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Sunday, September 30, 2018
Breaking Down The Chicago Mayoral Field
We Need a Revolution in Trade Enforcement
We Need a Revolution in Trade Enforcement
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.
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Every adult in the state owes $4,000 for teacher health care costs; pensions not included
Shutterstock photo
Every
adult in Illinois is on the hook for $4,000 in retired teacher health care
costs, according to a new study showing the state has no money saved to pay for
the growing cost of its promises.
The
report released Tuesday by Bellwether Education Partners estimates that
Illinois owes $54 billion in future health care costs that have been promised
to teachers after retirement. That’s the sixth-most of any state when divvied
up by each state’s adult population. This is not included in the estimated $130
billion in unfunded teacher pension liabilities.
Thirty-five
states offer post-employment health coverage to teachers, of which Illinois is
one, according to the report.
“For
too long, employers were able to promote the benefits without recognizing their
long-term costs,” the report said. “That reckoning is coming, and there are
better and worse ways to tackle it.”
Chad
Aldeman, principal at Bellwether, said the growing bills from health care could
edge out dollars intended for the classroom.
“Less
money is going to current services like schools or teachers that are in the
classroom right now,” he said, adding that the costs are bound to grow as
retirees live longer and health care costs increase.
The
growing cost will have to be paid for by either cuts to retiree
benefits, tax hikes, or a combination of both, Aldeman said.
Health
care benefits, like pension payments, are a promise made by the state and local
school districts but, unlike pensions, the benefits aren’t protected from
diminishment by Illinois’ constitution.
States
should put qualified retirees into health care exchanges, the report said, and
rescind coverage of retirees making more than a certain amount.
“The
state is providing retiree benefits even to a retired superintendent who’s
making $150,000 or $200,000 a year in a pension and they get free healthcare on
top of that,” Aldeman said. “That may not be a good use of public
dollars.”
Sojourners' Jim Wallis hosted a forum with Democratic presidential candidates John Edwards, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2007.
Christian Socialism Is a Sinful Mix of Greed and Envy
Written by Peter Heck
I recently read a thought-provoking, though ultimately misguided, article by Daniel Jose Camacho from the faith-oriented left-wing commentary website Sojourners. In it, Camacho argued against the preoccupation many American Christians have with capitalism, suggesting that,
“Capitalism is so deeply ingrained in our Christianity that it is the default. Yet, this arrangement is neither natural nor inevitable.”
Such a perspective was anything but surprising coming from a Sojourners publication. After all, the online magazine is the modern iteration of socialist Jim Wallis’s anti-capitalist magazine “The Post American.” Wallis, who himself championed communism throughout the 1970s, changed the name to Sojourners as part of a strategy to wrap socialist ideas in Christian terminology.
Camacho has joined that movement, speaking favorably in this particular article of the many “Christian socialists” of the New Deal era, while denigrating free-market Christians. He goes so far in that effort that while talking about Education Secretary Betsy DeVos owning 10 yachts, he asks and answers:
“Can someone who owns 10 yachts enter the kingdom of God? I’m not sure.”
If Camacho is truly “not sure,” than Camacho is leaning on his own understanding rather than trusting the word of God Himself. Many times throughout Scripture God uses material prosperity as a method through which He blesses people – Abraham, Solomon, even Zacchaeus come to mind. In modern parlance, Solomon owned a heck of a lot more than 10 yachts. What prevents one from entering the kingdom of God isn’t wealth, it is making that wealth their idol, or first love. That was the problem with the Rich Young Ruler that Jesus encountered. If Betsy DeVos loves her yachts more than God, that will be her problem. If she doesn’t, yachts don’t keep you out of heaven.
That glaring confusion over a fairly elementary Biblical concept should send red flags up for any discerning Christian reading Camacho’s article. As is so often the case with Sojournerscommentaries, this article appears to originate in political dogma, with words of faith merely sprinkled on top for flavor.
If Camacho’s thesis had been that free market capitalism too often leads to greed and exploitation, I would find little to disagree with. All Christians should be cognizant of the moral considerations accompanying any economic policy. But that’s where Sojourners in general, and this piece specifically, goes utterly tone deaf.
Free market capitalism’s propensity towards sliding into greed and excess pales in comparison to the economic system Camacho is tempting his readers to entertain. The heart of socialism is greed. If feeling entitled to the fruits of someone else’s labor is not greed, after all, what is it? Yet that (along with a side of envy) is the backbone, the foundation, of socialist economic policy.
