CDC's phony gun statistics

By Joe Baker

The week's news that wasn't 

Unskewing, unrushing, unravelling, uncoloring and unenthusiasming the most disease-ridden, anti-Trump, out-of-context, tipless and waveless fakeries in the week's fake news.

CDC's phony gun statistics

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is a typical feel-good government agency in that its name implies it does something it does not do, and in fact, it does just the opposite of what its name implies.

The CDC does not control diseases. Nor does it prevent them. Nor can it, if pressed, provide any actual evidence that it has controlled or prevented a disease. What it does do is give cover for pharmaceuticals to kill on average 106,000 people per year (that's 1.06 million a decade). And it rakes in millions of dollars annually while doing so.

What the CDC does do well is lie and dissemble. So it's not surprising that we learn the CDC is creating phony statistics to be used as fodder for the anti-gun crowd — including those who have a direct impact on U.S. policy through their status as "nonpartisan experts."

The CDC reports that there is a steady rise underway in the number of people killed or injured by guns (although I'm still waiting to see a single instance of a gun getting up and doing anything to anyone). The agency's most recent study shows that between 2015 and 2016, the number of Americans injured nonfatally by a firearm jumped 37 percent — from 85,000 to more than 116,000. It was the largest single-year increase recorded in more than 15 years, according to fivethirtyeight.com.

But data collected by others — like independent public health and criminal justice agencies — show no such uptrend, and in fact show just the opposite. And even the CDC flags its own gun death data with an asterisk, indicating it should be treated as "unstable and potentially unreliable." But the asterisk gets missed or ignored by people looking for any anti-gun fodder.

As fivethirtyeight.com explains, the agency's 2016 estimate of gun injuries is more uncertain than nearly every other type of injury it tracks. Even its estimates of BB gun injuries are more reliable than its calculations for the number of Americans wounded by actual guns.

That's because the CDC uses computer modeling and estimates from data collected from the Consumer Product Safety Commission. In other words, it makes them up out of thin air, much like it does annual flu deaths. And it is skewed because the numbers come primarily from hospitals in high-density urban areas where the gun deaths per capita are grossly out of whack with the rest of the country.

From fivethirtyeight.com:

Over a dozen public health researchers reviewed The Trace and FiveThirtyEight's analysis and said that the inaccuracy of the CDC gun injury data has serious implications for the national-level understanding of gun violence. "No one should trust the CDC's nonfatal firearm injury point estimates," said David Hemenway, director of the Harvard Injury Control Research Center. But many researchers have trusted these numbers, or at least referenced them. Since 2010, at least 50 academic articles have cited the CDC's gun injury estimates. Last year, for example, the American Journal of Epidemiology published a paper that used CDC data to conclude that there was a "hidden epidemic of firearm injury." "For those of us who are doing this kind of research, it's disconcerting," said Priscillia Hunt, a researcher at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. "With the CDC, there's this general assumption that they are reliable and have good data." Hunt herself cited the estimates in the introduction of a policy paper she published last year.

And therein lies the danger of this government-sponsored fake news, which is really just anti-gun propaganda.

Yahoo's alternate reality

As the U.S. Senate rolled (or roiled) toward a vote on whether Brett Kavanaugh would be confirmed as associate justice to the U.S. Supreme Court, Yahoo tried one last time to sow seeds of doubt in the minds of wobbly Republican voters this week with a story titled, Brett Kavanaugh vote: the two scenarios that could make or break Trump's legacy.

According to Yahoo's expert analysis, if Kavanaugh is confirmed, women are going to "punish Republican candidates" in November's midterms. If Kavanaugh is not confirmed, Trump will be viewed as a failure and will have to nominate a more "moderate" candidate who "can get bipartisan support" next year, and it's for that reason the process of nominating Kavanaugh has been "rushed."

Both claims are poppycock. The only women who are going to try and "punish Republican candidates" if Kavanaugh is confirmed are those leftist, man-hating feminazis and right- and left-coast statist bedwetters who were already out to "punish" Republican candidates. Anyone paying attention to the women in flyover country will hear that they are absolutely disgusted and appalled by the Democrats' character assassination of Kavanaugh and the damage it's done to his wife and daughters.

And the trope that Kavanaugh's nomination is "rushed" is spurious nonsense. Through 2017, the average length of time to confirm a nominee from the day of his nomination was 25 days. As Bob Livingston told you last month, there weren't even confirmation hearings held for the nation's first 100-plus years. That didn't start until 1939.

But the process has grown ever longer over the years. John G. Roberts was an outlier. His confirmation took just 19 days. Ruth Bader Ginsburg's took 50. Sonia Sotomayor's took 66 days. Stephen G. Breyer's process took 74. Samuel Alito's was 82; Elena Kagan's was 87. Clarence Thomas' took 99. Kavanaugh's nomination is at 95 days, by my count. There's been no rush, and anyone who says it's rushed is lying to you.

