Satanic Temple Slams New Texas Fetus Burial Rule Opposed by Pro-Choice Groups

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Abortion rights activists may have found an unlikely ally in the Satanic Temple, which has vowed to oppose a new Texas state rule requiring fetal tissue be given a burial or cremation.

In two weeks, a new state rule on medical waste will take effect in Texas, meaning aborted fetal tissue must undergo “interment.”

From December 18, Texas hospitals and abortion clinics will no longer be permitted to place fetal tissue in sanitary landfills and instead will have to organize a burial of sorts. Although not an official law, the rule could be used to guide court procedures.

TEXAS RULE ON FETAL REMAINS THE SATANIC TEMPLE RELIGIOUS DEFENSE OF REPRODUCTIVE
RIGHTS
The Texas Department of Health and Human Services plans to enforce new rules that require that fetal tissue must be buried or cremated and can no longer be disposed of in sanitary landfills as they are in every other state. The Satanic Temple believes burial rites are a well-established component of religious practice. This is undisputed in the entirety of US legal history. In addition, members of The Satanic Temple believe in the inviolability of the body and, as such, these rules contradict our fundamental beliefs. The First Amendment protects our right to practice our beliefs,
and under the Religious Freedom Reform Act (RFRA), the State must present a compelling reason for why they want to enforce rules that inhibit adherence to our religious
practices. Clearly, the State of Texas has no compelling reason because these rules were
not enacted to promote health and safety, but rather to harass and burden women who terminate their pregnancies. For these reasons, members of The Satanic Temple are not required to comply with the Texas rule on fetal remains. Nevertheless, we will require legal support to protect the
rights of our members. Read more at thesatanictemple.com and religiousreproductiverights.com #thesatanictemple #religiousreproductiverights

A photo posted by The Satanic Temple (@thesatanictemple) on

The Satanic Temple, which uses Satan as a symbol to promote secularism, has now denounced the rule for enforcing a “well-established component of religious practice.”

The group has already targeted the inclusion of religious practices in education and local government by setting up an “After School Satan Club” in Oregon and hailing the Dark Lord in a prayer at an Alaskan council meeting. (Read more from “Satanic Temple Slams New Texas Fetus Burial Rule Opposed by Pro-Choice Groups” HERE)

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Could We Please Quit Pretending It’s About Marriage Equality?

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Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of Education is opposed to marriage equality. Representative Tom Price, Trump’s nominee for Secretary of HHS, is also opposed to marriage equality. Three other Trump Cabinet selections are against marriage equality, according to the strongly pro-gay Human Rights Campaign. Vice-President-elect Mike Pence has been working against it for years.

Brian Soucek, an acting professor of law at UC Davis, views all this with alarm. He wants to ward off “the threat to marriage equality in California” by repealing Proposition 8 — in case a future U.S. Supreme Court repeals its recent pro-gay marriage ruling.

I hate to tell him, but whether or not Proposition 8 is repealed, there’s going to be marriage inequality either way. There’s marriage inequality even now, under Obergefell v. Hodges. The case was always billed as a battle for marriage equality, but that was never what it was about.

It’s time we quit pretending. It isn’t just Donald Trump’s Cabinet that disbelieves in marriage equality. It isn’t just Jimmy Seibert, controversial pastor to HGTV’s Chip and Joanna Gaines. It’s Brian Soucek, too. It’s the Human Rights Campaign, along with virtually every other gay activist. It’s all of us.

No one believes in marriage equality.

No one, that is, except members of the hyper-radical fringe who want to do away with marriage altogether. They’re the only ones who really believe in marriage equality. Otherwise “marriage equality” has never been anything but a slogan.

Rhetoric in Action

It’s a good one, as slogans go; I’ll grant it that. Borrowed straight from America’s most magnificent noble ideals, it’s got the all right stuff to pack a a powerful rhetorical punch. Why shouldn’t marriage equality be self-evidently a human right, just as much as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness! Who could possibly oppose such a positive vision?

But it gets better. The phrase also trades in the guilt we’ve felt over falling short of our country’s founding ideals. No sensitive human being would be caught dead being against it — not after all the ethical and social failures we’ve been guilty of for so long. We’re not making those mistakes again!

There’s a problem, though. For all its rhetorical usefulness, “marriage equality” can’t be a self-evident human right if it’s self-evidently self-contradictory and impossible — which is exactly what it is.

What “Marriage Equality” Would Mean, if Anyone Really Meant It

Consider what would happen if we took equality seriously as a primary principle for deciding what should count as marriage. It would mean calling an end to all of our exclusionary biases, like our prejudice against father-daughter marriages, multiple-partner marriages, sibling marriages, indeed, any relationship that anyone wants to label “marriage.” If you want marriage equality, that’s the only way you’ll really get it.