Socialism robs an individual of their creativity, their ingenuity, their resourcefulness – in many ways it robs them of their resemblance to their Creator. Unsurprisingly this has devastating effects not only on a human’s soul, but upon the community or culture that is so ordered. Remarkably Camacho even illustrates that, albeit inadvertently. He writes,
“Factor in the increasing unaffordability of basic needs like housing and health care, and ballooning student debt, and it’s not hard to see why more and more Americans are struggling to get by. According to a study released this week, 47 percent of working Californians are now struggling with poverty.”
Has Camacho paused to consider the origins of many of the very problems he laments? Though this is admittedly an oversimplification of two complex concepts, housing and healthcare costs have gone up not as a result of free markets, but the distortion of both through third parties and government regulation.
Student loan debt is almost exclusively a government-manufactured problem. By refusing to allow a market correction (the bursting of the college loan bubble) to take place, government has perpetuated the escalating costs.
And there is no state in the union more closely aligned with far-left socialist economic policy, including heavy taxation and massive social programs, than California – the very state Camacho notes is experiencing a poverty crisis.
Christianity transcends economic policy. Jesus brought a spiritual kingdom, not a political one. But for Christians we have a responsibility, it would seem, to discourage public policy that increases human suffering. That’s why it’s confusing to see Camacho and all those at Sojourners wearing the name of Christ advocating for it.
This article was originally published at PeterHeck.com
Friday, September 28, 2018
Fighting back against globalism requires an honest movement to decentralize
By Brandon Smith
Over a decade ago, critics of the liberty movement would often argue that it was not enough to simply point out all the problems plaguing our economy — we needed to also offer solutions. Of course, a common Alinsky tactic is to demand your opponents solve all the world's ailments before they can earn the right to complain about problems. "If you can't give us a solution, then stop going on and on about the problem," they would squeal.
I don't agree that our right to analyze the instabilities of our financial system is predicated on our ability to fix the issue outright. In fact, that sounds rather insane. How can we fix the problem if we don't educate the public on the problem first? However, I do think that the only people who have the drive and the knowledge to ultimately come up with a solution are those in the liberty movement. Who else is going to try? Who else is even qualified?
I have seen many ideas come and go over the years. The thing about solutions is that while you might get most people to agree on the problem, getting a majority of them to agree on a solution is a nightmare. Then, once enough people agree on a solution, you then have to find a way to motivate them to act on it. The masses often want desperately to help themselves, they just don't like it when a lot of effort or sacrifice is required.
This is why we only tend to see organized activism and a push toward self-sufficiency after a crisis has already struck. Most human beings require obvious incentive before they become motivated. They need immediate gratification. The people that can see the long game, who can see the incentives years or generations down the road, we call "leaders." The hope is that one day every individual can be educated to the point that they can self-lead; that each individual will become an innovator and problem solver in their own right.
One solution to fight back against subversive globalism that I have promoted for most of my career as an analyst for the movement is decentralization. And I still hold to this day that it is the only practical way to protect free people from the threats created by international banks and globalist institutions bent on shaping the world to their will. This solution, though, requires individual action.
Globalists desire a world system that forces everyone to participate, either through fear or necessity. This system is designed to promote dependency (slavery) while also promoting a feeling of isolation and helplessness. It is meant to erase self-reliance as a model for living, while also squashing any potential for voluntary organization. To go to war with such a system, we have to achieve the opposite goals.
Liberty activists have to lead by example, first by educating the public on the concept of the non-aggression principle — the principle that force is not an acceptable method of compelling a group of people to organize in the way you wish. Force is not incentive, it is criminal. Force is only an acceptable reaction when someone else is trying to harm or enslave you and those around you. This concept is paramount to the long-term survival of any society. It should be codified and taught to each new generation.
Next, liberty activists need to organize locally into voluntary groups based on mutual aid. Modern civilization has been directed over many decades to assume that participation in the system is mandatory and that the survival of the system is paramount over the rights or prosperity of the individual. But a system that is hostile to individual liberty does not deserve to exist. It should not be allowed to survive.
People have to walk away and build something else.
Voluntarism is the key to changing decades if not centuries of misallocated human labor and time. Imagine a world in which every person is a "free agent," and they join groups (or partnerships) based on shared goals or shared beliefs rather than being born into servitude — fuel to keep a global machine that does not care about them running. They join these groups based on their abilities, merit and how they might help a particular project progress. Then they leave the group whenever they wish or when the project is done.
