No Place to Lay Your Head: How Economic Policy Makes Housing Unaffordable for Young Working Families thumbnail

No Place to Lay Your Head: How Economic Policy Makes Housing Unaffordable for Young Working Families

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By H. Shelton Weeks and Victor V. Claar

When it comes to the decision whether to rent or own, most of our parents gave us counsel that went something like this: (1) move out (!), (2) rent something inexpensive while you save until you can afford a downpayment on a home, and then (3) finance a home because you are investing in real estate – rather than “throwing away” rent money every month.

Yet in today’s real estate market – whether in Southwest Florida, Alabama, or Western Massachusetts – all three of those pieces of advice are nearly impossible for young working families to follow. And whether it’s the rental market or the market for single-family homes, wrong-headed economic policy – federal, state, and local – is to blame.

And it’s bad. While most Americans believe that moving out of your parent’s home is an important rite of passage, recent Pew data indicate that a stunning 37 percent of men aged 25-29 now share a residence with an older relative. And in many cases, both males and females are moving back in with their parents for financial reasons. They just can’t find a way to make the money work.

Now a skeptic might suggest that young people are moving back home because they don’t work hard, can’t stick to a budget, or don’t possess the fortitude necessary to face the world head-on. But rental price data suggests otherwise.

The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) refers to households as being “housing-cost-burdened” when they spend more than 30 percent of their monthly household income on rent or a mortgage, plus other housing needs like utilities. Such cost-burdened families frequently have difficulty paying for other essentials like food, clothing, transportation, or medical care. And renters are much more likely to be housing-cost burdened than mortgage holders.

The latest national data (May 2023) from the Waller-Weeks-Johnson Rental Index highlight the financial hardship faced by young households who either rent or want to. In May 2023, the average national rent was $2,048.36. This represents an 8.11 percent premium above the rent one would expect based on historical growth rate trends, and also represents a 4.79 percent increase in the past year alone. The index also estimates the annual income required for an average household to avoid being “rent burdened” according to the HUD definition, and in May 2023 that number for the US was a whopping $81,934. Yet the most recent Census Bureau estimate of US annual household income (though with a two-year lag) was roughly just $70,000. Clearly, conditions throughout many of the nation’s rental markets make it very challenging for young households to find housing at a price that aligns with their budget constraints.

In addition, because the cost of utilities can vary so much from city to city, the Waller-Weeks-Johnson index omits utility costs completely from its estimated monthly cost of housing. This means that rental markets are even more burdened than the index indicates and that an average household needs even more annual income to avoid being rent-burdened than the May 2023 estimate of $81,934.

But why? Why is all housing so unaffordable for many? And why isn’t it limited to either rent prices or home prices?

A fundamental reason that prices of all housing – apartments, condos, townhouses, and single-family dwellings – move up and down together is because buying a home and renting are the two alternatives most of us face. Economists refer to these as “substitute goods.” Examples abound. In one recent instance, pandemic-driven microchip supply-chain issues reduced the supply of new cars – resulting in a surge in prices of not only new cars but also their closest substitute: used cars. So when it comes to housing, high prices – or high mortgage rates – in residential real estate will drive families into the rental market, driving up rents. Conversely, high rents can drive families into the homebuying market, driving up home prices. In short, housing costs move up and down together – regardless of which market changes first.

But none of this resolves the fundamental question of why all housing costs seem so high. Nor why price drops are ephemeral, while increases quickly become the new normal.

The answer is two-fold. First, much housing policy – often born of good intentions – results in what we like to refer to as “artificial scarcity.” Now we all encounter artificial scarcity most often when we deal with monopolies. In fact, that’s the entire point of being a monopolist. Because you face no competition, you can get away with producing less of a good or service than we’d see in a more competitive market. That’s artificial scarcity. And when you produce less, you can charge more.

This is why incumbent monopolists and wannabe monopolists alike work so hard to pursue economic regulations that guarantee their firms reap the profits of artificial scarcity for as long as possible. The best guarantee of ongoing monopoly power is to get politicians to make it illegal to compete with you. Economists refer to the costly efforts firms incur to lobby politicians in this way as “rent-seeking” behavior.

There’s also artificial scarcity in housing markets, but in that case, it’s the planners themselves who put housing in such short supply – and at consequent high prices.

For starters, most municipalities around the country use residential zoning, a process that restricts land use in one “zone” to a few limited uses. For example, if a neighborhood is “zoned” for only single-family residential dwellings, then it’s unlawful to build an apartment building or an auto repair shop in that zone. You can see already that such zoning ordinances create an artificial shortage of apartment buildings where there doesn’t need to be a shortage. And when there is artificial scarcity, higher prices follow.

Defenders of residential zoning generally proceed along two lines. First, we ourselves have heard residents defend such restrictive policies because they have been arrived at via the democratic process. That is, if current residents living in single-family neighborhoods wish to vote to keep it that way, then it’s their democratic right to do so. After all, who could object to policies decided by democracy?

But just because the policy is arrived at by voting doesn’t mean it will be a good policy. It’s an extreme example, but we used to tolerate slavery in the United States – a product, at the time, of representative democracy. But that policy was wrongheaded for all kinds of reasons. Or to take a ridiculous example, I am pretty sure there are sufficient votes to ban bowties, via popular vote, from men’s fashion if we cared to. But that would be a silly policy to enact because it would interfere with the ability of individuals to freely choose their neckwear.

The other argument that defenders of residential zoning will make is that it keeps neighborhoods “nice.” We have personally heard people say things like, “nobody wants a church near a school near a restaurant near an auto body shop.” But this argument overlooks significant challenges. First, throughout most of human history, including much of US history, we all worked and played and worshiped, and shopped within the same neighborhood. The strip mall, the subdivision, and the industrial park are twentieth-century inventions, and we now drive to all of the places we used to walk to within our neighborhoods. And in most cases, the reason we do everything in different zones now is because of zoning ordinances that made it so – not because the subdivision and the industrial park spontaneously emerged as the product of a free society.

Any restriction of any use of any productive resource – whether it be land, labor, capital, or entrepreneurship – will necessarily limit and frustrate its productive potential.

This brings us back to artificial scarcity. If young working families need more housing, the market should be free to deliver what they want and need. Instead, we limit the places where new apartments can be constructed. If you ever wonder why the new apartment building goes up behind your local Walmart and not someplace more convenient for its residents, blame zoning.

Even where single-family dwellings are concerned, we create artificial scarcity. Most municipalities dictate minimum lot sizes, minimum distances from the street, and minimum distances from neighbors’ homes. Such policies artificially restrict the number of residents to something smaller than it needs to be. It’s all democratic, but it restricts the options for working families looking for a place they can afford that is also convenient to their workplace as well as the schools they want their kids to be able to attend.

But what about the other reason for a lack of affordable housing? We mentioned, “artificial scarcity” through zoning, minimum lot sizes, and “setbacks” (minimum distances from your neighbors or the street). But what else gets in the way of affordable housing for young working families?

The other answer lies in the Fed’s activist management of interest rates. Interest rates — all of them — are arguably the most important prices in a market economy. They should help households figure out how much to save and over what time horizons, and they should facilitate sensible borrowing and investing by firms. But rather than allowing interest rates to coordinate such plans, the Fed commandeers interest rates in an effort to deliver on its only two responsibilities: “maximum employment” and “price stability.” As a consequence, interest rates cannot convey accurately to developers how much to borrow and when, and they cannot do the same for potential homebuyers either.

In recent months, home prices have softened slightly since the worst of the pandemic, which sounds like good news. But at the same time, home mortgage interest rates have more than doubled. And the real monthly cost of your house is your mortgage payment – calculated using both the sale price of the house and the interest rate you locked in. While sale prices for single-family homes have softened, it’s difficult to claim that housing costs overall have moderated in any serious way.

It’s often said that less is more. And, in this case, less housing regulation and less intervention by the Fed could lead to more of what we claim to want: affordable housing for all, located in the most socially beneficial places possible.

*****

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

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The Multiple Indictments of Donald Trump and the Rising Tyranny of the Far Left thumbnail

The Multiple Indictments of Donald Trump and the Rising Tyranny of the Far Left

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By Mark Wallace

Until less than six months ago, no United States president or former president had ever been indicted for any serious crime.  The closest any president had ever come to criminal prosecution for a serious crime was Richard M. Nixon, who was named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the Watergate affair in the mid-1970s.  Ulysses S. Grant was arrested for speeding in his horse-drawn carriage, but a speeding ticket is hardly a serious crime.

The history of the United States of America’s integrity in respecting its current and past presidents and not levying false and contrived serious crime allegations against them came to a screeching halt on April 4, 2023 when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Jr. announced an indictment of President Trump for 34 counts of “falsifying business records.” This was soon followed up with a federal indictment of President Trump in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida for allegedly mishandling classified documents.  That indictment was filed June 8, 2023.  The lead government attorney is Jack Smith.

Remaining in the hopper are additional likely criminal indictments for matters relating to the January 6 trespasses in the U.S. Capitol and purported election interference in the State of Georgia.  

Although these savage actual and intended prosecutions directed at a U.S. president are without even the tiniest scrap of precedent in the history of the United States of America, there is plenty of precedent for them in the history of the communist Soviet Union and the fascist Nazi Germany.  Indeed, the prosecution of political opponents through political show trials is usually on page one of the playbook of history’s biggest and most evil monsters such as mass murderers Josef Stalin and Adolf Hitler.

Josef Stalin cemented his iron control over the Soviet Union by arranging political show trials in the mid-1930s for Lev Kamenev and Grigory Zinoviev, two of the “Old Bosheviks” who had helped Comrade Lenin overthrow the Tsar in 1917.  Kamenev and Zinoviev were two of Stalin’s main political opponents.  The prosecutor hand-picked by Stalin was Andrey Vyshinsky.  Vyshinsky accused Kamenev and Zinoviev of (variously) treason, espionage, poisoning and sabotage in a kangaroo court political show trial in 1936.  Each of them was found guilty — no surprise there — and promptly executed.

It is Andrey Vyshinsky who is sometimes attributed with the origin of the phrase “Show Me the Man and I Will Find You a Crime.”

After the failed July 20, 1944 conspiracy to kill Adolf Hitler, Hitler took his inspiration from Stalin in subjecting the conspirators to political show trials after which they were promptly executed.  Hitler set up a “People’s Court” — another kangaroo court —presided over by fanatical Nazi Roland Freisler.  Hitler reportedly boasted to others that “Freisler is our Vyshinsky.”  Freisler was what today might be termed an “activist judge.”  He made no show of being a neutral judge and instead often acted as the prosecutor, denouncing the defendants himself and then pronouncing a guilty verdict without even a murmur of opposition from defense counsel (who kept their mouths shut if they knew what was good for them, unless perhaps they spoke up to denounce their own clients).  After the guilty verdict, defendants were hung from piano wire nooses suspended from meathooks — a grisly and torturous death to be sure.  Freisler’s tenure came to an end when he was killed in court during an American air raid in February 1945.

Bringing history up to date in our present time, we now find President Trump’s fanatical Far Left opponents taking a page from Josef Stalin’s and Adolf Hitler’s playbook and attempting to corruptly use our justice system to destroy him and prevent his re-election as president in 2024.  If Biden had more of his wits about him, we can imagine him boasting to confidants, like Adolf Hitler, that “Jack Smith is our Vyshinsky.”  Is Alvin Bragg the modern-day equivalent of Hitler’s Roland Freisler ?  The jury is still literally and figuratively still out on that one.

Make no mistake about it, the real purpose of these prosecutions of President Trump is not to enforce the law but rather to illegally and feloniously interfere with the 2024 election.  The goal is to imprison or otherwise greatly hinder Donald Trump so that he cannot run an effective  campaign for president.

Attorney Generals in Red States like Missouri, Tennessee, Texas and Louisiana need not sit idly by while corrupt federal and state prosecutors feloniously interfere with free and fair 2024 presidential elections in those States.  And if indeed a corrupt prosecutor is indicted for election interference and extradited to stand trial in, say, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas or Louisiana (or in all of them), he may find that he or she cannot just run to a friendly federal court and get an injunction to stop the state criminal prosecution.  There is an old U.S. Supreme Court case by the name of Younger v. Harris that generally bars federal courts from enjoining state criminal prosecutions.

On the subject of whether these prosecutions of Donald Trump constitute election interference, consider this.  What would be greater election interference, a group of armed thugs barring members one political party or the other from entering voting booths at a single voting precinct, or so tying up the time of the leading candidate of the Republican Party for president that he cannot effectively campaign throughout the nation?  The first of these affects one voting precinct.  The second affects virtually every voting precinct in the entire nation.  Indeed, the Democrats sent armed thugs to 100 voting precincts to stop Republicans from voting and it would not be as serious an election interference as what they are doing to Donald Trump at the present time. 

If indeed a prosecutor’s goal is to imprison Donald Trump so that he cannot run an effective presidential campaign, it would seem poetic justice to see that prosecutor hoist by his own petard and to spend that campaign sitting in a jail cell in, say, Missouri.  Of course, if that prosecutor is indicted by Attorney Generals in six or seven Red States and convicted in all of them, the States might need to draw straws to see which State gets to put its prison facilities to good and just use.  

