney also recently reported less-than-stellar streaming subscription growth.

Entertainment critic for faith-based outlet Crosswalk Michael Foust says the clash of cultural mores between Hollywood and faith-driven families has been building for years. “Disney does not operate from a biblical worldview, so it is no surprise that it keeps offering content that frustrates many in the faith community,” he stated via email.

Melissa Jacobs and her husband, Jeremy, raising seven children in St. Louis, canceled Disney Plus this spring. While the family has enjoyed shows like “Bluey,” along with Star Wars and Marvel films, she stated that “the direction Disney was leaning” prompted their decision.

“Many of their programs no longer have a traditional family and instead highlight and celebrate queer, transgender, and homosexual characters,” she stated. “In many shows, kids are openly disrespectful to their parents. It’s all contrary to what we are trying to teach our children.”

Christians Object to Plot Twist in ‘Toy Story’ Franchise

The first Pixar production to hit theaters in more than two years, “Lightyear” is tied loosely to beloved “Toy Story” films. It’s billed as young Andy’s favorite movie, the one that compelled him to cast aside his cowboy Woody in the original 1995 film.

Reading between the lines of some critics’ effusive praise, families get the plot’s general drift. Sent on a peacekeeping mission, space ranger Buzz and his co-pilot Alisha face off against aliens on a strange planet. When subsequent damage to their ship maroons them for years, stranded Alisha meets a female romantic interest and the two “start a family together.”

For the Jacobs family, fans of past “Toy Story” films, “Lightyear” won’t be a summer outing to the multiplex. The mother of seven is author of “Livin’ the Dream,” which includes their story of adopting a daughter. She says the Bible guides their views on sex, marriage, and family.

“As a mom, I can see clearly that there are needs my children have that only I can fill,” stated Melissa. “Meanwhile, there are needs they have that only their dad can fill.” She added that single-parent friends of their family “seek out support” so their kids have “both a mother-type figure and father-type figure” involved in their lives.

Similarly, Foust, who is raising four kids with his wife in rural Illinois, observed cultural trends run counter to Chrisitan theology on marriage and sexuality. “Hollywood may consider us strange for even questioning the content of ‘Lightyear,’ but that shouldn’t surprise us,” said Foust. “After all, 2,000 years ago the Apostle Peter reminded us that we are ‘strangers’ and ‘temporary residents’ in this world.”

Two of the filmmakers behind “Lightyear” — director Angus MacLane and producer Galyn Susman — are “Toy Story” franchise veterans who say they’re eager to make something “exciting and awesome.” MacLane says they didn’t want the LGBTQ plotline to be “a superfluous thing” but an “accurate representation.”

If anyone is puzzled by this being the flick supposedly referenced in 1995’s “Toy Story,” while reflecting cultural mores far left of the mainstream in that era, producer Susman explained: “Though it’s the film Andy saw, we were still making it for today’s generation.”

Promoting Alternative Lifestyles to Children

Will many families forgo a much-hyped movie featuring favorite spaceman Buzz? For those who are Disney Plus subscribers, it’s merely the start of new additions to navigate during Pride Month.

In June, six seasons of “Glee,” three seasons of “Love, Victor,” and LGBTQ-themed “Trevor: The Musical” will be added to the streamer’s Pride Collection. (Last year, Pixar’s short “Out” with similar themes premiered.) Such a deluge of titles involving same-sex romance among minors could prompt some to readjust parental controls or bail on Disney Plus altogether.

Foust, an evangelical Christian, says believers uphold the dignity and worth of every person. It’s praising sin to children that is problematic. “We are to love our neighbors unconditionally — while not being conformed to this world by the entertainment we consume,” he stated.

No Christians Wanted

Disney’s leftist drift seems to be accelerating. As part of an initiative called Reimagine Tomorrow, Disney outlines its association with LGBTQ advocacy groups like GLAAD. Reporting on this initiative, the Los Angeles Times linked to a letter by current Disney employees who have chosen to remain anonymous. 

“As much as diversity and inclusion are promoted, the tomorrow being reimagined doesn’t seem to have much room for religious or political conservatives within the company,” state these Disney cast members. “This politicization of our corporate culture is damaging morale and causing many of us to feel our days with [Disney] might be numbered.”

Several players in family entertainment, such as Angel Studios and GAC Family, are working to produce and distribute films and shows that appeal to families who object to Disney’s direction.

This all reflects how entertainment continues to splinter to reach varied audiences, said Foust. “More and more, it is obvious that if the faith community wants entertainment framed within a biblical worldview, the faith community alone must produce it.”

*****

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Could Chile Turn Its Back on Freedom? thumbnail

Could Chile Turn Its Back on Freedom?

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By Ken Veit

Editors’ Note: Chile is a beautiful country, as is the United States of America. This article is clearly about America as much as it is about the potential loss of liberty and a far leftist takeover in Chile. The parallels are stunning with actors like Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and the radical progressives (Obama inspired) driving the out-of-control Biden presidential bus. It is an important read and an important message for freedom loving, hard working, and law abiding American citizens who believe in the foundational principles of individual sovereignty and the rule of constitutional law that has guided the greatest experiment in governing by consent of ‘We the People’.

Most people outside of South America do not follow trends there very closely. You may not be aware that democracy and freedom are being threatened in the most successful country in Latin America: Chile. That development threatens us here as well.

A quick history lesson. In 1970, Chile became the first country to freely elect what became a Communist government under Salvador Allende. The Chilenos did not want Communism. Allende was elected with only a little more than a third of the total votes when the other two candidates split the Conservative vote. Allende quickly became a puppet of the extreme left, and the country spiraled into chaos, pushed along by Henry Kissinger and the CIA. Things got so bad in terms of inflation, unemployment, etc. that on August 22, 1973, Congress by a large majority asked the armed forces to put an end to multiple violations of the Constitution.  General Augusto Pinochet staged a coup d’etat on September 11, 1973, ousting Allende who shot himself in the Presidential palace.

Pinochet became dictator until 1989 when he freely relinquished office after honest elections. He gets a bad press in the U.S. because of the brutal methods he used to suppress the Communists, who were not about to give up power easily. It was during the Pinochet era that I was traveling regularly to Chile. The reality on the ground was quite different from what we NorteAmericanos were told by our media.

Anyone could walk around the cities and talk freely about politics and the government, as long as you did not promote insurrection. If you did, you might find that the Police would come down on you with una mano dura (an iron fist). But for the most part, there was no censorship. Restaurants were full. Most people led normal lives and were comfortable speaking their minds.

Most people liked Pinochet. He quickly restored order from chaos. I asked friends how they felt about the allegations of brutality, which were true. None approved of it, but generally, I was told, “You weren’t here. Anything is better than how it was under Allende.” What was so bad about him? It was largely the fact that he promised everything to everyone for free, all at Government expense. Naturally, this was popular with the poor and the uneducated, but it was totally unsustainable. The economy collapsed.

Pinochet hired a group of economists from the University of Chicago, disciples of Milton Friedman, to come down and tell him how to straighten things out. Among other things, they revamped their Social Security System which was bankrupt. Taxes were still collected, but instead of turning the money over to the politicians to spend, a group of companies was allowed to compete to be managers of the pension funds that were seen to belong to the individual citizens. This was how I became involved, as my company became one of those investment managers.

The program was wildly successful. Chile became one of the few countries anywhere that had a public pension system that was not built on smoke and mirrors. Among other things we established a system where individuals could go to a public kiosk, punch in their Social Security ID, and learn exactly how much they had accumulated on their behalf.

Not everyone was happy, however. The Pinochet reforms primarily benefited those who worked. Chilenos are serious people. If you work, you benefit. If you don’t, you can’t look to the Government to take care of you. This is anathema to people who see society as a global village where everyone is responsible for everyone. Politics is usually about the division of the spoils, and inevitably the pendulum of power swings back and forth between those who are content with the way things are and those who would like things to be more favorable to their interests.

After Pinochet, Chile tried Governments of the Left and of the Right over the next 30 years, but generally, they did not stray too far from the precepts of Milton Friedman. People always speak of Chile as a model for South American governments, which historically have tended to be either corrupt or inept.

In the last few years, however, the gap between the Haves and the Have-nots has widened dangerously. This is a global phenomenon that threatens to topple Governments. With the Internet, social media, and cell phones ubiquitous, public opinion and public action can be mobilized rapidly.

In Chile, the Have-nots are rising. Not surprisingly, they resent the fact that those who have been contributing and saving for retirement are in better financial condition than they are. Chile’s social safety net is not satisfactory. With rising power, those on the political Left have forced a Constitutional rewriting. Recently, a 600-page draft was released which, if adopted, would put the country back on the path they abandoned when Allende fell.

Among other things, the draft calls for a more socially just allocation of retirement assets. Put bluntly, that would mean giving the Government the power to seize all the accumulated retirement assets of individuals and spread the money around to the less fortunate. Another name for confiscation is “theft”, but to the apostles of social justice, this is dismissed as just an excuse for keeping poor people down.

In today’s world, to be poor is seen as being a victim of elites in an unjust society, which is translated into having rights denied. As more and more people come to see themselves as victims, they are increasingly using the political system for a redress of grievances over rights denied.

“Rights” are things to which one has a proper claim. Some, like freedom of religion, if enshrined in law, are ours to enjoy without regard to anyone else. But many rights also place obligations on others to facilitate or pay for those benefits or alter their behavior. The so-called right to health care, or the right to security in old age, involve costs that have to be paid for somehow by someone. In other words, many rights are affected by the political process that determines obligations associated with those rights.