In other words, voluntarism is a kind of return to a tribal system, but one in which many tribes exist temporarily based on what they plan to achieve. The incentive to better one's self would be high in a voluntary society, for you are competing against every other individual that is also improving their own skill sets and knowledge for a spot in each project or tribe.
Voluntarism is perhaps a lofty vision, but one that can be pursued in steps. One of the first steps is individual self-sufficiency and production.
Decentralization requires each person and group to become production capable. There was a time not more than a century ago when the majority of Americans learned skill sets through family or apprenticeship that gave them the ability to produce necessary goods and services. This idea has all but disappeared today. The principle of self-reliance is treated almost as a joke in popular media now. And many municipalities actually punish individual attempts at growing one's own food or collecting water. Production is discouraged through overt taxation and bureaucracy. Nevertheless, these things have to be done if we are to break from the existing system.
Learning a trade skill is something anyone can do to improve their chances at survival. Organizing into trade groups that barter their skills and goods is the next step.
Tribalism is commonly presented in the mainstream as a barbaric and outdated mode of living, which is why I highly recommend it. The more centralized civilization becomes, the less varied its ideas are, the less self-sufficient it is and the more easily controlled it is. This is the point, of course. Globalists use any means at their disposal to enforce centralization not because they think it will serve to better mankind, but because it gives them more dominance over mankind.
Tribes may have their differences or even come to conflict if they do not respect the nonaggression principle. But any war that erupts between two tribes is never going to match the horror of the centralized military industrial complex with its never-ending wars on a global scale. By the same token, tribalism prevents the possibility of a single world system that claims to "end war" while enslaving the populace through dependency and force. One ring to rule them all is not the answer. It never was.
It is my belief that the human endeavor to improve life and improve how we interact with the Earth itself must be worked toward by decentralized efforts, otherwise the chances of civilization being led down a destructive path by a small group of psychopathic people is high.
Today, most innovation is bottlenecked through control mechanisms that only benefit the elites. They promote their puppets to government and in exchange government provides them special protection. Most science revolves around their goals alone, not the betterment of humanity. Most social discourse is designed to divide people in anger and cultism rather than provide greater understanding. Geopolitically, they preach about the erasure of national borders and the unification of society, while at the same time using trickery and subversion to trigger wars all over the world. They have a monopoly on the direction of human progress, but not a monopoly on human thought... not yet.
Our job is to dismantle their monopolies by starting our own competing systems that serve our interests far better. In this way we create redundancy that shields us from economic collapse, engineered or otherwise. In fact, if we become more independent as producers and organize our own local economies, we might even welcome the collapse of the globalists system as a useless parasitic husk, rather than fear its collapse as a sign of the "Apocalypse."
Globalist efforts to co-opt decentralization movements are rampant, which tells me that the model is indeed a threat to them. The cryptocurrency scam is one such example; it was originally sold to the liberty movement as a "decentralizing" currency system that would provide anonymity in trade and an alternative that would crush central banks. Instead, we find that crypto provides the exact opposite of anonymity as a perfect tracking mechanism through the blockchain and that international bankers love blockchain tech as they invest heavily in the arena.
Another example of co-option is the propaganda surrounding the narrative of the new "multi-polar" world order. The claim that nations are moving away from the dollar-based reserve currency system as a means to "decentralize" is a lie. They are in fact moving away from the dollar, but also quietly into the arms of the IMF and its SDR basket as various countries congeal into a single global currency system. That is to say, they are getting ready to trade one centralized system for an even more centralized system.
There is no decentralization happening today, and it will not happen on a national scale ever. It must happen at the local level; from the bottom up, not the top down.
I also realize that if movements to decentralize locally become successful and the idea catches on, globalists will attempt to use violence to stop us. If this occurs, at least we will be far more equipped to respond as self-sufficient and organized producers. The violence question must be answered in a separate article from this one. Independence comes first, and we can declare it by decentralizing away from the existing and festering totalitarian model.
What's behind the destruction of Brett Kavanaugh?
of Brett Kavanaugh?
By Bob Livingston
We hear from the progressive left and the propaganda media that Ford's accusations are credible, but that she doesn't have to prove them. The burden of proof, we're told, is on the accused. Welcome to the new star chamber.
A star-chamber is a system of entrapment that provides no escape. The accused is made to testify against himself and then punished upon confession of guilt.
The term credibly accused is nonsense. It replaces the rule of law with the rule of smear. Anyone can "credibly accuse" anyone of anything at any time.
