U.S. policy toward China appears to be suffering from a belief in magic – that, for instance, withdrawing from Afghanistan would be a great idea; that Putin would be happy with a “minor incursion” into Ukraine; that the Chinese spy balloon was “silly;” that the mission of education and the military should be to ensure “equity,” leading one veteran to say that the US is “trying to out-pronoun our enemies;” and that America’s southern border, with agents trying to process reportedly 8,000 illegal migrants each day, thereby leaving vast swaths of land open to traffickers, smugglers, and terrorists, is “secure.”
Regrettably, the Biden Administration seems to be letting itself be outmaneuvered in countering the imminent threat of war posed by China’s leader Xi Jinping and his ruling Communist Party.
Three cases in point:
John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, landing in China in mid-July, declared that the country was doing an “incredible job“ developing renewable energy sources. He also asked it to reduce its world-leading coal-fired electricity production.
Not exactly likely. On January 24, 2022, the Chinese ruler told party leaders that carbon goals should not undermine energy or food supplies. China opens two new coal-fired generating plants a week, according to multiple reports.
Then there was Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China in June. Even before Blinken could deplane, Xi let Washington know who he thought was boss. When the secretary of state arrived — for the first trip to China by a top U.S. diplomat since 2018 — no senior Chinese official went to the airport to greet him: no red carpet, no ceremony. This non-encounter took place after Blinken’s journey had been postponed following the February shoot-down of a Chinese spy balloon that had snooped its way over many of the most sensitive military installations across the United States. Blinken swallowed the airport insult and met anyway with, among others, his Chinese counterpart and Xi himself. They held what the State Department called “a productive conversation, a real exchange.” Chinese officials likewise said the talks were “candid, in-depth, and constructive.” Good, so we have nothing to worry about!
Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen apparently thought so too. When she arrived on her pilgrimage ahead of Kerry in July, she actually bowed repeatedly, as Fox News showed—in the Chinese fashion of an inferior kowtowing to a superior—three times, “optics the Chinese love,” before Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng.
Doing business
“Criticism of Yellen’s apparent obsequiousness was ‘just noise’”, Mary Lovely of the Washington, D.C.-based Petersen Institute for International Economics told Bloomberg News. The treasury secretary went to Beijing “to do business” and put guardrails up to decrease tensions and “manage” U.S.-China relations.
What have Xi and his hand-picked team atop the party-government pyramid been doing to install guardrails and manage the critical relationship? Here are a few recent illustrations:
The Wall Street Journal revealed that China uses Cuba for extensive surveillance of the United States and military training. Miles Yu, who was China’s policy advisor to then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, wrote in a June 29 Wall Street Journal op-ed that “China’s spying installations and military training in Cuba reflect the Communist Party’s plans for global dominance”;
China maintains “police stations” in at least 53 countries around the world — as well as in Manhattan — from which, according to reports, to intimidate expatriate dissidents and others, and threaten them with “arrest” — meaning kidnapping and imprisonment in a Chinese gulag;
Former Canadian Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole, in a speech to Parliament, said he had been told that Beijing used proxy agents to spread disinformation about his party via the Chinese-operated WeChat instant messaging service. This followed similar charges by parliamentarian Michael Chong;
The Chinese Communist Partyhackedthe e-mails of senior U.S. officials, including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo before her planned trip to China.
Beijing decided early in July to restrict exports of germanium and gallium, key elements in semiconductors and missile systems. China retaliated against U.S. trade restrictions, citing “national security”.
Xi’s real purpose
At home, Xi has continued to tighten party control over the economy even as economic growth has faltered and unemployment climbed. Why pursue antagonistic policies abroad and counter-productive ones at home?
J. Kyle Bass, the founder of the Texas-based hedge fund Hayman Capital Management, thinks it is due to China’s vulnerability to petroleum and liquid national gas sanctions. Bass said on July 12 that Xi’s objectives are not economic growth or good relations but rather to insulate China from outside sanctions and other pressure like that, orchestrated by the United States and NATO against Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.
According to Bass, in 2020, China possessed 100 intercontinental ballistic missile launchers, and last year, the tally reached 450. This year, he said, Fujian province, opposite Taiwan, opened 18 new air raid shelters, and a major military hospital, and conducted a large-scale blood drive.
Holding U.S. dollars, China “should be buying short-term Treasury notes,” Bass stressed. Instead, “the curve is going in the opposite direction.” Beijing is building its gold reserves.
“The day Yellen landed in China, Xi told the Eastern Military Command to prepare for war. I think it is highly likely he invades Taiwan,” Bass said. Not by 2027, as estimated by U.S. intelligence, but “in 12 to 18 months.”
Bass said he believes the United States and its allies can prevail against China in a conflict over Taiwan and its democratically-governed 24 million people, but only if everything needed for defense “is on the island on day one.”
Also, it must be added, only after American leaders drop their belief in magic and speak realistically to the public.
On the occasion of his “eleventy-first” birthday, the hobbit Bilbo Baggins famously disappeared. On July 31, we celebrate[d] what would have been the 111th birthday of another man who was diminutive in size but larger than life in spirit: Milton Friedman. Were he to reappear today, he would likely marvel at how much progress has been made on issues about which he cared so deeply.
In particular, Friedman would likely be amazed at the expansion of education freedom over the last year as well as the landmark Supreme Court decision to eliminate racial preferences in education.
In the past three years alone, more than 20 states have enacted new education choice policies or expanded existing ones, including eight states that are in the process of implementing Friedman’s vision of universal school choice.
And last month, the Supreme Court decided jointly in two cases brought by Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard and the University of North Carolina that the equal protection clause prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, including in college admissions.
For Friedman, these two issues were closely connected. He was convinced that black Americans could not obtain equality of opportunity unless they had access to school choice. But he also understood that if those educational opportunities were allocated with racial preferences, that system might help a few but would inevitably undermine access to quality options for most black Americans.
Friedman once remarked, “If you think that there is a way out of this by getting government to pass laws especially to benefit [black Americans] you are kidding yourself. That isn’t going to happen.”
The problem, he astutely observed, is that majorities pass laws and black Americans are a relatively small minority. It is unreasonable, he argued, to expect majorities to pass laws that would undermine their own interests while advancing the interests of a minority. As he put it:
Temporarily … affirmative action may benefit some blacks, some low-income people, but if you believe that Supreme Court decisions are going to be able to stop a majority of the population, which is prejudiced, from using this power to benefit themselves rather than the people who are disadvantaged, you’re kidding yourself. That’s not the way out.
Affirmative action may have elevated select members of minority groups, but it did so at the expense of others, particularly Asian Americans. According to author Kenny Xu:
In the case of Harvard, race is not simply used as a tiebreaker in admissions. A 2013 internal Harvard study revealed by the [Students for Fair Admissions] lawsuit showed that had Harvard only considered academics, Asians would make up 43% of Harvard’s student body. Adding legacy, athlete recruitment, “extracurriculars,” and a “personal” score lowered Asians to 26%. Finally, in the years the internal Harvard study looked at, Asians actually made up only 19% of the student body.
Even the supposed beneficiaries of racial preferences in college admissions are harmed by them in at least three ways. First, artificially advancing some applicants undermines incentives for achievement within their racial communities, as it detaches accomplishments from rewards.
Second, as the great economist Thomas Sowell (a former student of Friedman) observed, racial preferences lead to a“mismatch effect”that leaves “many blacks and Hispanics who likely would have excelled at less elite schools … in a position where underperformance is all but inevitable because they are less academically prepared than the white and Asian students with whom they must compete.”
And third, as Justice Clarence Thomas has argued, racial preferences “stamp [their beneficiaries] with a badge of inferiority” that “taints the accomplishments of all those who are admitted as a result of racial discrimination” as well as “all those who are the same race as those admitted as a result of racial discrimination” because “no one can distinguish those students from the ones whose race played a role in their admission.”
Friedman was very clear that meaningful progress depended on abolishing both racial discrimination and racial preferences:
We want a society in which people can celebrate their own special ethnic background. But that’s a very different thing from a society which somehow takes ethnic characteristics as a criterion for preference or lack of preference, from a society which moves away from the doctrine of color-blindedness to the doctrine of so-called affirmative action. That’s the problem.
There are many advocates within the school choice movement who agree with Friedman on the benefits of expanding educational freedom but somehow ignore his message about the harms of racial preferences. They favor private school choice, but only for urban school districts with large minority populations or only when programs are targeted toward low-income families. They favor charter schools, but only those that focus on minority students with “culturally responsive” models. They believe that students learn the most from teachers who share the same skin pigmentation and they seek preferential funding, training, and hiring of black teachers to accomplish this.
Friedman would be thrilled to see that all students, regardless of class, color, or creed, are now eligible for private school choice in eight states. But he would be aghast that some claiming to favor school choice would prefer that these opportunities be allocated with racial preferences.
Friedman had no objection to people maintaining strong racial and ethnic identities: “I believe it’s highly desirable for people to be able to pursue their own values, to have whatever ethnic values they want, provided they do it voluntarily and do not interfere with the freedom of others to do it also. We want a society of variety and diversity.”
But he would have objected vigorously to the idea that government policies, such as critical race theory in public school curriculum, matching the race of students to teachers, or racial targeting of education opportunities, were necessary to cultivate those group identities and achieve progress for members of those communities.
Friedman was once asked directly about this issue: “Don’t you think it’s through ethnic solidarity that many minority groups were able to make advances in the American society?”
To which Friedman replied, “Not in the slightest. If you look at the way in which ethnic minorities made advances, it was not through ethnic solidarity. It was through the free market.”
On Milton Friedman’s 111th birthday, we should celebrate the remarkable growth toward a free market in education that we have seen in recent years. But we should also heed Friedman’s warning that those benefits of freedom can only be enjoyed if we avoid the coercion of racial preferences.
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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The line between radical activism and “mainstream” journalism has been obliterated, especially when it comes to the LGBTQ+ lobbyists.The war on traditional Christianity is on. It was splashed all over the front page of the July 25 USA Today.
The headline above the photograph was “Christian transgender man says fighting LGBTQ+ discrimination has increased his faith.” The big headline underneath was the trans man’s quote: “This is what I was supposed to be doing.
Zayn Silva was refused admission to a Christian seminary in New York and is part of a lawsuit trying to destroy any religious exemption for schools that hold true to biblical teaching. On the libertine Left, it’s believed God often cruelly “assigns” people the wrong gender at birth.
The large color photograph is Silva sitting in front of a stained-glass window at the First Presbyterian Church of Brooklyn, where he is an elder. The church members call themselves “intentionally inclusive.”
But it goes deeper than that. The “LGBTQ+ Fellowship” page on their website includes a video titled “Queer Mary, Trans Christ,” showing a “queer pastor” reading passages about “the cross-dressing Jesus” in “false eyelashes” from the book “Indecent Theology: Theological Perversions in Sex, Gender, and Politics.”
There is a word for this theology: heresy. But the word never surfaces in our secular press as they seek to undermine traditional religion in all its forms. Forsaking God is the objective.
The outfit gaining all this free publicity in USA Today calls itself the Religious Exemption Accountability Project, which is misleading. It’s a Religious Exemption Obliteration Project. Their website explains they “advocate for human rights while shining a light on the dangers and abuses of a major educational pipeline of white Christian Supremacy.”
There’s one nod to the religious-liberty counterpoint from Gregory Baylor of Alliance Defending Freedom. Baylor said some religious schools could have “very different perspectives,” but these lawsuits “are trying to diminish those choices.” In other words, activists like Silva can find a nominally Christian school that’s “intentionally inclusive,” but the lawsuit route is more appealing.
USA Today summarized its official disdain in the subhead: “Counterargument: Lawsuits threaten religious ‘choice.’” There can be no “diversity” of opinion. The new orthodoxy is secular and leftist.
On the same day USA Today campaigned on the front page, NPR’s “Morning Edition” aired a more balanced story on the battle inside the United Methodist Church, where a significant sliver of churches is leaving. NPR reporter Jason DeRose interviewed minister Glen Haworth, complaining the Methodists were “drifting from what he calls traditional biblical teachings” on homosexuality and marriage. “What he calls” is NPR’s subtle method of wanting to deconstruct the Bible.