Of course LGBT activists are always quuick to tell us “No! That’s not what we meant!” They’re not at all interested in setting the stage for polygamy or incestuous marriages, they say; and I believe them. I just have trouble believing the part where they tell me at the same time they’re for marriage equality, because clearly they believe in marriage inequality, too, beyond their chosen line of marriage demarcation.

We All Draw Our Lines of Equality and Inequality

We all have lines of marriage demarcation. Marriage conservatives place our boundary in the space between opposite-sex relationships and same-sex relationships. Couples on one side of that line may be candidates for marriage; couples on the other side cannot. Couples on one side all deserve fully equal access to marriage (certain other reasonable conditions being in place, of course). In other words, we believe in marriage equality, but only up to a certain line; beyond that there is inequality, as we freely admit.

Marriage revisionists draw a line that looks almost exactly like our line, other than including same-sex couples. They, like we, are quick to exclude underage persons, incestuous relationships, polygamy and so on. As one pro-gay commentator wrote on the day the Supreme Court ruled in favor of gay marriage, “Justice Kennedy today wrote the opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, finding state bans on same-sex marriage unconstitutional, and securing full marriage equality for gays and lesbians across America.” Marriage equality extends to gays and lesbians, now, but no further. In other words, LGBT activists believe in marriage equality, but only up to a certain line; beyond that there is inequality, as they freely admit.

Now I’m sure you’ve caught it already, but it bears repeating: we all believe in marriage equality up to a certain line, and inequality beyond that line. We all agree on marriage equality, and we all believe in marriage inequality. Our only disagreement is over the location of the line.

Some Lines are More Principled Than Others

So how do we all decide where to place our lines of marriage exclusion? Marriage conservatives can make a strong, principled case for the location of our line. It has to do with history, with family and community stability, with the social and physical health of individuals (especially women), and much more.

Those who stand for gay marriage can make no such principled case. Virtually all the arguments they make for gay marriage work just as well for any sort of couple, threesome, foursome, etc. that wants to call their relationship “marriage.” So why don’t these others get “marriage equality,” too? LGBT activists have been quick to say, “We don’t intend that for a moment! We’ve only asked to have marriage equality for gays and lesbians.” But why? From here it looks perfectly arbitrary.

Or maybe it’s not so arbitrary. Their line is in exactly the right place to gain the social approval they’ve needed for their cause. Activist leaders have long cautioned LGBT people against asking for too much too soon, knowing that they would surely suffer a backlash if they pushed too hard. This marriage-equality line of theirs looks suspiciously as if it’s landed where it is because it suits gay activists’ political purposes.

Enough Pretending Already

At any rate it should be clear enough: we all agree on marriage equality up to a certain line, and inequality beyond it. Our only disagreement is over the placement of the line. So let’s call this “marriage equality” slogan what it is: it’s a sham. Marriage equality isn’t real. The slogan exists only to arouse patriotism and guilt, and to make the conservative view on marriage appear morally inferior. Given that we all believe in marriage equality up to a certain boundary, however, it is no moral fault to prefer a principled boundary over an arbitrary one.

But LGBT activists will undoubtedly continue the sham. They don’t dare quit it. They can’t afford to give it up; it’s too much of a rhetorical powerhouse for them. They have to keep on pretending it’s about marriage equality. But we don’t have to keep letting them get away with the pretense. (For more from the author of “Could We Please Quit Pretending It’s About Marriage Equality?” please click HERE)

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What Donald Trump Could Really Do for America’s Working Class

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Since as a winning candidate Donald Trump made a powerful symbol of the impending 1,000 lost jobs at Carrier Air Conditioning, it was inevitable that he would intervene in that business. It would have been politically foolish not to — and as the many savvy professionals whom he crushed in 2016 now should realize, Trump is nobody’s fool. So we learned this week that he has indeed used the many levers at an incoming president’s disposal to strong-arm/sweet-talk the company into saving those jobs for Americans, and denying them to Mexicans.

My first book was on the merits of the free market and free trade, but when I watched the footage of Carrier workers learning last year that their jobs were on the chopping block, I got teary-eyed myself and found my heart saying (despite my head) that Trump should indeed violate economic logic and engage in big government meddling, to “do something” for those workers — as Ronald Reagan once intervened against his principles to use a tariff to “save” Harley-Davidson from Japanese competitors.

Protectionism: Patriotic But Self-Defeating

There’s a strong rational case against protectionism — especially of the kind Trump engaged in here. The most benign form of protectionism, as free market economist Wilhelm Röpke explained, is a simple tariff. A small or medium tariff indeed distorts the market and imposes some inefficiency, but not necessarily more than any other form of tax. If imposed with advance notice and kept at predictable levels, businessmen and investors can simply figure it in to the cost of doing business — as they currently do the cost of environmental regulations.

What Trump did with Carrier is an order of magnitude worse: He singled out a particular company, and got the federal government down into the nuts and bolts of how it does business, threatening its corporate parent with lost federal contracts unless it made a specific decision — namely, avoid opening a factory in Mexico, and keep one open in the U.S. That is more than “leveling the playing field” against supposedly unfair foreign competition. It is picking winners and losers, like a umpire who has been bribed.