Yahoo's second alternate reality

Apparently continuing to lose its mind over Kavanaugh, Yahoo took a video clip from an interview with Senator Lindsey Graham and made it seem as if he was disparaging Christine Blasey Ford, the Democrat operative or pawn (not sure which, just yet) who fabricated the story that Kavanaugh had tried to rape her when she was 15.

While reminding the interviewer how those in the Bill Clinton orbit treated people who Clinton actually tried to sexually assault, Graham quoted Democrat operative James Carville, the serpentheaded degenerate who said of Paula Jones, "This is what you get when you go through a trailer park with a hundred dollar bill."



After about 30 minutes of massive Twitter backlash, Yahoo deleted the tweet. The fake news organization then followed it up with another saying it did not accurately reflect the context of Graham's quote.



Yahoo's social media editor is evidently a master at understatement.

Another waitress, another (phony?) racist note

We have told you in this space about several examples in which a restaurant server waiting on a table of whites was left with no tip and a nasty note indicating that the reason no tip was left was because they hated non-whites. Each of those have turned out to be false.

Well, here's another. And while it hasn't yet proven to be false, I would bet a sack of donuts it turns out to be, if I were of the betting sort. As it is, I'll just eat the sack of donuts while I watch the story unfold.

Jasmine Brewer waits tables for Applebee's in Radcliff, Kentucky. As she told the story to WDRB.com, one fine day last week she waited on a table of four who came into the establishment. But it became clear pretty quickly that something was amiss.

"I asked him how they was doing, went through my little rundown," she said, demonstrating her ability to speak in Ebonics but not English.

"As I was talking to them, they barely said anything to me," Brewer said. "They didn't want to tell me their drinks. They didn't want to tell me their food. One person ordered for the whole table."

She kept it professional WDRB.com says, and brought the food to the group in a timely manner. But, when those customers walked out the doors, and Brewer went to look for a tip, there was no money on the table.

"Instead of a tip, I got a note saying 'we don't tip black people,'" Brewer said.

The message was "upsetting" to her, so she texted her mother to tell her about the experience. Her mom did what any mom would do in this situation; she put it on Facebook.

No doubt the radical leftists and social justice warriors (but I'm being redundant) are asking themselves why the good Jasmine would make up a story like this. Well, Wave 3 news may have the answer. She's getting hundreds of dollars — including $500 from one Father Jim Sichko – from people upset by her plight.

Something about Brewer's story doesn't pass the smell test. Particularly the part about them not wanting to tell her what they wanted to eat and drink. And racists don't call black people "black people." They use a word that rhymes with trigger; like colored. So I'm going to call this fake news.

But here's something politically incorrect that Ms. Brewer won't tell you, but it's something you can verify if you talk to people who have waited tables for any length of time and they are honest, at least in Alabama.

Servers by the dozens have told me for years that the overwhelming majority of black diners don't tip. And it doesn't matter whether their server is white or black. And servers white and black have a code for each other for when a group of blacks comes into the restaurant so they can try and avoid having to serve them. They call them Canadians.

So much for the blue wave

We have heard ad nauseum over the last year or so from the propaganda media that Democrat politicians are going to wax the floor with Republicans in the coming midterms. It's going to be such a banner year for Democrats in the November midterms that Democrats are going to control the House and possibly the Senate and Donald Trump and Kavanaugh will both be impeached, the media and Democrat politicians say.

And for a while the polls — the same ones, I add, that said without a doubt that Hillary would be president — showed a heavy Democrat enthusiasm factor indicating a midterm Republican thumping might be in the offing.

But Democrat politicians did what Democrat politicians are wont to do. They overplayed their hand. In the wake of the high-tech lynching of Kavanaugh, Republican voters are now fired up. NPR just published a poll showing the enthusiasm gap between Democrats and Republicans has disappeared. It's down to 2 points from 10 in favor of the Democrats, which is a statistical tie.

It also means Republicans hold the edge because such polls are always skewed Democrat by 5 to 10 points. It's also telling that several red state Democrats up for reelection in states Trump carried have gone underwater in recent polls.

I'd bet a sack of donuts the Republicans are going to gain Senate seats and hold their own in the House, but I've already eaten them all. 

Governments attacking free speech

The week's news that wasn't  By Jay Baker
Legislating, obfuscating, campaigning and fraternizing on the most propagandic, misreported, political and militaristic fakeries in the week's fake news.

Governments attacking free speech

Since people around the globe are ignorant blithering idiots unable to discern truth from "misinformation," they need compassionate and magnanimous governments to establish laws to protect them. And we are immensely grateful that governments are obliging them — because we know that governments never lie.