NPR’s opposing view came from Grant Hagiya, president of the Methodist seminary in Southern California, Claremont School of Theology. He clearly set orthodox Christians on edge by suggesting the LGBTQ+ view is for “justice, something he believes even a medieval theologian could support.”
Hagiya claimed Thomas Aquinas “would say that if a law is unjust, it’s not a law. Laws are human-made. And they can be wrong, immoral. And we believe that this is true of this particular case of exclusion.” What Aquinas actually wrote is, “An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.” The libertines are at war with “eternal law and natural law.”
“Justice” in the eyes of the Left is defined as bending the arcaway from the Bible(and the Torah and the Quran)and creating a new God that believes exactly what the Left believes, a malleable deity who evolves exactly as the Left evolves.
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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It’s not about Trump. It’s about criminalizing dissent and punishing the millions who voted for him — and warning them not to do it again.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department took the unprecedented step of indicting former President Donald Trump — Biden’s chief rival in the upcoming 2024 election — for repeatedly expressing his opinion that the last election was stolen, rigged, and unfair.
It’s an opinion millions of Americans share, and to which they are unquestionably entitled thanks to the First Amendment. That includes Trump, who has said repeatedly (and recently) that the 2020 election was stolen. He’ll probably keep saying it until his dying day, and he has every right to do so.
The idea that our Justice Department can indict someone, especially the sitting president’s main political rival, over speech that’s protected by the First Amendment is simply insane. It puts us firmly into banana republic territory, where tinpot dictators jail their political opponents ahead of election day to ensure their “reelection.”
Simply put, this indictment is nothing more than a declaration of war against American voters and their constitutional right to free speech. As Jonathan Turley noted on Twitter, “If you take a red pen to all of the material presumptively protected by the First Amendment, you can reduce much of the indictment to haiku.”
Consider what’s alleged, and what isn’t, by DOJ Special Counsel Jack Smith (who, let’s not forget, was once rebuked by a unanimous Supreme Court after he tried to put a GOP governor in prison during the Obama administration). The charges against Trump do not include incitement to violence on Jan. 6, 2021. You might be surprised to hear that after Smith’s hyperbolic press conference Tuesday, in which he went on and on about the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and how horrible it was.
Instead, the charges are that Trump committed conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and an attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights. Sounds scary, but what it amounts to is the criminalization of opinions with which Jack Smith and the Biden Justice Department happen to disagree.
Crucially, Smith’s indictment alleges that Trump’s claims about the 2020 election were false and that he knew they were false. As evidence, Smith cites a bunch of Trump officials and federal bureaucracies that told him there was no evidence of widespread election fraud. He even cites the infamous Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which we now know, thanks to the “Twitter Files,” directly interfered in the 2020 election by censoring Americans by proxy.
Yet despite the likes of CISA telling him otherwise, Trump kept claiming the election was stolen, so he must have been lying. Or so goes the reasoning here.
I know, I know. You’re probably thinking this can’t be real, that no one would be so stupid as to hang charges on the idea that Trump secretly believed he’d lost the election because a bunch of deep-state officials told him so, but lied about it in hopes of pulling off a grand “conspiracy.”
But it doesn’t matter. Whether Trump knew he lost the election and lied about it is a political matter, not a legal one. It’s precisely the kind of thing that can only be settled by voters, not by DOJ thugs in the Biden administration.
Think of it this way. If Smith can indict Trump for speaking out about the election, for arguing that it was stolen or rigged, then rest assured the DOJ under Biden could indict every one of the millions of Americans who agree with Trump about 2020 and have said so publicly. Hell, Smith could probably indict me for writing this article (and especiallythis one).
Forget about Trump for a minute. This indictment sets a terrifying precedent that puts all Americans at risk.If the prosecution of Trump succeeds, it means the First Amendment is a dead letter in America. It means you’re not allowed to have opinions that contradict the Justice Department’s official narrative — and if you do, you’d better not have the temerity to run for high office.
Seen in that light, this latest indictment of Trump — who has now been charged with more than 75 crimes, many of them by the Biden DOJ — is an exercise in raw power. It’s not that Democrats are playing some kind of 4D chess in hopes of ginning up support for Trump among the base to ensure he’s the nominee because they think they can beat him in the general election.
No, they just want to put him in prison. They think Trump’s a criminal for opposing them, and they think the same thing about his supporters. The left wants to criminalize dissent. They don’t really think you should get a vote, much less an opinion. That’s what this indictment is about. If you think this is bad, just wait.
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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While I come from what might be called the traditional left, or what today can perhaps be called the RFK, Jr left, I have always been very interested in reading thinkers from other schools of political thought, especially libertarians. This, owing to their generalized disdain for war and empire, their fierce belief in the need to protect our constitutional rights, and their marked ability—in comparison to so many people in today’s left and mainstream right —to engage in frank, vigorous, and respectful debate.
That said, I’ve never been a huge fan of the ever-present Tyler Cowen. And even less so since he, a supposed lover of liberty, acquiesced (I’m being kind), during the Covid emergency to what Justice Neil Gorsuch rightfully termed “the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country.”
A few days ago, however, he made himself look good by comparison by debating the high priest of animal rights and hedonistic utilitarianism (his term not mine), Peter Singer.
Reading and listening to Singer, it is easy to get seduced by the vision of the future he paints, one in which human populations will, little by little, come to embrace the kinder angels of their nature and usher in a world marked by much less cruelty to both human beings and animals.
Who could be against that?
The problem lies in the methods he proposes, or perhaps more accurately, obliquely suggests for getting us from here to there.
He speaks a lot about “happiness” and the “general good” and the essential role that “rationality” plays in achieving them.
But he never, at least in this admittedly relatively brief exchange with Cowen, comes close to admitting the immensely problematic nature of all of these concepts.
Who decides what is “happiness” or the “universal” or “general good” in a society? Is it true that “rationality” is coterminous with knowing, or that rationality is the only true path to happiness and moral improvement? Or, for that matter, who exactly is it that has decided that general happiness, however defined, is the supreme moral good? Billions of Christians and Buddhists around the world, to take just two examples, with their belief in the fundamental value and importance of human suffering, might oppose that notion rather strenuously.
When Cowen rightly tries to gain more clarity on his ideas on happiness—by talking about what one should do in a putative encounter between humans and extraterrestrials supposedly possessed of the ability to generate and spread happiness better than humans—Singer admits the possibility that there may not a common metric for happiness between such groups, and should this be the case, he wouldn’t know what to do in terms ceding to, or fighting against, the alien invaders.
Similarly, when Cowen challenges the difficulties of firmly establishing an idea of the common or general good in society, Singer simply changes the subject and repeats his belief in the concept.
COWEN: How do we know there is a universal good? You’re selling out your fellow humans based on this belief in a universal good, which is quite abstract, right? The other smart humans you know mostly don’t agree with you, I think, I hope.
SINGER: But you’re using the kind of language that Bernard Williams used when he says, “Whose side are you on?” You said, “You’re selling out your fellow humans,” as if I owe loyalty to members of my species above loyalty to good in general, that is, to maximizing happiness and well-being for all of those affected by it. I don’t claim to have any particular loyalty for my species rather than the general good.
Are you catching on to the game?
Singer goes around mouthing immensely problematic concepts like these, and building an edifice of ethical imperatives around them for others to follow. But when challenged on basic aspects of their coherence he is unwilling to provide any answers.
Let’s be serious.
Do you really think someone, a supposedly really smart someone, who immediately admits, in the example of the extraterrestrials he and Cowen used, the inoperability of his theory of the common good in the absence of a common metric of happiness, is incapable of seeing the enormous question it begs about his vaunted theories about the same thing when applied to the immense cultural, and therefore value diversity of the human species?
I don’t for a moment think he’s incapable of seeing this obvious point. I think he simply does not want to go there.
And why might he not want to go there?
We get the first hint as to why when, in a response to a Cowen query about the existence or not of a “general faculty of reason”—the thing which Singer had just presented as the fundamental source of a more evolved human ethics—he speaks of the possible need of a more rational and therefore presumably more moral elite to effectively impose their superior ways of seeing things on the less enlightened majorities. And again notice the initial hedging when pressed about a fundamental element of the moral edifice he uses to generate very non-ambiguous moral imperatives for others.
Cowen: You’ve written plenty about many, many other examples. Is there really this general faculty of reason that overrides those evolved intuitions?
SINGER: I think there certainly can be, and I think there is for some people some of the time. The question would be, is everybody capable of that? Or even if not everybody, are we capable of getting a dominant group who do follow reason in general, universal directions, who use it to develop a more universal ethic that applies to a wider group of beings than their own kin and family and those that they’re in cooperative relationships with? I think there’s evidence that that is possible, and we don’t yet know to what extent that can spread and start to dominate humans in future generations.
Things become clearer still when we take the time to consult a paper, Secrecy in Consequentialism: a Defense of Esoteric Morality, mentioned later in the interview, that the Australian philosopher wrote in cooperation with Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek in 2010.
In it, the authors defend Sidgwick’s concept of “esoteric morality,” which Singer and Lazari-Radek sum up in the following way:
“Sidgwick famously divided society into ‘enlightened utilitarians’ who may be able to live by ‘refined and complicated’ rules that admit exceptions, and the rest of the community to whom such sophisticated rules ‘would be dangerous.’ Therefore, he concluded: ‘. . . on Utilitarian principles, it may be right to do and privately recommend, under certain circumstances, what it would not be right to advocate openly; it may be right to teach openly to one set of persons what it would be wrong to teach to others; it may be conceivably right to do, if it can be done with comparative secrecy, what it would be wrong to do in the face of the world; and even, if perfect secrecy can be reasonably expected, what it would be wrong to recommend by private advice and example.’ ”
Maybe I’m being precipitous, but I find it hard to believe that, given his obvious intelligence and renown, Singer does not consider himself to be one of the ‘enlightened utilitarians’ who may be able to live by ‘refined and complicated’ rules that admit exceptions, and the rest of the community to whom such sophisticated rules ‘would be dangerous.’
If this is the case, would it be so wrong to suggest that when Singer blithely and repeatedly uses concepts he is unwilling to minimally subject to the scrutiny they clearly deserve, he might be playing the very game of “esoteric morality” he defends in his article on Sidgwick?
I don’t think so.
If we were to have the ability to eavesdrop on the uncensored internal train of Singerian reason, my guess is we’d find perorations similar to this:
I know most of the boobs out there are a lot less thoughtful than me and, again, unlike me, will probably never transcend their irrationality enough to ascend to see the truths of the new moral universe toward which I am trying to impel them. Therefore it is important for me and others in my enlightened caste to withhold a lot of details which would just get balled up in their convoluted minds, and instead keep the repeated rhetorical emphasis on vague and deeply compelling notions like increased happiness and the general good which will appeal to their less developed brains that will, in time, eventually allow them to be herded into “our” superior castle of ethics.
I wish I could say Peter Singer is an exception in our current socio-political landscape, but he is not.
Rather, Peter Singer’s peek-a-boo world of vaguely defined, but at the same time supposedly deeply urgent, moral principles is the world toward which many, many very powerful forces are trying to drive us.
Indeed, these same people just ran a very successful 3-year experiment in conditioning us to accept more debasement of our individual rights in the name of at best unprovable, and at worst, flat-out false ideas of the “common good.”
And given that so few rebelled and spoke out during this experiment in the name of the concrete individual human being with a name, a mortgage, and a pesky sense of his own dignity and destiny before the unfathomable complexity of creation, they’ll be back for more.
Will those who went along with the hustle have by then reconsidered the consequences of their meek acquiescence to these abstract schemas that insouciantly snuffed out so many people’s basic claims to dignity and autonomy?
One can only hope so.
For their sake as much as anyone else’s.
Why?
Because power has no loyalty.
For while this time around the conformists may have gained a sense of energy and virtue from being on the “right,” majoritarian side of the supposed campaign to enforce the abstract, and as it turned out, the completely lie-ridden notion of the common good—with all that this implied in terms of the ephemeral joy of demonizing others —there is no guarantee that the same rules and alignments will apply the next time around.
Indeed, one of the cardinal precepts of today’s Machiavellians and their esoteric court philosophers is the imperative of rewriting the operative rules early and often to the point where only the most stubborn and mindful among the rubes have the will to object to their carefully planned campaigns of moral disorientation.