If the president gets in the business of directly trying to decide how every major manufacturing company in America makes such decisions, he is abandoning the free market altogether. Like Franklin Roosevelt, he is making himself effectively a board member of each of those companies. That starts a vicious cycle. Soon companies catch on that by threatening to move their factories abroad, they can provoke a presidential reaction — that pretty soon, the feds will move in and start offering tax breaks and other incentives, maybe extra federal contracts if they stay on American soil. Think of the squalid hog-slopping that happens when cities bid for the Olympics, or the bidding wars provoked by movie producers hungry for subsidies, and sports franchises who want new stadiums at taxpayer expense.

Making America Like the Post Office or Amtrak

All of this political meddling is profoundly wasteful, as the rotting hulks of Olympic complexes (and massive resulting deficits) testify all around the world. Such crony capitalism tends to benefit not productive and innovative companies, but those which are skilled at lobbying and greasing politicians’ palms. The more any business relies on federal help, the closer it becomes not to Southwest Airlines or Fedex, but to Amtrak and the Post Office. Is that really the way to make our companies profitable and high-paying? One of the most compelling reasons why the British voted for Brexit was to escape the micromanagement of the economy imposed by the wannabe federal government of the European Union.

Add up all those objections to protectionism, and then factor in how it raises the prices of ordinary goods for ordinary consumers, and you see why conservatives generally oppose it.

And yet, we need to look out for hard-pressed ordinary workers — the kind of people whose businesses don’t get bailed out by the U.S. federal government, as enormous Wall Street banks were after their reckless run of irresponsible investments in shaky mortgages, which crashed in 2008. Steve Bannon is right to observe that this bailout — conducted almost at gunpoint, under the threat of a “Great Depression” — was a corrupt transfer of wealth from the little guy to the “1 percenters,” which violated every tenet of free market economics and simple justice.

It is healthy that we feel some solidarity with blue collar workers simply because they’re fellow Americans — whose ancestors fought in our wars, and who still disproportionately enlist in our country’s armed services. (Long gone are the days when young men from elite schools routinely signed up for at least four years — though some Southerners still do.) The impulse to choose to “buy American” stems from the virtue of patriotism.

A Real Pro-Worker Agenda

We can be patriotic but smart. We can look out for U.S. workers without turning them into postal workers. (My dad was a mailman; as he told it, when two windows are open in a post office with a long line waiting, that means five workers sit idle, flipping through copies of Playboy they’ve stolen from the mail.) Here is a list of measures which a President Trump could take instead of Putin-style palm-greasing and browbeating to interfere with companies’ rational economic decisions. These steps would be populist in the positive sense, since they benefit the people.

Secure our country’s borders and workplaces by building a wall and making E-Verify mandatory for every business with more than five workers. Americans shouldn’t have to compete with unregulated, exploited laborers who can be threatened with deportation by their employers.

Drastically cut low-skill legal immigration, and the resettlement of refugees from distant countries. Some jobs are simply doomed to migrate overseas. But there’s no reason to fill the entry-level and low-skill jobs that can’t be outsourced with recent arrivals from other countries. Fixing immigration by itself would reduce most of the pressure on less-skilled American workers’ wages.

Cut our corporate tax rates, which are currently among the highest in the world. Stop granting tax breaks to individual companies (like Carrier) and grant them to … every company doing business in the U.S.

Greatly increase the per-child tax deduction for families, who are struggling under the regressive Social Security tax.

Promote school choice not by creating vouchers, which would give federal bureaucrats control over even private, Christian schools. Instead, create large and refundable tax credits which parents could use for tuition at any school — including home schools.

In one “grand bargain” piece of legislation, dismantle the labyrinth of regulations imposed after 2008 on banks to prevent them from failing, and use anti-trust laws to break up enormous banks that can threaten the whole economy with their reckless investments. Any bank that’s “too big to fail” is too big to exist — and the proliferation of such banks offers a perfect excuse for massive government meddling in that sector of the economy.

Reverse Richard Nixon’s massive blunder, and as George Gilder recommends, recouple U.S. currency to the price of gold. America’s post-war boom took place on a modified gold standard, and 1970s stagflation resulted when we abandoned it. Some link to an external commodity in limited supply in the real world would stop the Federal Reserve from massively inflating the money supply every time an incumbent president wanted to win an election — and sparking a mindless “boom” of wasteful investments in pointless dotcom startups and dodgy real estate boondoggles.

Each of these ideas is Constitutional, populist and economically sound. A Trump administration could stick up for blue-collar workers and middle-class families without descending intp cronyism and corporatism. It just takes imagination and political courage. (For more from the author of “What Donald Trump Could Really Do for America’s Working Class” please click HERE)

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Obama Admin Reserves Hero’s Sendoff for Castro. Thatcher? Not So Much

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President Obama will send a higher-level delegation to the funeral of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro’s funeral than he did when Margaret Thatcher was laid to rest.