Increasingly, politicians and judges have invented rights like the right to privacy, the right to an abortion, etc. It is not so much a matter of appropriateness as it is a matter of funding. This largely depends on political power. This is what is playing out in Chile. The proposed new Constitution is full of rights, but vague on how they will be financed. Chilenos will vote in September. Most likely, few will have actually read the entire document, relying instead on political slogans.

What has this to do with the United States? Politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are at the forefront of politicians proclaiming the existence of many rights on the grounds of morality. Their answer to the question of who pays is the greedy rich and greedy corporations. Chilean politicians make similar arguments. Isn’t it immoral for some to have so much more than they could ever need when so many are currently in desperate need? The BLM movement argues that many of the great corporations and great fortunes were built on the backs of slaves, and therefore reparations are in order to right old wrongs. Proposed “wealth taxes” are merely confiscation by another name.

These are powerful arguments that swing voters, ignorant of the fatal flaws inherent in what is essentially a Communist core belief. (“To each according to his needs from each according to his ability.”)

There are no easy answers. However, I was disturbed by a recent article in the Wall Street Journal that highlights the potential fragility of Capitalism in our time. Jamie Dimon, the popular CEO of JPMorgan-Chase Bank was awarded a $52.6 million dollar “special” bonus on top of his regular compensation of $32 million. That doubled his pay from the previous year. Now Dimon had not invented a cure for cancer or “saved” JPM in a time of great financial peril. He had simply done a good job, as he usually does.

Shareholders overwhelmingly refused to approve the special bonus. However, the Journal calmly reported that it is doubtful he will give it back. Jamie is not like a baseball pitcher who argues he should get a bonus because when he pitches the attendance always goes up. Dimon manages a large bank and does it well. It is unquestionably a challenging task. But $80+ million dollars?

I don’t believe that Chilean corporations pay their CEOs as lavishly. But the Dimon incident gives ammunition to those who find the “wealth gap” intolerable. As political power shifts back and forth, those of us who believe in Capitalism would be well advised to minimize examples of excesses that fan the flames of resentment. The mob always has the power of numbers.

Watch the Chilean referendum on the new Constitution carefully. The vote will be on September 4. The betting is that it will not be approved because it goes too far to the Left. But you never know. The winds of change will still be blowing even if it is defeated.

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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Today’s Left Opposes Everything Jimmy Carter Proposed on Elections

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By Hayden Ludwig

Two decades ago, a commission chaired by Jimmy Carter and James Baker III proposed sensible election reforms. Today’s Democrats oppose them all.

Believe it or not, the nation could learn a few things about how to run elections from Jimmy Carter.

In 2005, Carter co-authored a study on America’s election systems with James Baker III, who ran George H.W. Bush’s 1980 primary campaign against Carter and later served as Ronald Reagan’s treasury secretary and chief of staff. The resulting Baker-Carter Commission report still stands as a monument to how to run free, fair, transparent elections—which makes it all the sadder that today’s leftists bitterly oppose everything the report proposed.

Contradictions

For example, the Baker-Carter report warned about mail-in ballots, flatly contradicting the views held by today’s leftists that vote by mail is key to increasing voter participation. Baker-Carter says otherwise: “While vote-by-mail appears to increase turnout for local elections, there is no evidence that it significantly expands participation in federal elections.” (Recent studies suggest the same.)

Those activists also claim that vote-by-mail and private collection bins helped make 2020 the “most secure election in U.S. history.” Baker-Carter: “Vote-by-mail is . . . likely to increase the risks of fraud and of contested elections” in the states, especially where the “safeguards for ballot integrity are weaker.”

In short, mail-in ballots can work in some spots, but not everywhere—particularly in areas with a high risk of ballot trafficking.

Baker-Carter Recommendations

Instead, Baker-Carter proposed five pillars as the foundation of a “modern electoral system”:

  1. “A universal and up-to-date [voter] registration list,”
  2. “A uniform voter identification system that . . . increases, not impedes, participation,”
  3. “Measures to enhance ballot integrity and voter access,”
  4. “A voter-verifiable paper trail and improved security of voting systems,” and
  5. “Electoral institutions that are impartial, professional, and independent.”

Anyone familiar with today’s election battles knows that the Left has consistently opposed all these measures.

The Electoral System We Have

The states’ voter rolls are notoriously flawed, riddled with the names of people who’ve died or moved. Efforts to clean them up have been attacked by Democrats. For example, as one of the last acts of the Obama administration, Attorney General Eric Holder’s Justice Department tried to block Ohio from purging its voter rolls, claiming it would discourage minority turnout. (Trump officials reversed the federal government’s position in 2017, and the Supreme Court upheld Ohio’s practice a year later.)

What about voter ID laws? Last June, the Biden administration sued Georgia and Texas for implementing “voter suppression” bills that require—among other things—voter ID for mail-in ballots.

Improving voter access is about the only recommendation on this list that today’s Left supports—but not if it means improving ballot integrity and security. Democrats went all in on mail-in ballots to defeat President Trump in 2020, effectively turning it into the country’s first all-mail election in many places. Yet mail-in and absentee ballots are extremely vulnerable to ballot harvesting since there’s rarely any oversight from the time the ballots are sent out to when election officials collect them. In many cases, establishing a paper trail is impossible, particularly in places with privately funded drop boxes, which enable illegal ballot harvesters to prey on the poor and elderly, claiming to “assist” while really stealing their votes.

In the last election, we learned just how far left-wing activists will go to taint election offices when the Mark Zuckerberg–funded Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) dumped $350 million into thousands of local elections offices in the fall of 2020. These COVID-19 “relief grants” effectively privatized the election in battleground states, including Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia, where “Zuck bucks” overwhelmingly favored Democratic vote-rich counties.

For example, in Georgia, we found that CTCL spent an average of $5.33 per capita in Biden counties and only $1.41 in Trump counties. Over 94 percent of the $42 million in Zuck bucks that flowed to Georgia went to counties Biden won.

I doubt that even CTCL believes that private money from a partisan mega-donor encourages “electoral institutions that are impartial, professional, and independent.”

But Wait, There’s More

The Baker-Carter report was paid for by a set of liberal foundations, many with familiar names: Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation, Knight Foundation, and the Omidyar Network, which is bankrolled by eBay founder and liberal billionaire Pierre Omidyar.

Omidyar himself sits on the board of Nonprofit VOTE, which registers voters to advance “racial equity.” Speaking of Hawaii specifically, Omidyar et al. tellingly argued, “If we want to get out the vote, we’ve got to mail it in.”

We’ve traced grants from these foundations to a host of groups demanding Americans oppose the very policies proposed in the Baker-Carter report:

  • State Voices, which coordinates get-out-the-vote campaigns among likely Democratic voters and endorsed the John Lewis Voting Rights Act (H.R. 4), which would give the Justice Department control of the redistricting process in many (mostly Southern) states.
  • Rock the Vote, which registers young, left-leaning voters to push for socialized health care, abortion rights, and legalizing marijuana and encouraged them to vote by mail in 2020.
  • National Vote at Home Institute, one of the top groups responsible for normalizing vote by mail on the Left. Its former head, Amber McReynolds, sits on the oversight board for the U.S. Postal Service with the aim of transforming it into the Democrats’ premier mail-in ballot machine.
  • Demos, which wants federal agencies to register voters for mail-in ballots and to spend $10 billion to expand vote-by-mail nationwide.
  • Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), which spent roughly $350 million to virtually privatize the 2020 election in key battleground states.
  • Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR), which accepted close to $70 million from Mark Zuckerberg to fund state get-out-the-vote and “voter education” drives in 2020. CEIR is run by David Becker, a former activist for the far-left group People for the American Way. We’ve traced its grants to a $2 million campaign to turn out Democratic-leaning voters in Baltimore and counties neighboring Washington, DC.
  • Center for Civic Design, which redesigns ballots to help Democratic voters, particularly non-English speakers. One of its key recommendations to policymakers: permanent vote by mail, with advice from its partner the National Vote at Home Institute.
  • Trusted Elections Fund, a “pop-up” campaign run by the Arabella Advisors “dark money” network. A secret donors’ memo reveals the group’s goal to stop “viral misinformation” and “post-Election Day violence” by angry Trump supporters.
  • Safe Voting Fund, another Arabella-run “pop-up” that promoted vote by mail to keep voting “safe” in 2020.
  • Center for Secure and Modern Elections (CSME), which demands automatic voter registration and hired Democratic consultants to help funnel Zuck bucks to county elections officials in at least two states in 2020.
  • Secure Democracy, which wants more drop boxes for mail-in ballots, looser absentee voting laws, and restoration of voting rights to felons.

But this shouldn’t surprise anyone who paid attention to the last election cycle and the Left’s shenanigans.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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What are ESG Scores?

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By Neland Nobel

And why are so many advocates of liberty deeply concerned about them?

Klaus Schwab and a growing list of powerful global economic and political elites, including BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and President Joe Biden, have recently committed to a global “reset” of the prevailing school of economic thought. They seek to supplant the entrenched “shareholder doctrine” of capitalism, which—as Milton Friedman famously espoused over 50 years ago—holds that the only purpose of a corporate executive is to maximize profits on behalf of company shareholders.

To replace shareholder capitalism, Schwab, Fink, Biden, and a legion of their peers have promulgated a nouveau “stakeholder doctrine,” commonly referred to as “stakeholder capitalism.” This approach, which aims to harness the growing clamor for more socially conscious corporate decision-making, authorizes, incentivizes, and even coerces corporate executives and directors to work on behalf of social objectives deemed by elites to be desirable for all corporate stakeholders—including communities, workers, executives, and suppliers.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores—a social credit framework for sustainability reporting—are being used as the primary mechanism to achieve the shift to a stakeholder model. They measure both financial and non-financial impacts of investments and companies and serve to formally institutionalize corporate social responsibility in global economic infrastructure.