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Judge Halts Arizona Transgender Sports Ban, Horne Promises Appeal thumbnail

Judge Halts Arizona Transgender Sports Ban, Horne Promises Appeal

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By Cameron Arcand

A federal judge ruled against Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne in a lawsuit over banning transgender girls from participating on girls’ sports teams in schools.

Arizona District Court Judge Jennifer Zipps, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, ordered a preliminary injunction that will allow girls who identify as transgender to play for their school’s girl’s sports teams.

“Plaintiffs will also suffer severe and irreparable mental, physical, and emotional harm if the Act applies to them because they cannot play on boys’ sports teams. Playing on a boys’ team would directly contradict Plaintiffs’ medical treatment for gender dysphoria and would be painful and humiliating,” the court document states. “Plaintiffs’ mental health is dependent on living as girls in all aspects of their lives.”

However, Horne insists that the final decision maker will be the U.S. Supreme Court, which leans conservative.

“We will appeal this ruling. This will ultimately be decided by the United States Supreme Court, and they will rule in our favor,” Horne said in a statement Thursday. “The Plaintiffs in this case claimed that this only involves pre-pubescent boys, but we presented peer-reviewed studies that show pre-pubescent boys have an advantage over girls in sports. The only expert presented by the Plaintiffs was a medical doctor who makes his money doing sex transition treatments on children and who has exactly zero peer-reviewed studies to support his opinion.”

The law, known as the “Save Women’s Sports Act” was passed by the Republican-led Legislature and later signed by former Gov. Doug Ducey in March 2022. Other Republican-led states, such as Tennessee, Oklahoma, Iowa, and Alabama, have similar laws on the books. According to 13 News, two transgender girls sued Horne in order to get the opportunity to play for the girls’ teams at their schools. 

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College Towns Across America See Massive Democratic Shift thumbnail

College Towns Across America See Massive Democratic Shift

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By Arjun Singh

College towns across the United States have come to overwhelmingly support Democrats, which is damaging the Republican Party’s ability to win elections in key swing states, according to a new report.

The American Communities Project (ACP), which has sought to develop a demographic profile of every county in the United States, has cataloged the voting patterns of 171 “college towns,” where major colleges or universities are situated and account for much of their economic activity, according to a report released by the project this year. The towns have seen a dramatic increase in Democratic support since the 2000 presidential election, with over two-thirds now being expressly Democratic, per the report and analysis by Politico. (RELATED: Here’s How Colleges Could Get Around The Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Ruling)

Of the 171 college towns, 38 towns flipped from being predominantly Republican to Democratic, while 79 Democratic-leaning college towns became even more so by large margins, in terms of average vote shares during elections, per the analysis. By contrast, just 47 Republican-leaning towns became more Republican, while just six college towns flipped from being pro-Democratic to pro-Republican.

In the 2000 election, 48% of all college towns in the United States voted for Vice President Al Gore, the Democratic nominee that year who lost the election, the report reads. In 2020, that number had increased to 54% for Joe Biden, who won.

Additionally, the report revealed that among the college towns and counties where support had shifted, several were in prominent “swing states” where presidential elections are often decided. These included Dane County, where the University of Wisconsin—Madison is located, and where the Democratic margin of victory in the state’s recent Supreme Court election was higher than any other county.

In Washtenaw County, where the University of Michigan is located, voters chose Joe Biden over then-President Donald Trump in the 2020 election by a margin of over 50%, approximately 101,000 votes, per the analysis. Had Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton obtained such a margin of victory in 2016, she would have won the state of Michigan, which Trump won in an upset and was among the states key to his Electoral College victory.

In Larimer County, Colorado, which includes Fort Collins and the campus of Colorado State University, the Democratic margin of victory in 2020 increased by 169,000 votes over the 2000 election, while the Republican margin increased by just 21,000 votes.

“This is a really big deal,” said Mark Graul, a former campaign manager for President George W. Bush in Wisconsin in 2004, to Politico. The shift is “truly making it impossible for Republicans to win a statewide race,” he added.

Most of the new residents in college towns, particularly in Dane and Larimer Counties, were from outside the state and from states that favored Republicans.

Overall, the nationwide gap between both parties among college-educated voters in 2020 was over 1 million votes, in favor of Democrats, per the report.

The Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

*****

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

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The (Almost) Complete List of Biden’s Lies thumbnail

The (Almost) Complete List of Biden’s Lies

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By Charles M. Strauss

I say “almost” complete because (1) Biden has told so many lies that surely there are some that I have missed, and (2) by the time this article is published, likely he will have added new ones.

In this list, I include as “lies” only those things that are not only false, but which Biden knows to be false. I exclude, for example, the preposterous assertion that “Assault rifle bullets travel five times faster than other bullets,” which is akin to saying that cars with automatic transmissions travel five times faster than cars with standard transmissions. Such untrue statements are not “lies,” just astonishing foolishness, and Biden is every bit as foolish as he is dishonest. He is the Cliff Klaven president — often wrong, but never in doubt.

But why is Biden such a prolific — even compulsive — liar? I am not an expert, but sometimes common sense beats expertise. As the saying goes, “I can tell a good egg from a bad egg, even though I am not a chicken and I cannot lay either kind.” I don’t know why Biden lies, but I have a suspicion. Psychologists recognize something called “Narcissistic Personality Disorder.”  According to Mayo Clinic:

“Narcissistic personality disorder is a mental health condition in which people have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They need and seek too much attention and want people to admire them. People with this disorder may lack the ability to understand or care about the feelings of others. But behind this mask of extreme confidence, they are not sure of their self-worth and are easily upset by the slightest criticism.”

Hmm. “Easily upset by the slightest criticism.” Like, for example, when Biden told a person who dared to question him at a town hall meeting, “You’re full of s__t” and “I’ll slap your face”? (And Trump was accused of not acting presidential!)

Here are some more characteristics of people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder:

– Make achievements and talents seem bigger than they are.

– Behave in an arrogant way, brag a lot and come across as conceited. (“I think I have a much higher IQ than you.”)

– React with rage or contempt and try to belittle other people to make themselves appear superior. (“You’re a dog-faced pony soldier.”)

Any listing of Biden’s lies must begin with his first appearance on the national stage, in 1987, when he first decided this country needed him to be president. Certainly he had been lying long before that — most likely since he could talk. But that episode was the first time we saw him on national TV, when he replied to a person who asked a fairly innocuous question: “What law school did you attend, and how did you do?” Biden flew off the handle:

 “I think I have a much higher I.Q. than you do, I suspect.” Then, in less than a minute, he told these lies:

– “I went to law school on a full academic scholarship   the only one in my class to have a full academic scholarship.”

– “I graduated in the top half of my class.” (Top 90%. 76th out of 85.)

– “I won the International Moot Court Competition.”

– “I was named the Outstanding Student in the Political Science department.”

– “I graduated with three degrees.”

The pundits at the time (including Democrats) predicted that that would be the end of Biden’s political career — nobody would ever take him seriously again. How did his image get “rehabilitated”? Lying. In the movie, “Wag the Dog,” the president’s PR team finds a dangerous psychopathic soldier, William Schumann, and sells him to the American public as a war hero (“Good Old Shoe.”) In Biden’s case, his long career as a liar and plagiarist were simply shoveled into the memory hole.

Since then, he has claimed that:

– He used to drive an 18-wheeler. (He got a ride in one.  Once.  Fifty years ago.)

– He spoke to the “inventor” of insulin. (Multiple scientists are credited with discovering insulin; two died before Biden was born and there is no evidence Biden met any of the others.)

– He “had a house burn down with my wife in it” and said “they almost lost a couple firefighters.” (In 2005, Biden’s house had a small fire in the kitchen. Controlled quickly. No injuries. No big risk to firefighters.) 

– He was raised in the Puerto Rican community of Delaware.  (Eyeroll. In Delaware in 1970, only 2,154 people   0.39% of the state population   were of Puerto Rican descent.)

– He spent time at and went to the Tree of Life synagogue after the 2018 shooting. (The folks at the synagogue say it never happened.)

– He served as a liaison to Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir during the Six-Day War. (Biden was struggling through law school during the war, and Meir wasn’t prime minister then.)

– His first job offer came from Boise Cascade, an Idaho lumber company. (The company said they have no record of President Biden’s application, or of him having worked for the company.)

– The first time he got arrested was at a civil rights protest. (There is no evidence he has ever been arrested — not a first, second, or any other time.)

– He was actively involved in the civil rights movement, including marches and sit-ins. (In 1987, Biden was forced to admit that no, he was never active in the civil rights movement. Nevertheless, he still repeats that lie now and then.)

– He “got started out of an HBCU, Delaware State.” (He never attended Delaware State or any historically black college or university.)

– He was arrested while trying to see Nelson Mandela in Soweto, Africa, with Ambassador Andrew Young. (Ambassador Young said it never happened, and besides, Mandela was not in Soweto at the time; he was over 700 miles away.)

– “I got raised in the black church. We would go sit in Rev. Herring’s church…sit there before we’d go out, and try to change things when I was a kid in college and in high school.” Reverend Herring died long before this lie, but longtime elders in the church say they have no memory of Biden going to that church when he was young.

– “I probably went to shul more than many of you did,” he told a Jewish group. “That’s where I received my education. I’m a practicing Catholic, but I’d go to services on Saturday and on Sunday.  You all think I’m kidding.” (No, we don’t think he’s kidding; we think he’s lying. Or else Biden is America’s first Puerto Rican Jewish Black president.)

– He had a conversation with an Amtrak conductor in 2012 or 2013 about traveling over one million miles on Air Force Two. (That conductor retired in 1993, died in 2014, and Biden didn’t reach one million miles on AF2 until 2015.)

– He was appointed to the Naval Academy in 1965, by the late Sen. J. Caleb Boggs (R-DE). (There is nothing in Boggs’ records, or any other records, about Biden being appointed to the Naval Academy. Biden graduated from the University of Delaware in 1965, so he could not possibly have been appointed to be a freshman, after he had already graduated.)

– Oil refinery pollution is “the reason I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer.” (Riiight… he has “oil cancer.” Suuure.)

– He was a full professor at the University of Pennsylvania after his term as Vice President. (Never happened.)

– His “great-grandpop” was a coal miner. No he wasn’t. Biden must be thinking of Neal Kinnock’s great-grandpop.)

– After he was elected vice president, his first act was to award a long-delayed (WW2) Purple Heart to his Uncle Frank. (Uncle Frank was not eligible to receive a Purple Heart. Also, he died in 1999, and Biden wasn’t elected vice president until 2008.)

– He hit a ball 368 feet off the wall in a Congressional baseball game in 1973. (Funny, nobody else remembers it, and no contemporary newspaper reports said anything about it.)

– His grandfather was an All-American football player at Santa Clara University. (Not according to the records of Santa Clara University and the NCAA.)

– He himself “could have been an All-American” football player. (Biden played on the freshman football team (repeat, the freshman team) for part (repeat, part) of one semester in college. He also said he considered walking on to an NFL team and thought he could make it in the pros.  Mmhmm.)

– When he was a member of the New Castle County Council, a woman asked him to remove a dead dog from her lawn, but instead of removing it, he left it on her doorstep. But on another occasion, he changed the story and said he removed the dog. (No word on whether that woman was related to Corn Pop.)

– Corn Pop.

– He had visited Afghanistan and Iraq twice after becoming president. (No he didn’t.)

– His son Beau died in Iraq. (Beau Biden died in a Maryland hospital.)

– Beau died “as a result of” the war in Iraq. (Beau Biden was not shot at or injured in Iraq; he had a desk job. Biden has suggested his son’s cancer was caused by inhaling toxic gases from “burn pits” in Iraq.  There is no evidence of that being true; it is just another of Biden’s lies to make a story, and himself, more interesting.)

– His first wife and infant daughter were killed by a drunk driver. (His first wife and infant daughter were killed in an accident, but Biden embellished the story; i.e., he lied.  There was never any evidence or suspicion that the truck driver who hit them was drunk, nor was he ever charged or cited with recklessness or anything else. She had a stop sign; he did not. She pulled into the path of a truck, and he was unable to stop in time.)

– He never discussed business deals with Hunter. (But he left Hunter a voicemail a year before that assertion, referencing a business deal with Chinese energy giant CEFC.)

– He signed a law cancelling student loans, which “passed by a vote or two.” (Congress passed nothing; Biden signed an Executive Order, which is why the Supreme Court shot it down. Congress is supposed to make laws, not the President.)

– The price of gas is “down from over $5 when I took office.” (The day before former President Donald Trump left office, the national average price of gas was $2.38.)

– He traveled 17,000 miles with Chinese President Xi Jinping. (Nope.)

– The withdrawal from Afghanistan was an “extraordinary success.”

– When he was elected, there was no national plan for vaccinations; he had to start from scratch.  (By the time he took office, nearly a million Americans had been vaccinated. Never heard of Operation Warp Speed?)

– If you get vaccinated, you won’t need to wear a mask.

– If you get vaccinated, you won’t get the Wuhan virus.

– He has been to the border.

– The border is secure.