Ben Rhodes, the White House deputy national security advisor and one of the president’s closest aides, will attend the Castro funeral, the Obama administration announced Tuesday. He will be joined by Jeffrey DeLaurentis, the U.S. ambassador to Cuba.

Castro, imposed his tyrannical rule on the people of Cuba for half a century. Known for his firing squads, labor camps, and suppression of basic human rights, he was also fiercely anti-American, allying with the Soviet Union in hopes that one day the United States would crumble.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Tuesday: “The president has decided not to send a presidential delegation to attend the memorial service.” However, with the sending of Rhodes, whether or not the president sent an “official” delegation becomes more or less an issue of semantics.

The United States restored official diplomatic relations with the Cuban regime in July 2015. Rhodes, who has been on Obama’s team since 2007, was an integral member of the administration’s push to normalize relations with Havana. The New York Times previously reported on Rhodes’ efforts to advance negotiations with Cuba, claiming he “spent more than a year sneaking off to secret negotiations in Canada and finally at the Vatican.”

Rhodes has utilized the enormous influence of his position to pursue the Obama foreign policy agenda, leaving a trail of deception in his path.

The White House deputy national security advisor has bragged that he purposely misled journalists regarding the U.S. negotiations with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Rhodes boasted about his success in creating an “echo chamber” to move public opinion toward accepting a nuclear deal with the Ayatollah’s regime.

When baroness Thatcher passed away in 2013, the president did not send a SINGLE high-profile member of his administration to the funeral. Two Reagan-era secretaries of state, James Baker and George Schultz, attended on behalf of the U.S., along with the ambassador to the United Kingdom.

As the first female prime minister of the U.K., Margaret Thatcher helped end the Cold War.

“All over Europe the peace marchers demonstrated to prevent Western missiles from being installed for their defense,” President Ronald Reagan wrote in a 1989 piece for National Review, “but they were silent about the Soviet missiles targeted against them! Again, in the face of these demonstrations, Margaret (Thatcher) never wavered.”

The Soviet press nicknamed her “the Iron Lady,” a tag she embraced in showcasing her resolve against tyranny.

Lady Thatcher, a voice for liberty and freedom worldwide, and a key ally in bringing about the end of the Soviet Union, was given the cold shoulder by President Obama. Fidel Castro, the ruthless tyrant, known for mass executions and the subjugation of basic human rights, gets Ben Rhodes, an irreplaceable part of the White House foreign policy team. (For more from the author of “Obama Admin Reserves Hero’s Sendoff for Castro. Thatcher? Not So Much” please click HERE)

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7 Top RINO Moments of Betrayal This Week

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One of the excuses for Republicans failing to promote a conservative agenda is that “outside organizations” have unrealistic expectations of what they can accomplish when they are out of power.

That excuse comes to an end in January when Donald Trump is sworn into office with a Republican-controlled House and Senate. However, based on what we’re seeing from the lame-duck session, it is clear that the dearth of conservatism is not due to a lack of power but a lack of will. The alacrity of Republicans to promote mediocre or liberal priorities in a lame-duck session with Obama as president instead of passing a budget CR and getting out of town — so that we can do better things next year — demonstrates that they fundamentally don’t share our values.

To that end, I present a week in review in the form of the top seven RINO moments of betrayal. (Warning: John McCain, R-Ariz. (F, 32%) and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. (F, 30%) are the stars of the show.)

1. Sold out to the transgender lobby

GOP leaders negotiated a conference report for the final version of the FY 2017 defense bill (NDAA). The transgender lobby pushed hard to remove a provision protecting defense contractors from Obama’s mandate forcing them to comply with his transgender policies and views on gay marriage or risk losing contracts. John McCain, as the lead Republican negotiator, agreed to take out this provision (the Russell Amendment).

Let’s get this straight: Republicans are passing an NDAA in a lame duck, which is already several months into the fiscal year, instead of waiting until early next year when we have a Republican president who could sign an NDAA with better provisions, protecting religious liberty. Remember, this is an authorization bill — not an appropriations bill — and can wait until February. Then again, the sexual identity movement tells Republicans to jump and they ask, “How high?”

Unfortunately, with leadership presenting members with a false choice of passing a defense bill with bad provisions instead of waiting, conservatives felt compelled to vote for it and so as not to appear they oppose the military. This is what leadership does to conservatives on a daily basis.

2. Jammed through 1,000-page health care spending bill

Who doesn’t want to cure cancer? Under the guise of discovering the cure to cancer, GOP leadership passed an “unpaid-for” $6.3 billion health care spending bill that threw even more money at the HHS, which already spends about $1 trillion a year on health care programs. Once again, conservative members were placed in a tough position between the false choice of either appearing to be against a cure for cancer and some good reforms or creating a lot of wasteful big government programs.