Environment, social, and governance scores are theoretically supposed to incentivize “responsible investing” by “screening out” companies that do not possess high ESG scores while favorably rating those companies and funds that make positive contributions to ESG’s three overarching categories. A company’s ESG score has become a primary component of its risk profile.

Who Are the agents responsible for this shift, and what have they done to bring it about?

Although there have been many ESG frameworks developed over the past decade, in the past three years alone, three major documents and compacts have been signed by a coalition of corporate governors, political elites, central bank directors, international organization representatives, and other powerful individuals. Together, they have had a substantial impact on the global economy and the shift to ESG.

In August 2019, The Business Roundtable (TBR)—comprised of 181 of the most powerful corporate executives in the United States—officially revised its conception of a corporation’s purpose to “promote an economy that serves all Americans.” The companies these CEOs represent hail from nearly all sectors of the U.S. economy, including major financial institutions, media conglomerates, technology firms, defense contractors, pharmaceutical companies, and myriad others.

Many of these executives are likely unaware that their  ESG ideas come dangerously close to the social credit system run by the Chinese Communist Party. It applies to corporations instead of individuals, but the principles are the same. Nor do they likely recognize that their policies result in starving the fossil fuel industry of capital, thus contributing to soaring energy costs to consumers and rampant inflation. Besides Biden, think of these leaders when you fill up your tank!

For businessmen to betray the principles of private ownership of capital, and free enterprise, and buy into the agenda of a particular political party, marks quite a change in the role of business in society. Heretofore, with the exception of tax-free foundations funded by businesses (think of the Ford Foundation), corporations rarely have been so politically active outside of election activities. This is causing evolutionary tension with our political parties. The Democrat party increasingly has become the party of Big Money and Big corporations, while the Republican party is increasingly less friendly to Big Business and sides more with small business people and consumers.

A case in point is the state of Florida. Previously quite friendly to Walt Disney, state leaders took affront when that giant corporation that had received special favors from the state, decided it would take it upon itself to interfere directly and publicly with legislation that would restrict the teaching of transgender ideology to those in kindergarten through the third grade. The result was the loss to Walt Disney of the Reedy Improvement district, which gave that corporation almost the power of self-government.

You will note in the map provided, that Arizona has down well on this front, largely due to Republicans in the legislature.

If the upcoming elections go badly for Democrats and the Green New Deal, Republicans need to keep in mind that Big Business has not been their friend. The result should be a reexamination of the relations of business to government. Special favors, subsidies, and tax breaks, all need to be eliminated. Republicans should strive to eliminate regulations and barriers that reduce competition.  It is bad enough to have socialism constantly foisted upon us by Democrats. It is quite another to expect that from Big Business. Republicans will have to deal with “Business Roundtable” types within our own ranks.

Vote with your dollars as well and try to avoid doing business with corporations that betray your trust and the economic system that made this country great. More than half the country identifies as conservative so make these companies pay whenever you can. True, it takes some work to find substitutes, but where you can, hit them in the pocketbook. But it is easy in some cases to avoid buying shoes for example from Nike, buying anything from Disney, buying a car from GM, and turning off the NBA is quite easy. Some choices, like the NBA, are not even “necessities” in the normal course of life and can easily be dismissed. Find money managers other than BlackRock, and move your checking account away from Chase and other large banks, to smaller independent banks. It can be difficult finding substitutes on occasion but where you can, avoid doing business and avoid buying the stocks of companies in the Business Roundtable, or at least directors of the Roundtable.You can actually make spending your money a political “lifestyle” choice.  It is fun and you will feel good about doing so.

Corporate leaders will soon get the message.  If you go woke, you will go broke.  Other than the transgender craze, nothing has been more woke than ESG.

*****

This article is adapted from materials published by The Heartland Institute and is reproduced with permission.  However, the opinions are that of the author.

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Weekend Read: 5 Reasons America’s Birthrate Is Plummeting

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By Hannah Cox

The simple truth is, that there are fewer people who want to bring kids into the world. Though the reasons are diverse, 44 percent of non-parents between 18 to 49 say it is not at all likely they will procreate.

Elon Musk recently tweeted, “population collapse is the biggest threat to civilization.”

The tweet included a link to an interview Musk gave where he expanded on the subject. “Assuming there’s a benevolent future with AI, I think the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years is population collapse,” Musk wrote. “Collapse. I want to emphasize this….Not explosion, collapse.”

Musk has been known to raise this concern in the past too. Last year he told the Wall Street Journal, “I can’t emphasize this enough, there are not enough people.” He also said that low and rapidly declining birth rates are “one of the biggest risks to civilization.”

That the wealthiest and arguably one of the smartest men on earth spends his days fixating on this issue should be a signal to others that things might be more dire than they think.

According to the US Census, “The US population grew at a slower rate in 2021 than in any other year since the founding of the nation.” And we’re not alone. According to reporting by the BBC, “Researchers at the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation showed the global fertility rate nearly halved to 2.4 in 2017 – and their study, published in the Lancet, projects it will fall below 1.7 by 2100.”

Population replacement rates are important for a society to sustain itself. We need people to be born so that there are workers to fill the various needs of the whole. Old men cannot do the labor young men can do, young adults are needed to care for the dying and aging. Fewer people mean less economic activity, smaller GDPs, less innovation, and less competition.

It also means we have less division of labor. As Adam Smith wrote in The Wealth of Nations, “The division of labor is limited by the extent of the market.“ That means people are less able to specialize and lean into their preferences or areas of expertise in their work.

As a whole, the machine slows and then stagnates when new firewood is not added to the furnace.

But while Elon Musk is absolutely correct about the problem and the potential threat it poses to society, he has not addressed (as far as I’ve seen) the underlying issues creating it or discussed how they might be solved.

So, in an effort to address these issues, here are five reasons people are increasingly choosing not to procreate, along with the free-market responses that could address them.

The simple fact is, that some people don’t want children. And there are legitimate reasons for that choice.

No matter what Sheryl Sandberg wants you to believe, women cannot have it all. “Leaning in” is a practice that has left most women who attempt it barrelled over in pain.

The reality is, while women tend to work outside the home in most partnerships now, the vast majority of childcare and household work continues to be laid at their feet. This is an ongoing issue that causes many women to choose not to have kids or not to have more kids.

In life, just as in economics, there are trade-offs. Most women realize they will likely not be able to be a successful career woman, a dedicated mother, and a jaw-dropping homemaker all at the same time. There are choices to be made here, and some women are simply deciding that motherhood is the role they can let go of.

It’s important to point out that these are choices that used to be harder to make. In generations past, women were shamed for not having kids, ostracized in society, or simply did not have the access to birth control they needed to determine their own pathway. We’re moving away from that kind of culture, and the advancements in women’s healthcare have empowered women to set their own course.

As a woman who has never wanted children, I’ve thought deeply about this topic. And I believe there are many others who are looking at the same factors I am and reaching the same conclusion.

Motherhood is hard, physically, emotionally, and mentally. I personally never wanted to go through the pain of childbirth, nor do I want to give myself the mental and emotional anxiety that comes with taking on this role. But as pointed out above, this wasn’t always a calculation afforded to women.

Furthermore, I love working—always have. And I’ve built a meaningful and impactful career I’d never be willing to give up. While some women choose to work and have kids, that’s not a situation I’d choose for myself. I’d never put my kids in government schools nor would I want them to spend their time with others in daycare. So when faced with the choice of pursuing my work or raising kids, I simply choose the former. It’s where I want to spend my time. I’ve met many others who feel the same way as me.

There are other factors as well. While the world has actually been improving (though you wouldn’t know it based on the media), there are many people (myself included) who look around and still don’t find the world to be one they’d want to bring kids into.

Thanks to birth control and the gains made under feminism, these are choices women now get to make that other generations simply were not afforded. As a whole, this is a choice that should be accepted and even celebrated by society.

Are there free market solutions to these factors? Sure. School choice would make it easier for women to homeschool or find other alternatives. Remote work would allow more people to balance child-rearing with their careers. And improvements in our social climate would likely make people more optimistic about procreating.

Still, the simple truth is, there are fewer people who want to bring kids into the world. Though the reasons are diverse, 44 percent of non-parents between 18 to 49 say it is not to or not at all likely they will procreate. And that’s ok. But for those who do want kids, we should strive to create a world where that option is as feasible as possible.

While some women and men are simply choosing not to have kids, others wish to and cannot find adequate partners.

It’s important to remember that we are still merely a few decades into a new normal: the sexes having equal rights and a fair playing field.

While this is long-overdue progress that should obviously be celebrated, it also means the social fabric of our society is still fraught with landmines. For all of human history, women and men have not been in a situation where they were equal under the law.

That means culturally and biologically women are programmed to look for partners who are stronger and wealthier than they are, because those elements were essential for survival for most of our existence. But in recent decades, women are largely surpassing men economically. They are more likely to obtain degrees, are catching up to men in their earnings, and in 37 percent of US households, women pay the bills.

To this, many will say women should just lower their standards or not be so picky. But it’s not that simple. Again, to do that requires overcoming significant evolutionary impulses on the part of women. And even when they do overcome these factors, it still isn’t working out. In fact, marriages with female breadwinners are 50 percent more likely to end in divorce. This illustrates that the power dynamic shift created between higher-earning women and lower-earning men is one our society has not yet learned to live with.

Furthermore, while men say they are fine with dating women who are smarter than them, psychological studies have revealed otherwise. Men are also biologically inclined to be providers and to be competitive. But for the first time in history, they’re having to compete with women, and outcome-wise, they’re often ending up in second place. It turns out they don’t find this so appealing in practice.