Bidens apologists and enablers call these “gaffes.” A gaffe is a mistake. A lie is intentional.

People make a big deal about Biden’s age-related dementia. But his continuous lies are not age-related. He has been a psychopathic liar his whole life. Now he is a psychopathic liar with senile dementia.

Too harsh?

Psychopath:

Noun

1. A person who engages repeatedly in criminal and antisocial behavior without remorse or empathy for those victimized.

2. A morally irresponsible person.

3. A person with a personality disorder indicated by a pattern of lying, cunning, manipulating, glibness, exploiting, heedlessness, arrogance, delusions of grandeur, sexual promiscuity, low self-control, disregard for morality, lack of acceptance of responsibility, callousness, and lack of empathy and remorse. Such an individual may be especially prone to violent and criminal offenses.

When it comes to misinformation, Biden is full of it.

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If We Live by Lies, We Will Demand Deceitful Politicians

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By Barry Brownstein

Recently, the AIER’s Senior Editor James Harrigan asked rhetorically, “When was the last time a politician of any description used the phrase ‘sacred honor’ with a straight face?” Jefferson, Harrigan pointed out, wasn’t “inventing the Declaration from whole cloth,” but instead, he was capturing “the American mind.” In his evocative Fourth of July essay “The Harmonizing Sentiments of the Day,” Harrigan concluded, “So we are left with one important question in our own time: What are the harmonizing sentiments of our day?”

Once foreign to the “American mind,” dishonor and deceit are essential “harmonizing sentiments” in totalitarian societies. In a society controlled by force, lying is a way of life for the government and its citizens, who harmonize to survive.

The day before he was exiled from the Soviet Union, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn released the text of his famous essay, “Live Not By Lies.” The Marxist doctrine that the state can determine our being will never be true, Solzhenitsyn explained, but its fallaciousness can be maintained by the lies of citizens. We live by lies, Solzhenitsyn spelled out, when,

We have internalized well the lessons drummed into us by the state; we are forever content and comfortable with its premise: we cannot escape the environment, the social conditions; they shape us, “being determines consciousness.” What have we to do with this? We can do nothing.

“We can do nothing” is a lie. The actual truth Solzhenitsyn wrote is, “we can do—everything!—even if we comfort and lie to ourselves that this is not so. It is not ‘they’ who are guilty of everything, but we ourselves, only we!”

What we can do, Solzhenitsyn argued, is “Never knowingly support lies!” He explained the cure to overcoming the totalitarian harmonizing sentiment of deceit:

When people renounce lies, lies simply cease to exist. Like parasites, they [lies] can only survive when attached to a person.

We are not called upon to step out onto the square and shout out the truth, to say out loud what we think—this is scary, we are not ready. But let us at least refuse to say what we do not think!

Václav Havel was a dissident, playwright, and the first president of Czechoslovakia after communism. Havel echoed Solzhenitsyn when he wrote,

Consciousness precedes Being, and not the other way around, as Marxists claim. For this reason, the salvation of this human world lies nowhere else than in the human heart, in the human power to reflect, in human modesty, and in human responsibility. Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better.

“Consciousness precedes Being” means we get the government we deserve. We can no longer pretend to be victims of the world we see.

When we choose to live in an inner world governed by our self-deception, we get a government ruling by deceit and vigorously stifling alternative views. In the American mind today, is the prevailing harmonizing sentiment inching dangerously close to normalizing totalitarian deceit?

During COVID, particularly in the early days of the pandemic, the public was frightened. Many preferred to get with the program and eschew responsibility for their often difficult health decisions. They wanted no interruptions to their fantasy that their preferred choice was an easy decision. Yet life is messy; there are few one-size-fits-all answers. Unwilling to tolerate the inherent ambiguity in life, they willingly forfeited their freedom. They demanded a government that lied and deceived them.

Streams of orchestrated, hateful propaganda were directed against those who made different medical choices. These relentless attacks were designed to stir up an agitated population easily gulled into supporting attacks on constitutionally guaranteed freedoms. The result was predictable. As Aldous Huxley wrote, “The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” Righteous indignation may be another prevailing sentiment in the American mind of our time.

We saw during COVID that many didn’t want to decide for themselves what was true. Misinformation came to mean even truths that disagree with the current official orthodoxy. Only 30 percent of Americans agreed “misinformation” about COVID vaccines is constitutionally protected speech. Why were 70 percent of American minds unconcerned about the government violating basic constitutional rights? Were they victims of a deceiving government, or did their self-deception create a lying and bullying government? 

In July, Federal Judge Terry Doughty issued a preliminary injunction barring the Biden Administration from bullying social media companies into censoring posts or deplatforming people. He ruled, “Each United States citizen has the right to decide for himself or herself what is true and what is false. The Government… does not have the right to determine the truth.”

Doughty wrote: “One of the purposes of free speech is to allow discussion about various topics so the public may make informed decisions… Without a free debate about these issues [vaccines, masks, closures etc.], each person is unable to decide for himself or herself the proper decision regarding their health.” (See also, “How AIER Helped to Hobble Fauci’s ‘Ministry of Truth”)

Dr. Aaron Kheriaty is one plaintiff that Judge Doughty ruled for. Kheriaty observed, “The common feature of all totalitarian systems is the prohibition of questions: every totalitarian regime first monopolizes what counts as rationality and determines what questions you are allowed to ask.”

Kheriaty has it half-right. We were not allowed to ask questions because many didn’t want to hear unsettling answers.

Of course, living with lies is not just about vaccines. Questions about the wisdom of transitioning children, via medical interventions, to another gender identity are not to be asked. In some circles, people prefer to be assured these surgical and hormonal medical procedures unambiguously save lives.

The wisdom of the subsidized green economy can’t be questioned either. “They” must do something about the climate is a common refrain. Denied is the truth that problems are solved not by social planners but by individuals free to cooperate with others in the course of an emergent social process.

We can go on with other examples. But like a snow globe that settles if you stop shaking it, sanity returns to a mind that takes steps to reduce its agitation. Deceitful people demand a government that whips up constant agitation via “emergencies” and “crises, “ensuring their minds never settle down to reflect and come to terms with their self-deception.

Imagine a world with 100 percent censorship. We don’t have to imagine, we have only to study history. In his memoirs, Hitler’s armaments minister, Albert Speer, observed, “In normal circumstances people who turn their backs on reality are soon set straight by the mockery and criticism of those around them.”  In totalitarian societies, there is no such correcting device. Instead, Speer continued, “every self-deception was multiplied as in a hall of distorting mirrors, becoming a repeatedly confirmed picture of a fantastical dream world which no longer bore any relationship to the grim outside world.”

If we have turned our backs on reality, no one and no event is coming to save us. We can temporarily renounce our freedom by our own lies, but as Solzhenitsyn warned, “if we shrink away” from renouncing our “daily participation in deceit,” we should “cease complaining that someone does not let us draw breath—we do it to ourselves!” 

In 2024, when deceitful liars are among our political choices, it is because we the people have not learned that we forfeit our freedom when we lie and demand lies. Truth may make us uncomfortable, but it will preserve freedom.

*****

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

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Arizona News: July 25, 2023 thumbnail

Arizona News: July 25, 2023

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By The Editors

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.

Independent Voters Now The Largest Voting Group In Arizona

AG Mayes Plans To Ignore SCOTUS Free Speech Ruling

Federal Judge Blocks Arizona Save Women’s Sports Act

Group Warns Legislature About “Data Mining Of Children”

Arizona One Of The Top Economic States In Nation

EVs Aren’t The Solution To Anything

Judge halts Arizona transgender sports ban, Horne promises appeal

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How Democrats and Their Media Allies Cooked Up a Phony Supreme Court ‘Legitimacy Crisis’ thumbnail

How Democrats and Their Media Allies Cooked Up a Phony Supreme Court ‘Legitimacy Crisis’

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By Jarrett Stepman

The legacy media has signaled that it’s all in on the Left’s cooked-up Supreme Court “legitimacy crisis.”

This week, Senate Democrats plan to vote on Supreme Court ethics rules that are clearly meant to give them the ability to hector and harass the court to get the decisions they want. The vote coincides with an increasingly aggressive media campaign to create the appearance that the Supreme Court is mired in scandal.

There’s no question the Left has launched this scheme because it is infuriated by the Supreme Court’s recent decisions.

A Supreme Court leaker struck the first big blow in 2022, releasing the upcoming draft opinion that would ultimately overturn Roe v. Wade. The opinion did not mark an aggressive change—it merely overturned the badly reasoned Roe decision, which had effectively outlawed abortion restrictions across America. That leak inspired death threats against justices, alongside political threats from Democrats in Congress.

More defeats this year, on affirmative action and the student loan bailout, have sent the left-wing media machine into overdrive.

The loss on affirmative action was particularly stinging given how unpopular racial preferences in admissions are. Without elite institutional backing, the issue is a dead letter with the American people.

The Left had become so accustomed to every institution doing its bidding that its only strategy in the face of defeat revolves around putting a metaphorical stick of dynamite under the Supreme Court and setting it off.

Every scheme Democrats have drawn up to deal with this challenge— like court packing — has come off as obviously partisan and downright reckless.

They need the media to step in and make this all seem serious and noble. As you would expect, their friends in the media have been happy to oblige.

Politico basically acknowledged that the legacy media en masse is all too eager to carry water for the Democrats’ crusade to pulverize a Supreme Court they no longer control. This was from Monday’s Politico Playbook—a widely read media newsletter:

Fourteen months ago, our colleagues Josh Gerstein and Alex Ward’s revelation of the Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs opinion didn’t just upend American politics and abortion policy — it also ushered in a new era for the media’s coverage of the court.

No longer do SCOTUS reporters principally cover only the cases before the high court. Now they’re focused more regularly and aggressively on ‘the justices’ business dealings, relationships, and ethical issues,’ as well as the broader politics around the high court, Vanity Fair’s Charlotte Klein reports in a new story that interviews Josh about the shift.

The “new era” that they are referring to is one in which those on the Left must endure Supreme Court decisions they don’t like. Therefore, they will now do anything to smear the court and delegitimize it until they get decisions they like again.

Politico noted that media outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post are suddenly pouring resources into “asking explosive ethics questions” about Supreme Court justices.

After not caring to ask questions for generations our noble, objective media has suddenly become highly interested in ethics reform on the Supreme Court. What incredible and surely coincidental timing for the Democrat Party messaging effort.

They are here to convince Americans that the Supreme Court’s “crisis of legitimacy” is something other than the cooked-up Democrat campaign to bring the high court to heel.

Where was this legitimacy crisis when the Supreme Court sided in favor of Obamacare by reclassifying it as a tax? When that decision came down, the legacy media celebrated it as a wonderful affirmation of the Supreme Court’s institutional integrity.

That phase is over. The Bat Signal has gone up. The Left’s media pawns are in full delegitimizing mode now.

As columnist Dan McLaughlin wrote in National Review, some of the media’s “explosive” revelations about Supreme Court justices have been hilariously shallow non-stories. Apparently, some of Justice Clarence Thomas’ former clerks used Venmo—a commonly used money transfer app—to receive money for a Christmas party. A lawyer who worked on the latest affirmative action cases also happened to attend that party.

All the party attendees had clerked for Thomas at some point. The bill was $20. So, it was roughly equivalent to a fast-food lunch in a big city these days if you splurge on dessert. I guess we’re supposed to believe this sum swayed Thomas’ opinion on affirmative action, even though Thomas surely had no long public record of statements on the issue.

Get ready for a series of stories about how Thomas or Justice Samuel Alito, or any one of the other justices on the Supreme Court not controlled by the Left, once bought a hot dog at a baseball game that pro-life advocates also attended—a scandal of the highest proportions, implying that we need to restore Roe v. Wade or something.

As I’ve noted time and again, those on the Left will seek to destroy any institution they don’t control. They don’t care about constitutional limits, they don’t care about the structure of government, checks and balances, or anything like that. They only care about amassing power and enforcing their agenda.

If that means bulldozing the court, so be it. If that means empowering an activist court to overstep its bounds and act as a kind of super-legislative body as it did during the Warren Court era of the mid-20th century, again, so be it.

This latest campaign to intimidate and smash the court has been obvious and cynical to anyone paying attention.

In the end, this moment reveals a lot more about leftists than it does the integrity of the justices they seek to impugn.

*****

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

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You Are the Population They Want to Control thumbnail

You Are the Population They Want to Control

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By Robert Malone

Worldwide birthrate per 1,000 people follows a very predictable trend. In “developed” and/or wealthy nations, the birthrate is low and in nations at the lower end of the economic development scale, the birthrate is high. Nothing new there.

Many countries, including the US, have birthrates that either are too low to sustain current population levels or are stable. Since 1970, the population of people born in the US has been stable at below 300 million. In fact, some estimates show a decline in population. All of the population growth in the US during this time period has been due to immigration. That is why the USA has grown to 336 million people in 50 years. This trend has only increased in recent years.

