Will Higher Ed Boom or Bust Under a Trump Administration?

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What does the future of higher education look like? While there has been much talk about how the Trump administration will impact K-12 schools, the picture for colleges and universities looks murkier. As a candidate, Trump was comparatively silent on higher education. Now that he has been elected, we have a slightly better idea of what approach he might take.

This has led to some commentators flying into a panic, with claims that Trump will destroy the market for higher education by failing to continue the policies of the Obama administration. While it remains to be seen what Trump’s approach will actually be once he takes office, however, there are reasons to believe that education could improve significantly over the next few years. That will certainly be the case should the president and his education secretary abandon or reserve Obama’s indefensible policies.

Let’s look at student loans first. Obama was obsessed with the idea that everyone should go to college, even if they couldn’t afford it or were not well-adapted to a liberal arts education. In an effort to push more people towards the college path, Obama offered government subsidies for student loans, and allowed students to refinance loans as well. Of course, when you lower the price of something, you get more of it, so it’s no surprise that student debt ballooned under Obama to $1.46 trillion.

Maybe saddling the next generation with mountains of debt could be defensible if it is used to increase career prospects and future wages. However, it turns out that when everyone goes to college, the value of that education — at least as far as the workplace is concerned — drops. This is not only due to the increased number of degrees, but the quality of them as well. When thousands of students who would otherwise not have gone to college suddenly show up looking for diplomas, the rate of failure will naturally increase. Colleges don’t like to flunk massive amounts of students since it looks bad, and invites accusation of elitism and mistreatment of minorities. Universities, therefore, have an incentive to let poor performance slide, and allow student to graduate who would not have made the cut a few years ago. Employers recognize this, and adjust their hiring expectations accordingly.

This is known as degree inflation. A high school degree once meant something. Now it is taken for granted. The same thing is happening with college degrees. While you used to be able to take a diploma to an employer to prove that you knew more than your competitors, that piece of paper now means less than ever, and certainly won’t guarantee you a job, much less a good one. This, in turn, is forcing more and more people into master’s and doctoral programs in an effort to stand out from the pack, which means more time out of the workforce and, you guessed it, more debt.

With the flood of new debt comes the increased probability of defaults, and that prospect is starting to spook private insurers, some of whom have announced that they will stop offering student loans, fearing another bubble not unlike the housing crisis of 2008. Destroying the private lending market means students are increasingly dependent on the government, where the lack of a profit motive further increases the risk of irresponsible lending.

There’s also the possibility that universities, benefitting from a new glut of government money, will simply raise their prices to keep student enrollment at a more manageable level and increase profits. In this way, student loan subsidies accomplish the exact opposite of their stated purpose, making education more expensive, not less.

Interfering in the student loan markets has further reaching effects than just increasing the cost and decreasing the value of a college degree. Funneling young people who might have pursued technical or vocations educations, or simply entered the workforce into liberal arts colleges distorts the labor market. The president doesn’t know how many people need STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) degrees — no one does — but by intentionally redirecting student choices, he pretends as if he does. Ordinarily, the market would sort students out by rewarding higher valued degrees, thus attracting people to those programs. By artificially lowering the cost of certain types of education, however, we run the risk of creating huge surpluses of unemployable students.

So that’s why Obama’s policies have been terrible for education, but what evidence do we have that Trump will be better? To begin with, Trump has been a vocal critic of the federal Department of Education, promising to scale back the agency’s funding in a significant way. Since the department has been the major agency responsible for meddling in student loans, this alone could be good news for education. Trump’s pick for secretary of education, although untested, also bodes well given her past support for school choice and a limited government role in education.

Trump also wants to require students to pay off their loans more rapidly, raising the current rate from 10 percent of the student’s income to 12.5 percent. This should reduce the accumulation of debt and force students to more carefully consider whether they want to take out a loan for a college education. Other positive steps would be to require university to share the risk of default with the government, and to reduce the role of government loans in favor of private lenders.

Perhaps the most promising sign for the Trump administration’s education policy is that he simply doesn’t seem that interested. During the campaign, Trump took a relatively laissez-faire approach to K-12 education, and barely mentioned higher education at all. In contrast to Obama’s constant meddling in the market, a president who just leaves colleges alone could be a welcome improvement.

It’s not all good news, however. Trump has also indicated a willingness to forgive student loans after 15 years, continuing the expectation that students can run up unlimited amounts of debt without consequence. Similarly, he has criticized the government for making profits off of current student loans, which indicates that he would lower interest rates, further distorting labor markets, undercutting private lenders, and worsening budget deficits at the same time.

The bottom line is that, as in the case of so many of Trump’s proposals, we really have no idea what he will do until he does it. It is safe to say, however, that he could hardly do worse than his predecessor. Not without some serious effort. (For more from the author of “Will Higher Ed Boom or Bust Under a Trump Administration?” please click HERE)

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Newt Gingrich Explains Why the Media Can’t Comprehend Trump

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President-elect Donald Trump’s successful candidacy is the result of an unequivocal disconnect between elite media and average Americans, says former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Speaking Tuesday at The Heritage Foundation at the first of a six-part series on Trumpism, Gingrich explained how the media’s disdain for the American people ultimately led to Trump’s victory in November.