The fact that LDS and evangelical families are still having more children backs all of this up. Since gender norms are changing more slowly in these communities, it would seem their relationships are not suffering the same growing pains and therefore the number of children they are having is falling more slowly.

These are societal problems, not ones suited for public policy. And the harsh reality is that it will probably take decades for us to sort out this new landscape for romantic relationships and for people to evolve past the male provider/female nurturer gender stereotypes. But they are challenges worth examining and overcoming, and at an individual level, we can all look for ways to foster romantic relationships that take these factors into consideration.

Even for people who do want to have kids and manage to find the right partner, there is still a multitude of landmines they must overcome before they can comfortably procreate, and they all trace back to affordability.

A flourishing society would naturally incentivize people to procreate. But that requires a steady currency, a good job market, relatively safe communities, the promise of a good education, and economic factors that make it affordable to have and raise a child.

According to Merrill Lynch, it currently costs $230,000 to raise a kid to age 18. That’s a jaw-dropping amount, especially when one considers record-breaking inflation, wage stagnation, and economic uncertainty created by the reckless printing and spending policies of the US government.

The reasons for these high costs also trace back to the government. Childcare costs have been soaring for decades thanks to extreme government regulations and restrictions on these services. In one survey, 85 percent of parents reported spending 10 percent or more of their household income on child care.

Education is another major financial calculation in these decisions. There’s no way to sugarcoat it, government schools are atrocious and private schooling or alternative options can be expensive or unfeasible. Many parents are also hesitant to place their kids in government schools because of gun-free zones that make them sitting ducks.

And then there’s college. The price of higher education is astronomical, and that is solely due to government subsidies and loans. But while evidence increasingly shows college is not a good investment for most, many parents still desire to give their kids every opportunity they can and thus factor this in.

Additionally, healthcare costs continue to rise in the country thanks to the government increasingly taking over our system. Insurance prices shot up after Obamacare and there is no end in sight for many.

Finally, there are the costs of infertility. A growing number of Americans are having trouble getting pregnant when they want to. Some blame this on problems with our nutrition. Others say it’s because people are having kids later in life. Likely there are multiple reasons. But whatever the cause, fertility assistance is extremely expensive and a cost many cannot afford.

Relatedly, many economists point to the quantity-quality tradeoff theory which implies that a reduction in fertility would lead to more human capital investment per child. Meaning, people would rather invest their love, finances, and attention into a smaller number of children versus spreading it across a large family.

There are many public policy reforms that would bring these costs down. But for the time being it is understandable why for some the math is simply not adding up. People want to know they can give their kids a brighter and better future than they themselves had, and for now, that simply isn’t true for a lot of people.

Finally, many economists point to something called the demographic transition theory to explain the decrease in childbirth. In short, because child mortality rates have dropped so precipitously under capitalism people don’t have to have as many kids.

In generations past, as terrible as it was, parents would have a lot of kids with the assumption that several would die. That is no longer the case. People can plan how many children they want to have with a high level of certainty that those kids will live into adulthood.

Furthermore, as societies have become less male-centric, parents don’t have to keep having kids until they have a boy. For inheritance, property, and societal reasons, this used to be a goal for many people, but it is one that is quickly diminishing.

Many of these are issues we as a society can address through free-market solutions. It’s time we have that conversation.

*****

This article was published by FEE, Foundation for Economic Education and is reproduced with permission.

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A Balanced Budget Constitutional Amendment May Be Our Only Hope.

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By Thomas C. Patterson

Over the last few decades, no force on earth has been able to halt the explosive growth of US federal debt.

At the conclusion of WWII, fiscal conservatives were aghast that our national debt had ballooned to $259 billion. By the end of the Vietnam war it stood at $533 billion and, despite urgent warnings, was over $5,674 billion by the end of the century. Today it stands at $30,000 billion ($30 trillion) after the Biden administration’s horrific spending spree conducted under the pretext of limiting the fallout from Covid.

The reason is pretty simple. Spending other peoples’ money is politically popular. Taxes are not and budget-cutting is risky.

We have developed a political culture in which the reelection of incumbents is the highest of all priorities. It is considered perfectly acceptable to just kick the can down the road and let future generations sort out the consequences of our selfishness.

So, for example, when Bush 43 attempted to propose desperately needed reforms for Medicare and Medicare, he was mercilessly demagogued for “pushing granny over the cliff”. His Republican allies deserted him and the effort collapsed.  Nobody has tried any such thing since, although debt reduction is mathematically impossible without entitlement reform.

It doesn’t take a genius to see where this is going. Interest rates are rising, while serious geopolitical threats are forming. We’re backing ourselves into a position of severe internal and external weakness at just the wrong time.

Yet the political class remains unmoved. Some pay lip service to fiscal discipline, but the spending goes on unabated.  Student loans, accommodations for illegal immigrants, and missiles for Ukraine on the condition that no Russians will be harmed by their use are all embraced as if unlimited funds are available.

Fortunately, our forefathers anticipated that the government they created would attempt to exceed its limited constitutional powers. They gave the states a powerful tool to defend themselves – the right to amend the constitution on their own.

Article V of the constitution mandates that Congress “shall” call a constitutional convention when requested to do so by 2/3 of the states and that any amendments proposed when ratified by 3/4 of the states become “Part of this Constitution”.

The founders would be disappointed to know that the states have never exercised this extraordinary privilege. Thomas Jefferson, knowing how these things go, thought a convention of the states would be needed every generation or so to reign in federal government encroachments.

Instead, the states have stood meekly by as the federal government has far surpassed them in power and prestige to the point where calling a convention of the states is seen as an act of rebellion against authority.

But nothing else has worked to restrain federal spending. Millions of dollars have been spent to elect self-described fiscal conservatives, yet it’s beyond obvious that Congress will never reform itself.

Of course, the convention-of-the-states idea has its enemies. Opposition from the spenders on the left is understandable because they don’t want to end their gravy train. But it is the alliance between the left and conservative stalwarts like the Eagle Forum and John Birch Society which have effectively stalled progress.

Their arguments are fear-inspired. Their principle objection is the perceived threat of a “runaway convention“, the fear that in a constitutional convention, there would be nothing to stop special interest groups from pushing their agendas from banning abortion to banning guns.

Hogwash. Even if the state legislatures fail to limit the authority of Convention delegates, 38 states must ratify any proposed amendments. That historically has been very strong protection.

Right-wing opposition seems mostly concerned that the convention could inflict lasting damage to the sanctity of our Constitution. The opposite is the truth.

Nothing could honor and strengthen the constitution more than using its own provisions to enable us to address our most urgent modern threat.  The other option is the Left’s practice of declaring a “living“ constitution that says whatever judges say it does.

It’s time for us to flex our democratic muscles and fulfill our destiny as free, optimistic, and proud Americans.  Our republic may be in the balance.

*****

Thomas C. Patterson, MD is a retired Emergency Medicine physician, Arizona state Senator and Arizona Senate Majority Leader in the ’90s. He is a former Chairman, Goldwater Institute.

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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The Federal Government’s Own Study Concluded Its Ban on ‘Assault Weapons’ Didn’t Reduce Gun Violence

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By Jon Miltimore

Other studies, including two published in 2020, reached similar conclusions.

Do something.

This is a response—and perhaps a natural one—to a human tragedy or crisis. We saw this response in the wake of 9-11. We saw it during the Covid-19 pandemic. And we’re seeing it again following three mass shootings—in Buffalo, New York, Uvalde, Texas, and Tulsa Oklahoma—that claimed the lives of more than 30 innocent people, including small children.

In this case, the “something” is gun control. In Canada—where no attack even occurred—Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the introduction of legislation that would freeze handgun ownership across the country.

“What this means is that it will no longer be possible to buy, sell, transfer or import handguns anywhere in Canada,” Trudeau said in a press conference.

In the United States, the rhetoric has tended to be more heated but also vague, though some specific proposals have emerged.

Over the weekend, Vice President Kamala Harris called for an all-out ban on “assault weapons.”

“We know what works on this. It includes, let’s have an assault weapons ban,” Harris told reporters in Buffalo after attending the funeral of a victim.

On Thursday, President Joe Biden, while speaking from the White House Cross Hall before a candlelit backdrop, called on Congress to pass new gun control legislation, including a ban on assault weapons.

“How much more carnage are we willing to accept?” Biden asked.

There are numerous problems with this proposal, starting with the sticky question of defining what an “assault weapon” is.

Assault rifles, which by definition are capable of selective fire, are already banned under the National Firearms Act of 1934. The vague phrase “assault weapon” is basically a tautology—by definition, any weapon can be used to assault someone—and virtually useless. The term might be effective politically, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, the guns politicians choose to define as “assault weapons” typically “are no more dangerous than others that are not specified.”

We know this because the US had a ban on “assault weapons” as recently as 2004, something gun control supporters recently pointed out on Twitter.

“We had an assault weapon ban for 10 years: 1994-2004,” said Dr. Joanne Freeman, a historian at Yale University. “The world didn’t end. People kept their (other) guns. They bought new guns. It was hardly an attack on gun ownership.”

The Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act of 1994 targeted firearms deemed “useful in military and criminal applications but unnecessary in shooting sports or self-defense.”

Freeman is right that the ban lasted a decade before expiring on September 13, 2004. She’s also right that the world “didn’t end” and Americans continued to use and purchase other types of firearms.

What Freeman didn’t bring up was the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the government’s Federal Assault Weapons Ban. Nearly two decades ago the Department of Justice funded a study to analyze this very topic, and it concluded that the assault weapon prohibition had “mixed” results.