There were a record 44.8 million immigrants living in the US in 2018, making up 13.7 percent of the nation’s population. This represents a more than fourfold increase since 1960, when 9.7 million immigrants lived in the US, accounting for 5.4 percent of the total US population

For Jill and I growing up in a blue state, we were indoctrinated at an early age by the public school system that having two children was the responsible thing to do to save the planet from overpopulation. That careers were more important than having a large family. That women would find more fulfillment in a education and career, as opposed to staying at home. That women should defer motherhood until college and a career were firmed established. That this was the responsible path to take. Today, young women receive the same messaging from our government, our schools systems, and mainstream corporate media.

This messaging by the US government is still as strident as when I was in my youth 50 to 60 years ago.

The truth is that UN’s Agenda 2030 asserts that migration is a human right. What this means in practicality is that persons born in countries with high birthrates have a right to migrate into wealthy countries with low birth rates.

To begin – migration is not a “human right.” Property laws and nation states exist for a reason. To assert otherwise is to assert that there is a one-world government which is in control of migration. Another usurpation of authority by the UN and the WEF.

This nation’s rules and regulations, our very Constitution do not apply to non-citizens. This is by design. Let’s abide by our Constitution and Bill or Rights, not UN agreements, such as Agenda 2030, which was signed by a US president and never ratified by the Senate.

Our country has done a fine job of convincing the American populace that large family size hurts families and individuals in aggregate. We were told that the reward of that, for better or worse, would be a stabilized population over time and preservation of the American way of life, environment, cultural heritage and associated economic opportunities for US citizens. And yet still they persist. This week, Kamala Harris specifically stated that a reduced population was key to children being able to breath and drink clean water. This is not the first time she has asserted this false narrative.

“When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breath clean air and drink clean water.” – Kamala Harri

Yet, the Biden border crisis grows ever more urgent and the rate of illegal immigration continues to surge. It is a no brainer to think that an option to reduce population might be as simple as reducing immigration, if that was their true intent.

The truth is that the US has a vibrant and amazing culture. A heritage built on independence, free speech, shared values, and strong work ethic. This heritage can easily be diluted by too much immigration. Just look what is happening France right now. Open migration policies have worked to cause a vast instability within the nation. France literally can no longer integrate so many people, with such different sets of cultural norms into their core national culture. This is not progress.

Under globalism, the heterogeneous cultures throughout the world are being weaponized as a way to destroy diversity; a path towards enabling a single, globalized government controlled by the UN and the WEF. Which is precisely what open borders, the immigration policies of the UN and even Kamala Harris’ statements seem to be working towards. It is time to end this nonsense and get back to a closed and orderly immigration system.

There are over 8 billion people in the world. The US can not take all those that wish to immigrate. To think otherwise is foolish.

America has to be an independent and free nation. We need to rely on Americans for our goods and services. A strong economy is one that meets its own needs internally. Whereby goods, services, medical care, and energy are produced domestically. A strong nation doesn’t need to import low-wage earners to do its dirty work. The bizarre directive of reducing the naturally born population while importing new immigrants serves no functional purpose except to further globalize the USA.

By accepting large numbers of immigrants while reducing our own American population, we further regress as a nation, and we will continue to accelerate economic devastation of both middle class and urban poor citizens. A new world order where migration is a right, borders are open and the UN controls the ebb and flow of populations is ceding American nationalism and will destroy the American experiment in self-governance.

Our government needs to stay out of the business of enforcing population measures.

Which brings me to the mRNA genetic shots. People worry that the mRNA jabs have some sequence or component, such as the lipid nano-particle or genetic code, which are causing sterility. And that these were intentionally designed to cause a decrease in fertility worldwide. This is not a completely unrealistic fear.

For years, there have been rumors of abortion vaccines and anti-fertility vaccines being developed in India and Africa. With evidence being presented for and against these rumors. But we do know for sure that China used forced sterilizations and forced abortions on its own citizens. Now, China worries that their population levels are crumbling rapidly. Government controls on family choices are immoral. The idea of a vaccine to control population is repugnant.

Which brings me to a newly published Nature paper that shows that using adeno-associated viral vectored techniques, cats can be permanently sterilized. In this essay, I don’t want to get into the science behind this (let’s defer that to a later essay) but I do want to discuss the ethics of developing “gene therapy” techniques that rely on viral vectors for sterilization.

To begin with, such a fertility gene therapy technique using adeno-associated virus (AAV) “gene therapy” vectors could be accidentally or purposefully modified to be infectious. This requires a recombination event (rescue) of another related adenovirus, which could be a wild type. Once that happens, the viral vector could be replication competent: ergo infectious. Although AAV “gene therapy” vectors are not a full replicating virus; the truth is that in a research setting, using the full virus to create infectious products is relatively simple. It could be as simple as missing a purification step or a recombination event. If such a product were to escape or be released into the general cat population, it would be a disaster. If such a vector had a rescue event in an injected animal, it could literally create a new virus. What happens if it were to infect on other feline species, such as cheetahs, big cats, cougars or bobcats? There is a scenario whereby it could decimate the population of an endangered species or all the cats . Furthermore, there is a possibility that such a virus could jump species – even into humans. Adeno-associated viruses are respiratory viruses, so can spread easily. What happens then?

Not to mention, we already know that NGOs and governments are willing to consider reducing population via vaccination or forced sterilization. Who is to say whether an organization, perhaps even one with the “best of intentions” in mind (or believing that “the ends justify the means”), would be willing to go there. After what we have experienced over the past three years, I would consider it in the realm of possibility. Kamala Harris, Bill Gates and the WEF and UN all have made their positions crystal clear. Population reduction is imperative.

There must be more regulatory controls on biological research for both animals and humans.

But in the meantime, we have to consider that the government doesn’t really care about population control. You can know them by their actions, not their words. Their words endorse low birthrate as a pathway to population stabilization, but their actions enable rampant population growth due to immigration. The DATA indicate that what they really are striving for is a New World Order, whereby the UN becomes the dominant force of the world, with nation states nestled under their organizational structure. One in which out-migration combined with regional population control via government-enabled birth control (via both pharmaceuticals and deployed propaganda) is designed to augment that process of enabling populations born in economically disadvantaged regions to gain control of more economically advanced nations and infrastructure while destroying the cultures and politico/economic structures which have historically enabled the economic development of these more advanced regions.

*****

This article was published by the Brownstone Institute and is reproduced with permission.

Author -Robert W. Malone is a physician and biochemist. His work focuses on mRNA technology, pharmaceuticals, and drug repurposing research. You can find him at Substack and Gettr

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Tale Tale Of Two States’ Policies: Comparing Arizona and Colorado Economies thumbnail

Tale Tale Of Two States’ Policies: Comparing Arizona and Colorado Economies

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By Lauren Scott

Arizona and Colorado had similar policy decisions in recent years but diverged on a number of them. A new report says the Copper State’s pro-growth moves have resulted in outsized economic growth compared to its northern neighbor.

Partnered with the Arizona Chamber, the Common Sense Institute of Arizona used research from partners in Colorado to estimate the potential impacts on Arizona’s economic prospects of enacting some of the policy ideas within the “job killer” bills, according to the CSI Arizona report.

CSI’s report analyzed 67 bills and found that if enacted, they would create an additional $25 billion in costs for businesses, resulting in a $9.5 billion decrease in Arizona’s economy.

“Bills like those studied here are being shopped at state legislatures across the country, and many of them have been introduced annually at the Arizona Legislature,” according to the report. “Though they have not moved in the past, the lesson of Colorado’s anti-business policy transformation over the past half decade shows that climates can change quickly.”

Five years ago, Arizona and Colorado were on similar growth trajectories. In 1990, Arizona had 3.7 million residents and Colorado was 10% smaller. By 2015, Arizona’s population had increased 86% and Colorado’s by a comparable 65%.

One difference in the past few years between Arizona and Colorado is the policies.

“Arizona has aggressively invested in policy initiatives post-Great Recession intended to both diversify and make more competitive its business economy (and in particular its manufacturing economy),” according to the report. “The beginnings of this can be traced to the state’s passage in 2011 of its ‘Jobs Bill,’ which established the Commerce Authority and lowered business property and income tax rates.”

But Colorado went in a different direction. 

“While the state conformed to the federal tax law changes in 2017, beginning in 2019, it has been enacting various statutory and regulatory schemes intended to promote social welfare ahead of economic growth,” according to the report.

Colorado’s manufacturing sector is now running at an average annual job growth rate of just 0.7%/year.

According to the report, if Arizona had grown more like Colorado since 2019, there would be 113,500 fewer workers, 3.5% of the state’s workforce.

“Policy matters as seen in Arizona’s success compared to Colorado’s shortcomings. In the Grand Canyon State, our leaders have trusted people over government,” Rep. Matt Gress, a Phoenix Republican who previously served as former Gov. Doug Ducey’s budget director, told The Center Square. “The report released today by the Common Sense Institute Arizona reveals that some Arizona politicians think they know better than Arizonans by proposing terrible ideas like tax hikes of all sorts, higher energy costs to cover environmental regulations, and greater compliance with an administrative state that knows no bounds.”

In Colorado and since 2019, at least 13 bills similar to “job killer” bills identified this year by the Arizona Chamber have been enacted. More are under active consideration and each year similar bills are re-introduced.

“Arizona has seen extraordinary economic growth over the last ten years,” Executive Director of CSI Arizona Katie Ratlief said in a tweet. “Our economy has diversified and matured, and we’ve been one of the fastest growing states in the country.”

CSI estimates that some of the bills introduced would have a total tax increase of more than $15 billion.

*****

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

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Tale Of Two States’ Policies: Comparing Arizona and Colorado Economies thumbnail

Tale Of Two States’ Policies: Comparing Arizona and Colorado Economies

/in , , , /by

By Lauren Scott

Arizona and Colorado had similar policy decisions in recent years but diverged on a number of them. A new report says the Copper State’s pro-growth moves have resulted in outsized economic growth compared to its northern neighbor.

Partnered with the Arizona Chamber, the Common Sense Institute of Arizona used research from partners in Colorado to estimate the potential impacts on Arizona’s economic prospects of enacting some of the policy ideas within the “job killer” bills, according to the CSI Arizona report.

CSI’s report analyzed 67 bills and found that if enacted, they would create an additional $25 billion in costs for businesses, resulting in a $9.5 billion decrease in Arizona’s economy.

“Bills like those studied here are being shopped at state legislatures across the country, and many of them have been introduced annually at the Arizona Legislature,” according to the report. “Though they have not moved in the past, the lesson of Colorado’s anti-business policy transformation over the past half decade shows that climates can change quickly.”

Five years ago, Arizona and Colorado were on similar growth trajectories. In 1990, Arizona had 3.7 million residents and Colorado was 10% smaller. By 2015, Arizona’s population had increased 86% and Colorado’s by a comparable 65%.

One difference in the past few years between Arizona and Colorado is the policies.

“Arizona has aggressively invested in policy initiatives post-Great Recession intended to both diversify and make more competitive its business economy (and in particular its manufacturing economy),” according to the report. “The beginnings of this can be traced to the state’s passage in 2011 of its ‘Jobs Bill,’ which established the Commerce Authority and lowered business property and income tax rates.”

But Colorado went in a different direction. 

“While the state conformed to the federal tax law changes in 2017, beginning in 2019, it has been enacting various statutory and regulatory schemes intended to promote social welfare ahead of economic growth,” according to the report.

Colorado’s manufacturing sector is now running at an average annual job growth rate of just 0.7%/year.

According to the report, if Arizona had grown more like Colorado since 2019, there would be 113,500 fewer workers, 3.5% of the state’s workforce.

“Policy matters as seen in Arizona’s success compared to Colorado’s shortcomings. In the Grand Canyon State, our leaders have trusted people over government,” Rep. Matt Gress, a Phoenix Republican who previously served as former Gov. Doug Ducey’s budget director, told The Center Square. “The report released today by the Common Sense Institute Arizona reveals that some Arizona politicians think they know better than Arizonans by proposing terrible ideas like tax hikes of all sorts, higher energy costs to cover environmental regulations, and greater compliance with an administrative state that knows no bounds.”

In Colorado and since 2019, at least 13 bills similar to “job killer” bills identified this year by the Arizona Chamber have been enacted. More are under active consideration and each year similar bills are re-introduced.

“Arizona has seen extraordinary economic growth over the last ten years,” Executive Director of CSI Arizona Katie Ratlief said in a tweet. “Our economy has diversified and matured, and we’ve been one of the fastest growing states in the country.”

CSI estimates that some of the bills introduced would have a total tax increase of more than $15 billion.

*****

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

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EXCLUSIVE: Chinese Intel-Linked ‘Service Centers’ In US Cities Used Cultural Events To Push Communist Party Propaganda thumbnail

EXCLUSIVE: Chinese Intel-Linked ‘Service Centers’ In US Cities Used Cultural Events To Push Communist Party Propaganda

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By Philip Lenczycki

Overseas “service centers” set up in seven U.S. cities by a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) intelligence arm have hosted cultural events featuring pro-CCP propaganda and performers tied to China’s government and military, according to Chinese government records and state-run media reports reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The CCP’s United Front Work Department (UFWD) runs “Overseas Chinese Service Center” (OCSC) branches that operate out of U.S.-based nonprofits in seven U.S. cities, a recent DCNF investigation found. OCSCs were ostensibly set up to assist with official government duties, like reviewing passport applications, but they also host cultural events that often feature pro-CCP songs and performers tied to China’s military and propaganda departments, according to Chinese government records and state-run media reports.