3. Funded Syrian al Qaeda in defense bill

In addition to caving on the transgender provision in the NDAA, Republicans, at the behest of John McCain, extended funding for the training and equipping of Syrian rebels through 2018! Yes, they are extending Obama’s legacy of funding Syrian Islamist groups — who call for the beheading of the troops who are training them — into Trump’s presidency. Again, why not wait until Trump becomes president and disband this harmful program? Because McCain, as you will see in a moment, loves himself some Islamist rebels.

4. Proposed an amendment to protect al Qaeda and Saudi Arabia

Obama is not the only one who mixes up enemies and allies. Just how strong is the support of John McCain and Lindsey Graham for the Syrian Islamist rebels? They proposed an amendment this week to strip out a provision from the Justice Against Sponsors of Terror Act (JASTA), which allows families of terror victims to bring civil claims against governments that fund those terrorist groups responsible.

As Patrick Poole reports, the intent behind their amendment, which comes on the heels of an intense lobbying campaign from Saudi Arabia, is “to immunize countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar that have funded Sunni terrorist groups in Syria — the Syrian ‘rebel’ effort that both McCain and Graham have publicly supported since 2011.” Meanwhile, as they promote Saudi Arabia and Syrian al Qaeda, McCain and Graham are publicly criticizing domestic policies of Egyptian President al-Sisi in his efforts to clamp down on the Muslim Brotherhood. Who needs Democrats when we have two of the most senior Republicans on foreign policy promoting the same dyslexic Muslim Brotherhood agenda?

5. Thom Tillis threw a tantrum over criminal justice reform

Imagine being a Republican now as we look forward to the opportunity of controlling all branches of government. There is an endless list of conservative priorities to push on social, fiscal, and national security issues, right? Well, for Sen. Thom Tillis (R-K Street), his hill to die on his promoting jail break.

This week, he threatened to retire from the Senate in 2020 unless Republicans pass criminal justice “reform.” So as a member of the Judiciary Committee, with the opportunity to focus on immigration and election fraud, which are helping create a permanent Democrat majority, he instead focuses on Soros’ number one priority: help grow the Democrat voter base?! This is a man whose priorities are already dyslexic, as he sided with the transgender lobby over his own state party. His threat to retire should actually come as welcome news to conservatives. Unfortunately, his threat is likely as real as the threat from Hollywood actors to leave the country when Trump becomes president.

6. Lindsey Graham just can’t divorce himself from amnesty

Lindsey Graham has long peddled the open borders electoral myth: Republicans cannot win elections without embracing amnesty. This election completely repudiated that premise and proved conclusively that just the opposite is true. So what is Graham’s first priority for 2017? He plans to introduce another Dream Act amnesty designed to preserve Obama’s executive amnesty! At a time when more and more young, illegal immigrants are flooding our southern border, induced precisely by these very promises of amnesty, Lindsey wants to pour gasoline on the fire.

Meanwhile, there are new reports that illegal immigrants are more successful than ever at evading apprehension at the border and that unaccompanied minors are draining our federal health care funds. Thanks Lindsey! You are just what the doctor ordered.

7. Orrin Hatch might violate his pledge and run again

Facing a competitive primary in 2012, old-bull establishment hack Orrin Hatch, R-Utah (F, 33%) pledged that this would be his final — and most conservative — term in the Senate. Well, it has been his most liberal, and he is now indicating he will break his pledge and run for another term in 2018. If re-elected, he will be 90 years-old at the end of his term. Then again, the growing fumes of more power will always get in the way of doing the right thing, turning the House of Lords into a retirement home.

With friends like these … (For more from the author of “7 Top RINO Moments of Betrayal This Week” please click HERE)

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Trump and the Media: Star-Crossed Lovers

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Remember back in those first Republican presidential debates when Donald Trump would seemingly mess with Jeb Bush and Rand Paul just because he thought it was fun?

Right from the start, he was marking his territory like some kind of feral dog. He smelled weakness, and off he went — straight to the White House.

Now that he’s there, don’t expect this old dog to suddenly learn new tricks. Why would he? The old tricks are working. This is a man who invented an alter ego named John Barron just so he could mess with reporters’ minds. Which I know is a pretty low bar, considering how messed up many of those minds already are.

Journalism has been trolling the American public for decades now with its fake news and elitist contempt, but now it has met its match. Trump has seen its malarkey and raised it. And like double-down addicts who always think the next hand of poker will set them free, progressive journalism is almost certainly about to bankrupt itself of whatever shred of integrity it had left.

In fact, Trump is counting on it.

Amidst making cabinet selections that ultimately haven’t looked too different from what Jeb himself would have selected, Trump yelled “squirrel” in the form of sharing his opinion on flag burning earlier this week.

Off to the races we went.

Ironically, the chattering class took a break from demanding Draconian limits be placed on Christian speech and expression to offer an ode to the First Amendment. Which took Trump right where he wanted to go. Otherwise known as his happy place, where he holds court on Twitter with barely trained seals.