Researchers noted there was a decline in crimes committed with firearms classified as assault weapons, but noted: “the decline in AW use was offset throughout at least the late 1990s by steady or rising use of other guns.”

In other words, there was a decline in crimes committed with firearms that were banned, but the drop was replaced by crimes committed with other types of firearms that were not banned.

While gun violence overall fell in the US during this period—just like many other countries around the world—the decline continued even after the Federal Assault Weapons Ban ended in 2004. Authors of the government-funded study plainly stated “we cannot clearly credit the ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence” and any future reduction in gun violence as a result of the ban was likely “to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement.”

One might contend that this is just one study. No study is irrefutable, after all, even ones commissioned by the Justice Department. However, other studies since then have yielded similar conclusions.

A RAND review of gun control studies, which was updated in 2020, concluded there’s “inconclusive evidence for the effect of assault weapon bans on mass shootings.” Research published in Criminology & Public Policy the same year (2020) concluded that bans on assault weapons “do not seem to be associated with the incidence of fatal mass shootings.”

President Biden has claimed the 1994 crime bill he helped pass “brought down these mass killings,” but fact-checkers have contested these claims based on this evidence and much more.

It’s unlikely the White House has enough votes to pass a second ban on certain semi-automatic firearms, but it’s far from impossible in an environment in which many Americans—even gun enthusiasts and Second Amendment supporters—are increasingly asking politicians to “do something.”

Unfortunately, when people say “do something” they tend to mean “pass sweeping legislation that infringes on the civil liberties of others.” Such thinking spawned the super-state that sprang forth in the War on Terror following the 9-11 attacks. It also produced government lockdowns during the pandemic, the worst and longest depression in American history, and a host of other disasters.

If history has taught us anything, it’s that the impulse to use collective force to “do something” in the wake of a tragedy or crisis has created far more problems than it has solved.

The economic historian Robert Higgs has noted that the most sprawling encroachments of freedom in history spawned during crises and tragedies; they have given rise to tyrants from Lenin to Mao and beyond. Even when powers are relinquished by the government, they are rarely relinquished completely (a phenomenon Higgs describes as the Ratchet Effect).

“When [crises occur] … governments almost certainly will gain new powers over economic and social affairs,” wrote Higgs. “For those who cherish individual liberty and a free society, the prospect is deeply disheartening.”

As we mourn the victims in Buffalo, Uvalde, and Tulsa, we’d do well to remember that one true moral purpose of government is to protect individual rights, and any attempt to deprive humans of these rights for “a greater good” is a perversion of the law.

*****

This article was published by FEE, Foundation for Economic Education and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

The highly choreographed January 6 Select Committee that is being performed on primetime TV over the next several weeks can only be described as political and partisan trash. It is not about truth or acting in the interests of American citizens. It is about the 2024 election – clear as day.

Please click here to inform our elected leaders how you feel about the partisan travesty unfolding in the U.S. House of Representatives.

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Arizona Universities Ignore Board of Regents

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By Neland Nobel

A study by the National Association of Scholars finds that Arizona Universities Ignore the Board of Regents.

According to the report: “The Arizona study finds that, despite efforts by the Arizona Board of Regents, Arizona’s universities provide very little formal training in American history and civics. Instead, students in Arizona’s universities are likely to learn American history indirectly, through efforts that fall under the broad umbrella of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). NAS recommends substantial reform to Arizona’s governance of its public university system.”

According to the author of the study, John Sailor, “The Grand Canyon State is a perfect study of how college administrators obfuscate clear guidelines to achieve their own political goals, such as perpetuating the ideology and bureaucracy of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Instead of ensuring a robust civic education, Arizona’s universities give priority to an ever-growing number of classes rooted in critical theory.”

He adds, “Public universities exist to shape citizens and leaders, but Arizona’s universities seem to equate that purpose with a call for a more ideologically-charged education. The people of Arizona deserve better, and its lawmakers should take note.”

Indeed legislators should take note.  One of the curious developments is that about half the states in the United States have Republican leadership in both the legislature and governorship, yet little has been done to root out extreme left-wing bias in state-sponsored universities.

NAS recommends reform of the Arizona Board of Regents so that it may engage in closer oversight of the public universities; state laws to increase transparency and accountability in public higher education, to strengthen civics requirements, and to prevent universities from substituting DEI ideology for civics education; and reforms by university presidents to restore transparency, accountability, and a civic mission to their institutions.

*****

This study can be read in full here.

TAKE ACTION

Thank you to all The Prickly Pear readers who contacted legislators about the egregious formation of the “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Citizens such as yourselves made the Biden administration and DHS back away from this unprecedented Orwellian and tyrannical step of censorship and suppression of free speech in our Republic. There are critical issues to  ‘TAKE ACTION’ on and The Prickly Pear will serve as a rallying point to stop the left’s assaults on We the People and our liberty. God bless America.

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Everyone Should Vote

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By Bruce Bialosky

After HR1, the Democrat’s bill to nationalize the election process was defeated in two consecutive Congresses, one might think the supporters would get the hint and move on. That is clearly not the case as they are chastising Republicans for reestablishing voting rules at the state level, so there is not another free-for-all as we experienced in 2020. There is a new proposal that attempts to cheapen voting and place central control at the federal level for all election rules.  Do not discount this can happen because ideas begin this way and then metastasize. You need to be aware.

Long-time Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. authored this new proposal together with former Connecticut Secretary of State Miles Rapoport who currently is a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.  They co-authored 100% Democracy: The Case for Universal Voting. I have not read the book but did read their column on the subject in the WaPo.

The authors make the argument that Americans have many obligations. They are obligated to pay taxes, show up for jury duty, get their kids vaccinated, etc. They should be obligated to vote. Here is the problem with that argument.  Almost 50% of Americans pay no income tax and a vast number of people who are “obligated” to sit on juries do not. I have never sat on a jury due to hearing impairment. My wife has shown up just once but was never seated. When you start with a premise that Americans have government-dictated obligations so adding another is not inordinate your premise fails when it cannot hurdle initial comparisons.  

A large part of the authors’ argument stems from their initial statement. They state there were changes made during the 2020 election that made voting more convenient, but now states are making it harder for people to vote. Many of those 2020 changes were made unilaterally by state officials and overruled later by the courts. Some are being modified legislatively after the actual experience of 2020 to refine the voting process and better protect the integrity of the election process.

The authors’ prime example of why America should convert to universal voting is Australia. It is stated election day is always on Saturday and turnout is about 90% in every major election. They offered a quote. “Voting in Australia is like a party.”“Participating in elections is not some grim exercise involving endless lines.” The authors say, “Elections become what they should be: celebrations of freedom.”

These two can really paint a picture. First, they do not say that the people of Australia have any better knowledge of what they are voting for than Americans or any knowledge. They just are forced to show up and vote. And since when did Americans perceive voting as a “grim experience”? If we have long voting lines now with 67% turnout for presidential elections, what would it be like with a 90% turnout?

The authors want to punish people for not voting. They want to charge a penalty — $20 for not voting that can be waived with an hour of community service – working for the government. How many new government employees do you suppose would be required for enforcement? How long would the penalty stay at $20? It is likely $40, $60, or more will happen soon. And if you do not pay, how are they going to get the money?  y withholding your driver’s license? The Left is always dreaming up new ways to punish people if you do not do what they want.

The authors argue that this proposal is constitutional because they are not actually requiring voters to vote for someone. People can cast a blank ballot or vote for a “none of the above” choice. Aren’t Americans already free to make a choice by doing what they are currently doing, i.e., not voting? Isn’t that better than someone being forced to show up at a polling place just to write “Screw You” on a ballot? But they would get a day off from work which is ironic since most people do not work on Saturday already.

Let me remind you, we are different than other countries and that includes Australia. We have the Bill of Rights. We have protections. That is why people have not come into our homes and taken our guns like they did in Australia or arrested us for walking down a beach by ourselves during the pandemic like they did in Australia.

The esteemed authors need a refresher course in our Constitution. Just read the Ninth Amendment which states “The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” There is no right for the government to compel us to show up to vote. With the Ninth Amendment, we have the right not to and no one can force us otherwise.

How about the people who like to vote but find it useless? I go through the fruitless effort every time I get a ballot. Unless there are propositions on the ballot, the people I vote for never win. I am a Republican in Los Angeles, California. The last time I cast a vote for a candidate who won elective office was in a non-partisan race 20 years ago. There are many people who say forget it and have every right to do so. 

The authors did not address such issues as cleaning the voter rolls, voter ID, or dead people voting. People on the left like to forget about those issues. The authors cited 20 democracies around the world that have some form of voter obligation, but they ignore the 46 democracies in Europe with voter ID laws, yet we do not have universal voter ID laws as we should.

This is a classic leftist idea. Rather than providing positive encouragement for people to vote in a cleaner and safer system, force them to do something and punish them if they do not. It is a harebrained unconstitutional idea, but just be aware they will be promoting this very soon. These are the same people who brought us the idea of strangers coming to your door and collecting your ballot – ballot harvesting — and they wanted to make that universal.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

Thank you to all The Prickly Pear readers who contacted legislators about the egregious formation of the “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Citizens such as yourselves made the Biden administration and DHS back away from this unprecedented Orwellian and tyrannical step of censorship and suppression of free speech in our Republic. There are critical issues to  ‘TAKE ACTION’ on and The Prickly Pear will serve as a rallying point to stop the left’s assaults on We the People and our liberty. God bless America.

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Red4ED Is One of the Most Expensive Failures in Arizona Political History

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By Arizona Free Enterprise Club

Push a sympathetic message. Drum up a bunch of misguided support. And then aim for a ridiculous tax increase. That was the strategy from Red4ED after it launched a little over four years ago.