American jurisprudence hinges on the presumption of innocence. The 5thAmendment guarantees the right of due process; the 6th the right to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation and to confront your accuser(s).
Ford's legal team — a group of Democrat activists and political hacks — have been at times both crawfishing and making impossible demands on the Senate Judiciary committee before agreeing to allow her to testify, even though Ford and Democrat politicians both on and off the Judiciary Committee have stated she needs to be heard. Her legal team had not turned over to the committee documents that purport to bolster her claims late Wednesday.
The leftist politicians pushing Ford headlong into setting herself up for perjury thought Ford's unsubstantiated claims — supposed witnesses named by Ford all refute her claims or deny having knowledge of them — against Kavanaugh would cause him to back down and President Donald Trump to withdraw the nomination. When that didn't happen, they began fighting a delaying action in order to drag other "accusers" into the fray.
A second one arrived, but her claims were so specious even The New York Times wouldn't publish them. Again, none of the witness she herself named affirmed her story. Then a third one, associated with the Creepy Porn Lawyer, possible Democrat presidential candidate and currently appearing on every propaganda cable news show Michael Avenatti, appeared with claims even more outlandish than the first two.
As stated above, the term credibly accused is specious nonsense. Kavanaugh cannot possibly "credibly defend" himself because the charges against him from the first two accusers are so flimsy that not even a month or year has been established for the events; much less a day and time. The third accuser's claims that Kavanaugh and friends were running a high school drug and rape gang and she willingly attended more than 10 of them as a 19-year-old woman, is so preposterous that it's almost laughable.
This theater would be comical if not for the stakes involved.
The leftists claim to be champion of women, and that defending women from the predatory patriarchy is what the fight against Kavanaugh is about. That is sophistry. If the leftist politicians pushing this narrative against Kavanaugh cared about women they'd direct some of their outrage at Keith Ellison, Senator Robert Menendez, Bill Clinton and the dozens of congressweasels that have used the federal treasury to pay off women they've sexually harassed.
This fight is about abortion and the ability to legislate from the bench through an activist judiciary. Never mind if they have to destroy three women, Kavanaugh, his wife and children to win it.
Leftist politicians and their propaganda media enablers worship in the cult of abortion. They are willing to destroy the rule of law, common decency and as many people as necessary to defend their "right" to murder babies in the womb.
When you're so evil that preserving the murder of the most innocent is your primary goal, other souls destroyed along the way are acceptable collateral damage.
Benford urges fellow candidates to earn, not buy votes
Benford urges fellow candidates to earn, not buy votes
Campaign finance records have shown that more than 60 sitting state lawmakers have been given nearly $15 million by House Speaker Michael Madigan (D-Chicago), a fact that infuriates Alyssia Benford.
"I don’t think political donations like this should be allowed," Benford, the Republican candidate for the 98th District House seat, told the Will County Gazette. "Why do you need that much money for a state representative race? There are a lot of charities in my district that could use that money to help people in our district."
Benford's opponent, incumbent state Rep. Natalie Manley (D-Joliet), is one of the lawmakers who has received funding from Madigan.
"My opponent, Natalie Manley made the top 10 list of candidates receiving money," Benford said. "Madigan recently gave her another $150,000 to $200,000, so now she has over $700,000 in her campaign account."
Benford is frustrated by the fact that Manley has been running her campaign with such a large budget and that she has, essentially, been paid off by Madigan.
"During the last election cycle, she was out speaking ... at an event and she said, 'Mike Madigan will always be the speaker of the House and I will always vote for him,'" Benford said. "She has voted for him as speaker, each time. They are buying votes."
Benford is opposed to political donations of this type and believes them to be unfair as they are making it incredibly challenging for individuals who are not career politicians to enter the political scene.
"How can a single parent and entrepreneur such as myself run for office to represent the people in my district when someone has $700,000 in lies waiting to attack," Benford said. "I challenge Manley to donate that money to charity and run her campaign utilizing her voting record. She can’t because she does not vote based on the needs of our district."
In this election, Benford seeks to earn, not buy, the votes of her constituents and is urging other candidates to do the same.
"It is time for a change in Springfield," Benford said. "A vote for Manley is a vote for Madigan. Let’s send a strong message to Springfield, that our vote cannot be purchased; it has to be earned."
The 98th District covers portions of Bolingbrook, Crest Hill and Joliet.
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Update from Orland Mayor Pekau
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