The Poynter Institute — which has somehow forgotten the basic tenets of what freedom of speech really means — has compiled a running tally of the wonderful government actions aimed at combatting "fake news." Or, as Poynter describes it:

Poynter has created a guide for existing attempts to legislate against what can broadly be referred to as online misinformation. While not every law contained here relates to misinformation specifically, they've all often been wrapped into that broader discussion. We have attempted to label different interventions as clearly as possible.

As an aside, Poynter is actively working with the European Union as an "expert" to help it craft policies to battle misinformation. In layman's terms, that means shutting down non-approved speech.

What we learn from Poynter is that several governments known far and wide for their history of respecting individual liberty and freedom of speech are generously passing laws aimed at identifying and punishing the authors of fake news. Among the countries that have shown compassion for their citizens and chosen to free them from the scourge of fake news are the free states of Egypt, Cambodia, Brazil, Indonesia and Kenya. Oh, and Russia, and Uganda, and Turkey, and Malaysia.

These governments are among those that have passed laws or enabled courts to impose fines and prison sentences on people who disseminate "fake news."

But America is backwards and there's that pesky 1^st Amendment thing. So it hasn't yet passed a law to regulate speech, though Congress is considering various sorts of legislation, unless you count laws against "hate speech." Never mind that the very notion that something can be considered "hate speech" is totalitarian nonsense.

Several "respected" senators have taken to Twitter and expressed their contempt for fake news and advocacy for some law or another to stop it. And the free state of California has passed a bill aimed at creating an "advisory group" to develop ways to "monitor the spread of misinformation on social media."

And there's really no need for a law when you have corporatism. The social media giants that exist based on contracts with the government — particularly the Deep State — just delete any "misinformation" and purveyors of such without so much as a "by your leave." And that means that the "truth" we get is only that "truth" that is government approved.

The media's fake Kavanaugh news

We could have expended our bandwidth for the week if we recounted all of the fakeries published by "legitimate" news organizations about the Brett Kavanaugh sex assault allegations in just the last couple of days. But quite frankly, we're tired of the Kavanaugh controversy, and trying to make heads and tails out of Christine Blasey Ford's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee made our head hurt. So we'll focus just on this one item that caught our attention.

The day before Ford was scheduled to testify, her hack Democrat activist lawyers released signed declarations from four people claiming that Ford had told them of being sexually assaulted. Showing that its interest is activist journalism rather than truth-telling, the MSM ran with the story claiming the declarations corroborated her story.

This tweet by Peter Alexander of NBCNews is typical of the coverage of the "bombshell" news:



But the declarations do not "corroborate Christine Blasey Ford's claims of sexual assault against Kavanaugh" at all. All they "corroborate" is that Ford told them decades after the fact that she was assaulted, and only to one of them did she mention Kavanaugh's name.

Another fake candidate runs as a Democrat

Last month we told you about New York Democrat Julia Salazar, the phony "Columbian Jew" running for New York State Senate. Now meet a fake Democrat running for U.S. Senate in Arizona.

Kyrsten Sinema, a congressweasel running against Republican Martha McSally to fill the seat of retiring Jeff Flake(y), has played fast and loose with her biography. It seems it's mostly fake news.

Sinema has repeatedly claimed she grew up homeless, living in an abandoned gas station in Florida with no running water or electricity. She told the story while running for congress in 2012, and continued to tell it until a few days ago.

"You know when I was young my stepfather was out of work for several years and we lived in an abandoned gas station with no running water and no electricity," Sinema told Fox 10. "Sometimes we were hungry and we relied on the kindness of others to help us get through."

But then some uncomfortable information came to light through the reporting of The New York Times, which began digging through court records submitted during her parents' divorce case. The records show that the parents were paying for electricity, gas and telephone for the gas station.

"We are unable to provide adequately for the children," the stepfather wrote to the court, adding that his "bills will exceed $2,000 and I will only bring in $1,500."

When asked by reporters from The Times why the parents might have been paying for electricity if there was none at the station, Sinema said, "Oh gosh, I don't have an answer for that. That's not something a little kid would hear about from her parents."

Her parents told The Times in a statement that they lacked power and water while living in the gas station, but would not address why they still paid utility bills.

As Fox News reports, Sinema also declined to directly answer whether she had exaggerated details about the conditions of her upbringing:

I've shared what I remember from my childhood. I know what I lived through.

And Christine Blasey Ford remembers being sexually assaulted by Brett Kavanaugh, but not much else. And her own witnesses refute her story — for what that's worth — but we digress.

Other media have asked her about discrepancies in her biography. In 2013 The Washington Post questioned her about her statement that she had a toilet but no running water. The Arizona Republic, in 2016, noted the owner of the gas station said the building had a spigot and wood-burning stove.