In that spring of 2018, the color red was popping up all over the place—from Facebook profile pictures to protests at the state Capitol. And it was supposedly all about increasing teacher salaries and funding for K-12 education. It was a movement that had great momentum, a sycophant media, and a political class that was terrified to stand up to them. Yet they figured out how to, in four short years, go from a political juggernaut to one of the largest and most expensive failures in Arizona political history.

Of course, defeating this multiyear assault on Arizona by Invest in Ed was a huge win for taxpayers, job creators, and the future prosperity of our state. And it would not have been possible without a combination of political miscalculations and blunders by the Red4ED decision makers and a consistent, sustained opposition from key organizations and elected officials willing to stand up to the bullies behind the movement

A Massive Legal Blunder

While the story of Red4ED began with a protest at the Capitol and demands for higher teacher pay, the movement was quickly hijacked by the teachers’ unions and other out-of-state special interest groups. It didn’t take long for the mission to morph from one about helping teachers into a singular quest to double the state income tax through a ballot initiative.

Soon after the first protests, a consortium of liberal organizations launched Invest in Ed version one, a poorly drafted initiative that proposed to double Arizona’s income tax. After receiving over $2 million from the National Teachers Union, Red4ED was successful in submitting enough signatures for their tax increase initiative to qualify for the 2018 ballot. But there was a problem. The organization’s 100-word summary of its ballot measure was grossly misleading. The Arizona Chamber of Commerce sued, and the Arizona Supreme Court ruled against it, saying that the description “did not accurately represent the increased tax burden on the affected classes of taxpayers.”

Whether it was an intentional effort to mislead the public or just a complete drafting blunder on their part, Red4ED’s tax increase initiative was removed from the ballot. And a $2 million lesson was learned. Or was it?

Their Litigation Woes Continue

Red4ED regrouped after its embarrassing court loss and put all its effort—along with more than $23 million—toward passing Invest in Ed version 2.0, also known as Prop 208. After an ugly campaign that involved deceiving voters once again, the initiative barely passed with 51% of the vote.

Yet just like the first initiative, Prop 208 was taken back to court, this time by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club and Goldwater Institute. And once again, the measure was struck down by the Arizona Supreme Court.

The court determined that the initiative violated the constitutional expenditure limitation. Here is the craziest part of the story—the drafters of the initiative knew that it violated the constitutional expenditure limitation. That’s right, the people that put Prop 208 on the ballot were fully aware that their measure had a constitutional defect. Yet their lawyers thought they could address the problem by including language that would “exempt” their statutory measure from the constitutional spending cap. As you would expect, this didn’t work, and the court struck down the measure in its entirety. But instead of cutting their losses and figuring out how to stop burning money that they said teachers desperately needed, Red4ED found a new way to target Arizona taxpayers.

A Futile Effort

In the midst of a brutal year for many, the Arizona legislature delivered historic tax cuts in June 2021. You would think this would be a cause for celebration for everyone, but Red4ED refused to join the party. Instead, the group spent over $5 millionto hire an army of paid circulators to put a referendum on the ballot to block the tax cuts from going into effect.

They thought they finally scored a big win, but it turns out the only thing they scored was more legal headaches. Immediately after the referendum was submitted, the Arizona Free Enterprise Club filed a lawsuit, challenging the constitutionality of ballot referral. It was our belief that the measure did not comply with the “support and maintenance” clause in the constitution, and therefore the tax cuts were not referrable.

Nine months after our lawsuit was filed, the Arizona Supreme Court agreed with our position and ruled against the referendum, issuing a big win for taxpayers throughout the state.

If you’re doing the math, that’s more than $30 million spent in just over four years, and what does Red4ED have to show for it? Two legally flawed initiatives and a legally flawed referendum that all failed miserably. Plus, they took a movement that had sympathetic support for increased teacher salaries and turned it into a radical left/teacher union effort that destroyed any credibility they had with voters.

Adding insult to injury, they also had to endure watching the Arizona legislature and Governor Ducey implement the anti-Red4ED plan by slashing income tax rates in half to a flat 2.5%. In other words, a plan hatched by Invest in ED seeking to double the state income tax resulted in income tax rates that were slashed in half. What a disaster for them! But maybe they can at least celebrate the possibility that Red4ED may be the largest, most expensive failure in Arizona political history.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

Thank you to all The Prickly Pear readers who contacted legislators about the egregious formation of the “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Citizens such as yourselves made the Biden administration and DHS back away from this unprecedented Orwellian and tyrannical step of censorship and suppression of free speech in our Republic. There are critical issues to  ‘TAKE ACTION’ on and The Prickly Pear will serve as a rallying point to stop the left’s assaults on We the People and our liberty. God bless America.

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There is Nothing Common-Sense About Some of These Gun Proposals

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By Mark T. Cicero

Who would oppose ‘common-sense gun laws that are designed to prevent tragedies as we saw in Uvalde Texas recently? Who sees a violent slaughter like that and is unmoved to do something to prevent further attacks?  Emotionally and rationally, there is not a single person in this country that wouldn’t do almost anything to prevent another massacre of children.  The real question to ask is simply this: would any action or new law being currently suggested have prevented these shootings?

Doing nothing feels insensitive while imposing new gun regulations restricts our second amendment rights and that is the conundrum that is facing all Americans. At a time like this, it is best to err on the side of doing nothing as most quick actions will likely yield very poor outcomes. Let’s examine some of the less sensical choices:

Red Flag Laws: this has a fair amount of enthusiasm and support behind it, with good reason. It is logical to have a method to report someone who “appears mentally and emotionally unbalanced” to prevent them from obtaining or using a firearm. The problem is that anyone can report anyone else, the criteria have not been established, and, in most iterations of this, there is an immediate law enforcement action to remove all weapons from that person’s home.

Making threats is an action that warrants concern.  But what if the threat is made online? How are we going to monitor all those that may make threatening statements in cyberspace? Are all threats intended to be serious or are they a cry for attention? What if it is made in public?

The problem is, that what appears unbalanced to you may make someone else happy. For example, didn’t we just have a famous actor say in public that it has been a long time since an actor killed a President? A famous singer said before a large crowd that she had thought often of bombing the White House. That was Johnny Depp and Madona talking about Trump, but law enforcement never moved. Both were cheered by the public and neither lost any of their rights, so when is a threat, a threat? Seems like some deep thought needs to go into establishing the criteria of a threat.

The biggest problem with so-called “red flag” laws is that there is typically no due process. If you are “flagged”, you are presumed guilty and must prove your innocence before you can get your firearms returned. Thus, if you have a neighbor who doesn’t like you or an embittered former spouse, they can simply make a phone call to disarm your household.

What is a mental illness is a fluid concept among professionals in the field. Just a few years ago, certain sexual practices were considered an illness, then political pressure was exerted by activists, and these behaviors were normalized. If “mental illness” can be bent that easily by pressure groups, the danger is having certain political and social views determine what is mental illness. It is far better to judge people by their actions, not their opinions. But in an era that has defined deviancy down to just about anything, and ideas are considered to make people “unsafe”, red flag laws are so loose that it begs to be abused.

Limit Magazine Capacity: This seems sensible enough in the abstract. After all, does any sporting hunter or marksman need a “high capacity” magazine? Don’t only soldiers need a weapon like these? In order to unpack this, let’s review the purpose of the Second Amendment: it was to empower the citizens of the nation to repulse any attempts to restrict our freedoms. If you take a few minutes and look at why this was included in our constitution, you merely have reviewed the writings of our country’s architects, such as Patrick Henry, who delivered the following:

“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined…. The great object is that every man be armed. Everyone who is able might have a gun.” – Patrick Henry, Speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 5, 1778

This is but one of many examples of our founders directing our citizens to keep and bear arms, not to prevent an invasion but to be able to throw off any attempts at a monarchy or totalitarian government. In this vein, we, as active citizens, should be permitted any and all weapons that our soldiers are equipped with. The President’s statement that “you weren’t allowed to own a cannon” is patently false.

In addition, the argument is made that “low-capacity magazines” will slow down a killer, allowing counterattack during the reloading process. There are two obvious problems. One can learn to reload a magazine in less than two seconds. And more to the point, if it takes an hour to respond as it did in Uvalde, it would have done nothing to slow down the killer even if he was running a reloading press, making his own ammunition.

 Expanded Background Checks: This might actually be a useful way to prevent felons and the mentally ill from obtaining firearms but if, and only if, we as a society are willing to provide for the mentally ill. The predominance of mental illness in the homeless that have flocked to San Francisco and Los Angeles is at an almost epidemic level and is responsible for the lion’s share of crime in those communities.

Moreover, many infractions do not make it to the national database because it is poorly run and administered. Remember when the Air Force failed to get relevant information about a shooter onto the national database? Serious infractions may not get on the database because these infractions were committed by minors. We all should agree that felons should not be allowed to own weapons, but the Left is busy trying to dismantle the police, hobble the prosecutors, and shut down the prisons. If they succeed, how does data from non-prosecuted crimes, and non-incarcerated non-felons, get onto a national database? Any database is only as good as the data.

Before we jump to restrict gun ownership any further, let’s consider how well some of those restrictions work. Let’s examine some of the most restrictive gun laws in the country and their impact on gun violence. The most flagrant example of this is the city of Chicago, home to some of the most restrictive gun laws in the nation, which has seen 229 gun murders year to date, as of June 5th, 2022, and another 760 shot to death in 2021.  At last check, making guns illegal in Chicago has only guaranteed that only the criminals in that city are armed.