The great prophet Snoop Dog had it right: Hate the game, not the player. Trump is just the dealer here, and you’re not a dealer if there’s no one to deal to. It’s not his fault the mainstream media have all the self-control of a meth addict.

For all the stress Trump put his messaging team through during the campaign, this is an amusement park for him now that he has won and in governing mode. He gets to call all the shots with the biggest bully pulpit on the planet. Just wind up that jack-in-the-box that is the artist formerly known as journalism, and watch it annoyingly pop again and again and again.

He will watch amused as various members of the press write column after dutiful column about their vital watchdog role, during what they believe to be the most dangerous presidency of our lifetime. Meanwhile, Trump will smile a yuge smile, because he knows he has them right where he wants them. They simply have no idea what is happening to them.

This goes way beyond flag burning and midnight Tweet binges. For example, Trump has announced his own multi-billion-dollar version of the New Deal as part of his strategy to Make America Great Again. With this week’s crony capitalist deal with Carrier being the opening salvo on that front.

So while he’s got the discredited media birthing cows on television defending flag-burning-America-haters, Trump was in Indiana celebrating 1,000 jobs he “saved” before he’s even sworn in. Exactly the side-by-side “America First” comparison Team Trump is looking for. Because Team Trump understands as leery as people may be about a Trump presidency, they hate the media even more.

Even though they bring out the worst in the other, Trump and the media need each other like we need oxygen to breathe. They’re like the stereotypical binging rock star and his junkie groupie, who can’t stay away from each other. But when they hook up, it always ends up with both of them naked in a seedy hotel with full ash trays, dirty needles, and half-drank liquor bottles everywhere. He always wakes up before her and sneaks out, leaving her to clean up the mess.

And given the fact Trump is about to be inaugurated while the media implode, it’s pretty obvious who’s who in this analogy. (For more from the author of “Trump and the Media: Star-Crossed Lovers” please click HERE)

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Is the Chinese Economy Hitting Stagnation?

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For roughly three decades, the Chinese economy registered a staggering annual growth rate in the vicinity of 10 percent. Over the past four years, however, it has clearly slowed from that breakneck speed.

There has also been increased skepticism about the reliability of the old growth figures, and even whether today’s slower pace of expansion can be maintained. These signs and others suggest that China may be entering a period of stagnation.

Is this true?

While China’s economy recorded its slowest growth in 25 years in 2015, its official number was still a respectable 6.9 percent.

Many who follow China are increasingly relying on microeconomic data to assess the direction of China’s economy. This includes electricity consumption, passenger traffic, service sector spending, freight volume, and credit growth.

Here, the data is mixed. For example, in 2015, the number of international passengers traveling to and from China reached 42 million—a new record. The service economy has also been growing briskly, at an 8-9 percent pace in recent years.

On the other hand, the volume of rail freight traffic has declined for two consecutive years and electricity consumption has risen only 0.5 percent during the past year.

These microeconomic factors point to an economy growing in the 4-5 percent range.

Most importantly, much of the recent growth has been manufactured by enormous credit growth. Despite the authorities’ goal of wanting to trim total debt, total social credit growth is advancing close to the pace it was during the 2008-2009 global financial crisis.

Much of the rise in debt has been at the corporate level. According to the Bank for International Settlements, Chinese companies have accumulated $18 trillion in debt, equivalent to approximately 170 percent of gross domestic product.

The loans have come from the banking sector, which are now very vulnerable in the event of heavy defaults. State-owned companies account for over 55 percent of that debt.

Moreover, Chinese are issuing far more short-term debts. In the third quarter of 2016, 82 percent of Chinese corporate bonds had maturities of less than three years, compared with just 36 percent in the same quarter of 2010.

China’s two steadfast pillars of growth, exports and domestic investment, clearly show cracks in their veneers. China’s exports for October slumped 7.3 percent from the previous earlier, despite the yuan’s depreciation during the past year.

This is reflected in the stock of foreign exchange reserves, which peaked over a year ago at $4 trillion but have now fallen to $3.1 trillion.

Imports have also been falling—clear evidence that domestic demand has slowed more than the authorities or headline numbers acknowledge. Despite stringent capital controls, capital flight has clearly accelerated as affluent Chinese have lost confidence in the domestic economy.

Fixed asset investment is still running at 45 percent of GDP, leading to significant excess capacity in industries ranging from steel to solar panels.

Earlier objectives to lay off 6 million workers in state-owned enterprises early in President Xi Jinping’s term have not materialized, and state-owned banks continue directing credit to prop them up.

So, is the Chinese economy entering a period of stagnation?

Because the credit spigots cannot gush indefinitely and much of the mounting debt will likely go bad, it appears reasonably likely. And the window to solve these problems is quickly closing. (For more from the author of “Is the Chinese Economy Hitting Stagnation?” please click HERE)

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The Trump Administration Should Crack Down on Silly Rules That Carry Criminal Penalties

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President-elect Donald Trump’s “Contract with the American Voter” pledges that “for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated.”