According to polls, the race between Sinema and McSally is a toss-up.

Given Arizona's propensity to elect fakers to the senate — John McCain and Flake were/are fake conservatives — I'm betting Sinema wins in a cakewalk.

One of first female infantry Marines gets busted

There have been female Marines for a number of years but it was only last year that female Marines were allowed to join the infantry.

There are many Neanderthals who think women have no business serving in combat roles. Women are far more adept at staying home barefoot and pregnant, cooking meals and cleaning house than being sent abroad to shoot at and be shot at by brown people in wars of aggression to expand Pax Americana or force democracy on a bunch of cave-dwelling goatherders. But if we were to say or write such a thing we'd be banished to a reeducation camp and forced into diversity training classes taught by a bunch of fat, homely feminazis and skinny jeans-wearing girly men. So we'd never say it, even if we were to think it privately.

What we would say publicly is that not only do experience and studies show that mixed-gender (sex) teams not perform as well as all-male teams, and that female Marines are more likely than males to be injured; there's a danger of fraternization between men and women in the same unit, and opportunity for more fodder for the #MeToo crowd. But the smart Ivy league social Marxists in government — mostly fat and homely feminazis and skinny-jeans wearing girly men — said such fears are poppycock and show backwards, Neanderthalistic thinking. Since men and women are the same — and in fact there is no such thing as "gender" (or sex, which is the proper term) except when it's convenient for government set-asides and the like — there's no chance of any hanky-panky going on.

So when we heard that Remedios Cruz, one of the three first women to join a combat unit, had been caught hany-pankying with a lower-ranked Marine in her unit, we were certain it must be fake news.

Alas, it wasn't. Cruz pleaded guilty to having a romantic relationship with another Marine after she was charged with fraternization, adultery and accessory to larceny and given a choice either pleading out and being granted a less than honorable discharge or going to court and risking the brig. Her case probably wasn't helped by the fact that she married the man she hanky-pankeyed just prior to having charges brought.

We're certain that it's male privilege that got Cruz in hot water and not her paramour-ne-husband, who by all accounts remains a Marine. 

The illness deep within the bones of the republic

By John Kass

The illness deep within the bones of the republic

John Kass

It is tempting to watch the political spectacle of Democrats destroying Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as if it were only some shameful partisan circus.

Something brutally Roman with a howling mob, blood on the sand; or something medieval, like trial by ordeal, with a mace and an axe and the might of brutes as the elements of God’s will.

Or, better yet, a drama as Spanish as the Inquisition itself.

Because what we’re seeing in the Kavanaugh circus isn’t American, where until very recently — like a few months ago — the accused was given the presumption of innocence.

All that has changed. Now the accused is forced to prove his innocence before accusers who must be believed, accusers who aren’t expected to bring witnesses, accusers who must not under any circumstance be subject to rigorous cross-examination, before judges who have already made up their minds.

What we’re witnessing is the symptom of an illness now deep within the very bones of our republic.

It threatens Republicans now, and Democrats tomorrow. It will threaten even those who don’t give two figs for politics and see all such talk as lies told by knaves to fools.

What we are seeing are founding American principles being swept — among them the presumption of innocence and the rights of the accused — to feed the appetites of power politics

That’s what Kavanaugh is dealing with, having to testify and defend himself against uncorroborated allegations of sexual predation 36 years ago, when he was in high school and in his freshman year of college.

The short-term politics of all this is quite clear, a movement led by cynics and assisted by their handmaidens in the Democratic Media Complex.

It is designed to convince suburban women voters that Republicans are hateful creatures, help Democrats pick up congressional seats in the November midterm elections and do away with President Donald Trump.

But look deeper and you’ll see something else.

The sweeping away of traditions that have been carefully nurtured from the founding of this nation, to protect individual liberty and shield us from the passions of the mob.

Without these principles, we are no longer a republic.

To prove the point, Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono insisted the other day that Kavanaugh’s accusers not only “need to be heard, they need to be believed.”

But asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if Kavanaugh should have the same presumption of innocence as other Americans, here is what Sen. Hirono, a lawyer, said: “I put his denial in the context of everything that I know about him in terms of how he approaches his cases.”

In other words, Kavanaugh’s legal decisions on unrelated matters make him guilty of sexual predation, and therefore, he is disqualified.

That is the reasoning of magistrates in the trials of Salem, that is the logic of Torquemada’s Spain, not the principles of the United States of America.

Sen. Hirono says she supports women. But I wonder about American women who are the mothers of boys, women who are the wives of husbands, women who have brothers. Doesn’t what’s happening to Kavanaugh concern them?

A few days ago, there was that story in The New Yorker, that while a freshman at Yale, Kavanaugh exposed himself at a party to a female student, Deborah Ramirez, who couldn’t remember seeing him do it.