Finally, let’s remember that no totalitarian leader has ever permitted their populace to remain armed.  Let’s review the dictators in recent history: Mao disarmed the Chinese people, and Lenin and Stalin disarmed the Russian people.  Hitler confiscated guns as did Cambodia.   Turkey disarmed the Armenians, and so on. Moreover, we should also expect our leaders to live under the same rules that they wish to impose on us. Are they willing to disarm their bodyguards, take down the walls around their homes, or dispose of the billions of bullets in the DHS?

The political left has generally promoted defunding law enforcement, elected the most liberal district attorneys, argues for the shortest sentences for felonies, and currently oversees the worst crime rates in the nation. Now we are to trust that they will offer ‘common-sense gun measures’ for our own good (“to protect our children”). 

Perhaps the most galling fact of these pontifications and pronouncements is that they are issued by the same people who advocate for abortion rights for the entire pregnancy and through delivery. If they were intellectually honest, they would simply categorize school shootings as late-term abortions.

Let’s be blunt.  The political left wants to take our guns away, yet they are doing their best to disarm the police, hobble the prosecutors, close down the prisons, open our border to all people unvetted, turn law enforcement against parents concerned about schooling, and destroy the family and traditional morality. With a record like that, would you trust them to protect you from crimes, and protect your rights from government abuse?

Our rights are always eroded with any regulation of our Second Amendment. The sanctity and health of the First Amendment can only exist with a healthy Second Amendment.

The abuse of a right by a tiny minority of mentally unstable people does argue to deny the vast majority the full exercise of their rights.  It is not common sense to argue that it does.

TAKE ACTION

Thank you to all The Prickly Pear readers who contacted legislators about the egregious formation of the “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Citizens such as yourselves made the Biden administration and DHS back away from this unprecedented Orwellian and tyrannical step of censorship and suppression of free speech in our Republic. There are critical issues to  ‘TAKE ACTION’ on and The Prickly Pear will serve as a rallying point to stop the left’s assaults on We the People and our liberty. God bless America.

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The Missing Element in Debate About Guns

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By Cal Thomas

The heightened debate over gun violence following the massacre of 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, is leaving out one critical element. The debate starts at the wrong end.

Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Thermodynamics states: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

While Newton’s laws were about physics, the concept of action and reaction, of cause and effect, could be applied in other areas, such as violent people who use guns to kill others. Notice I said violent people, not gun violence.

Instead of starting with guns, we should begin at the beginning. If voters elect liberal district attorneys and liberal judges who release dangerous criminals, sometimes with low or no bail, that is an action. The opposite reaction is that many of them will commit new crimes.

As the conservative Heritage Foundation notes, “The most prominent rogue prosecutors are George Gascon in Los Angeles, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, Kim Foxx in Chicago, Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore, Kimberly Gardner in St. Louis, and Rachael Rollins in Boston.”

There are others, like Milwaukee District Attorney John Chisholm.

The U.K. Daily Mail reports that Chisholm told an interviewer: “Is there going to be an individual I divert, or put into a program, who’s going to go out and kill? You bet.”

Chisholm’s office gave a deferred prosecution to a convicted drug dealer. After his release, reports the Mail, the dealer fatally injected a 26-year-old woman with heroin and then tried to hide her body. The man, Darrell Brooks, was caught but released on a $1,000 bond. Within a few weeks, Brooks drove through a Christmas parade, killing five people. He previously had been convicted of a felony for running over the mother of his children.

Once again, an action (low bail for a dangerous criminal) produced a reaction (the deaths of innocent people).

In our schools and culture, if the action is to refuse to teach right from wrong, the reaction will be the creation of a generation of people who behave as they wish.

The McGuffey readers were used in many American public schools from 1836 to 1936. They contained sayings and lessons designed to conform young people to a standard of behavior that was good for them, their families, and the wider culture. These values included patriotism, respect for parents, honesty, and hard work as a path to success.

They also promoted the necessity of religious faith as the foundation for a better life. Here’s one excerpt from the 1879 edition: “Religion: the only basis of society. How powerless conscience would become without the belief of a God. Erase all thought and fear of God from a community and selfishness and sensuality would absorb the whole Man. … Man would become what the theory of atheism declares him to be.”

Again, action and reaction. Teaching moral absolutes and faith produced one kind of person. Failure to teach these values, in fact, their opposite, has predictably created a different type of human in modern times, the type who shoots up schools and kills children. Can anyone credibly assert that the concepts contained in those old books failed to create adults who respected the law, life, and the property of others as opposed to what is being taught—and not taught—in schools and by culture today?

Attempts to ban certain guns will not solve the problem. Recalling and teaching ancient truths will help. That will require a different kind of action than what we have experienced in recent years. Restoring those time-tested values is more likely to produce a different reaction we claim to want but are unable to get by passing more laws.

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

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Thank you to all The Prickly Pear readers who contacted legislators about the egregious formation of the “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Citizens such as yourselves made the Biden administration and DHS back away from this unprecedented Orwellian and tyrannical step of censorship and suppression of free speech in our Republic. There are critical issues to  ‘TAKE ACTION’ on and The Prickly Pear will serve as a rallying point to stop the left’s assaults on We the People and our liberty. God bless America.

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A Black Conservative vs. a White Marxist on Education

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By Craig J. Cantoni

You decide which of the two is right. 

Roland Fryer, a professor of economics at Harvard and a self-identified conservative, believes that student achievement can be boosted by giving K-12 students short-term monetary rewards for showing up on time, paying attention in class, and completing homework.

Fredrik deBoer, a professor with a PhD from Purdue and a self-identified Marxist, believes that increased education spending causes inequality instead of equality, and is thus a failed anti-poverty tool.

Who’s right?

In my opinion, neither. But I’ll provide more information on the two and their theses so you can judge for yourself.

Roland Fryer

Professor Fryer is the author of a 91-page study on the subject of incentives in K-12 schools and recently published a Wall Street Journal commentary based on the study.  The full study can be found at this link:

The study suggests that short-term incentives narrowly applied can have a positive effect on study habits and thus grades. There are two flaws with Fryer’s study, however.

First, it does not establish that financial incentives will be long-lasting. They may be like other interventions, such as early childhood development programs, which have been shown to have diminishing returns in later grades and result in no discernible improvement by the twelfth grade.

The study’s main point is that the incentives might be more cost-effective than other interventions, but without knowing their staying power, it’s possible that they could be a complete waste of money.

Second, practical considerations are not addressed in the study. Can lumbering, hidebound school districts be trusted to administer the incentives with the necessary flexibility? Will schools be accused of discrimination if certain racial/ethnic groups get greater incentives than other groups?  If it is later determined that the incentives don’t have a lasting effect, will the program be ended or become a permanent fixture?

Incidentally, Fryer, a black man, is also the author of two other very controversial studies. One addressed the achievement gap between black and white students, showing that the gap would be nonexistent if it were not for socioeconomic factors. This went against the prevailing orthodoxy that racism explains the gap. 

The other study showed that shootings of blacks by police are not disproportionate to shootings of whites by police when relevant variables are taken into consideration. This study led to attempts by Harvard to cancel him.

An article on these two other studies can be found here.

Fredrik deBoer

Professor deBoer is the author of the following book:

The Cult of Smart: How Our Broken Education System Perpetuates Social Injustice, by Fredrik deBoer, 276 pp, hardcover, $16.79, ISBN-13: 978-1250200372, All Points Books, 2020.

I reviewed the book for the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

A major premise of The Cult of Smart is that intelligence is hereditary and inherited to the same degree across all races. Genes help to explain why some people excel in school and in abstract thinking, and some people don’t. Therefore, ever-increasing spending on education, especially on higher-education, only serves to benefit those who are blessed by hereditary and who would rise to the top of society regardless of spending levels.

As I wrote in my review:

DeBoer is merciless in his criticism of liberals who feign concern for the poor and social justice but engage in selective breeding and do whatever they can to get their kids into the best K-12 schools and into elite universities, so that their ticket is punched for the rest of their life—and, as deBoer’s Marxist thinking goes, at the expense of the less fortunate. He questions whether the education is any better at elite schools, and posits that the schools are key members of the “Cult of the Smart,” where credentialing takes precedence over other considerations and leads to self-reinforcing and self-replicating elitism.

Naturally, being an academic, he buys into the progressive Zeitgeist about white privilege, the goodness of wokeness, and America being racist, sexist, and classist. At the same time, he lambastes his “fellow leftists” (as he calls them) for their phony virtue-signaling. He writes that if they were “simply a new kind of nouveau riche with culturally liberal politics, they would probably be harmless, if somewhat obnoxious. But there’s a far larger problem: simply by living upper-middle-class lives, these woke go-getters perpetuate inequality.”

What is de Boers solution?  It is a political and economic system based on the Marxist principle, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

In Conclusion, Who Is Right?

  •  a) Roland Fryer
  • b) Fredrik deBoer
  • c) Neither
  • d) Both

TAKE ACTION

Thank you to all The Prickly Pear readers who contacted legislators about the egregious formation of the “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Citizens such as yourselves made the Biden administration and DHS back away from this unprecedented Orwellian and tyrannical step of censorship and suppression of free speech in our Republic. There are critical issues to  ‘TAKE ACTION’ on and The Prickly Pear will serve as a rallying point to stop the left’s assaults on We the People and our liberty. God bless America.

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Arizona Lawmakers Eye Teen Mental Health in Wake of Texas Massacre

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By Tom Joyce

In reaction to the mass shooting inside of a Texas elementary school, Arizona lawmakers seek to explore their options to help teenagers struggling with mental health issues.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers appointed State Representative Joanne Osborne, R-Goodyear, to chair a new Ad Hoc Committee on Teen Mental Health this week.

The committee will look into causes and issues impacting teen mental health. Some of these issues include substance abuse, depression, and suicide. The committee hopes to find potential solutions to these problems.