Eventually, however, the campaign to change society in the name of abstract notions of the common good engineered by those avid for power will touch on something that the one-time cheerleaders for the Covid mob and now the Trans and Climate mobs deeply cherish as part of their essential humanity (that is if they haven’t yet abandoned that concept under the weight of external pressures) and they will once again have the choice of fighting or acquiescing.
Maybe then those suggestions they made about cries for bodily sovereignty and informed consent being mere fig leaves for justifying puerile Oedipal intransigence or flat-out scientific illiteracy, will look a little different to them.
Then again maybe they won’t.
Maybe they’ll simply go along with the stealthy extirpation of that thing they once cherished about their individual humanity without a fight and, after ceding to the messaging of self-anointed rational and moral clairvoyants like Peter Singer, convince themselves it was all necessary for guaranteeing the “march of progress” that will end in more happiness for all.
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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When Nebraskans went to the polls last November, nearly two-thirds of voters decided to amend Nebraska’s Constitution to require people to present a valid photo identification before casting a vote in future elections.
To implement the amendment, Nebraska’s Legislature recently passed a law setting forth the exact voter ID requirements and striking a proper balance between ensuring election integrity and enabling citizens to freely exercise their right to vote.
In an era when noncitizen voting gains currency as a serious proposal and when tech mavens spend millions lobbying to make voting as banal as sending a “like” on their social media platforms, it was heartening to see that this traditional means of safeguarding the integrity of elections remains popular with voters.
Still, after the voters spoke in November, there was work to be done. The newly adopted amendment left to the state’s Legislature the task of determining how the voters’ will would be implemented. And good intentions, like those the amendment expressed, never suffice to ensure good outcomes.
Fortunately, the bill proposed by state Sen. Tom Brewer, which was passed by a vote of 38-1 in Nebraska’s unicameral Legislature and signed into law by Republican Gov. Jim Pillen on June 2, largely delivered on the twin promises of election security and accessibility.
The law mandates that in any election, a person who appears at the polls to vote must first show a valid photo ID before he or she casts a ballot. Those choosing to vote by mail are obliged to provide either a copy of their photo ID or the number from their state driver’s license or state ID card with their ballot envelope. The law wisely prevents voters from signing an affidavit in lieu of providing a photo ID, a fraud-prone practice allowed in some states.
Finally, the law permits those who appear at the polls without the requisite ID to cast a provisional ballot, which ballot officials will count only if the voter returns on or before the Tuesday following the election to provide the necessary photo ID.
Narrow exceptions exist for voters with religious objections to being photographed and those with a recognized impediment. Collectively, these changes enable election officials to authenticate the identity of each person and ensure that only eligible voters are casting ballots.
To temper concerns about the ID requirement limiting ballot access for some, Nebraska’s law states that no fee will be charged to citizens seeking a state-issued photo ID for voting purposes. Nebraska thus eliminated any financial burden that might have fallen on voters needing to comply with the new law.
The Heritage Foundation tracks laws like Nebraska’s on its Election Integrity Scorecard, which ranks all 50 states and the District of Columbia based on 48 criteria reflecting best practices for administering free and fair elections. Prior to this law, Nebraska ranked 41st with a total score of 47 out of 100 possible points—among the lowest scores in the nation. The state earned not a single point in the category “Voter ID Implementation.”
With its latest law and the blessing of its voters, Nebraska now earns all 20 points in that category, bringing the state’s total score to a more respectable 67 points and putting it in sole possession of 18th place overall.
This is a great improvement and a testament to the good work legislators can do when they faithfully heed the electorate’s concerns.
While the new law is a significant accomplishment, the broader cause of election integrity offers other opportunities for voters and legislators alike. The need to keep voter rolls accurate, to manage the chain of custody for mail-in ballots, and limit opportunities for vote harvesting by unscrupulous campaign workers are all areas where Nebraskans could apply their improving energies in the next legislative session in 2024.
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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Federal lawmakers created a glut of EVs with their meddling, and it’s likely to have an adverse impact on both the auto market and the environment.
Ford Motor recently announced it is slashing prices on its F-150 Lightning, an electric vehicle the company rolled out in 2021.
The Lightning now carries a suggested retail price of $49,995, about $10,000 lower than its previous recommended price tag ($59,974), a reduction the company says is possible because of lower “battery raw material costs and continued work on scaling production and cost.”
It’s certainly possible that reduced overhead from battery minerals and production costs played a role in Ford’s decision to trim its price tag by nearly 20 percent, but that may be only half the story.
Several reports show EVs are not exactly flying off dealership lots. In fact, there’s a glut of them.
“After a prolonged period in which EVs quickly disappeared from dealerships, the electric vehicle industry now has the opposite problem: unsold models are piling up,” reportedMoney last week. “About 92,000 EVs currently sit on dealers’ lots; that’s a 342% increase from a year ago, when only about 21,000 did so, according to automotive research firm Cox Automotive.”
Ford is not immune from the weakened demand for EVs. Sales of its flagship car, the Mustang Mach-E, have slumped, down 44 percent in May from the same month last year.
The Lightning, which won the title of EV king of pickup trucks after Ford moved nearly 16,000 units in 2022, has fared better but is still struggling to keep pace with 2022. And now the company is facing some stiff new competition. (More on that in a minute.)
This was not the scenario many people predicted.
In April, the International Energy Agency released a report in which it predicted EV sales to increase 35 percent after a record-breaking year. But economists I spoke with said such predictions were overly optimistic considering current macroeconomic conditions.
This invites important questions. Is the glut of EVs simply a product of tightened money supply?
Apparently not. As Axios noted, the 92,000 EVs currently sitting on lots are comparatively high relative to gasoline-powered cars.
“That’s a 92-day supply — roughly three months’ worth of EVs, and nearly twice the industry average,” wrote Joann Muller. “For comparison, dealers have a relatively low 54 days’ worth of gasoline-powered vehicles in inventory….”
In other words, dealerships are sitting on a lot more EVs than gasoline-powered vehicles—despite efforts to entice consumers to buy EVs with taxpayer-funded credits up to $7,500.
This is evidence that pretty much everyone—from central planners to auto manufacturers—misjudged the demand for EVs, which are not even as environmentally friendly as politicians would have you believe.
Not only do EVs require an astonishing amount of mining—an estimated 500,000 pounds of rock and minerals must be upturned to make a single battery, physicists point out—but their carbon footprint isn’t much smaller than gas-powered cars.
It turns out that EVs actually require a lot more CO2 to produce than gas-powered cars. EVs can make that up, but it takes a great deal of time because EVs also often run on electricity generated from fossil fuels. Just how long? In 2021, Volvo admitted that its C40 Recharge has to be driven 70,000 miles before its carbon impact is lower than its gas-powered version.
All of this is to say that a bunch of unused EVs isn’t just a financial headache for auto dealers and motor companies; it’s also an environmental problem.
That said, the weaker-than-expected demand for EVs doesn’t mean the future of electric vehicles is doomed. On the contrary, demand for EVs is likely to increase as battery technology and EV infrastructure improves. Ford’s Lightning, for example, only has half the range of its gas-powered F-150 because of its small battery—a clear concern when charging stations are not yet readily available in many places.
For now, however, motor companies are competing with one another to attract customers in a smaller-than-anticipated EV market. Which brings me to Elon Musk.
Tesla last week rolled out its much-hyped Cybertruck, which is a direct challenge to the Lightning and likely played a role in Ford’s price cut.
Federal lawmakers may have created a glut of EVs with their meddling, and it’s likely to have an adverse impact on both the auto market and the environment. But one of the virtues of capitalism is that consumers will ultimately decide who wins in the EV market and who loses.
Whether that turns out to be Musk’s Cybertruck or Ford’s Lightning remains to be seen. Either way, the competition is bringing down prices, which is a win for consumers looking to purchase an EV.
But the glut of electrical vehicles on the market reveals the danger in letting lawmakers decide what consumers should be driving.
*****
This article was published by FEE, The Foundation for Economic Education, and is reproduced with permission.
TAKE ACTION
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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A majority of heat deaths in Maricopa County are attributable to methamphetamine, according to the latest Maricopa County Department of Public Health heat deaths report.
53 percent of heat deathsinvolved meth last year, or 226 deaths. 67 percent of deaths involved some type of substance abuse. The county noted that the proportion of heat deaths involving drug use has increased over the years.
The homeless make up the largest class of all heat deaths: 178 met that characterization (150 were classified as having “unknown” living situations). Nearly 70 percent of all heat deaths last year occurred in urban areas.
Although the homeless made up the most heat deaths last year and in 2020, that wasn’t the case from 2012 to 2019. More non-homeless individuals suffered heat deaths during those years than the homeless.
Phoenix had the most heat deaths last year, 245, followed far behind by Mesa at 36 deaths and then Glendale at 22 deaths. Scottsdale and Tempe both had 10 deaths, Avondale and Peoria both had 8 deaths, Chandler had 7 deaths, and Gilbert had 6 deaths.
Phoenix also holds the vast majority of the homeless population in the county. The Maricopa Association of Governmentsreporteda 36% increase in homeless individuals in the county from 2019 to last year. That increase was most greatly felt at the very heart of downtown Phoenix, evident in the mass homeless encampment called “The Zone.”
Phoenix Mayor Kate Gallego has used heat deaths to bolster her campaign to declare The Valley’s regular summer heat as a federal emergency. Such a declaration would result in the awarding of federal relief funds.
During her annual state of the city address in April, Mayor Gallego petitioned the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to qualify extreme heat as a disaster by adding the regular seasonal occurrence to its national emergency declarations categorization.
A FEMA recognition would bring in more federal funding. The city has a number of heat mitigation projects that would likely benefit from such funding, like the manufactured shade and drinking water access areas known as “cool corridors,” which are determined on an equity basis, and the special sunlight absorption streets known as “cool pavement.” Those initiatives were unique creations under Mayor Gallego’s administration.
Mayor Gallego was also responsible for the creation of one of the first heat mitigation offices within city government: the Office of Heat Response and Mitigation (OHRM). The city established the office with $2.8 million in 2021, with the explicit attempt to combat “urban heat”: the theory that urbanization causes higher temperatures.
Presently, the OHRM doles out COVID-19 relief federal funding provided by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) for annual heat relief grants. These grants are earmarked for nonprofit, charitable, small business, and faith-based organizations existing within the city-recognized Maricopa Association of Governments Heat Relief Network that claim negative impacts from the COVID-19 pandemic. OHRM will give out a maximum of $450,000 total, with each recipient receiving anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000.
A major focus of the OHRM is providing heat respite for the homeless. The latest update from OHRM, issued last summer, announced initiatives costing millions to increase the comfort of the homeless residing within the The Zone: the creation of seven new shade structures; distribution of insulated and reusable water bottles, hats, sunscreen, personal misters, towels, ice chests with water; and hundreds of shelter beds for 24/7 heat respite.
The first and current OHRM director is Arizona State University (ASU) professor David Hondula, who teaches within the Global Institute of Sustainability. Hondula was named director of the office overseeing the pavement initiative within weeks of publication of a joint study on the city’s “cool pavement” infrastructure, which the city knew ahead of expansion would make people hotter.
Although FEMA hasn’t heeded Gallego’s call, her Congressman ex-husband did. Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-03) introduced the Extreme Heat Emergency Act last month.
Per the latest county heat deaths report, fatalities decreased from 2012 to 2014. 2012 totaled about one-fourth of last year’s deaths and 2014 reached a low of 61 deaths. Deaths then increased from 84 in 2015 to 199 in 2019, spiking to 323 in 2020 and steadily increasing since then.
The county report also revealed that African American and Native American individuals made up the most heat deaths: 13 per 100,000 and 9 per 100,000, respectively. White individuals followed closely behind at nearly 8 per 100,000 deaths.
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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We have been searching for a place to focus our charitable efforts. For more than 30 years, most of our giving went to our synagogue. Sadly, we were compelled to leave after two left-wing Rabbis were more interested in being community organizers than teaching the Torah.
We have been giving to Prager U, StandWithUs, The Red Cross, and Veterans’ groups, but the Beautiful Wife wanted a new focus.