This should be celebrated by the majority of Americans who think the federal government does too much.

At the outset of this regulatory unwinding, one potential priority stands out above the others. The Trump administration should review the 300,000 or more federal regulations that carry criminal penalties with the goal of amending them to carry only noncriminal sanctions—or otherwise, repeal them altogether.

Over a century ago, the Supreme Court decided that Congress may set a criminal penalty “for violations of regulations to be made by an executive officer.” (United States v. Grimaud (1911)). Since then, writes former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese III, the “Congress has delegated to a host of federal agencies the power to define by regulation the elements of a broad range of different criminal laws.”

Today, these regulations number over 300,000. They are published in the bowels of the federal register—the place where few people outside of law firms and major corporations look to find laws—and are often drafted in ambiguous and often hyper-technical language that can’t be understood.

One might assume that if a regulation is serious enough for violators to be subject to criminal prosecution, it would be designed to prohibit conduct that is seriously harmful and morally condemnable. But this is often not the case.

For example, no one worries when they leave their house at night that a dog might bark at a squirrel. Most people don’t even pretend that they could prevent all dogs from barking. Yet it is a federal crime to allow a pet to make a noise that scares wildlife within a national park.

Nobody fears a local ice cream store might put a few too many drops of wine into a wine sorbet for sale. But that is also a federal crime punishable by up to one year in jail and fines of up to $1,000.

Consider John Sturgeon’s story as told by Heritage Foundation scholar Paul Larkin:

For more than 15 years, John Sturgeon used a hovercraft to reach moose-hunting grounds in Alaska without any incident or objection. Then, one day in 2007, two National Park Service rangers told Sturgeon that he was on federal property and hovercraft were illegal.

What followed this was almost a decade of costly litigation that concerned “federal criminal regulations no one knows (riding a hovercraft is prohibited) in places where no one lives (Alaskan backcountry).”

With little to no input from or accountability to voters, bureaucrats have run amok with the power to create new crimes.

One account on the Twitter social media platform titled “A Crime a Day” features plenty more federal criminal regulations that deserve scrutiny from any administration that is intent on reducing the size, scope, and power of the administrative state. These include:

Making it a crime to sell mixed nuts if the nuts pictured on the label aren’t in decreasing weight order (21 USC §333 & 21 CFR §164.110(f)).

Making it a federal crime to let small cigars leave the cigar factory unless they’re labeled “small” or “little” (26 USC §5762 & 27 CFR §41.73).

Making it a crime for amateur radio operators to sell amateur radio equipment, and using amateur radio too often (47 USC §502 & 47 CFR §97.113).

Making it a federal crime for the operator of a wharf to let his longshoremen use common drinking cups (33 USC §941(f) & 29 CFR §1918.95(b)(3)).

As these provisions convey, there are key differences between regulations and criminal statutes that must not be overlooked.

John Malcolm, director of The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, has previously written:

Criminal laws are meant to enforce a commonly accepted moral code backed by the full force and authority of the government. Regulations, on the other hand, are meant to establish rules of the road in a variety of areas designed to curb excesses and to address consequences in a complex, rapidly evolving, highly industrialized society, with penalties attached for violations of those rules.

Allowing bureaucrats to enforce policy agendas with criminal penalties, and thus to create crimes that neither Congress nor the public likely ever imagined or intended, can have serious consequences. Malcolm continues:

While people often debate whether our society is overregulated, regardless of one’s views on that subject, it is important to recognize that there is a significant difference between regulations that carry civil or administrative penalties for violations and regulations that carry criminal penalties for violations. Individuals caught up in the latter may find themselves deprived of their liberty and stripped of their right to vote, to sit on a jury, and to possess a firearm, among other penalties that simply do not apply when someone violates a regulation that carries only civil or administrative penalties.

Experience shows that swift and certain civil sanctions are enough for agencies to deter and punish misconduct. In fact, even these are sometimes too severe.

Consider the example of Andy Johnson, a Wyoming welder. The Environmental Protection Agency fined him $16 million—$37,500 a day—for constructing a stock pond on his private 8-acre farm. Johnson described these penalties as “very threatening.”

Heritage scholars James Gattuso and Diane Katz report that the Obama administration “is responsible for an unparalleled expansion of the regulatory state, with the imposition of 229 major regulations since 2009 at a cost of $108 billion annually.”

Many regulations from previous administrations can and should be reviewed by a new administration seeking meaningful deregulation.

Yet “many of the worst effects” of overregulation, write Gattuso and Katz, such as “the loss of freedom and opportunity,” are greatest where violating an arcane regulation can be met with jail time, criminal fines, and all of the consequences that come with criminal prosecution and conviction.