The Ad Hoc Committee on Teen Mental Health will consist of members of the House of Representatives and of the Arizona community. It’s intended to research and review information about how substance abuse, bullying, and social media may impact the mental health of Arizona’s youth, including teen suicide.

The committee is supposed to identify potential solutions and offer recommendations to both public and private agencies to address teen mental health problems and improve access to mental health care.

“Teenage children today are faced with tremendous stress and pressure along the path to adulthood, and far too many succumb to substance abuse and suicidal ideations,” Representative Osborne said in a news release. “Struggles because of the pandemic and social media aggravate the situation further. As a mother of four and a longtime mentor to young Arizonans, I am deeply concerned with this current state of teen mental health, and I am committed to using the legislative pulpit to draw public attention to this important issue. Recent tragedies further highlight the urgent need for solutions. This will be our committee’s endeavor.”

Other House members who will serve on the committee include Representative Travis Grantham, R-Gilbert, and Representative Alma Hernandez, D-Tucson.

The Speaker will make community member appointments to the committee. Those members will likely include a parent who has lost a child to suicide, a pediatrician, representatives from the education community, the faith-based community, law enforcement, the governor’s office, and more.

The committee will hold a series of public hearings beginning in June. It will issue its findings and recommendations in a report in December.

*****

This article was published by the Center Square and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Thank you to all The Prickly Pear readers who contacted legislators about the egregious formation of the “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Citizens such as yourselves made the Biden administration and DHS back away from this unprecedented Orwellian and tyrannical step of censorship and suppression of free speech in our Republic. There are critical issues to  ‘TAKE ACTION’ on and The Prickly Pear will serve as a rallying point to stop the left’s assaults on We the People and our liberty. God bless America.

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The Electric Vehicle Bad Dream

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By Duggan Flanakin

While some are certain of the inevitability of the impending demise of the internal combustion engine (ICE), others are far less certain. Cristian Agapie points to market pressures due to increased demand for electric vehicles have raised prices and operating costs as well. Another writer calls out electric vehicles, even Tesla’s, as just boring to drive. One thing for certain: hardly anyone will be able to enjoy the camaraderie and thrill of working on these vehicles.

Meanwhile, even General Motors, which like most other automobile manufacturers, has pledged to end its production of ICE vehicles, has also patented what it calls “multilink cranktrains with combined eccentric shaft and camshaft drive system for internal combustion engines.” This innovative design is likely similar to Nissan’s variable compression engine already available in its luxury Infiniti QX50 SUV.

The GM system, invented by Michigan-based senior engineer Andrew G. Balding, is designed to provide variable compression ratios that provide high power output when needed and high efficiency otherwise. Balding, who was just promoted, had been working at GM for the past six years on advanced powertrain designs but a lot longer in the field.

The patent describes a system that incorporates a multipoint linkage that engages the piston to the crankshaft and rotates on a secondary axis that is offset from the first axis between the crankshaft and the engine block. This enables a variable volume above the piston head at top dead center in the stroke and switching on the fly to produce more power under heavy load or greater efficiency while cruising. The result is greater fuel efficiency without sacrificing power.

The system is compatible with GM’s overhead-valve (pushrod) engines that drive the automaker’s pickups and SUVs. Widespread adoption of variable compression ratio engine technologies could ensure that ICE engines remain competitive and available to especially rural and business drivers. That is unless irrational mandated or even voluntary deadlines for abandoning the engine that transformed the world can be enforced against an unwilling public.

Rural and freedom-loving Americans are quite aware that globalist policies are deadly to outdoor lifestyles, but the majority of America’s urban youth have been brainwashed to believe that the ICE vehicle is a murderous killer of humanity and the environment. Activist-fearing “Detroit” (an archaic term, to be sure) is already at work dismantling ICE assembly lines in favor of vehicles that ordinary people will never be able to tinker with.

The electric vehicle is, in this writer’s opinion, a death machine. Not because a few EVs have spontaneously caught on fire, sometimes locking a driver in the vehicle. Not even because EV batteries can pose problems for those responding to a vehicle crash. Nor need we discuss other foibles–like the year-long backlogs for new EVs largely due to supply chain issues for semiconductors and the short supply of lithium for batteries, both of which could be short-lived.

No. The era of the mandatory electric vehicle marks the end of human freedom on the American highway, truly the end of human freedom – PERIOD. And not just the EV, but the EV culture, which is part of the “virtual” revolution in which people can act out roles online that do not translate easily to the physical world. For example, most “driving” done by pre-teens through twenty-somethings is done via video gaming. These virtual unreality games often focus on killing, almost never on, say, gardening, ranching, farming, forest management, electrical line work, water and sewer system construction, or other physical world jobs.

This massive disconnect with the physical world is what enables the green fantasies to gain traction with the naïve who only know what the censors approve–unless they have family or friends who do live in the “real” world and invite them to share in those experiences.

All too often today’s “education” consists of sloganeering and rote instruction that discourages real investigation and demonizes physical work. [Two plus two only equals five in a virtual unreality.] The massive shortfalls in trade industries are at least anecdotal evidence of the near-complete condemnation of those who work in the physical world as evil or worthless or something to be done by “others.”

The elites brazenly fly to meetings where they openly plan the demise of the middle class, even all private property not already under their own control. They have invested seemingly trillions in convincing people to give up their freedoms to serve “the common interest,” otherwise known as the interests of the elites. But people should realize that mandated “renewable” energy is a Trojan horse inexorably linked to ending private ownership of transportation, housing, and just about everything else.

Under plans designed by World Economic Forum (WEF) types, once the “transition” is complete, drivers will no longer be able to choose from among dozens of independent or corporate gasoline providers. Instead, they will buy their electricity from monopoly governments or their crony-controlled franchises. That means that politics, not the market, will determine the price of a recharge. And governments always seem to find ways to give us less for more.

More to the point, energy shortfalls imply electricity rationing (which already exists in China and elsewhere). In the coming age of scarcity, it is quite conceivable (given the thrill that China’s social credit policy gives the WEF crowd) that only “good Panem-ers” will be allowed to charge their vehicles. Dissidents (we see this already in today’s political rhetoric) will be denied even essential services.

Even what is deemed “essential” (as it was during the COVID lockdowns) will be determined by governments–and today’s governments only reward their friends. Rest assured, in every power outage “emergency,” government vehicles–and those of favored elites–will be first in line for recharging. The rest of us will be left high and dry–and, in summer, sweaty.

Rural drivers know full well they will pay more and have fewer options, just as they do for cable and broadband. They see this in the glee that President Biden and his cabinet members express as gasoline and diesel prices escalate (according to plan). And every time there is a power outage–and with no natural gas, coal, or even oil to burn, these will happen frequently (they already are in some places)–they will be unable to deliver produce and other goods to urban markets.

City folk will be the secondary victims–and they have no clue this is even a possibility–because dissent is verboten.

Meanwhile, there are reports that electric grid operators are warning that California and some midwestern states face energy shortages again this summer. Hot, dry weather, and careless smokers lead to wildfires that soak up water supplies and force blackouts that can last for days. EV drivers cannot recharge without electricity and may even be trapped because of power failures. Who knows? Maybe the perpetrators of this fraud will find they overplayed their hands.

There may be still time to stop the theft of freedom posed by the EV culture, but only if people awaken to realize that “wokism” is designed to put you to sleep. And then act accordingly.

*****

This article was published by CFACT, Committee for A Constructive Tomorrow and is reproduced with permission.

TAKE ACTION

Thank you to all The Prickly Pear readers who contacted legislators about the egregious formation of the “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Citizens such as yourselves made the Biden administration and DHS back away from this unprecedented Orwellian and tyrannical step of censorship and suppression of free speech in our Republic. There are critical issues to  ‘TAKE ACTION’ on and The Prickly Pear will serve as a rallying point to stop the left’s assaults on We the People and our liberty. God bless America.

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Maricopa ‘threshold’ Program Offers Rent for Homeless

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By Cole Lauterbach

Maricopa County officials say efforts to help the homeless have fallen short at a critical step in their process of getting off the streets, and a new program aims to help.

The county announced Tuesday the approval to spend $5 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to help formerly-homeless residents afford their first rental. Named “Threshold,” the program is a collaboration between property owners and managers, the county’s Human Services Department, and the local nonprofit HOM, Inc.

“Reducing homelessness requires an ‘all hands on deck’ approach—from emergency shelter services at times of crisis to permanent housing and resources that lead to self-sufficiency,” said Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates, District 3. “This partnership ensures people working to end their homelessness have a path into the rental market.”

Through Threshold, the county will give property owners rent, financial incentives, and other supports in exchange for housing someone as they begin the transition out of homelessness and get on firm financial footing.

“We believe individuals, families, and communities are safer, healthier, and stronger when everyone has a home,” said Mike Shore, President, and CEO of HOM, Inc. “The Threshold network recognizes that engaged property owners and managers are instrumental to helping people exit homelessness and seeks to make them collaborative partners in solving the housing crisis.”

Threshold is the latest in a $77 million effort to get many of the county’s thousands of homeless off the streets. As of Jan. 24, the Maricopa Association of Governments estimated 9,026 homeless people in the county.

*****

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

TAKE ACTION

Thank you to all The Prickly Pear readers who contacted legislators about the egregious formation of the “Disinformation Governance Board” at the Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Citizens such as yourselves made the Biden administration and DHS back away from this unprecedented Orwellian and tyrannical step of censorship and suppression of free speech in our Republic. There are critical issues to  ‘TAKE ACTION’ on and The Prickly Pear will serve as a rallying point to stop the left’s assaults on We the People and our liberty. God bless America.

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