She identified a locally based charity with whom she felt comfortable focusing her efforts. They would be lucky to have her. She was previously given the Young Leadership Award for the Jewish Federation’s Women’s Division; is a past president of both NAWBO-LA (National Assn. of Women Business Owners, Los Angeles) and the Organization of Women Executives (OWE). She can sell ice to an Eskimo. She would be a real addition to any charity.
Additionally, charities need three things: donors, doers, and door openers. She fits all three.
She was doing the ceremonial dance with the charity when we were invited to their annual gala with a hefty price tag. Because of the orientation of many groups today, I wanted to do a deep dive into their activities before we wrote a check.
I found many of the activities described on their website to be worthy of support. Then I noticed they invoked the words “social justice” in their mission statement. That terminology sets off alarm bells among Republicans and Conservatives. It signals to them that the organization has a political bent that is pretty much against the moral standards to which we aspire. To me, it invokes Black Lives Matter, a disgusting, anti-Semitic, and fraudulent organization.
I addressed an email to the head of development:
Dear Janice:
Teri is very interested in being involved in your charity. As for me, I am happy just writing checks for any charity. Not big on going to Galas anymore. Been there, done that.
One thing I insist on is doing a deep dive into any charity to make sure it is in line with our values. I have read up on what is being done and like it very much.
I am wondering why in your overall description the terminology “social justice” is used?
Thank you.
She replied:
Hi Bruce,
Thanks for the great email! I appreciate your feedback and honest approach to researching a charity before committing to anything.
Also, thank you for the question on social justice. I believe it to be a powerful word that carries a lot of weight for the communities we serve. Specifically, the term is important to our charity because we are guided by the belief that everyone, regardless of background, has the right to social, economic, and political opportunities. We amplify our social justice initiative through an innovative approach to operate and fund programs that advance inclusiveness for youth. Under the lens of social justice, we are invited and often allowed to guide community investments and provide targeted, smart, and on-the-ground solutions for the racially diverse communities we serve. The youth in these communities are often the recipient of the most basic and minimal social and economic resources, so we provide those resources through a series of programs we support. We believe that everyone, regardless of community, deserves equal social, political, and economic rights and opportunities, thus making social justice one of our pillars.
Please let me know if that helps answer your question on social justice. I am more than happy to jump on the phone with you and chat about it further if you would like any additional information.
Thanks!
Well, that did not exactly alleviate my concerns and we agreed to have a phone call at a further time.
In preparation for that phone call, I sent an individually addressed email to ten involved Republicans.
The email went as below:
Dear Steve:
Teri was looking at getting us involved in a well-known charity in Los Angeles. They are doing some very good things as part of their mission. Their website refers to tackling social justice for all Angelenos.
Your thoughts, please.
A few wrote back immediately saying (I paraphrase here) “No way, Jose.” Do not get involved. Half thought that someone had invaded my email address and that the email sent was not legitimate. One person contacted our son to verify the authenticity of the email. Their responses once they found out it was me were (again, I paraphrase here) “You must be joking. You would not possibly get involved with them.”
I had a phone call with the representative of the group, and we made no progress on our differences in perception. I made clear to her she was antagonizing Republicans; and, according to every study, Republicans give more to charity than Democrats. Likewise, religious people give more than non-observant people.
She asked me to write a letter she could pass on to higher-ups in the organization to express my concerns. That was a monumental task. As an experienced writer, I knew I had to structure this in a particularly detailed way. I could not express anything in a manner that would allow them to say, “See, he is just a kook.” I could not write a sentence that would allow them to clip what I said to take a portion and distort my meaning. Most of all it had to be overwhelmingly positive. I was up to the task and motivated.
After sending it off, I received no response. I received no response to my email checking whether she had received the requested letter.
During this entire process, I have kept the identity of the organization from others. I wanted unvarnished thoughts about the actions.
The definition of what this organization is and how they frame what they do is divisive. It is also unnecessary. It comes from the assumption of the principals think everyone agrees with them. Of course, they think that way because they only interact with like-minded people in their cozy cocoons.
They say they are open to helping all people, but any group like this would exclude helping white people and likely Jews. They would immediately cite they have Jews involved in their leadership. My answer is that they are deeply confused Jews or uninvolved Jews. A hallmark of groups like this is that Jews are one of the excluded groups. Look at what is going on across the country on college campuses. Jews are not considered cool kids.
This is the Los Angeles Dodger Foundation. Why they have cast themselves in a divisive light baffles me, but I know it comes from their cozy cocoon where everyone thinks as they do. How could anyone possibly think otherwise?
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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What a run it has been! The S&P is up better than 20% and the tech-laden NASDAQ is up better than 45% year to data. Label it as either a new bull market or a bear market rally, it has been strong.
The stock market seems poised to challenge old highs based on good technical action and the widely held expectation that a recession has been averted and the FED has pulled off the magical “soft landing.” And bulls will rightly point out there is still significant cash on the sidelines.
For the bearish naysayers, the last few months have been difficult. Just since the middle of March, the broad market is up 22%. To be sure, the breadth has been narrow with the “magnificent seven” accounting for the bulk of the gains. Historically this is not healthy although of late breadth has expanded somewhat from earlier extreme concentration in all things tech. This has given the bulls even greater confidence.
Likewise, the signs of economic strength have emboldened investors. There is diminishing fear of recession in the US, although much of Europe and China looks alarmingly soft.
Have tried and true indicators of a recession been proven false this time, or have they simply not had enough time to work?
Our biggest concern for the short term is that public psychology tends to push to extremes, one way or the other, much like a pendulum. Because of that readings in sentiment tend to be the most helpful at extremes.
As we previously noted, markets can get overbought and stay overbought for some time, so we are making more a statement of the market’s condition than a statement of timing. It would appear we have been in that overbought condition since early June. Price has continued to advance even within the overbought condition.
However, we are beginning to see telltale signs of fatigue. This is showing up in momentum data and sentiment studies.
Nevertheless, we are in some kind of large bullish equity move, regardless of the labels you wish may wish to use. But it is looking a bit tired and we have now registered some extreme readings.
For those older or those who wish to limit their risk, this may be a good time to take some profit, write calls, think of using a crawling stop, and check your asset allocation.
Most of what we will likely experience will be a correction within a “bull” move that will work off some of the current excesses in the market. As we approach all-time highs, it could be more serious than that. Right now, it is too early to tell. At present, it looks more like the “pause that refreshes”, as the soda pop ad used to say.
The market has really surprised a number of people in its ability to buck the interest rate trend. We would put ourselves in that camp. Markets can do well with higher rates, but markets historically are adversely influenced by a rapid change in rates, which we certainly have had. But not this time. It would seem that fiscal stimulus and recovery from the lockdown have overpowered many past indicators. The market has plowed through all the noise of rising rates, recession threats, and inverted yield curves.
But rising rates are hurting the economy if not the market yet. For example, delinquency rates on credit cards from small lenders are at an all-time high, the average US credit card balance is at $7,3000, a record high, suggesting people are borrowing just to live. US sovereign debt has been downgraded by Fitch, the 30-year mortgage is back over 7%, and according to the Kobeissi Letter, 20 states now have 40% of household income just going to house payments, and bankruptcies for the first half of the year exceed that of 2020, the year of the lockdown and the most since 2010.
The credit system is stressed, even if stocks are not paying attention.
However, both rising rates and inverted yield curves have lagging effects and they are not instantaneous. We don’t know yet that the skeptics are wrong, but we do know they have been early. The market has powered through a very sharp increase in rates. But in due time that can’t help but damage the economy.
The same can be said for the plunging money supply and contraction in bank lending. It may take more time but that does not mean that in the end, it won’t be important.
Besides momentum being overbought and starting to stall, as we have noted the other concern is sky-high sentiment.
The argument is summarized as follows: while it may have been correct for the vast majority to be bullish, once they are, and have taken action on their opinions, it is now all in the market price. How much more at the margin can people get bullish?
Sentiment studies further break down into two areas. There is survey data, which is more or less, asking investors their opinion, and there are action indicators, which allow us to see if that opinion is being translated into actual market positions.
But since people can have opinions and not act on them, we need that action sentiment to confirm. Are people fully committed, are they using margin, do calls swamp the number of puts, are institutions fully committed?
Opinion survey sentiment is quite overbought. Last week the spread between AAII bulls and bears reached 30%, one of the highest records ever. The public is very bullish.
Sentiment action indicators are confirming the overbought condition. The National Association of Investment Managers indicates now an almost 100% allocation to stocks. True, the number can get up to around 110 as managers go on margin, but usually anything around 100% is cause for concern. Professionals are as bullish as the public and that is not a measure of opinion but one of action. They have committed portfolio cash to equities to 100%, and can only go further by going on margin. Just last October, when the market was a real steal, professionals had less than 20% allocated to equities.
What is the lesson from that? Professionals can be just as emotional as the public.
Another good summary of action is also the CNN Fear and Greed gauge. On June 30th, the gauge hit 84% bullish, a reading of extreme greed. Just last March, on the eve of the big rally beginning, it was just 23%. Notice the 80-20 principle seems at work here?
We are supposed to buy when prices are low and the public is bearish. The old saying was “Buy snow shovels in July and straw hats in January”. But crowd behavior being what it is suggests the public does not have confidence unless confirmed by the actions of others. Humans are herd animals.
Usually, once sentiment numbers begin to reverse, the market will follow in a few weeks. Our readings suggest sentiment is beginning to weaken. For example, the aforementioned CNN gauge hit 84%, putting it squarely in the “extreme greed” level but it has now dropped to 77%. The reversal in sentiment is a key indicator to watch.
This brings to mind another famous dictum of Warren Buffet: ” Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.”
How would you rate the current psychological state of the market?
Finally, the market has some patterns within the year that technical types refer to as seasonality. August tends to be one of the weaker months with September being the worst. This is a time when particularly in Europe, everyone goes on vacation and the market volume begins to dry up. As such, the market tends to become more sensitive to adverse developments because the “collective mind” literally is at the beach or in the mountains.
Thus it would seem that overbought conditions in both momentum and sentiment have reached extremes just in time for August and September.
TAKE ACTION
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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The Prickly Pear will provide current, linked articles about Arizona consistent with our Mission Statement to ‘inform, educate and advocate’. We are an Arizona based website and believe this information should be available to all of our statewide readers.
As agents continue to apprehend more known, suspected terrorists (KSTs) illegally entering the U.S., internal federal agency processes have allowed them to enter the U.S. and “potentially threaten national security and public safety,” an Office of Inspector General report found.
The OIG, which audited the Department of Homeland Security, the agency created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks tasked with defending Americans from terrorism, identified ineffective practices and highlighted an example of a known terrorist being released into the U.S. after illegally entering in Yuma, Arizona. The KST was caught only through a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) airport screening in California when trying to board a plane en route to Tampa, Florida.
The OIG report found that a KST was released because of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s “ineffective practices and processes for resolving inconclusive matches with the Terrorist Watchlist led to multiple mistakes.”
The Terrorist Screening Dataset (TSDS), referred to as the Terrorist Watchlist, is the federal database that contains sensitive information on terrorist identities, CBP explains. It originated as a consolidated terrorist watchlist “to house information on known or suspected terrorists (KSTs) but evolved over the last decade to include additional individuals who represent a potential threat to the United States, including known affiliates of watchlisted individuals.”
The OIG audit also found that after the KST was identified, it took two weeks for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to make an arrest because of “multiple challenges sharing information.”
The OIG recommended that CBP resolve its inconclusive terrorist watchlist matching process and that ICE improve its internal mechanisms to more effectively implement removal and enforcement operations. It made three recommendations, with which DHS agreed.
Jim Crumpacker, CFE director with the Department of the Government Accountability Office-Office of Inspector General Liaison Office, expressed concerns about the report’s title, saying it “misleads readers into believing that CBP knowingly released” a known or suspected terrorist. He also said the report “mischaracterizes how and when the individual’s location was identified.”
The OIG disagreed, stating CBP releasing a KST “is accurate and supported in the report findings. The report explains that CBP released [the KST] without sharing information that would have confirmed the Terrorist Watchlist match.”