The story offered no corroborating eyewitnesses, only hearsay. And still it was published, providing cover for political operatives to peel Kavanaugh’s skin.

Even the New York Times, the great gray liberal battleship in America’s cultural/political wars, wouldn’t touch it. The newspaper explained:

“The New York Times had interviewed several dozen people over the past week to corroborate Ms. Ramirez’s story, and could find no one with firsthand knowledge. Ms. Ramirez herself contacted former Yale classmates asking if they recalled the episode and told some of them that she could not be certain Mr. Kavanaugh was the one who exposed himself.”

No firsthand knowledge? And even the alleged victim was unsure it was Kavanaugh? Then why run it?

But it was published in The New Yorker. And it was defended by the same journalistic class that wonders, publicly, why Americans hold journalism in such low esteem.

This is what happens when tradition and principle is swept away and are subjugated to politics.

As if to mitigate its sin for avoiding the Yale story, The New York Times offers an account of Kavanaugh’s high school yearbook, and the lusty commentary from high school boys who drink beer.

Those of us who were once high school boys may dimly recall that lust was on our minds, oh, every 30 seconds or so, in those rare moments when physics or baseball didn’t intrude upon the urgent requirements of biology.

Now, I don’t know what happened 36 years ago between Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford. And I don’t know what happened at Yale in that drunken dorm room party. I refuse to condemn the women making the accusations.

Witnesses might help us understand, but as I write this, they don’t exist.

And as Sen. Hirono and her Democratic colleagues insist, witnesses are irrelevant.

And this is damning.

Somewhere in America, there must be Democrats who read John F. Kennedy’s “Profiles in Courage” when they were children, Democrats who must be sickened by what is happening and would speak out.

But they must be afraid, lest they, too, are denounced and devoured.

Theirs is a silence breaking the bones of America.

We reap what we sow.

Listen to “The Chicago Way” podcast with John Kass and Jeff Carlin — at www.wgnradio.com/category/wgn-plus/thechicagoway.

Creating the Big Choice, Better Future Campaign

Originally published at Fox News  by Newt Gingrich

Those who believe the elite left-wing “blue wave” theory for the 2018 elections should look at what happened in Texas on Tuesday.

In a special election runoff, Republican Pete Flores successfully flipped Texas State Senate District 19, which borders Mexico and had been in Democratic control for 139 years. Flores, a political newcomer competing against a seasoned former Democratic congressman, won in a district that is 73 percent Hispanic and African American – despite virtually all political analysts’ expectations. I am studying this election for a future op-ed, but I have been told by many Texas Republicans that Flores was able to win because he ran a big choice campaign.

Republicans everywhere should also study this Texas state special election and make the 2018 midterms a big choice election for all American voters. And with only 48 days left until November 6, they must act now.

Candidates, consultants, campaign managers – Republicans at every level – must break out of the small-ball, district-by-district campaign model and create a national message that defines a set of big choices that contrast the Republican positions and those of the Left. Otherwise, the Democrats are very likely to achieve the so-called blue wave the liberal media has been touting for months.

I outlined the need for this kind of campaign (and provided an in-depth look at how to implement it) in my recently released political strategy paper called The Republican Choice for 2018: Win or Lose, which I have shared with a number of Republicans around the country and have made available for Kindle on Amazon.

The paper is broken into four parts, but I’d like to focus on the first, critical concept that I think can help Republicans design and execute the kind of campaign we need to win in 2018 – and again in 2020.

Starting right now, Republicans need to develop a set of core big issues that create a clear vision for a better future for Americans – in completely personal terms, not platitudes. These issues (and the Republican position on them) must be broadly appealing to the vast majority of Americans.

In the paper, I discuss a set of issues that Republicans could include in this big choice election narrative – such as favoring work over welfare, paychecks over food stamps, safe and orderly immigration over dangerous borderless chaos, personal health versus bureaucratic health, and others – but I will expand on those in a future piece. In the meantime, Republicans should think critically – and listen closely to their constituents – to develop and communicate a robust set of big choices to voters over the next few weeks.

It’s critical that each of these big choices is popular. When we developed the Contract with America in 1994 we polled every policy position to be included. Every pledge in the Contract had 70 percent support from Americans – some had 80 percent support. Issues that didn’t have wide appeal, didn’t make it into the Contract. It was that simple.

Despite constant left-wing attacks and media bias, if Republicans put together a set of highly-supported, issues and policies, and contrast them vividly with the unpopular liberal Democratic positions, the American people will support Republicans.