So long as the Trump administration is looking for regulations to axe, officials in the Justice Department, federal agencies, and Congress should work together to strike as many regulatory crimes as possible. (For more from the author of “The Trump Administration Should Crack Down on Silly Rules That Carry Criminal Penalties” please click HERE)

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Obama Administration Sides With Protesters, Halting Construction of Dakota Access Pipeline

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The Department of the Army handed protesters of the Dakota Access pipeline a victory Sunday when it announced the project would be re-routed. The decision came on the eve of the government’s Monday deadline for protesters to evacuate their encampment.

For the past several months, members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe have waged a campaign against the pipeline, drawing the support of environmentalists and liberal entertainers. They were upset that the pipeline would cross under Lake Oahe in North Dakota. Now, the company installing the 1,172-mile pipeline will have to find another route or appeal to the incoming Trump administration in 2017.

“Although we have had continuing discussion and exchanges of new information with the Standing Rock Sioux and Dakota Access, it’s clear that there’s more work to do,” Jo-Ellen Darcy, the Army’s assistant secretary for civil works, said in the statement Sunday. “The best way to complete that work responsibly and expeditiously is to explore alternate routes for the pipeline crossing.”

It’s unclear what protesters will do Monday, when they face the deadline to leave. Even before Sunday’s decision, North Dakota’s congressman warned that the fight over the pipeline would likely continue.

“The idea that [the pipeline protest] is about the environment is bogus,” Rep. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., said last week in an interview with Daily Signal editor in chief Rob Bluey.

The pipeline is designed to transport oil from the Bakken oil fields in North Dakota to southern Illinois.

Prior to Sunday’s announcement, Energy Transfer Partners, the company in charge of the project, had estimated it would be fully operational by the end of this year. It is already over 90 percent complete, but environmentalists and citizens of the nearby Standing Rock Sioux Reservation successful halted its construction.

On April 1, tribal citizens founded the “Sacred Stone Camp” near the construction site to protest the pipeline. The group is concerned that it will be constructed close enough to the tribe’s water source, the Missouri River, to cause spillage.

However, according to Time magazine, the pipeline does not pass through tribal land. Since Sacred Stone’s founding, the site has been subject to ongoing protests to halt the pipeline’s construction.

State officials and the Army Corps of Engineers have issued an evacuation notice to protesters, but Cramer said it is unlikely they will comply.

“They have … issued an evacuation notice for the land that the camp is on, the illegal camp, and so as of next Monday [Dec. 5], anyone staying there will be trespassing,” Cramer said.

When asked if he was confident that the protesters would leave by the deadline, the congressman said:

I’m not, because the tribe and others have committed to staying there. I will tell you that the 2 feet of snow or so that they’ve got in the last couple of days probably is a greater distraction than an evacuation notice from the [U.S. Army] Corps of Engineers, but winter can be a very sobering time in North Dakota on the prairie.

“What started out as a prayerful, peaceful protest of course has turned into a very violent and aggressive riot in many cases,” the congressman said in his interview with The Daily Signal. “The blending of agitators and out-of-state people with a different agenda than just protection of water for the tribe has created a lot of chaos,” he said.

In the interview, Cramer also rejected the idea that protesters were seeking to defend the environment against the pipeline’s construction.

“This oil is being produced today. It’s being moved now. It’s just not being moved by this efficient, safe means of transportation,” Cramer said. “So the idea that some of this is about the environment is bogus. This oil is going to be produced. So I just think that many of the arguments against it are ironic at best and hypocritical most likely.”

When asked about how he believed the management of federal lands would change under the incoming Trump administration, Cramer expressed optimism that President-elect Donald Trump would handle things differently.

“We own … over $50 trillion … worth of oil and gas. [Trump is] a businessman; he knows what $50 trillion could do for our country,” Cramer said, adding:

Mr. Trump is also an environmentalist. The idea of just exploiting federal lands is something he doesn’t take lightly either, but he’s also smart enough to know that modern technology and appropriate safeguards can be put in place to do it in a safe and reasonable manner while at the same time exploiting it for the benefit of our economy and job creation and, certainly, national security.

(For more from the author of “Obama Administration Sides With Protesters, Halting Construction of Dakota Access Pipeline” please click HERE)

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Veteran Dies With Maggots Crawling in Wound, Four Employees at VA Hospital Immediately Resign

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Four employees at the Talihina Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs center have resigned after a patient was found with maggots in his wound shortly before he died.

Talihina director Myles Deering confirmed the maggots didn’t enter the wound after the patient died on Oct. 3, but rather were present while the patient was still alive . . .

eering also serves as secretary of the Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs, which is separate from the federal Department of Veterans Affairs.

The 73-year-old veteran, Owen Reese Peterson, initially came to the medical center with an infection, but then ended up with sepsis, to which he later succumbed . . .

The Oklahoma VA has since reported the maggot incident to the Oklahoma State Department of Health and has sent over a report to the district attorney, which means charges may be forthcoming. (Read more from “Veteran Dies With Maggots Crawling in Wound, Four Employees at VA Hospital Immediately Resign” HERE)

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