The 24-page redacted report explains that the Department of Homeland Security’s process to protect Americans from potential terrorists includes screening, arresting and removing foreign nationals who threaten national security. To do this, agents in CBP’s National Targeting Center (NTC) coordinate with Border Patrol agents to provide the FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center (TSC) with information to determine if foreign nationals are in the TSDS. Agents also interview foreign nationals and perform other criminal background checks. The TSA also screens everyone before boarding domestic flights to ensure they aren’t on the TSDS. The law requires ICE agents to arrest foreign nationals identified as KSTs and process them for removal.
The report describes how one KST fell through the cracks. On April 17, 2022, a group presenting as a family unit in Yuma, Arizona, was screened by Border Patrol agents. One, who was determined to be an “inconclusive” Terrorist Watchlist match, was released two days later.
Four days after entering the U.S., the individual was flagged by TSA at the Palm Springs International Airport in California, identified as a known, suspected terrorist. It took another two weeks for ICE agents to arrest the KST on May 6, 2022.
One of the problems the OIG identified is that CBP sent a request to its Tactical Terrorism Response Team to interview the KST but sent it to the wrong email address so the interview never happened. CBP also gained information from an international partner about the KST but never forwarded it to the FBI. Two CBP officials told the OIG they “did not recall” why they didn’t forward the information. The report doesn’t state if they face disciplinary charges or were fired.
One Yuma official told the OIG he was unable to respond quickly to email because he was busy processing a flood of illegal foreign nationals into the country with a station at capacity. The agent released the individual without checking if the NTC and TSC had exchanged information to confirm a positive KST match.
Another problem the OIG found is that ICE agents requested the KST’s file – but didn’t receive it for 8 days – through the mail. Despite the individual’s file showing prior acts of violence, the individual was still released into the country.
“CBP missed multiple opportunities to help the TSC verify the migrant was a positive Terrorist Watchlist match before releasing the migrant,” OIG concluded. “CBP’s ineffective practices resulted in sending an interview request to an incorrect email address, obtaining but not sharing information requested by the TSC, and releasing the migrant before CBP finished coordinating with the TSC. If CBP’s ineffective practices for resolving inconclusive Terrorist Watchlist matches continue, the component risks releasing individuals into the United States who potentially threaten national security and public safety.”
The report was published after more than 8 millionillegal border crossers have entered the U.S. from over 170 countries since January 2021. Among them are at least 1.7 million people who evaded capture. DHS has no idea if they are KSTs, who, or where they are.
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We published an interesting interview with Tom Lewis, the generous benefactor who had to withdraw his significant contributions to ASU because of militant left-wing bias among its faculty.
In that interview, he has high praise for Michael Crow, although he admits he does not think Michael Crow knows what is going on regarding academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus.
This is a reaction we have gotten from a lot of people who hang around the Paradise Valley Country Club and we really can’t understand why they feel that way. Michael Crow is the man in charge. If things are going awry at ASU, he is ultimately responsible. After all, they will readily assign credit to Mr. Crow for ASU’s astounding growth. Should he then not be held responsible for its deficiencies?
At a minimum, he is supposed to know “what is going on.” If he doesn’t, who is? We readily admit, even having that knowledge is no guarantee that attempting to herd biased academic cats will be successful. But at least the attempt should be made.
Secondly, on the occasions when he has had a chance to deal directly with left-wing bias and support intellectual diversity and free speech, he has caved into the demands of intellectual vandals. So far on this latest crisis, he has been strangely silent.
To his credit, Mr. Crow has built ASU into a behemoth of a university and upgraded its academic standards, at least the academic standards maintained by left-wing academics that determine the standards.
He has also built a real estate empire and sports enterprise that generates large sums of money, something admired by the business community and some in the legislature. The more ASU runs like a business, the less money it will seek from the legislature.
However, neither the square footage of a university nor its cash flow is a measure of its quality. A university that does not allow free inquiry cannot by definition be rated very high as an academic institution.
The economic independence argument is somewhat understandable when there are so many competing demands for legislative funds. However, that does not mean intellectual diversity and freedom of speech really exist on campus. It simply means we have a left-wing hothouse of a school that doesn’t cost the legislature much money.
Maybe the legislature should take some of that money back and exert some control. Maybe taking control of the funds generated by sports will get the attention of the university administration.
For those reasons, lots of people on our side of the political spectrum give him a pass for the terrible intellectual environment on campus.
We won’t do that. He is the man in charge. If there is a lack of free speech and intellectual diversity at ASU, Michael Crow is the man at fault.
Further, if you don’t have freedom of speech and intellectual diversity, you really don’t have a university, you have a training camp for radicals.
Earlier we said when confronted by left-wing bias, he has either capitulated to it or agreed with it.
Left-wing bias in the university is something that has gone on for many years, and that is not his fault, to be sure. But for purposes of illustration, we will choose a particular time period to examine.
We fondly remember 57 years ago attending ASU and as a freshman taking philosophy from Marxist Morris Starsky, who openly recruited for the radical SDS in class and later got fired for his over-the-top activism. It was in that class one really was alerted to how biased your professor could be. In a way, it was a good lesson. While most of the faculty in economics and history were “liberals” at the time, they were not like the left-wing radicals of today. They were more like Hubert Humphrey than Che Guevara. But, they paved the way.
Perhaps the worst decision was allowing special departments to be built such as Black Studies, Women’s Studies, and Gender Studies. All of these could have been accommodated within existing academic departments and thus subject to more rigorous academic standards and peer review.
It would not be a stretch to say that almost all of the bad ideas infecting our society today came out of the university and specifically out of these departments.
You might recall just three years ago the spasm of riots and destruction that accompanied the outbursts of Black Lives Matter. After some 700 “mostly peaceful” riots and numerous accusations of institutional racism, the organization has fallen somewhat on hard times as news has emerged about how BLM founders spent millions on luxury homes for themselves from the craven contributions of American Big Business.
While their progressive reputation has been sullied perhaps by their obvious greed and hypocrisy, their lies about America live on in our culture and in our universities, thanks in part to people like Michael Crow.
How did Michael Crow comport himself during this crisis? Mind you, this was Black Lives Matter, an organization founded by three militant Black women who said openly they were “trained Marxists” and when they published openly their views opposing capitalism, the nuclear family, and heterosexuality. To be sure, they took down their original website and tried to hide their radical views. But their rioting on a national scale spoke with less equivocation. And mind you, Crow made his decisions when the embers of our smoldering cities were still glowing.
In short, this recent period was a target-rich environment for a college President to say he was against these things.
The reading list is a cherry-picked pack of left-wing radicals chosen by Black Lives Matter themselves! That’s right. He farmed out the choices to those burning down the country. Not one book by Thomas Sowell, Walter Williams, Heather MacDonald, Shelby Steele, Glenn Loury, or James McWorter can make the list. Not one.
If intellectual diversity is not practiced by the head man, what kind of message does that send to the faculty and administrators?
In short, Mr. Crow farmed out his reading list to Black Lives Matter and it is easily as biased as his faculty when it comes to choosing books to get a “well-rounded” view of contemporary controversies.
As to the 25-point program, click on the hyperlink for yourself and see if you think that offers any pushback at all to the demands of radicals to brainwash your kids in college. From all reasonable perspectives, this looks like abject capitulation.
Funny, he seemed to know “what was going on” then?
So, no, we won’t give Michael Crow a pass, despite his great financial success. It is kind of Mr. Lewis to do so, but looking at Crow’s recommended reading list or his 25-point program, he did not face down any of the demands from left-wing radicals with anything but capitulation.
True, it probably mollified them because they got what they wanted. That created a peaceful period to continue building ASU’s educational empire, but it did not enhance intellectual discourse at the university.
Now to be fair, we picked a specific time period to measure Mr. Crow’s response because we think it tells you something. Otherwise, it is like looking for a response to a moving glacier. It has taken about 70 years for the left to completely dominate the university campus. While he is not at fault for that, he is at fault for not doing anything about it.
The specificevents back in 2020 tell you that he is not committed to free speech and intellectual diversity on campus. His primary job is to keep caving into the demands of radical faculty members, keeping them happy, and thus freeing him to keep growing ASU into a real estate empire that parades as a university.
He now has a chance to correct our impression and set the record straight. Will he stand up for free speech on campus and insist on intellectual diversity at ASU? Will the Republicans in the legislature finally stand up and insist on free speech on campus as well? What limited leverage lawmakers have with the university they should be applying to encourage, if not compel, free speech and intellectual diversity on campus.
TAKE ACTION
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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Editors’ Note: It is one of the defining issues of our time: the limits to personal liberty, especially absent any broadly accepted moral code. It seems many are their own God, making up their own moral code or copying one from social media. Democrats, i.e., the Left, like to sell themselves as the party for personal liberty. But this extends to choosing only certain things, such as choosing one’s “gender”. But it does not extend to choosing one’s school, owning a gun, speaking freely, or keeping the proceeds from one’s own labor. All these four things must be chosen for you by the state, according to the Left.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs criticized the state’s Empowerment Scholarship Account program on Tuesday [7/25], following a memo released outlining its estimated cost in fiscal year 2024.
According to the memo from the governor’s office, the program will create a $320 million shortfall in the general fund due to its cost estimate of $944 million.
“The universal school voucher program is unsustainable. Unaccountable school vouchers do not save taxpayer money, and they do not provide a better education for Arizona students,” Hobbs said in a statement. “We must bring transparency and accountability to this program to ensure school vouchers don’t bankrupt our state. I’m committed to reforming universal vouchers to protect taxpayer money and give all Arizona students the education they deserve.”
The program was signed into law by former Republican Gov. Doug Ducey last year. It was the first program in the nation to allow any family, regardless of financial circumstances, to use their share of public education for charter or private school costs or other education-related expenses.
The program has proven popular, with more than 60,000 students participating. Even at nearly $1 billion, the program costs a small fraction of Arizona’s public school budget of $8.5 billion. Federal, state, and local spending on public schools amount to more than $14 billion.
In the memo, the governor’s office accuses the Arizona Department of Education of not providing enough information about the program. Some estimates suggested it would save taxpayers money because the cost of educating a child in a public school district was more than the student would take with them in the form of an ESA. Critics say most ESA participants have never been to a public school; thus ESAs act as a private school subsidy.
“The Arizona Department of Education submitted a report to the Joint Legislative Budget Committee (JLBC) on May 30th outlining our estimates for the number of students that will participate in the ESA program by the end of the 2024 Fiscal Year. On May 31st, John Ward and I held a news conference where all aspects of these estimates, including the methodology, were thoroughly discussed and scrutinized by members of the news media,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne said in a statement. “This contradicts the contention that ADE was anything less than transparent in this process.”
“The projections we released are, ironically, almost exactly the same as those in the governor’s memo. There is a difference of only .008 percent between their numbers and ours. Questioning our methodology and our commitment to integrity in this process is unfair and unnecessary,” he added.
This reaction comes after Christine Accurso stepped down as director of the ESA program on Monday, and the department’s auditor John Ward is now taking over.
On Monday, Mayes warned about scam artists taking advantage of families using ESA funds, which was met with criticism from Horne and other Republicans.
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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There’s one sure sign that the Republican Establishment is the weakest it’s ever been. Reaganism, fusionism, neoconservatism, whatever you want to call it — the vast majority of American conservatives appear to have rejected the ideology that stands for unlimited commitments abroad and free market fundamentalism overall. Instead, the polling average among 2024 presidential candidates suggests that roughly 80% of Republican voters fall squarely into the National Conservative camp.
The Democrats and corporate media have tried their hardest to delegitimize both components of this burgeoning political moment. “Nationalism” is said to be a dirty word; once one embraces pride in his nation, it becomes a slippery slope to jingoism and fascism. “Conservatism” is said to be about a racially-charged return to some of the darker moments in America’s past. But their efforts have failed as more Americans than ever join the NatCon camp.
In reality, the NatCon movement is nothing more than a return to securing American interests first. Foreign intervention limited to the direct national interest; vastly curtailed immigration, legal and illegal; economic and trade policies that actually support American workers and their families — all undergird a true belief in the greatness of American principles and a desire for not just preservation, but renewal. (RELATED: Republicans Condemn New Charges In Trump Classified Docs Case)
While considered “radical” today, these were intuitive truths for most of American history — until the end of the Cold War left U.S. leaders confident in the unlimited potential to remake the world in their image. A return to common sense first articulated by Pat Buchanan, the movement is now carried on by America First presidential candidates Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy.