However, it is not enough to attract support for our issues. We also must clearly express how the Democratic alternatives to our positions are personally bad for Americans. This will drive powerful wedges between the Democrats and the American people. As I explain in the paper:

“Big choice campaigns invariably describe a better future, a future worth voting and fighting for, in personal terms. (You will be better off. Your family will be better off. Your community will be better off.) At the same time, the emerging majority describes the threat that the other side presents to potentially make life worse, in similarly personal terms. These aren’t campaigns about abstract philosophy or ideology. These are campaigns about two different ways of life, with two different impacts, at personal levels. They work very hard at finding the right words and images and picking the right fights. Attacking Nancy Pelosi personally seems tactically clever, but tying her to outrageous and unacceptable policies is strategically far more powerful.

“Small choice campaigns look for petty, personal weaknesses. Big choice elections focus on big differences and describing magnets of a better future to attract the voter, while they simultaneously hammer home wedge issues to drive the opposition away from the voter. Too many Republican consultants and candidates have no faith in the American people. They run small choice campaigns because they think that voters can only understand small things.

“The great leaders have all had faith that the American people can understand a lot if it is framed in clear, direct language. This is the job of a big choice campaign.”

Implementing this first key step of developing and contrasting the Republicans’ better future with the Democrats’ destructive future will make it easier to communicate the rest of the big choice campaign.

Not only will developing a suite of popular, big choice positions attract the support of the American people, but it will also help Republicans grow support within the party, build a governing coalition, and strengthen their ability to find and nurture future leaders within the GOP.

In doing so, it will be easier for Republicans to speak with the American people with one voice. This will have the added benefit of allowing us to be more effective in fighting against distortions from the elite media and assaults from the Left.

If Republicans are going to win in 2018, they must not fall into the old campaign habits of personal attacks, niche issues, relying on special interests, or skirmishing district-by-district.

Furthermore, even though the Trump-Republican-led government has brought us an incredible economy, historically low unemployment, a slew of strong judicial appointments, and many other successes, we cannot take for granted that voters will be considering these things on Election Day.

If Republicans want to continue to lead – and continue making America great for all Americans – they must give the voters big choice in November. The clock is ticking.

We Need a Revolution in Trade Enforcement

Originally published at Fox News

Since he was a candidate, President Trump has said free trade must also be fair. He has consistently challenged anti-competitive and unfair practices by our trading partners while working to forge new agreements.

The most recent example of this is the announced deal with Mexico – which his critics had claimed would never happen – and the potential deal with Canada, which has been spurred and shaped by Trump’s toughness.

President Trump’s success in international trade is happening because he understands every trade partner is self-interested and, if allowed, will take actions to benefit their own population and economy. Since the United States is the largest market in the world this gives us enormous leverage in negotiating trade deals.

While the tough negotiating approach has been working, there is a key piece missing. For Trump’s trade revolution to work, there must be a revolution in trade enforcement. It doesn’t matter how fair and equitable new trade agreements are written if other countries are happy to sign them and then cheat.

So, as a part of his revolution in trade, President Trump must build a new, dramatically more effective enforcement system that constantly monitors all trade agreements and quickly acts when parties bend, break, or ignore the rules.

The current multinational, globalist system simply moves too slow to be effective. Countries that disregard the rules have years to make money and dominate markets by cheating the system before they face any consequences. Meanwhile, for those countries who are keeping their words, justice delayed is justice denied. The current, slow system only benefits the cheaters.

An important example of something this revolutionized trade enforcement system should monitor and check are unfair state subsidies.

State subsidies are devious because they unfairly eliminate financial pressure on foreign competition, which in turn allows the companies in subsidizing countries to lower prices, expand distribution, or upgrade products without concern on how to pay for it – or whether the market even wants it.

One example of this system of cheating through state subsidies is the more than $50 billion in state subsidies that have gone to airlines in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) since 2004. With state subsidies, these airlines have been able to ignore market considerations and dump excess capacity all over the world in order to push out competition and gain market share – destroying market-based U.S. aviation jobs in the process.

Earlier this year, President Trump’s administration signed historic agreements with Qatar and the UAE to create transparency and accountability frameworks to expose the full levels of state subsidies flowing to these airlines. This leadership by President Trump has led to statements and understandings by the European Union and Japan to address state subsidies in aviation.

However, the U.S. seriousness about these state subsidies is being tested. Prior to commitments to the Trump administration, the Qatari government-backed Qatar Airways cleverly invested in Meridiana, a small privately owned airline that formerly operated out of Sardinia. Before Qatar intervened, Meridiana had lost more than $50 million in both 2015 and 2016, had reduced the number of flights to just 54 per day, and had only 15 aircraft with no new orders in sight.

Enter Qatar Airways. While the investment from Qatar Airways is capped at 49 percent, it is the Qatar CEO who has made the announcements about Meridiana’s future. A future that rebrands the airline as Air Italy, relocates the airline from Sardinia’s small market to the financial and industrial center of Italy in Milan, expands the fleet with more than 50 new planes from Qatar’s existing fleet and order books, and expands service by nearly 350 percent.