Members of the U.S. Congress have attended these propaganda-filled cultural events, according to Chinese state-media reports and photos.

“These activities offer a perfect platform for the CCP to invite elected officials, whom they can then influence into endorsing the CCP’s narrative, and, in turn, influence broad masses of people,” Scott McGregor, a former Canadian military intelligence officer, told the DCNF.

The DCNF previously identified OCSC branches operating in San Francisco, California; St. Paul, Minnesota; St. Louis, Missouri; Omaha, Nebraska; Charlotte, North Carolina; Houston, Texas and Salt Lake City, Utah. The DCNF also reported that, during a 2018 trip to China, OCSC representatives met with officials from the Ministry of Public Security (MPS), which is China’s national police authority.

Republican Senators have asked the FBI and Justice Department to investigate the OCSCs. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey recently opened an investigation into the St. Louis OCSC, which he called a “possible CCP outpost.”

‘China Is Back’ 

Between 2014 and 2017, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office established 60 OCSCs around the world, including seven branches in U.S. cities, the DCNF previously reported.

The Overseas Chinese Affairs Office was under control of the CCP’s State Council until 2018 when it became part of UFWD, according to Chinese government documents and reports from China experts. The U.S.-China Economic Security and Review Commission, a federal entity, characterizes the UFWD as the CCP organ “responsible for coordinating [foreign and domestic] influence operations” as well as a “Chinese intelligence service.”

“United Front work is Beijing’s effort to enlist the Chinese diaspora and sympathetic residents of other countries to create sympathy for, and support of, the CCP’s goals,” Dr. June Teufel Dreyer, former commissioner of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, told the DCNF.

OCSC branches perform a variety of duties in support of China’s foreign ministry, ranging from processing Chinese passport and travel permit applications to so-called “consular protection” activities, the DCNF previously reported. However, OCSCs also regularly host Chinese cultural events, many of which have featured pro-CCP propaganda, according to a DCNF review of dozens of events.

OCSC-hosted cultural events — which include Lunar New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival and other Chinese national celebrations — often present traditional Chinese music and dance alongside pro-CCP propaganda songs.

For instance, the Salt Lake City OCSC held a 2022 Mid-Autumn Festival livestream event featuring lion dancers and traditional instrumental songs, according to its website. Performers at the event also sang and danced to “My People, My Country,” one of 100 songs selected by the CCP Propaganda Department to commemorate communist China’s 70th anniversary, according to the state-run People’s Daily.

In a 2020 speech, Chinese President Xi Jinping called the song part of a “surging current that sings an ode to New China and inspires us to work harder in the new era, filling us with boundless energy.”

In 2018, the Salt Lake City OCSC hosted a Lunar New Year event that included ethnic dance routines, martial artists and performers singing patriotic tunes, like “Love My China,” which was also on the Propaganda Department’s list.

The OCSC in St. Paul, Minnesota helped organize a 2019 event celebrating the founding of communist China and the establishing of U.S.-China diplomatic relations, according to a report from the nonprofit Alliance of Minnesota Chinese Organizations (AMCO). The All-China Federation of Returned Overseas Chinese is also listed as a co-organizer for the event. The All-China Federation is part of the CCP’s united front, according to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.

In addition to performances featuring acrobats and traditional Chinese instruments, a performer at the St. Paul event also sang “Ode To The Motherland,” another CCP Propaganda Department-approved song, according to People’s Daily. The state-run China News Service has called the song communist China’s second national anthem.

The song’s author boasted to Chinese state-controlled media that his lyrics depict “the power of justice, a blood vow to resist the shame of national subjugation roared in the middle of battle.”

Although they did not appear to attend the event, AMCO reports that Minnesota Democratic politicians Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Dean Phillips and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey all wrote letters praising the celebration.

Klobuchar, Phillips and Frey did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

Service centers have also hosted events that included performances from art troupes affiliated with Chinese government propaganda departments, according to multiple Chinese state-run media reports.

In 2018, the Omaha OCSC sponsored a Lunar New Year celebration that featured Chinese opera performers from the state-owned Jiangsu Provincial Theatrical Troupe, according to Qiaowang, which is the news and propaganda arm of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office.

The Jiangsu theatrical troupe operates under the direction of the Jiangsu Propaganda Department, according to Chinese government documents.

The St. Paul OCSC and the Chongqing Propaganda Department have co-sponsored multiple events at the Mall of America in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, including events in 2019 and 2022, according to AMCO and Sohu.com. The 2022 event featured a performance from a dragon dance troupe managed by the Chongqing Propaganda Department, according to Sohu.com.

These performances came after the CCP Propaganda Department minister from Chongqing traveled to Minnesota in 2018 to sign a “mutual cooperation” agreement with the Mall of America and the St. Paul OCSC, according to the nonprofit AMCO. The details of the agreement are unknown.

In 2019, a vice president for Triple Five Group, which owns and operates the Mall of America, wrote a letter — which was posted on AMCO’s website — thanking the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office, the head of the Chinese consulate in Chicago and several Chinese provincial government entities for their “firm support” of the mall’s Chinese New Year performances that year.

Neither the Mall of America nor the Triple Five Group responded to multiple requests for comment.

A Chinese Military Saxophonist Jams Out To U.S. Pop Songs

OCSC branches have also co-hosted performances with a related Overseas Chinese Affairs Office program called the Star Art Troupe.

Launched in 2014, the Star Art Troupe theatrical program is the “cultural flagship” of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office and aims to “meet the cultural needs of overseas Chinese” while providing a “window for foreigners to understand China,” according to the office’s website.

Chinese government and state-run media reports detail how, between 2014 and 2017, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office established seven Star Art Troupes in Boston, Chicago, Houston, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and St. Paul.

U.S. OCSC have co-hosted events with Star Art Troupes, according to multiple Chinese state-run media reports. Some of these events featured performers from the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Academy of Art. The PLA is the Chinese military.

In October 2019, for instance, St. Paul’s OCSC and the local Star Art Troupe co-hosted an event commemorating the founding of communist China, according to AMCO. The event included a singer and musician from the PLA’s Academy of Art, according to Sohu.com.

Similarly, Houston’s Star Art Troupe also included a dancer who attended the PLA’s Academy of Art, according to the Oriental Arts Education Center (OAEC), though it’s unclear if the dancer remains at the center. OAEC, which hosts the art troupe, has co-hosted events with Houston’s Chinese Civic Center, which houses the Houston OCSC.

In September 2015, Houston’s Chinese Civic Center sold tickets for a public event in Stafford, Texas, celebrating communist China’s founding that was co-hosted by Houston’s Star Art Troupe, according to the local Chinese Student Association. During the event, the lead saxophonist for the PLA’s Central Military Band played the pop hit “My Heart Will Go On,” the association reported.

That same month, the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office invited the head of Houston’s Star Art Troupe to come to China to attend a military parade at Tiananmen Square commemorating the defeat of Imperial Japan, according to OAEC.

While in Beijing, the head of Houston’s Star Art Troupe met with the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office’s chief propagandist to discuss “how the modern mission of overseas cultural disseminators is to use cultural confidence to demonstrate Chinese people’s profound heritage and love of peace in order to defend the peaceful image of China,” according to OAEC.

OAEC did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

“Americans should be very wary of cultural events hosted by organizations affiliated with the UFWD — and especially the MPS — because they are used to covertly hide the CCP’s true intent,” Ina Mitchell, Canadian investigative reporter and co-author of “The Mosaic Effect,” told the DCNF.

The DCNF reached out to all seven nonprofits housing OCSCs by email and phone. Only two of the nonprofits responded.

The Nebraska Chinese Association, which houses the Omaha OCSC, claimed its cultural events “strive to cultivate understandings between Chinese and American culture” and denied any relationship with the Chinese government.

A man who identified himself as a “founding member” of the Charlotte “Chinese service center” told the DCNF by phone that his organization was “not related to any government agency.” He directed the DCNF to review the group’s website.

The exterior of the Chinese Civic Center in Houston shows the emblem of the Overseas Chinese Service Center. [Screenshot/YouTube/TJ工作室]

‘Feel Good Sentiments’

Several members of Congress have attended OCSC-sponsored cultural events, according to multiple Chinese state-run media reports.

In January 2023, St. Paul’s OCSC co-hosted another Lunar New Year event at the Mall of America. During the event, Minnesota Democratic Sen. Tina Smith delivered a speech praising her state for welcoming immigrants, the CCP-controlled Qiaowang and CBS News reported.

Smith’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Sen. Klobuchar also gave a video speech thanking an OCSC representative for promoting “the cultural heritage of Chinese Americans,” according to AMCO’s YouTube channel.

Performers at the January 2023 event sang the CCP Propaganda Department-approved song “Why Are The Flowers So Red?” The song’s lyrics celebrate “the heroic frontier guards in Northwest China’s Xinjiang,” according to the PLA’s English website.

The song’s lyrics include the line: “Why are the flowers so red? They’re watered with the blood of youth.”

Rep. Phillips has also attended St. Paul OCSC events co-sponsored by the Chongqing Propaganda Department, according to multiple reports.

In September 2022, Phillips attended the St. Paul OCSC’s Mid-Autumn Festival event at the Mall of America, according to iChongqing, a Chinese state-run media outlet. During the event, Phillips, the head of China’s Chicago consulate and St. Paul OCSC members painted eyes on a large dragon puppet, which was then used in a performance by a dragon dance troupe managed by the Chongqing Propaganda Department, photos from a state-run media outlet show.

“Cultural events create feel good sentiments — ‘how could a civilization that produced such fantastic dance, musical performances, acrobats, cuisine possibly have militant intentions?’” Dr. Dreyer told the DCNF.

Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon has also attended events hosted by the Omaha OCSC, including a 2018 Lunar New Year event that featured the state-controlled Jiangsu Provincial Theatrical Troupe, according to Qiaowang.

Bacon’s spokesperson told the DCNF that individuals from the Nebraska Chinese Association “cherish their Chinese heritage” and “have a deep disdain for the Communist government and have expressed love and patriotism for the United States.” Bacon’s spokesperson added that local law enforcement had never “highlighted any concerns to us in the past” about the organization.

However, after the DCNF reported on the Omaha OCSC’s connection to the CCP’s United Front, Bacon said he contacted the FBI about the service center.

“Allegations that the Chinese Communist Government is operating an illegal organization to monitor and intimidate Chinese students and visitors in Omaha are obviously very alarming and we want answers from the FBI,” Bacon said.

In 2022, the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center warned that CCP influence operations in the U.S. have now placed state and local officials “on the “front lines of national security.” While these operations may vary in their execution, ultimately, they all aim to coopt American lawmakers as Beijing’s proxies, whether wittingly or unwittingly, DNI cautioned.

“These associations have been bridges that Americans naively saw as just cultural and mutually beneficial,” Steve Yates, former deputy national security adviser to former vice president Dick Cheney, told the DCNF. “The CCP has always used every organization as a vehicle to monitor, and, in many cases, control their ethnic affiliates and through them the influencers in the communities in which their ethnic compatriots reside.”

*****

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

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Simple Solution in Government Intrusion Case

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By Bruce Bialosky

Ronald Reagan once said, “they say the world has become too complex for simple answers. They are wrong.” We have exactly that — a simple solution to the government’s intrusion into communication with social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Google, Instagram etc.

As I am sure you are aware there was an earthquake on July 4th. In an order filed with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, Federal Judge Terry Doughty put a halt to the federal government and the Biden Administration from communicating with social media companies to restrict commentary on the platforms.

The ruling by Doughty is a tour de force on free speech and the first amendment. The 155 pages are a history lesson and should be taught in every high school as the defense of our most essential freedom, one that many people in countries with which we are allied do not enjoy.

Doughty mentions eight different areas where the government could still assert itself. They break down into three categories:

1. Criminal activities – Everyone would argue (except criminals) that the social media sites should work with governmental entities to address any criminal activities on their sites.

2. National Security Issues – Not too many people would argue that if nefarious parties are using the sites to communicate about matters that involve actual national security issues (like what happened on 9/11), the social media sites should not work with the FBI and CIA.

3. MisinformationI-if there is largely consensus about the first two points, we must focus on the third point. This is the heart of the matter that needs to be addressed. The judge cites as one of his points that the government should, “Inform social-media companies of postings intending to mislead voters about voting requirements and procedures.” This gets to where there is a solution.

If the government believes there is misinformation about voting they should point it out in their own postings. The media companies may even direct their members to these postings. The government should not be working behind the scenes with media companies to ban people who post “incorrect” information. This leads to the proverbial “slippery slope.”

The government is nefariously communicating with media companies and “suggesting” certain information be banned. This information does not fall into the first two categories. It falls into the area of “misinformation” which is just a code word for speech restriction and violation of the first amendment. When the President’s people call you up and say, “We don’t think Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration (GBD), should be allowed to post their thoughts about COVID on your site,” how many people are going to resist that pressure? Not many. It is not a suggestion — it is a demand.