The latest Real Clear Politics polling average shows that Trump holds a slight majority of support among Republican voters (52.4%). DeSantis is a trailing, but not insubstantial preference at just under 20%. Ramaswamy surged recently after his performance at the Iowa Family Leadership Summit this month, now standing at over 5%. Even former Vice President Mike Pence enjoys support of over 5%, some of which is presumably a hangover from his performance in the Trump administration.
Together, that is roughly 75 to 80% support for an America First policy platform. The rest of the candidates who poll high enough to be included — Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, Chris Christie, Asa Hutchinson — all toe the establishment line on key issues that clash with the NatCon philosophy. That means the Republican establishment only receives support from, at most, a quarter their voters.
It likely began with Pat Buchanan, the paleoconservative firebrand who ran for president in 1992, 1996, and 2000. While even in 1992, pundits mocked his break with the official Republican consensus, he did surprisingly well in the primary against George H. W. Bush — the progenitor of Republican globalism. He ultimately won between 10% to one-third of the primary vote in many states. While not a NatCon politician, Independent Ross Perot also won nearly 20 million votes, pulling populist sympathizers from both parties. In hindsight, this too signaled the backlash brewing.
Skip ahead to 2000, and Buchanan had become so detached from the Republican consensus that he ran as a member of the Reform Party. By then, even Republican voters were almost evenly split on whether he belonged in the Republican party, with a small plurality saying he should leave. The subsequent Bush years appeared to signal that neoconservatism had won the day, but as the disaster of the War on Terror became more apparent, its dominance proved short lived.
During the aughts, another iconoclast began making bids for the presidency. Libertarian Ron Paul expanded his Republican primary support from 6.5% in 2008to 15% in 2012 — on the “radical” proposal that both parties were too liberal with the country’s checkbook.
After foreign entanglements and economic disaster became the norm, Barack Obama’sfalse promiseof racial harmony proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. With the culture war in full swing, Trump expanded hispluralityof Republican support in 2016 into the dominant grasp he holds over the party today.
While the line to National Conservatism is indirect, the signs have always been there for those who cared to look. Rather than correct course, leaders in both parties continued along their fundamentally liberal vision of America’s role in the world. The liberal alternative is a borderless world where differences are homogenized through social engineering and all cooperate peacefully together as interests align in perfect harmony.
The truth is that geopolitics will always be a zero-sum game, and National Conservatism is nothing more than the common sense recognition of this reality. It seems Republican voters have decided its high time to restore this recognition back in Washington.
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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Tom Lewis is among America’s most generous philanthropists. Over more than 20 years, his T.W. Lewis Foundation has funded causes helping children and families, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations like The Heritage Foundation.
But he’s now taking a different approach with colleges and universities after a controversy at Arizona State University. Lewis pulled his funding following the school’s mishandling of an event with Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager in February.
The Arizona State event was hosted by the university’s T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development. It sparked outrage from professors and accusations of censorship from the center’s former executive director.
Lewis spoke to The Daily Signal about his decision to pull the funding and the state of higher education in America. Listen to the full interview on “The Daily Signal Podcast” or read a lightly edited version below. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
Rob Bluey: Tom, welcome back to “The Daily Signal Podcast.” We’re always grateful to have guests return, and especially grateful for you given your support for our organization.
Tom Lewis: Well, thank you, Rob. I’ve been involved with Heritage for a long time and my respect for Heritage continues to grow. And really appreciate the work you do there too.
Bluey: When you appeared on our show last year, we talked mostly about your book “Solid Ground: A Foundation for Winning in Work and in Life.” And I remember from that interview what an important role college played in your life. That’s certainly relevant to the topic that we’re talking about today, given the controversy at Arizona State.
But before we get into that, I would really appreciate your sharing with people about your life and why college and your experiences in the workforce shaped how you think and basically how you make the donations with the T.W. Lewis Foundation.
Lewis: I grew up in Lexington, Kentucky. My dad was Navy for 20 years. We moved around until I was about 12. And then we returned back to my parent’s home, which is Kentucky.
And mostly, my parents were from Eastern Kentucky, Appalachia, and I used to spend a lot of summers up there with a lot of the natives of Eastern Kentucky, and those were my relatives.
But we grew up in Lexington, which is a nice town with pretty good schools, and I never considered going anywhere. I really couldn’t afford it, other than the University of Kentucky. And I became a big Kentucky fan when I got there anyway with football and basketball. And it was right there in our backyard, so I was kind of hooked by the time I was 13 in Kentucky. And I like to joke, when I went there, I got a full scholarship coming out of high school.
A philanthropist happened to die in a plane crash about that time, and he set up a scholarship to go to the University of Kentucky and major in engineering. And I got that scholarship and it was full tuition. And the tuition in 1967 was $115 a semester. So that’s hard to believe now, but that’s what it was, $900 for four years.
But the point, though, was that that scholarship meant so much to me. Back then, that was a big deal, and my mother was happy and my family was happy, and it was just—it meant a lot.
So I understood how much scholarships mean to kids coming out of high school. It’s really an endorsement of them, and somebody else other than their mother and father see potential in them. And so that was my big impression there. And then I was so active at Kentucky as a student leader.
And really, most of the things I learned were outside the classroom, getting involved in campus activities and leadership activities, living in a fraternity house, and just had so many friends and it was so much fun, and good teachers. And it was a great experience, the most fun I’ve ever had in my life.
I have always been a huge advocate of college, and I love to travel the country and go to football and basketball games on different campuses and just always enjoyed being on college campuses and being around college students.
When I became a donor, which was over 25 years ago, I started donating to, first, University of Kentucky, then to University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I got my MBA. And then later, in Arizona, where we live, [Arizona State University] and the Barrett Honors College.
And so for 20 years, I gave money to all three of these schools. And usually, they were one- to two- to three-year gifts. And then they were supposed to do something, and then they didn’t really do it. And then I would get on them about it, and then they would promise to do better. And then I would do it again, and just over and over.
And the 20 years that I gave to all three of these universities was really, I have to say, a steady series of disappointments, where, for example, you sponsor a class and you pay for a faculty member, and they’re supposed to teach a course on some subject and use books as resources. Well, they refuse to use any book that a donor would recommend. But they don’t tell you that. They just don’t do it. Then they morph the content of the class away from your intent, toward whatever they want to teach.
Tom Lewis terminated his $400,000 donation to Arizona State University after “out of control” and “radicalized” faculty objected to an event with conservatives Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager. (Photo courtesy of Tom Lewis)
It was hard to really learn that, but that’s what happened. That’s kind of a summary of what happened over the 20 years. And it makes me think of the saying, how do things go bad? And the joke is that at first, it starts gradually, and then it happens suddenly.
And I think that’s really the short story of public universities in America over the last 40 years, really, is they’ve been gradually getting worse relative to their curriculum and their product quality. And then when the George Floyd incident happened and COVID happened, it happened very suddenly. And now I think, finally, most people are waking up to that.
Bluey: You mentioned your gift to Arizona State. You began giving several years ago and you established a center with your name on it. And it was quite prominent, featured in the news over the last several months, given a controversial event that took place with Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager, two good friends of this organization and this show. The T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development hosted that event.
Tell us what exactly transpired in February and what led you to make the decision that you would no longer fund Arizona State.
Lewis: We have an executive director in this program at ASU called the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development. And the concept behind that center was, first of all, to better prepare the students for the challenges and opportunities of life. And the way you prepare them is to make them smarter and make them stronger.
So we were going to make them stronger by providing workshops on how to balance your checkbook and buy a car and having speaker series to get to talk to and hear from doctors and lawyers and people from all walks of life and all different career types. Because in college, nobody on the college campus has a clue about what it’s like to navigate a career outside of academia.
And so most people are not there to get a Ph.D., so they don’t—there’s no one to give anybody any advice and they don’t bring in these kinds of speakers.
So that’s what the center was all about.
We also, though, included in our gift agreement that it would be speakers that would address traditional American values, like faith, family freedom, and free enterprise.
Well, I learned later that the free enterprise topic was very controversial. Most of the faculty were anti-capitalist. They didn’t want to teach free enterprise. They wanted to turn it into anti-free enterprise.
But anyway, we went ahead with this speakers series, and we had over 150 events. And we had an event every week for a couple of years and it was really a great thing. We had … 7,000 students at Barrett Honors College. And we had a lot of participation and it was really a good thing.
But then we kind of took on a big event to bring in Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager, and it was kind of a marquee event. We had it in the big auditorium at ASU called the Gammage Auditorium, which seats about 2,000 or 3,000 people. We put on big events there.
When we scheduled the event, we knew it would be controversial because of Prager and Kirk, but we wanted to make our point that this is America and this is free speech, and these people are going to talk. But the subject matter was health, wealth, and happiness.
And knowing Dennis Prager and Charlie Kirk, know they’re both very strong men of faith, but they’re also incredibly wise men. And then Robert Kiyosaki was also on board to talk about wealth. So it was really a very positive topic.
But then once that word came out, ASU’s reaction from the administrators is, “Well, what are these people going to talk about? We don’t want them talking about anything political.” … They’re starting to come up with these parameters on what they could say and couldn’t.
Then the faculty got really crazy and … 37 out of 47 faculty at Barrett signed a really nasty letter of condemnation for the event. You can find it online. But they were calling Prager and Kirk purveyors of hate and homophobes and things like that. And so it was just got ugly.
Now, then, we went ahead and had the event. There was 1,500 people there, most students, a lot of non-students, actually. But what we learned right after it was how much the students had been suppressed, how teachers in the classroom had told them not to go to the event. If they did go to the event, they might pay a price. And the students that did want to go didn’t want to get filmed in the audience because they didn’t want their teachers to know they attended.
So there’s just all this behind the scenes suppression going on. And the dean of the honors college, Barrett, called in Ann Atkinson, and they wanted to quiz her about why she let this happen.
And so it just got really ugly. And it was pretty clear to me that I had no reason to continue supporting an organization like this where the faculty is out of control. They’re very radicalized. I’d say half of them are probably radical, but the other half don’t speak up. And the administrators were complicit. And in their passivity, it was their way of approving. And so they really did approve it.
And a lot of those people don’t believe in free speech. They just don’t think that—if free speech is hate speech, then you can’t say it. And they get to find out what hate speech is.
So it really showed and exposed, I believe, a very ugly condition in ASU that I think is in most big public universities, if not all of them, that is just this unwelcome attitude toward what we’ll call conservative thinking and traditional thinking and religion, and things like that America has been built on.
So there was no way I was going to continue to write checks to them, given the blatant disregard for the intent of our center. And so it was pretty easy to make that decision.
I wrote a letter to the dean and the foundation at ASU and just told them that based on the level of hostility toward these speakers at this event, I could no longer trust them to really steward our fund. And so I terminated our agreement, which I had the right to do. So that’s the short story.
Bluey: Was this the first time that you’ve had to terminate a recurring gift of this nature?
Lewis: No, I actually had two gifts to Barrett. The first one lasted two years and was bigger. But then I realized how badly the faculty was performing, and so I terminated that agreement, but told the dean I wanted to change the agreement and back off on the funding to the courses because the faculty was not adhering to the plan.
So I did do that. That was done quietly. And then we, within a month, implemented a new agreement. … And then the new agreement was the one that I canceled after one year. So, yeah. So I’ve canceled it twice.
Bluey: Amazing. And what is your reaction to Arizona State President Michael Crow’s response, which generated quite a bit of publicity, that he had to come out and state and adhere that Arizona State was adhering to free speech principles?
Lewis: First of all, the Arizona State Legislature called a hearing. It was a one-day hearing. They had Dennis Prager come and speak. They had other people. The director of the program spoke. I did not attend that but watched it.
So the state Legislature, which is conservative, or is led by conservatives, had that hearing. And then the conclusion was they would give ASU 60 days to respond to the accusations, really.
But I think Michael Crow has kind of tried to stay out of this. I think he’s not really said much at all. He did come out with a statement that said something to the effect that there are some confused folks out here that don’t understand free speech as it relates to ASU. OK? And so I thought that was kind of interesting. But he’s so buffered by his huge bureaucracy down there that I don’t think he’s really getting a straight story.