Certain facts about this are incontrovertible. First, Qatar Airways, in both action and word, is in full control of Meridiana/Air Italy. Second, Qatar Airways will report losses over the last two year in excess of $1 billion, so the investment in Meridiana/Air Italy is unquestionably a state subsidy from the Qatari government. Third, Qatar Airways’ expansion of Meridiana/Air Italy flights to the U.S. is directly counter to the assurances provided by the Qatari government to the Trump administration at the beginning of the year. This final point is what the Trump administration must address.

Once again, President Trump’s intuition has proven right. Despite assurances of fairness, our international trading partners are seeking to gain an unfair advantage. This is why Trump’s trade revolution also needs a revolution in trade enforcement.

Trump cancels pay raise for government workers, citing the ‘nation’s fiscal situation’

Posted on August 30, 2018 by Personal Liberty News Desk

President Donald Trump ruined the Labor Day holiday for some 1.87 million federal civilian union workers today when he announced that their scheduled pay increases will be rescinded.

“We must maintain efforts to put our Nation on a fiscally sustainable course,” the President wrote in a letter to the House and Senate. “I view the increases that would otherwise take effect as inappropriate.”

“In light of our Nation’s fiscal situation, Federal employee pay must be performance-based, and aligned strategically toward recruiting, retaining, and rewarding high-performing Federal employees and those with critical skill sets,” the President wrote.

The move was quickly condemned by federal workers unions and leftist politicians who view the federal treasury as their own personal piggy bank. As reported by AJC.com:

“This is a deeply disappointing action and one more indication that this administration, in this economic environment, simply does not respect its own workforce,” said Tony Reardon, President of the National Treasury Employees Union.

“It is simply obscene that the same person who gave away massive amounts of money to corporations and billionaires in a tax scam now is crying that we don’t have enough money for pay raises for the Federal workforce,” said Will Fischer of the veterans group VoteVets.

“Trump sent the deficit skyrocketing to give massive tax breaks to big corporations and the wealthiest Americans, while working families got nothing,” the Democratic National Committee declared in a statement.

“Republicans gave corporations a trillion dollar tax cut and are now cutting pay raises for social workers, janitors, painters, clerical workers, and more,” said Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA). “It’s outrageous.”

But what’s missing from the conversation is that many if not most of the federal workers actually got a “pay increase” as a result of last year’s Trump tax cut. It’s an increase that many folks, ourselves included, are seeing in our pay checks each week.

But it’s not surprising that the political class — which has no concerns for plight of the millions of middle class Americans who have been suffering under their policies and have been without significant raises for years and have seen their wages drop because of inflation — prefer average Americans pay higher taxes just so government workers can get fatter paydays.

It shows you whose side they’re on.

Benford Candidate for State Rep. calls for property tax cap to quell fear, uncertainty

Benford calls for property tax cap to quell fear, uncertainty

by Carrie Bradon | Aug 23, 2018

First-time State House candidate Alyssia Benford is concerned about the impact increasing property taxes have on Illinois residents.

"As a CPA, I have experienced clients selling their home and moving to other states that have lower property taxes," Benford told the Will County Gazette. "In my area, property taxes range from $5,000 to $13,000 or more. A homeowner is paying $400 to $1,000 a month in property taxes alone.”

Illinois has the second highest property taxes in the country, a new Realtor.com website survey states. That is why Benford, who is running against Rep. Natalie Manley (D-Joliet) for the 98th District seat, is calling for tax reform, explaining that the current property tax rates harm home values and prevent people from being able to purchase homes.

Benford also said some constituents are between jobs and are fearful of losing their homes.

The failure of the government to bring effective change constituents can depend on points to a bigger issue with the state’s current leadership, she said.

"My opponent has made several statements about property taxes, depending on the audience," Benford said. "She voted over 19 times and nothing has been accomplished? That is ineffective leadership and residents of the 98th District deserve better."

Although there might not be a perfect solution to the issue, Benford said a cap is a good place to start.

"A property tax cap is a hybrid of a freeze,” she said. “A cap limits the ability to increase taxes by a more than a certain percentage without a public hearing. There are advantages and disadvantages here as well, but (it) could be a better alternative.”

The 98th District includes DuPage, Joliet, Lockport, Plainfield, Troy and Wheatland.