It just so happens that these two gentlemen were correct. The facemasks were a fraud, natural immunity was more effective than the COVID shots, and the disease did come from the lab in Wuhan. But these issues are just “canaries in the coal mine.”

The solution is simple. There are matters in the first two categories with which the government and social media companies can work. Other than that, it is hands off. They can post what they believe to be the truth and others can post what they believe to be the truth. Absolutely no communication between government workers from any department with the staff of any media companies.

The essence of the First Amendment is that Americans need to be treated as grownups and make their own decisions. Government wonks can take their best shot with information and private people can do the same. And, certainly, no more lies that the government is only making “suggestions.”

Here is a possible resolution to this matter. As you know, Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act has allowed these social media operators to control their own methods of “moderation” of their content. It is badly outdated as few anticipated the explosion of the internet or the effects of social media. The Democrats refuse to consider updating the act because currently the suppression of speech has principally been against Republicans and their allies.

Let’s say this gets to the U.S. Supreme Court, and they rule against the government and their secret communications suppressing free speech. We will see the Democrats do a 180 degree turn on the issue of revising Section 230. Their instinctive policy nature is to control matters at the federal level through governmental mandate. In this instance, however, getting all the advantages from using the federal government to coerce social media without revising the law has prompted them to keep their hands off legislation to treat social media like legacy media. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of freedom of speech, you will see them calling for regulation of these social media sites faster than you can blink.

The Democrats are playing a dangerous game by using governmental entities to do their dirty work suppressing free speech. It can bring one of two results. It can boomerang against them, or it can cause a revolt. Neither action would be acceptable. This should skip to the final and proper step and regulate the social media companies like other media companies and thus protect free speech and the First Amendment.

*****

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

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Legislature Forms Committee Looking Into ASU Free Speech Concerns

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By Cameron Arcand

Following a free speech controversy at Arizona State University, the state Legislature is forming a new joint committee to examine “freedom of expression” in the state’s public universities.

ASU shut down the T.W. Lewis Center for Personal Development after its main donor, Tom Lewis, pulled funding after a controversial event featuring conservative personalities Charlie Kirk and Dennis Prager. The former executive director, Ann Atkinson, said in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal titled “I Paid for Free Speech at Arizona State” that she was fired by the university for organizing the event. A committee hearing scheduled for July 18 will feature testimony from Atkinson and Prager, as well as Dr. Owen Anderson and radio host Seth Leibsohn.

Tom Lewis himself said that the backlash from faculty protesting the conservative speakers was the reason he felt compelled to terminate funding to the center, which was part of Barrett, The Honors College.

“Because these were mostly conservative speakers, we expected some opposition, but I was shocked and disappointed by the alarming and outright hostility demonstrated by the Barrett faculty and administration toward these speakers,” Tom Lewis himself said in a statement. “Instead of sponsoring this event with a spirit of cooperation and respect for free speech, Barrett faculty and staff exposed the radical ideology that now apparently dominates the college. After seeing this level of left-wing hostility and activism, I no longer had any confidence in Barrett to adhere to the terms of our gift, and made the decision to terminate our agreement, effective June 30, 2023.”

State Sen. Anthony Kern, R-Glendale, and state Rep. Quang Nguyen, R-Prescott Valley, are co-chairing the committee, and Nguyen tweeted Thursday that he’s “very concerned” about the situation.

“[Arizona’s] public universities must be unfettered bastions of free speech & expression,” he said. “I’m very concerned to see admins terminated after coordinating to have conservatives speak on campus. I look [forward] to hearing from [university] leadership as to why this happened.”

The school currently holds a “green light” rating from the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression, which measures free expression rights at universities, and the group called Atkinson’s story “troubling” before learning that the donor pulled the funding himself.

“FIRE sees no #1A problem with such a closure, provided there are genuine funding concerns. But, because schools often point to viewpoint-neutral reasons to justify viewpoint-based censorship, we’ll continue to monitor closely,” the organization tweeted on June 21.

*****

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

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Britain’s Shakespearean Constitution

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By Adam Tomkins

When teaching constitutional law in the United Kingdom, one of the first challenges is to reflect on where the British constitution gets its authority. We say, for example, that it is not merely a rule that the Prime Minister must be a member of the House of Commons, but a constitutional rule. Likewise, we say that the King may do nothing except on ministerial advice—normally, prime ministerial advice—and that this is a rule of the constitution. We say these things because we wish to deepen and entrench the status of such rules. We regard them as fundamental, and we reach for the rhetoric of the constitution to signify this sense of fundamentality.

Of course, in the United Kingdom, we have no document or codified text we can point to as authority for our proposition that the Prime Minister must be a member of the Commons or that the King may act only on the advice of ministers. Like New Zealand’s, the British constitution is “unwritten.” That is an inapt term. Almost all of the UK’s constitution is written down, somewhere. But it is not codified. There is no single authoritative text. 

If the British constitution does not obtain its authority from a governing text, where does it obtain its authority from? Of late, it has become fashionable in British law schools to imagine that the constitution is based on (and obtains its authority from) a number of fundamental principles. Some say that parliamentary accountability is a fundamental principle; some say democracy is. Such commentators go on to say these principles explain why we have rules such as the two I’m using as examples. They tell us it is important that the prime minister is a member of the House of Commons because it is to the House of Commons that the PM must discharge his (or her) constitutional obligations, subjecting himself to parliamentary accountability.

That is why we have Prime Minister’s Questions every week, and so on. Likewise, it is important that the King understands that, in today’s constitutional order, the forces of monarchy have been well and truly subjected to those of democracy. The King remains head of state but he is unelected. He owes his position to an accident of birth, not to the ballot box, but it is the latter that rules. Ministers are accountable to the representatives of the people. Thus the King must act only and always on ministerial advice: the principle of democracy insists upon it. 

This style of constitutional reasoning may seem logical. It may appear to be rational—grounded in reason and, as such, consistent with the Enlightenment principles upon which all modern constitutionalism is said to be based.

And yet I am entirely unpersuaded by it. One may admire this style of constitutional reasoning as a matter of elegance, but does it hold up? Does it not, indeed, beg the rather obvious question: where do the principles come from, and who decides (in the context of an uncodified constitution) what “counts” as a fundamental constitutional principle and what does not? Why is parliamentary accountability a constitutional principle and how did it become one? On whose authority has democracy become a trump card, subjecting even the King himself to the will of the people?

The many centuries of English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish history make for an overwhelming canvas. No one could master it all, so we have to pick and choose—even when we only wish to grasp the historical foundations of our law.

These questions—and many more like them—are answerable. But, in the end, they are answerable not on the basis of any claim to a higher authority or abstract principle. They are answerable only by reference to history. The British constitution does not obtain its authority from a written legal text. Instead, it owes its authority to the past—to its history. The reason why ministers, from the PM down, are accountable to the House of Commons owes its explanation to no philosophy of modern constitutionalism (after all, there is no equivalent in the US Constitution). Rather, it owes its explanation, both as a descriptive fact and as a norm of constitutional behaviour, to history. It is because Parliament insisted upon it, first on the battlefields of the Civil Wars of the 1640s and thereafter in legislation. Likewise, the reason why the King may act only on ministerial advice and may not use his undoubted prerogative powers to thwart or to run counter to what ministers want is because, by the end of the seventeenth century, Parliament had won for itself not only the right to hold the Crown’s ministers to account, but the right to determine the powers of the Crown itself and, if necessary (as it was in 1688), to remove the Crown from the incumbent’s head and place it on someone else’s instead. None of this can be readily explained as a matter of constitutional rationality, reason, or principle. These are binding and genuinely fundamental rules of constitutional behaviour in the United Kingdom—and they are so because our history demands it.

The United Kingdom is not an especially old country. In its current form, it dates only from the 1920s, when the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. But the UK is composed of four exceptionally old nations, all of which have constitutional histories that reach back into the deep past. England is the dominant partner (it has about 85% of the UK’s population and is responsible for about the same share of the UK’s GDP), although Scottish, Welsh, and Irish history have each made decisive contributions to the UK’s interweaving story. The many centuries of English, Scottish, Welsh, and Irish history make for an overwhelming canvas. No one could master it all, so we have to pick and choose—even when we only wish to grasp the historical foundations of our law. Mostly, we venture no further back than the Civil Wars of the 1640s and the Glorious Revolution of 1688–89, which finally resolved the constitutional disagreements that had helped to fuel them. Occasionally, we may mention Magna Carta, which dates from 1215, but even then we tend to do so anachronistically, and, certainly, few ever say anything about the four centuries which separate it from the constitutional conflicts of the seventeenth century. 

This is a shame, as there is much that can usefully be learned about today’s constitution from the medieval political orders of the Middle Ages. One could start with Henry de Bracton, for example, and his thirteenth-century writings on kingship. Or with Sir John Fortescue’s De Laudibus Legum Angliae, written in the 1470s as a handbook for Edward IV but not published until the 1540s (well into the reign of Henry VIII). Or one could read Sir Thomas Smith’s brilliant Elizabethan overview of Tudor government, De Republica Anglorum, first published in 1583. All contain insights about the nature of rulership and government which remain pertinent to this day. Fortescue, for example, is as compelling as Sir William Blackstone’s Commentaries are, written in the 1760s, that the genius of the English constitution is its mixing together of elements of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. Blackstone was adamant that it was the mixed nature of the constitution that had given England her stability. But he was hardly the first great English jurist to alight upon this theme. Fortescue beat him to it by some three hundred years.

I confess that I do not teach Bracton, Fortescue, or Sir Thomas Smith to my constitutional law students. Perhaps I should. Were I to try to convey a sense of the ongoing importance of today’s British constitution of the late Middle Ages, I would be inclined to reach first for Shakespeare. In particular, I would cite his great tetralogy of history plays, Richard II, the two parts of Henry IV, and Henry V. These are not only Shakespeare’s best histories: they are among the finest of all his plays. Richard II is a story of weak and conflicted rulership, when the ruler doubts himself and crumples under the weight of leadership. Henry IV is a story both of guilt (aka, the burden of taking responsibility for the means by which you have obtained power) and of the public/private split, asking us to reflect on the moral fibre of our putative leaders, as reflected not only in their public action but also in their private behaviour.

The dominant figure in the first story is of course the king, who usurped Richard’s Crown to become Henry IV; the dominant figure in the second is his son (and heir) Hal, who will rise to become Henry V. The closing of the quartet, Henry V, is a study in leadership, principally but not only in war. It is a case study of how to take men with you, how to lead from the front knowing that the loyalty of those behind you is not only publicly displayed but—far more important, then as now—inwardly felt. The Chorus puts it thus, at the opening of Act 4:

For forth he goes and visits all his host.
Bids them good morrow with a modest smile
And calls them brothers, friends, and countrymen. 
Upon his royal face there is no note
How dread an army hath enrounded him …
But freshly looks and overbears attaint
With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty.
That every wretch, pining and pale before,
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his looks.
A largess universal, like the sun,
His liberal eye doth give to everyone,
Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all
Behold, as may unworthiness define.
A little touch of Harry in the night.

Henry is about to lead his troops in war. Outnumbered by the “confident and over-lusty” French, they fear decimation. But the king instead leads them to victory, and to glory.

Of the numerous constitutional insights contained within these majestic and brilliant plays, let me highlight just two, as illustrations of how Shakespeare can be used to illuminate aspects of constitutional law. The first concerns the identity of the state. What is it, this thing, which is constituted by the constitution? This is a question that, in the Anglo-American mainstream, lawyers have not spent enough time worrying about. (It is quite different in the French tradition, where la pouvoir constituant has been a fixation of constitutional theorists since at least the Abbé Sieyès). Perhaps now, as the rise of populism challenges us to consider where the limits should be set to the idea of popular sovereignty, we are belatedly coming around to the realisation that it is not just constituted power we should worry about, but constituent power too. Who has the authority to constitute the state—and what is the state, anyway? These are the foundational concerns of Richard II and they are most powerfully expressed in a speech, loaded with pathos, of the king himself (the speech, “Of comfort no man speak”, in Act 3, scene 2).

It isn’t popular sovereignty on which Richard ruminates, but his own supposed sovereignty—the sovereignty, that is, which literally embodies the state. The physical embodiment of the state is Richard himself. He realises his body is at once his own (as a man) and the manifestation of the state (as king). It is no accident that Ernst Kantorowicz, in his great study of what he called “medieval political theology,” The King’s Two Bodies (1957), devoted an entire chapter of his analysis to Shakespeare’s Richard II. Richard instructs his companions to:

… sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings,
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed …

“All murdered,” he blasts. He is inviting his companions (and by extension us) to reflect not only on what it means for the king to die, but what it means for the state. It is worth recalling that Shakespeare is writing at a time when it was treason—a capital offence, no less—to imagine the king’s death. The passing of the monarch risked the passing of the body politic itself. It was a moment of extreme frailty and fragility. And yet, as Richard laments, it is wired into the system (a feature, not a bug). All the king is granted is “a breath, a little scene ǀ To monarchise, be feared, and kill with looks”. Death is never far away. It is “vain conceit” to imagine that the king’s “flesh which walls about our life ǀ Were brass impregnable.” All it takes for death to bore through the king’s flesh—his castle wall—is “a little pin … and farewell king.” The truth, Richard concedes, is that his subjects:

have but mistook me all this while,
I live with bread like you, feel want, 
Taste grief, need friends.