I think in his mind—and I know Michael Crow. He’s a good man, but he’s in the ivory tower. And I think in his mind, ASU is a bastion of free speech, but he doesn’t know what’s really going on. And his close advisers aren’t telling him.
So I think this media is getting his attention. And they’ve now hired a law firm to represent them in this hearing request. And so it’s being elevated to a higher level.
But, Rob, what I want to say to your listeners, though, as a longtime lover and donor to universities, is that we need to fix these organizations. But before you can solve a problem, you have to understand it.
And briefly, here’s what I think is the problem. It starts, really, with the faculty. They become more and more radicalized, especially the younger ones. They don’t want to teach. They want to teach—it’s always been a three-three load, three courses per semester. That’s not very much. They want to teach two-two loads. They want to have six students in their classes or fewer students. They complain about too many classes, too many students. They don’t believe in free speech.
On most campuses, there’s this concept. It’s really misleading. They call it shared governance. And the presidents of the universities use that phrase because they share governance of the university with faculty. And so in other words, that gives faculty this concept that they have a voice and their voice matters. Well, most of the time, it doesn’t matter, but they like to be led to believe that it does.
And then there’s this issue of academic freedom. Academic freedom has always meant, used to mean the freedom of a professor or teacher to pursue truth in their discipline, wherever it leads them. That was always the definition of academic freedom.
But like the Left always does, they redefine things. And so they’ve now expanded that to where they have—somewhere, I read a statement that they believe they have the right to weigh in on any social or political issue inside or outside the classroom and say whatever they want, whenever they want, to whoever they want. So they feel like they have this superior freedom.
And I got a phone call yesterday, Rob, from the student at Barrett that was really upset by this. She’s a foreign student, but she wants to talk to me about how she felt whenever she would want to say something that they didn’t agree with. And so there’s a lot of kids like that and my heart goes out to them.
So, anyway, the faculty is kind of, to me, the problem. And it’s literally the inmates running the asylum. … And if you look around at the university and you try to find the person that is in charge of improving curricula, you can’t find them because there is no one.
One time I was talking to a provost, who is supposed to be the top academic officer, I believe, of a major university. And I asked him what his top goal was. And that was kind of a trick question. I wanted to see what he said. And he said, “Increasing enrollment by 20%.”
So that’s the chief academic officer. That’s what they want. They know that college applicants are going down. They know out-of-state students pay more. They know international students are easy to get and pay more. So that’s what they’re trying to do. And they’re all competing with each other.
But the administrators, though, are complicit in all of this. And they act like they’re not. They act like they’re above it. Michael Crow’s comment when someone asked him what’s going on at ASU after this event, his reaction was, “Well, that’s just faculty being faculty.”
It’d be like your children throwing spears at somebody. And then the parents saying, “Oh, that’s just kids being kids.” So that’s what he said, “Faculty being faculty.”
So … the administrators are complicit in this whole thing. And the faculty is kind of the point of the spear.
But I think the solution, I think, is to get a Republican governor. I was just in Aspen yesterday with the Republican Governors Association, and there’s a lot of good Republican governors, 26 of them right now. And like [Florida Gov.] Ron DeSantis, they can first pull [diversity, equity, and inclusion] and [critical race theory] out of the classroom.
This thing right now through Title IX and DEI bureaucracy, most universities have a DEI officer in every college. And so, for example, at the University of Kentucky, there’s, like, 26 colleges. They have 26 DEI officers, usually full-time. So these are just people that are running around trying to enforce all these race, gender, class, racial kind of perspectives on everything. …
So anyway, I think we start with eliminating DEI and CRT, but I think donor pressure on funding. Donors need to wake up and realize what they’re funding. And I think most of the main donors at these public universities are conservatives.
I know that the two biggest donors at ASU, they’re both friends of mine, they’re both conservative. I know the top three donors at the University of Kentucky, they’re all conservative. So somehow the conservatives tend to be the big donors. And I think you’re going to see a lot of that changed.
Bluey: Having recently interviewed Chris Rufo about his new book, “America’s Cultural Revolution,” it’s quite clear to me that this is the Left’s long march through institutions and it’s the consequence of that.
A two-part question for you, Tom. You said you recently spoke to a student. So how should students who hold Christian or conservative beliefs navigate the anti-free speech environment that you speak of on college campuses? And then, to your last point, what advice do you have for others who may be in a similar position to you as donors?
Lewis: I’d say, first, on the students, it’s hard. Because if you’re 19 years old, you want to fit in, and you want to go along, and that’s very natural. So that’s why the suppression is so unfair.
But I think, first of all, today, if you’re a conservative student, I think you have to get a support group, and then you have to stand together. And then you have to raise your hand and speak out and let the chips fall and not be intimidated. But you do need a support group of other students. And that’s what I would hope for.
Then I think, relative to other donors, every donor has their own reason for giving. And mine was just always to try to help students have better lives and better careers and find their talent and things that I talk about in my book.
That book was written for college students, really, on how to be successful. And it was also based on a lot of myths that are being promulgated out there today, like find your passion; do what you love; live your dream; 30’s the new 20; work smarter, not harder. That’s what they’re hearing.
So it’s really bad. It’s not just bad advice, it’s terrible advice, and it’s wrong. And so it doesn’t work. So that’s really why I wrote “Solid Ground,” to try to address the many myths that are out there in the culture. And they basically are living loud at public universities.
Bluey: Tom, how will this recent controversy, in your experiences with higher ed, shape how you make future gifts from the T.W. Lewis Foundation?
Lewis: I’m going to take a pause on any public universities for a while. I’m pretty much wrapped up there. I am wrapped up there.
And so our foundation is very active. We give to a lot of different causes, from foster children to battered women, to Christian education, to medical programs for melanoma and migraines, to organizations like Heritage and Arizona First Policy Institute, and a lot of the good conservative groups in D.C. that are really making a difference for our movement.
So there are plenty of good organizations to give to. There’s no shortage. But you just have to pick and choose. And I think, as I’ve become an experienced donor, I have expectations for every gift that we make, and I think that’s appropriate. And when the expectations aren’t met, you maybe give them another chance. And then if they don’t do it, you go somewhere else. And that’s what I think everyone should do.
Bluey: I appreciated the advice that you circulated in the wake of everything and suggesting that these universities should really talk to their customers, the parents and the students who are the ones who are ultimately supposed to be there in a learning environment, and hopefully learning the American principles of free speech as first and foremost.
And so … closing words from you as to where you see things going next. Are you leaving us on a optimistic note or are you leaving us on a pessimistic note about the future of higher ed in America?
Lewis: I think we’re kind of at a bit of a crossroads. I think there’s not much optimism out there right now in the public universities. I think public universities need what K-12 is getting, which is school choice, or let’s call it school freedom.
So I think we need to increasingly offer alternatives to public education or public university education. There are a lot of those out there from two-year trade programs to community colleges to small colleges.
And I think parents are going to need to get involved and get a little smarter about what’s going on in the school where they’re sending their children. Because so many parents in America over the last 20 years have sent their kids away to college, and then when they come back, they don’t recognize them. And as Dennis Prager talks about a lot, as he talks about a lot, there are so many kids that don’t even talk to their parents anymore. So you really need to be, as a parent, very aware of what the school is teaching.
Bluey: Tom, I really encourage our listeners to pick up a copy of your book. Again, it’s called “Solid Ground: A Foundation for Winning in Work and in Life.” Leave us with some thoughts about where they can follow your work, and pick up a copy of the book. Anything else, closing thoughts on your mind today?
Lewis: Well, we’re getting a little more active on social media. Our handle is @TWLewis_. And so we’re beginning to put some more messages out there. And also promoting the message of “Solid Ground,” because I still think that’s very relevant.
But it’s an interesting world and I think we see a big challenge here. And I think there are a lot of people that are really upset and have seen this thing happening in universities for a long, long time. And I’ve heard from hundreds of people, many that I don’t know, some from as far away as London, England. And so this is, I think, touching a nerve. And I think that’s how solutions begin, is awareness.
Bluey: Tom Lewis, thank you so much for standing up for these important principles and for the many contributions you’ve made to help our country and help so many individuals benefit and have an opportunity, just like somebody gave you when you were approaching college yourself.
We’re grateful that you would join us again on “The Daily Signal Podcast.” Tom, please keep us posted on what you have happening in the future. We’d love to have you back again.
Lewis: Great, Rob. Always look forward to talking with you and look forward to staying in touch.
If climate change is an existential threat, should the government ban yachts, mansions, Disney cruises, Disney World, and green phonies?
In 2021, the Disney Company issued its 183-page Corporate Social Responsibility Report, which included a section on environmental sustainability. Disney CEO Bob Iger is currently having a superyacht built for himself that is 210 feet long, or 30 feet longer than his first yacht.
In 2022, Amazon, Inc. issued an 83-page Sustainability Report. At the time, Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos was having his 417-foot superyacht built, along with a 246-foot support vessel with a helipad. The superyacht is a sailing ship but no doubt has diesel backup engines and generators.
The amount of fossil fuel required to build and operate these toys is staggering. Just as staggering is the phoniness, hypocrisy, and double standards of these two smug guys and their smug companies. The same for all the other big companies and bigwigs of similar ilk.
It’s not just the wealthy who are deserving of criticism. Also deserving are average folks who virtue signal about being green but are anything but. This might apply to me, too, but I’d be the last to know.
Is human-caused climate change a threat to human existence? Probably not. Is it a serious problem with potentially dire consequences? Probably so. A case can be made either way given the uncertainties.
For sure, there are flaws in the climate models, there is hyperbole and hysteria surrounding the subject of climate change, there is some validity to some of the arguments of so-called climate deniers, and there is a lot of truth to the contention that most of the steps being taken to ameliorate the problem will have negligible if any effects on either CO2 emissions or climate.
Having once headed an influential environmental group in Northern New Jersey and other parts of metro New York, I know something about how environmental facts are distorted by politics, public opinion, and media coverage.
The purpose of this commentary is not to give a tutorial on what I learned from that experience or to debate the seriousness of climate change. Rather, it is to raise ethical, philosophical, and regulatory questions.
Let’s assume for discussion purposes that climate change is an existential threat, or at least a very serious problem affecting the health and welfare of Homo sapiens and the survivability of other species‒as Disney’s and Amazon’s corporate reports on sustainability suggest.
Do Iger and Bezos have the right under that assumption to generate staggering amounts of carbon for their boating pleasure and egos? Would the moral calculus change if there were a carbon tax that resulted in them paying a steep tax on their superyachts?
How about owning multiple mansions in which a massive amount of energy was expended in their construction and continues to be expended for heating and cooling? Is there something morally suspect about Donald Trump’s Mar a Lago estate having 58 bedrooms, 33 bathrooms, 12 fireplaces, and a 20,000 square-foot ballroom? How about Oprah Winfrey’s six or so mansions? And on a much smaller scale, is it justifiable for Barack and Michelle Obama to live in a house with seven bedrooms and eight and one-half bathrooms on 29 acres in Martha’s Vineyard?
It’s relatively easy to make moral judgments about the rich, famous, and powerful. But it’s not so easy when the questions come closer to home and become personal.
For example, my wife and I live in a 2,200-square-foot house in the fragile, dry, hot desert of Tucson, a house that is about twice as large as our childhood homes. Do the two of us need that many square feet? Do the home’s solar panels give us a pass from such uncomfortable questions?
Keep in mind the context in which these questions are being asked: the health, welfare, and survivability of Homo sapiens and other species. Wouldn’t downsizing to a home half the size be a small price to pay?
How about Americans emitting tons of carbon to fly to Disney World,a place that consumes massive amounts of energy?Or how about cruises on a Disney ship or another huge cruise ship? Would these be too much to give up to save the planet?
Then there is the matter of humongous pickup trucks and SUV’s. Are these essential for a good life?
Similar questions can be asked about electric cars and trucks that accelerate from zero to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds. After all, the environmental benefits of an EV are canceled by the huge batteries and their mined minerals that are required to attain such acceleration.
On a related note, Wall Street Journal columnist Holman Jenkins recently opined on the environmental advantages of hybrid cars like the Prius. He wrote that a wheelbarrow full of rare earth and lithium can power either one battery-powered car or over 90 hybrids. He went on to write, “The same battery minerals in one Tesla can theoretically supply 37 times as much emissions reduction when distributed over a fleet of Priuses.”