Democracy and the love of money

By Bob Livingston

The American public clearly does not understand the relationship between democracy and "money," or what passes for money. In the same way that fiat, paper money passes for genuine wealth and value, democracy passes for the original and best form of American government. The two — democracy and fiat paper — are intrinsically connected. Democracy and fiat money are the twin towers of public deception. Both are required to deceive Americans concerning their own affairs. Both are empty, so far as individual liberty and the common good are concerned. The common wealth of the people has been perverted into a collective "public good," or disguised socialism, which is used as the primary appeal to advance both democracy and the love of money. Democracy and fiat money both thrive on the darkest sins of man's heart: greed and guilt manipulation. Fiat money appeals to the greed of men by asserting that it is possible to be wealthy without hard work and creativity — that one can create wealth merely by accumulating paper that has been arbitrarily numbered and assigned a fictitious value. As the Bible says, such love of money is the root of all evil. Democracy supports this wickedness by permitting the populace to vote itself the largess of the public trough. The big lie is that all can become wealthy in this system of unlimited paper money and unlimited paper money redistribution programs. The widespread guilt created by these sins of greed and deception is then used to manipulate the public into supporting social welfare programs. The system regenerates itself: The public relieves its guilt for having loved money so much that it allowed the creation of lots and lots of worthless "money." The illusion is that there is widespread wealth. The illusion is that there is self-government and freedom. At the head of this deception is the so-called "democratic" government. If it is so democratic, why are the same people always at its helm? Why are the same "government professionals" always in key positions of power and influence? Their lie fusing democracy and the greedy pursuit of unlimited "money" is made possible by their various bureaucratic confiscation programs. After all, if the IRS and other taxing and fee powers appear to really want those paper dollars, they must be valuable stuff! To some degree, we are all compelled to participate. The system is too large to avoid altogether. Also, regular media whippings and constant legislation of new "laws" compel people to believe in democracy and the love of money. To the degree that individuals avoid the system, they avoid the pending, utter collapse. For now, the payoff to avoiding the system is a clear conscience and greater personal and family liberty. Most of you are already informed enough to know that the American nation was founded as a republic, not a democracy. A republic is a limited, representative, participatory government. A republic is the almost natural result of public order built upon the love of God, the individual, the family and business and many, many private associations and relations. Democracy is not necessarily a representative government, but it is an illusory participatory government. People tend to think that democracy is evolved or modern republicanism. Democracy is truly a veil for a wicked government that places all matters, including personal and private ones, into the public view, for public legislation. In a democracy, the vote becomes the single, all-important symbol of citizen participation in government. The brilliant Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, described in his Democracy in America, the danger facing all Americans should they become deceived into believing that their mere, sole vote constituted all the duties of a good citizen. He warned that when this development came about, we should become slaves to the real, elitist and plutocratic powers operating behind the veil of democracy. The problem was obvious more than 175 years ago, when Tocqueville wrote his book. Democracy flourishes where the hard-working, creative middle class perishes, or is not allowed to develop. Its days, however, are numbered. For many reasons, the individual vote today is actually meaningless. So few people vote today that the illusion is breaking down. Some folks say I am a pessimist, but here you see that I am really an optimist. The middle class is opting out of the illusory democratic system. As a result, they are being herded into supporting the paper money system, which is less and less reliant on the dollar and more and more reliant on the stock market. This too shall pass.

Edgar County Watchdogs training Citizen watchdogs in Bolingbrook IL.

Most Illinoisans pay more in property taxes to fund local government than they do in state income tax. As taxpayers, we have a right to expect that our tax dollars are spent in a legal and transparent manner. And as citizens, we have a right to honest government. Are you curious to know more about how local governments in your area are spending your money? Do you think there is waste or fraud in your local governments? Do you want to learn the tools necessary for uncovering improper spending in your communities? Join us on Sunday, September 16th for a free Citizen Watchdog Training!

DATE AND TIME

Sun, September 16, 2018

1:00 PM – 5:00 PM CDT

No cost

LOCATION

Holiday Inn & Suites Bolingbrook

205 Remington Blvd

Bolingbrook, IL 60440

Using publicly-available information and the state's Open Meetings and Freedom of Information Laws, with this training, you will learn how two gentlemen have made a huge difference in Illinois- and how you can too! Our Citizen Watchdog Training is geared towards individuals who are curious to know where there money's going. 

Citizen Watchdogs have used their skills to expose waste, fraud, abuse, and corruption in their hometowns. Over the last four years, more than 300 elected officials and bureaucrats have resigned or been removed from office because of the efforts of two individuals from rural Edgar County (along with the Indiana border 180 miles south of Chicago). These men merely seek to expose those who betray the public's confidence. In fact, their amateur sleuthing has triggered multiple local, state, and federal investigations. The training will equip you to know where to look, what to look for, and what questions to ask. And it’s free! we look forward to seeing you in Bolingbrook on Sunday, Septmber 16th!

Get the tools you need to find out how the government spends money and how you can hold lawmakers accountable!   There is no cost!

Citizen Watchdog Training    
Sunday, September 16, 2018 at 1:00 p.m.
Holiday Inn & Suites Bolingbrook
205 Remington Blvd
Bolingbrook, IL 60440