“Subjected thus,” he asks, “How can you say to me I am a king?” What goes for the king as sovereign goes likewise for any other body making a claim to sovereignty, even the people themselves. Who are we, to think we have the power to lay down the law, the law of the constitution, no less? Are we not mere flesh, living with bread, feeling want, tasting grief, and needing friends? How do we square our own mortal, quotidian ordinariness with the exceptional power we arrogate to ourselves to exercise popular sovereignty? Richard II helps us begin to articulate these questions in a way few other texts can approach.

My second example of contemporary constitutional insight drawn from Shakespeare comes from the end of Henry IV Part 2. Upon his father’s demise, Hal has acceded to the throne—he is now King Henry V. He meets two older men, each very different from the other, both of whom have played an avuncular role in his life. One is Falstaff, Hal’s great lord of misrule. Sir John is clearly expecting preferment but instead is unceremoniously dumped—banished from court with the cutting words, “I know thee not, old man.”

The other is the late king’s Lord Chief Justice who, we are told, had once had Hal arrested and detained for breach of the peace. The judge fears—indeed, he knows—that the new king “loves [him] not” (Act 5, scene 1). He is expecting, at best, to be dismissed. But the new king surprises him by retaining him in office, telling him to:

… still bear the balance and the sword;
And I do wish your honours may increase
Till you do live to see a son of mine
Offend you and obey you as I did. 
So shall I live to speak my father’s words;
“Happy am I that I have a man so bold
That dares do justice on my proper son,
And not less happy having such a son
That would deliver up his greatness so
Into the hands of Justice.” You did commit me,
For which I do commit into your hand
Th’unstainèd sword that you have used to bear,
With this remembrance: that you use the same
With the like bold, just, and impartial spirit
As you have done ‘gainst me. There is my hand.
You shall be as a father to my youth;
My voice shall sound as you do prompt mine ear,
And I will stoop and humble my intents
To your well-practised wise directions.

Henry may be a new king, and he may have acceded to the throne at a tender age (he was in his mid-20s), but he is experienced enough to appreciate that he needs honest counsel, impartial justice, and an independent judiciary. That the rule of law must be administered alike to one and all, irrespective of status, is a given of modern constitutionalism, as is the fact that the realisation of this aspiration demands judges who are independent of government. Neither the “rule of law” nor the “separation of powers” were terms of constitutional art in Shakespeare’s day (the former we owe principally to Dicey; the latter to Montesquieu and Madison). Both are core maxims of the modern constitution, and both are proudly and defiantly on display in Henry IV Part 2, this poignant scene made all the more powerful by its contrast with the banishment of “old Jack Falstaff.”

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Biden’s DOJ Will Trigger A Major Crisis If Trump Is Indicted For Jan. 6

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By John Daniel Davidson

The news that President Joe Biden’s Justice Department might soon indict and arrest former President Donald Trump over the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol should terrify all Americans, regardless of their political beliefs.

Put bluntly, if Biden’s DOJ arrests Trump, the president’s main political rival heading into the 2024 election, it will trigger a political and electoral crisis unlike any America has ever faced. It’s not too much to say that such a move would not only imperil the upcoming presidential election but the republic itself. Jailing political rivals is what happens in tinpot dictatorships like Nicaragua, where President Daniel Ortega’s political rivals often find themselves arrested and imprisoned on charges of treason

Now it appears it could happen here. On Tuesday [July 20], Trump said he had received a letter informing him he is a target of the federal criminal investigation of Jan. 6 being led by Special Counsel Jack Smith. In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump explained he was given the letter on Sunday and that Smith gave him just four days to report to the grand jury, “which almost always means an Arrest and Indictment,” Trump wrote.

This is the second target letter Trump has received from Smith. The first one came in June, in connection with the unprecedented FBI raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home last year over classified documents. Days later, Trump was charged with dozens of criminal counts relating to seven different federal laws governing the handling of classified material. (Recall that classified documents, some of them top secret and dating back at least six years, were also found in President Joe Biden’s garage and at his “think tank” in Washington, D.C., last November through January. Rest assured Biden will never be indicted over it.)

Trump and others have rightly denounced this as the weaponization of federal law enforcement and the criminalization of political differences. It’s also just a naked attempt to rig the 2024 election in Biden’s favor. As Tucker Carlson has said, “They’re trying to take Trump out before you can vote for him, and that should upset you more than anything that’s happened in American politics in your lifetime.”

That’s not an overstatement. If this scheme works, if Biden’s DOJ succeeds in taking Trump out ahead of 2024 on bogus charges related to Jan. 6, it’s hard to see how we can ever have a normal election again in this country, how the outcome of any future election will be seen as legitimatate

Forget about the stalwart Trump voters who claim 2020 was stolen. If Biden’s DOJ throws Trump in prison, Ortega-style, for a crime the U.S. Senate already acquitted him of, there’ll be a whole new constituency of voters who will claim, rightly, that 2024 has been preemptively stolen.

Indeed, Biden’s Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland might be badly overplaying its hand here, unintentionally swelling the ranks of Americans who might not love Trump but absolutely loathe the way federal law enforcement has been deployed against him and his supporters from the moment he won office in 2016.

Between the Russia-collusion hoax, two bogus impeachments, and a litany of outrageous indictments, Trump’s enemies in Washington are earning him sympathy from ordinary American people, who can recognize injustice and abuse of power when they see it.

They can also recognize what by now is obvious. There are two standards of justice in America: one for establishment insiders like Biden and his corrupt family, and one for outsider politicians like Trump that dissent from the permanent regime in Washington and try to disrupt it.

Maybe that doesn’t matter to Biden and Garland and those in power. Maybe they feel like, after 2020, they don’t even need to be seen as legitimate by half the country in order to rule, and they’re willing to do anything to defeat Trump. But they’re kidding themselves if they think they can simply take Trump out by arresting and indicting him, and then move onward into the 2024 cycle as if everything is fine.

Their weaponization of federal law enforcement, if it continues, is going to delegitimize the 2024 election before a single ballot is cast. And at that point, we’re all going to have a huge problem on our hands.

*****

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

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Weekend Read: Get Woke, Go Broke? thumbnail

Weekend Read: Get Woke, Go Broke?

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By James Hartley

“Woke Capitalism is a growing and troubling dimension of contemporary economic and political life, especially among the mammoth multinational corporations that dominate so many aspects of our lives.” Such laments have become omnipresent in conservative circles. It has become hard to keep up with the Outrage of the Day. Woke Corporations have adopted the norms of the Left’s pet programs, both in advertising and public declarations, as well as in adopting ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) guidelines, leaving conservatives fuming.

What is surprising is that the opening quotation was not written by a conservative. It is the assessment of Carl Rhodes in Woke Capitalism: How Corporate Morality is Sabotaging Democracy. Rhodes, a Professor of Organization Studies at the University of Technology Sydney, is a very proud progressive. While he hates Woke Capitalism every bit as much as all those “right-wing reactionaries,” he goes to great lengths to reassure the reader on nearly every page that he is not one of them.

Have we finally found a place where conservatives and progressives can agree? Is this the beginning of the end of the Culture War? Consider the following pair of quotations. The first is from Mark Hemingway in Law and Liberty. The second is Rhodes.

[It] seems obvious that capitalism, and the necessary regulation of it, works best when we’re all clear where self-interest ends and social responsibility begins. “Woke capitalism” is clearly blurring that line. If you think obscenely rich CEOs can be trusted to tell the average voter what’s in their best interest on toxic masculinity, gay rights, religious freedom, or any almost any other controversial issue, well, you’ll probably buy anything else they happen to be selling.

[T]he real danger of woke capitalism is not that it will weaken the capitalist system, but rather that it will further cement the concentration of political power among a corporate elite …[which is] a threat to a progressive politics that dares to retain hope in the possibility of equality, liberty, and social solidarity.

Note that while the language is different, both passages are criticizing exactly the same thing. What right do wealthy CEOs have to aggrandize themselves beyond the economic sphere into being the leading voices in addressing social ills?

In one sense, Rhodes’ analysis of the problem could come straight out of Robert Novak’s The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism, which perceptively described a tripartite division of power. First, there is the political order, a democratically elected set of representatives; second, the economic order, a free-market system with profit-seeking businesses; and third, the moral-cultural order, with churches, universities, and media outlets vying for influence in the marketplace of ideas. Novak argues forcefully that this division of power results in a healthier society than one in which there is a unitary source of power.

Framed in Novak’s terms, the problem with Woke Capitalism is that it causes the system itself to break down. As Rhodes puts it:

Woke capitalism does not respect the boundaries. It involves second-sector organizations taking over the responsibilities of the other two. The issue with this is that while the state and the third sector are not motivated by profit, the second sector, by definition, is. When this profit motive bleeds into the activities of the other two sectors, things change.

Rhodes has little patience for progressives who are happy to see corporate leaders embracing their favored causes. Those who celebrate Woke Capitalism are “naive, if not gullible.”

Why is Woke Capitalism a Problem?

On the criterion of rhetorical ferocity directed at corporations adopting progressive political causes, Rhodes yields nothing to the conservative critics he so clearly despises. He fully agrees with conservatives that corporations are exceeding their proper bounds in society. But, before we celebrate this unification of the Left and the Right, we should note there is a fundamental difference in the critiques. In the two-word phrase “Woke Capitalism,” which word is the problematic one?

For conservatives, the problem is “Woke.” As Milton Friedman famously put it, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits.” It is the manager’s job to act in accordance with the wishes of the shareholders, whose desires “generally will be to make as much money as possible while conforming to their basic rules of society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom.” The problem with Woke Capitalism is CEOs who have decided to pursue other goals, regardless of, or in some cases to the detriment of, the profitability of the company. Particularly galling to conservatives is that corporations seem to be embracing every obsession of the Left.

Rhodes, on the other hand, believes the problem with Woke Capitalism is “Capitalism.” The problem is not that corporations are voicing agreement with causes Rhodes embraces. The real problem is that corporations have not yet committed themselves to a suicide pact.

Consider some of the examples Rhodes discusses at length. Jeff Bezos committed $10 billion to fight climate change. He also battled with Trump over immigration. He won a Human Rights Campaign award for his support of same-sex marriage. After noting all these things, Rhodes then excoriates Bezos. The foremost problem: Amazon, the firm which generated so much wealth for Bezos, actively manages its financial affairs to minimize the taxes it pays. As Rhodes notes, they are not doing anything illegal in avoiding taxes. They are just being immoral. “We need to remember here that paying tax is the main way that corporations can contribute to society.” You might have thought that corporations contributed to society by paying employees and providing goods and services to customers, but those contributions are nothing compared to providing tax revenue to the government.

The book is filled with examples in the same vein. Sure, Nike embraced Colin Kaepernick after his kneeling during the national anthem at NFL games. This was not an isolated event. Nike embraced the women’s movement in the 1970s and Rhodes notes, “Connecting their brand with socially conscious causes has been a motif for Nike ever since.” But, do not be fooled. Nike uses sweatshops forcing people into “inhumane living conditions” to make their products.

Why is Rhodes so critical of these corporations publicly supporting causes in which he believes? His chapter on Gillette makes it clear. In 2019, Gillette released a new TV ad, directly attacking toxic masculinity, thereby attaching itself to the #MeToo movement. By this point in the book, the reader is conditioned to expect a litany of corporate horrors committed by Gillette. But Rhodes provides no such list. Gillette’s sole sin: they ran this advertisement because they thought it would be good for their sales. Their goal was “influencing public opinion and improving consumer attitudes towards the company.” That second goal, like original sin, taints the whole effort. “No longer content to just influence our spending habits and lifestyles, with woke capitalism big businesses enroll the very heart of our moral beliefs into their commercial strategies.”

Rhodes clearly misses the Good Old Days:

There was a time where corporations were inextricably associated with right-wing conservatism. Woke capitalism changed all of that with corporations directly and unequivocally touting themselves as progressive and politically active, often with a billionaire CEO as the conspicuous spokesperson cum (political) action hero.

Gone are the days when the Left knew that corporations were blood-sucking monsters out to destroy all that is good. Those evil masterminds running large corporations have learned to put on a mask, duping the unwary in their attempt to “seize political power.”

In a society which is deeply divided on question of wokeness, is it any surprise that businesses have realized that joining the Culture War in selective ways may be a means of attracting new sales?

Even Bill Gates’ effort to convince billionaires to devote half their wealth to charitable causes is part of this evil conspiracy. “In the end, modern billionaire philanthropy is an exercise of capitalist power, effectively an extension of that power beyond the confines of the economy. It diverts private assets to public purposes, yet without any public accountability. It is profoundly undemocratic and serves to shore up the power and influence of contemporary society’s billionaire protagonists.” Want an example? The Mellon Foundation gave $5.3 million to provide books to prisons. Rhodes complains that the gift just masks the problem of mass incarceration. Rhodes is ever quick to look a gift horse in the mouth.