Then there is this most personal and controversial question: Considering the amount of fossil fuel required to make fertilizer for crops for human and animal consumption, and considering the amount of fossil fuel required to harvest, process, package, and transport food to supermarkets and your table, is overeating environmentally irresponsible? If so, there is a lot of irresponsibility in America, given that 41 percent of Americans are obese and a much higher percentage are overweight.
In summary, the superyachts of Iger and Bezos are just the tip of an iceberg of green phoniness and hypocrisy, an iceberg that extends down into the lower classes. Still, it would be particularly satisfying to see the two superyachts hit the iceberg and sink–metaphorically speaking, of course.
TAKE ACTION
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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When did things begin to go wrong? The Garden of Eden is one possible answer, of course. But we nevertheless look for more proximate answers to a question such as “When did transgender ideology become an unassailable orthodoxy in large parts of the academy?”
Personal memory is deceptive when trying to answer such a question: in any case, orthodoxies nowadays become dominant in a process, rather than by encyclical or as an event. The answer to the above question might well be “Longer ago than we think”: that is to say, at least 6 years ago.
Retraction Watch is a website devoted to publicizing and sometimes provoking the retraction of scientific papers that have been found deficient in some way. The pressure to publish in the academic world of “publish or perish” is a powerful incentive for carelessness, intellectual dishonesty, plagiarism, and outright fraud. There is also honest error, of course: indeed, it is but rarely that I read a medical paper that is completely beyond criticism.
We do not know what percentage of fraudulent or otherwise deficient scientific publications are caught in Retraction Watch’snet; it is not even known for certain whether scientific misconduct is increasing, decreasing, or remaining constant. But recently, a new jewel was added to the website’s crown: the hoax paper.
In 2017, a philosopher, Peter Boghossian, and a mathematician, James Lindsay, submitted a paper under pseudonyms to a journal called Cogent Social Sciences, titled “The conceptual penis as a social construct.” The paper argued, if that is quite the word for it, that the penis is not principally a male biological organ, but rather a concept or mental construct employed in the pursuit of male dominance. I quote a passage to give readers a flavor of the writing:
Penises are problematic, and we don’t just mean medical issues like erectile dysfunction and crimes like sexual assault. As a result of our research into the essential concept of the penis and its exchanges with the social and material world, we conclude that penises are not best understood as the male sexual organ, or as a male reproductive organ, but instead as an enacted social construct that is both damaging and problematic for society and future generations. The conceptual penis presents significant problems for gender identity and reproductive identity within social and family dynamics, is exclusionary to disenfranchised communities based upon gender or reproductive identity, is an enduring source of abuse for women and other gender-marginalized groups and individuals, is the universal performative source of rape, and is the conceptual driver behind much of climate change.
The journal Cogent Social Sciences usually demands money for publication, a common if lamentable practice now in the academic world, though in this case, the authors did not pay to have their paper published and it was peer-reviewed by two academics who recommended publication. No doubt they did so because it is so difficult these days to distinguish spoofs from the real thing in academic writing, especially in the social sciences, but also, increasingly, in literary criticism.
It seems that we have arrived at the point at which we need experts to decide for us whether or not a penis is “best understood as a male sexual organ.”
The publisher of the journal was Taylor and Francis, a multinational academic publisher with headquarters in England, but with offices in Stockholm, Leiden, New York, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Philadelphia, Tokyo, Sydney, Cape Town, New Delhi, and no doubt other places too. It is no fly-by-night operation, having existed for more than two centuries: evidently, it has moved with the times.
One of the company’s editorial directors said, in response to the humiliating exposure of the paper as a satire on the nullity of the field to which it was supposedly a contribution:
On investigation, although the two reviewers had relevant research interests, their expertise did not fully align with this subject matter and we do not believe that they were the right choice to review this paper.
Thus, it seems that we have arrived at the point at which we need experts to decide for us whether or not a penis is “best understood as a male sexual organ.”
As with so much in the modern world, one is not sure whether to laugh or cry. Deep academic solemnity and utter intellectual frivolity are often combined in the same sentences; academics pore over propositions that no intelligent person could entertain for a moment, as if, with enough study, some valuable truth might emerge from them. Such academics are the alchemists of our times.
In essence, this is state-funded stupidity. Without state funding (or, in the United States, without funding from charitable foundations or endowments that have been deeply corrupted from within), no such drivel could ever have been produced, certainly not in the industrial quantities in which it has been produced: and one cannot blame a commercial company such as Taylor and Francis for profiting from it. If anyone wanted proof of capitalism’s astonishing capacity to turn anything into profit, just read the passage above from the spoof paper that I have quoted and marvel at how Taylor and Francis (and, of course, other publishers) have turned a profit on hundreds of pages of such rebarbative prose: that is to say, prose which hides its meaning from the minds of readers as modestly as any woman in a burqa hides herself from the gaze of strangers.
Not surprisingly, perhaps, some academics in the field of gender studies (the alchemy de nos jours) have claimed that the authors of the spoof inadvertently enunciated truth in their paper because, presumably, the penis really is best thought of as a “social construct”—meaning that in another society, a penis would cease to be a penis, and become something else entirely.
It has long amazed me that those who engage in “gender studies” and the like never seem to grow tired of reading clotted prose that is to meaning what fog is to clear vision. Here I quote a short passage from Judith Butler, one of the leading lights in “gender studies”:
That the power regimes of heterosexism and phallologocentrism seek to augment themselves through constant repetition of their logic, their metaphysic, and their naturalized ontologies, does not imply that repetition itself ought to be stopped—as if it could be. If repetition is bound to persist as the mechanism of the cultural reproduction of identities, then the crucial question emerges: What kind of subversive repetition might call into question the regulatory practice of identity itself?
This, incidentally, is the author at her most lucid and succinct; and the ability to wade through hundreds of pages of this stuff is indicative of a determination and endurance of the kind that Ernest Shackleton and his crew displayed during his Antarctic explorations. And since the people who display it are not stupid, in the sense at least of being deficient in IQ, the crucial question is, to adapt slightly Professor Butler’s question, “How do they stick it?” Some explanation must be sought for their determination and endurance.
The most likely explanation, it seems to me, is that their search is not for truth but for power: for in a world without transcendent meaning of one kind or another, power is the only good, the only thing worth having. Truth has no value and nothing to do with it.
When a Far Left screed like The New York Times publishes a first-page article that is harshly critical of some “free” or low-cost socialist program, you know that (1) it’s got to be really, really bad, and (2) what The New York Times is writing about it just has to be true.There are simply no other explanations for such rare candor.
And so it came to pass that on July 17, 2023, The New York Times published on its front page (left-hand column) an article entitled “After 75 Years, Health Service in U.K. Teeters.”The article is a devastating critique of the British health care system.British health care is free, and it turns out that if you live in the U.K., you get what you pay for.
The article begins with a discussion of the experience of Marian Patten, age 78, who was taken by ambulance to Queen’s Hospital in Romford,England with chest pains and pneumonia.After 15 hours she was still waiting to be treated.She had not yet been wheeled into the hallway, and that was actually a good sign, because apparently that was a place reserved for patients facing a wait longer than 15 hours.
Upon reading this, I could not help but contrast this with the healthcare my 90+ year old mother-in-law received at a private hospital in Colorado.She had fallen while visiting a museum and had cut her scalp.There was blood, but not as much as one might expect from a head wound.Fortunately a hospital was close by, and I drove my wife and mother-in-law to the hospital and dropped them off at the front door.I then went to park the car.Parking the car and walking back to the hospital waiting room probably took no more than three or four minutes.I expected to see them sitting in waiting room chairs.But all the chairs there were empty.The receptionist told me my mother in law, accompanied by my wife, had already been taken back for treatment.When I went to the room where my mother in law was being treated, I was astonished to see four or five gowned hospital doctors, nurses and aides working on her — and it wasn’t a very serious cut!All’s well that ends well, and she was discharged with a bandage about one hour later.
Getting back to the paradise of socialized medicine as practiced in Great Britain, The New York Time writes “ . . . the N.H.S. [National Health Service],a proud symbol of Britain’s welfare state, is in the deepest crisis of its history:flooded by aging, enfeebled patients; starved of investment in equipment and facilities; and understaffed by doctors and nurses, many of whom are so burned out that they are either joining strikes or leaving for jobs abroad.”It turns out that 7.4 million people in Britain are on waiting lists for medical procedures.That’s up from 4.1 million before Covid.The only saving grace, it turns out, is that the sick and feeble in Britain are dying like flies.Since dead people don’t need medical care, this is a kind of escape valve reducing pressure in the system.The current “excess death rate” is the highest in 50 years.
On top of all this, there is simmering labor unrest.It turns out that junior doctors are paid at the same level as baristas in a coffee shop:“ . . . doctors were picketing outside, protesting starting wages that are comparable to those earned by baristas working at Pret-a-Manger, a sandwich chain in the hospital’s lobby.”(Again quoting The New York Times).Like some high-level apparatchik in the former Soviet Union, British Prime Minister Rishi Sundak has a plan.He announced a 15-year plan (much better than the Soviet Union’s paltry five year plans, don’t you think?) to recruit and train new doctors and nurses.But here’s the catch:nothing in Sundak’s plan would raise wages for doctors or nurses!Really, you can’t make this stuff up.
Here are a few other gems from the article.At one London hospital, it was discovered that dirty water from a leaking pipe was dripping on a circuit board controlling sophisticated medical equipment.Perhaps most disturbing of all, only 48 percent of patients with serious illnesses or injuries are treated within four hours of admission to a hospital.So if you are dying of a massive heart attack or bleeding out from external and internal injuries, there is a 52 percent chance you will have to wait more than four hours to be treated.Now isn’t that special?
In summary, N.H.S.’s health plan is much like Obama’s health plan:Don’t get sick or injured.
One wonders whether Canada’s socialized health system in the Great White North is more like Great Britain’s system or the United States’s system.I have yet to see a New York Times article on that.However, on a recent cruise where there were many Canadian passengers, I had an opportunity to ask a Canadian what he thought of Canada’s health care system. Based upon his answer, it was apparent he was not a great fan of Canadian health care.He told me that his daughter had to wait two years for a knee replacement.Unfortunately, due to favoring the good knee during the two year wait, the good knee had deteriorated into a bad knee by the time she had her other bad knee replaced.
It’s said that a socialist scheme always fails in the end because the scheme eventually runs out of other people’s money.British and Canadian socialized medicine seem to prove the point. Obamacare is probably not far behind.
TAKE ACTION
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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3rd Year-over-Year Price Drop in a Row. Monthly Increases Are “Just Seasonal”: Robert Shiller
Home price rise since 2012 “may be coming to an end”: Shiller. Biggest YoY drops: Seattle, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego, Portland, Denver, and Dallas.
“Probably what’s happening with the increase in home prices, it’s just seasonal, it’s the summer, typically it [the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index] is going up in the summer,” Robert Shiller, one of the guys that developed the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, told CNBC yesterday.
It “has been just growing ever since 2012, about 10 years in the US of steady growth in home prices,” he said. “But it may be coming to an end with the advent of this interest-rate rising cycle.”
It was the second time in the interview that Shiller used the phrase, “may be coming to an end.” Moments earlier he’d said: “The fear of interest rate increases has influenced people’s thinking — it’s not just the homeowners, it’s new buyers who wanted to get in before the interest rates went up even more. They wanted to lock in. So that’s been a positive influence on the market. But it’s coming to an end,” he said.
Today’s S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index for “May” is a three-month moving average of home prices whose sales were entered into public records in March, April, and May – so that’s smack-dab in the spring selling season, when prices always rise from the prior month, even during Housing Bust 1. And given the lag in the Case-Shiller Index, the spring selling season is reported in the summer, and “typically it is going up in the summer,” as Shiller said.
On a month-to-month basis, the 20-City Case-Shiller Index rose 1.5% in May from April, but it wasn’t enough, and compared to a year ago, it fell by 1.7%, the third month in a row of year-over-year declines, and the biggest since 2012:
Half of the 20 cities in the index had year-over-year declines:
As we move through 2023 and into the next election cycle, The Prickly Pear will resume Take Action recommendations and information.
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