Embracing Milton Friedman

While it is amusing to watch the ways Rhodes turns every act of Corporate Progressivism against itself in his quest to show that the only cure for Woke Capitalism is the end of capitalism, the book does raise a rather provocative question for conservative critics of Woke Capitalism. When you draw the battle lines over the desirability of progressive political causes, then it is quite natural for conservatives to see corporate leaders as becoming mere shills for the other side. Rhodes, however, thinks that battle line is misdrawn. He argues the divide is over the desirability of profit-maximizing businesses. As Rhodes sees it, Woke Capitalism is a problem because it deceives people into thinking corporate leaders are focused on something other than profits.

Here is the troubling question: what if Rhodes is right about the real goal of Woke Capitalists? Using Friedman’s formulation, the responsibility of business leaders is to make profits. To make profits, it is necessary to persuade people to buy your product. Suppose for a moment that embracing progressive causes results in higher profits for a company. Suppose the customer base for a company likes progressive causes and is more inclined to buy products from companies that share their values. If that is true, then what should a firm do if it wants to follow Friedman’s mandate that the sole responsibility of the business is to make profits?

Before thinking about the implications of that question, we should first examine the presupposition. In popular cadence, if a firm gets woke, does it really go broke? Both opponents and proponents of corporations adopting progressive causes will happily provide you with lots of anecdotal evidence. Nike’s sales rose after the Kaepernick ad; Bud Light’s sales fell after the Mulvaney promotion. Finding anecdotes that confirm your initial bias on the matter is easy; finding dispassionate studies which are persuasive to people who disagree is impossible.

But, set aside the question about whether wokeness is or is not profitable; that is not actually the right question. Imagine that a CEO believes that a woke advertising campaign will be profitable. After all, advertising is not an exact science; if it was, there would never be failed ad campaigns. If a business leader believes it will be good for profits to embrace wokeness, then what should the business leader do? It seems a bit odd for people to argue that businesses should focus on profits, but that a business should not adopt progressive causes when the managers believe it will be profitable to do so.

Thought about in this way, a curious conclusion arises. If you are convinced that a firm that gets woke will go broke, then what is the problem with Woke Capitalism? Won’t the firms adopting progressive positions die out? The real problem for conservatives occurs if wokeness is profitable. The real problem is if Rhodes is right, that Woke Capitalism is just a cynical form of profit-maximizing behavior. If it is profitable, then shouldn’t Woke Capitalism be encouraged?

Thinking about the implications of these questions makes it obvious that the debate over Woke Corporations is just a proxy war for the debate over the best set of cultural norms. In a society that is deeply divided on this question, is it any surprise that businesses have realized that joining the Culture War in selective ways may be a means of attracting new sales? Such a strategy might fail, but it also might work. In a free market, every business decision comes with risk; if you want to avoid risk altogether, stay out of the marketplace. If you want to win the Culture War, though, instead of complaining about firms trying to maximize profits, it would be better to focus on the moral-cultural institutions.

*****

This article was published by Law & Liberty and is reproduced with permission.

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FBI Whistleblowers: Wray Lied to Congress about J6, School Boards, Child Exploitation thumbnail

FBI Whistleblowers: Wray Lied to Congress about J6, School Boards, Child Exploitation

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By Catherine Salgado

Two FBI whistleblowers are calling out FBI Director Chris Wray as a liar after Wray’s testimony in a Congressional hearing July 12. You mean a government bureaucrat at the weaponized FBI, who works for Joe Biden, lied under oath? I’m shocked, shocked!

FBI whistleblower Steve Friend was one person insisting Wray lied to the House Judiciary. He said Wray lied about surveilling school boards. He also tweeted: “The @FBI Director told @RepTroyNehls that no agents were reassigned from child exploitation investigations to domestic terrorism. Another lie. I was reassigned from child pornography cases and told those cases were going to be considered a ‘local matter.’” That’s particularly interesting in light of how much hate the movie Sound of Freedom is getting for exposing child sex trafficking.

Another FBI whistleblower, George Hill, said Wray lied when he said he wasn’t aware of undercover agents in the crowd on Jan. 6, 2021. As it happens, there is a good deal of evidence about feds planted at the Capitol on January 6. This includes actual testimony from an FBI agent who was embedded undercover in the Proud Boys, and whose testimony undermined the lie of a “planned insurrection.” The FBI was even accused of destroying evidence for Proud Boys’ Jan. 6 case. Then there’s federal informant Ray Epps, who reportedly admitted to orchestrating the events of Jan. 6.

Jan. 6 was not an insurrection but a fedsurrection—and Wray’s FBI is part of the obscene persecution of the thousand or more innocent Jan. 6 prisoners.

[PJ Media] An FBI whistleblower says FBI Director Christopher Wray lied in testimony before the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.

George Hill, a supervisory intelligence analyst-turned-whistleblower who already gave statements to the Judiciary Committee and its chairman Jim Jordan, says Wray could not have believed he was telling the truth when he spoke about embedded agents in the crowd on January 6, 2021…[Rep.] Biggs basically asked: How many undercover agents did the FBI deploy to be in the crowd on January 6?

Wray played dumb: “Again, I’m not sure that I can give you the number as I sit here. I’m not sure there were undercover agents on the scene”…

[Wray said] something like this: No, I don’t know if there were agents that day (even though we already know there were because people have eyes and court filings), and I can’t talk about the agents…Whistleblower George Hill says there’s no possible way Wray couldn’t know about “undercovers” walking among the innocent — and guilty — on January 6…The host indicated that Wray wasn’t sure there were undercover FBI agents in the crowd, to which Hill shot back, “That’s a lie, OK?” And then he explained how he would know and how the director would have known…“So that’s a lie?” [WMAL radio host Vince] Coglianese asked.

“Absolutely,” Hill confirmed. “I’d look him in the eye and tell him it’s a lie. He would have had to have violated his own procedures going back decades [not to have agents in the crowd].”

Wray, like his boss Biden, lies for a living.

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The US Government Sent Millions of Grant Dollars to Alleged COVID ‘Patient Zero,’ Documents Show thumbnail

The US Government Sent Millions of Grant Dollars to Alleged COVID ‘Patient Zero,’ Documents Show

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By Jon Miltimore

In June, The New York Times ran an exposé detailing the tragedy that we may never know the origins of COVID-19.

“For three years, the U.S. government has been tied in knots over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, frustrated that China’s hindrance of investigations and unwillingness to look critically at its own research have obscured what intelligence agencies can learn about whether the virus escaped from a lab,” reported Julian Barnes. “Inquiries during the Trump and Biden administrations have yielded no definitive answers.”

That the conversation on the origins of the virus is shifting from “preponderance of evidence” to “definitive answers” is itself evidence that we may be closer to answering the mystery of COVID’s origins than many realize.

Patient Zero?

In November 2019, three lab researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China became severely ill, according to a U.S. intelligence report obtained by the Wall Street Journal in 2021. The researchers, whose identities were not disclosed, became so sick they were hospitalized, the report stated. The timing of the event is noteworthy. The three lab workers, the Journal noted, were hospitalized in November 2019, “roughly when many epidemiologists and virologists believe SARS-CoV-2, the virus behind the pandemic, first began circulating around the central Chinese city of Wuhan.”

Two years later, the identities of the three lab workers allegedly hospitalized were revealed. US government sources identified the three lab researchers as Ben Hu, Yu Ping, and Yan Zhu, according to recent reporting from Michael Shellenberger, Matt Taibbi, and Alex Gutentag in Public.

The Atlantic notes the “extraordinary” nature of the findings, if true.

“These proposed patient SARS-CoV-zeroes aren’t merely employees of the virology institute; they’re central figures in the very sort of research that lab-leak investigators have been scrutinizing since the start of the pandemic,” writes Daniel Engber. “Their names appear on crucial papers related to the discovery of new, SARS-related coronaviruses in bats, and subsequent experimentation on those viruses.”

Hu’s name is especially important. The man many are dubbing “patient zero” didn’t just work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. According to documents published by the White Coat Waste Project obtained via a FOIA request, Hu was receiving US grant money to perform gain-of-function research on coronaviruses.

“The funding came in three grants totaling $41 million, doled out by USAID and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, the agency then headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci,” the Intercept reports. “Hu is listed as an investigator on the grants.”

Pretty Specific Symptoms

These are not the only important details that have many suspecting Hu is “patient zero.” There’s also the fact that he was a top lieutenant of Shi Zhengli, a scientist literally named “batwoman” for her extensive research on viruses taken from bats in caves. And then there’s the fact that unreleased intelligence reportedly says the sick lab workers lost their sense of smell—one of the telltale signs of COVID.

“That doesn’t medically prove that they had COVID but that’s some pretty specific symptoms,” Josh Rogin of the Washington Post noted in an interview with Bari Weiss.

Finally, as Science notes, Hu is an “appealing suspect” because he “was a lead author on a 2017 paper in PLOS Pathogens describing an experiment that created chimeric viruses by combining genes for surface proteins from bat coronaviruses that would not grow in cultures with the genome of one that did. This paper has received intense scrutiny because it was partially funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) … .”

None of this is a “definitive answer,” of course. And Hu claims the entire story is “fake news.”

“The recent news about so-called ‘patient zero’ in WIV are absolutely rumors and ridiculous,”  Hu wrote in an email to Science. “In autumn 2019, I was neither sick nor had any symptoms related to COVID-19.”

That Hu would deny involvement in the incident is hardly surprising.

“Denials of culpability and dismissals of evidence by a likely culpable person cannot be taken at face value,” said Rutgers Professor Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist.

The Smoking Gun?

That those responsible for the deadliest pandemic in a century would not wish to take responsibility for it should not surprise us. And I’m not just talking about Ben Hu.

There’s little reason to believe the Chinese government would be forthcoming if their investigation determined they were responsible for COVID-19. Similarly, there’s little reason to believe the US government, which was funding China’s coronavirus research, would be eager to get to the truth either.

Let’s not forget there was a serious effort by the US government to prevent Americans from even openly speculating about the lab-leak theory. In February 2021, almost certainly at the behest of federal agencies, which were working with social media platforms to combat COVID “misinformation,” Facebook announced it would remove posts that suggested “COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured.” Months later, after it became widely accepted that the lab-leak theory was not “a crackpot idea” after all, Facebook was forced to backtrack.

Today many agencies within the federal government itself concede that the lab-leak theory isn’t just possible, but the most likely cause of COVID.

“The Department of Energy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation assess that a laboratory-associated incident was the most likely cause of the first human infection with SARS-CoV-2,” a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence found.

Indeed, a preponderance of evidence is emerging that points to the Wuhan lab, and Hu may turn out to be the key.

“It’s a game changer if it can be proven that Hu got sick with COVID-19 before anyone else,” Jamie Metzl, a former member of the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on human genome editing told Public. “That would be the ‘smoking gun.’ Hu was the lead hands-on researcher in Shi’s lab.”

Dizzy With Success

That the deadliest pandemic in a century might have been triggered by scientists pursuing risky genetic research in pursuit of a “greater good” should not surprise us.

“Many of the most monstrous deeds in human history have been perpetrated in the name of doing good—in pursuit of some ‘noble’ goal,” the philosopher Leonard Read once observed.

Nor should it surprise us if it’s found that the Chinese government (with help from the US) was responsible. Governments have been responsible for the worst atrocities in history, usually while using collective force to advance utopia. This includes famous genocides like the Holocaust, the Holdomor, and Mao’s Great Leap Forward, but also eugenics policies that forcibly sterilized tens of thousands of Americans to create a “purer race.”

A half-century ago, F.A. Hayek warned about humanity becoming essentially drunk—“dizzy with success”—in their faith in the physical sciences, “which tempts man to try…to subject not only our natural but also our human environment to the control of a human will.” He feared humanity’s faith in its ability to control the physical world stood to make those who controlled it a “destroyer of a civilization.”

Hayek was alluding to collectivism when he made these remarks in his Nobel Prize-winning speech, but it’s a similar Frankenstein-like hubris that lurks in gain-of-function research—which NIH continued to pursue despite warnings and pauses.

If the lab-leak theory turns out to be true, don’t expect these officials to be any more forthcoming than Ben Hu.

*****

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

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Arizona News: July 21, 2023 thumbnail

Arizona News: July 21, 2023

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By The Editors

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.

Maricopa County Board Of Supervisors Pick Bolick To Replace Kaiser

Lawmakers Launch Investigation Into Alleged Censorship At ASU

ASU Honors Professors: Free Speech For Inclusive Figures Only

ASU’s Carefully Worded ‘Fact Check’ Of Our Article Leaves A Lot To Be Desired

ASU President’s Special Advisor: Affirmative Action Will Exist In Other Ways

Goldwater Institute Urges Yee To Protect ESA-Related Monies

Arizona Attorney General strikes down Superintendent Horne’s dual language ban

Horne Vows Court Challenge Of Mayes’ “Politically Charged” Dual Language Opinion

Gov. Hobbs Joins Climate Alliance Advancing Paris Agreement, Green New Deal

Jungle Primaries? Just Another Bad Idea Designed To Turn Arizona Into California

Inflation is shrinking Arizona’s infrastructure dollars

Arizona U.S. Senate seat race shaping into high-dollar slugfest

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