“Because the media had such contempt for the average American, they simply could not see what was happening,” Gingrich said.

Following his Heritage speech, Gingrich spoke to The Daily Signal about the divide that exists between the American people and the news media.

“There’s a huge gap between the world as reported by the news media and the world as it really exists,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich pointed to Hollywood’s display of hatred toward Trump at the Golden Globes as an example of the gap between Americans and Hollywood elites.

“Trump is anti-political correctness and that’s the heart of their self-delusion,” he said. “They think they’re wonderful humanitarians and they think they care about the whole planet. They don’t care about you, but they care about the whole planet. They cling together like a large collection of gerbils who all reinforce each other and the loudest gerbil the other night was Meryl Streep.”

According to Gingrich, Trump disrupts the left’s core identity of safe spaces, political correctness, and their vision of the appropriate behavior.

“It just was inconceivable to members of the establishment that someone this randomly noisy, running a campaign that was so radically different, articulating issues that were clearly politically taboo and at times engaging in behavior and language that was unthinkable to the establishment definition of appropriate leadership, that such a person could become president of the United States until it became a fact,” he said.

Gingrich said the biggest disconnect came from the media’s failure to cover the issues that resonated most with Americans, while instead scrutinizing the way in which Trump delivered his message.

“Because Trump’s substance was so out of the mainstream, it was defined by the establishment media as lacking substance,” Gingrich said. “The attacks at him were about his style not the substance. Voters were responding to the substance, while reporters and opponents were responding to how he said what he said.”

“The media kept saying this guy is noisy, he uses inappropriate language, he’s not clear and the average person would go yeah, but I get what he’s talking about,” he said.

Gingrich will return to Heritage on Thursday for part two of the Trumpism series. The speech takes place at 11 p.m. EST. (For more from the author of “Newt Gingrich Explains Why the Media Can’t Comprehend Trump” please click HERE)

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United States Included in Annual Christian Persecution Report

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For the first time ever, the United States was included in the International Christian Concern’s annual “Hall of Shame Report.” In the 2016 edition, released last week, the U.S. appeared in the “New and Noteworthy” category.

“The persecution in these countries is not anywhere near the same level of persecution as those in the rest of the list,” the report explains, “but events in these countries indicate declining religious freedom and are cause for alarm.”

International Christian Concern (ICC) is a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that advocates for, raises awareness of and assists persecuted Christians around the world.

The report’s introduction explains that previous editions simply listed the top ten worst countries for Christians’ religious freedom. The 2016 edition splits featured nations into three categories: “Worst of the Worst,” “Core Countries,” and “New and Noteworthy.”

The “Worst of the Worst” category includes North Korea, Iraq, Syria, and Nigeria. “Core Countries” include Saudi Arabia, China, Egypt, Pakistan and India.

Russia and Mexico were also “New and Noteworthy.”

‘Alarming’ Decline in American Religious Freedom

On page 11 of the 16-page report, ICC details why the U.S. earned a spot in the “New and Noteworthy” category.

“Christians in the US are facing constant attacks in the media, where they are portrayed as bigoted, racist, sexist and close-minded,” the report states. It referenced as an example the fact that “numerous high profile media outlets” blamed last year’s nightclub shooting in Orlando on Christian attitudes toward the LGBT community, even though the shooter, Omar Mateen, declared his allegiance to ISIS.

The report also mentioned people like Eric Walsh, Joe Kennedy and Aaron and Melissa Klein, Christians who have been fired or faced penalties in the workplace because of their religious beliefs.

“Christians and all religious people are being marginalized through the law,” the report says, citing an annual study by First Liberty Institute. That report showed that attacks on religious people in the U.S. doubled between 2012 and 2015.

According to the ICC’s report, “the rise of these cases stems partly from a broad cultural shift towards secularism.” 23 percent of Americans now identify themselves as non-religious — compared with just 7 percent in 2007. “Anti-Christian entities have been able to leverage the growing secularization of society and culture to their advantage, utilizing the courts as a preferred venue to gradually marginalize and silence Christians.”

“Decades of accumulated poor judicial decisions and precedents have twisted the First Amendment,” the report notes,

so that the courts, in defiance of the Founders, are pushing religion out of the public square, and into the small space of private expression. In essence, the courts are deciding that you only have full religious freedom and expression in the church and your home. In the public domain, your religious views and thoughts must be restrained and controlled.

“While there is no comparison between the life of a Christian in the US with persecuted believers overseas,” the report concludes, “ICC sees these worrying trends as an alarming indication of a decline in religious liberty in the United States.”

‘Windows of Opportunity’

Kelly Shackelford, President and CEO of First Liberty Institute, previously told The Stream that 2016 saw “an increase in attacks on religious liberty.”

In an interview at the end of December, Shackelford expressed hope in the incoming presidential administration, saying that the future holds “huge windows of opportunity.” “There should be a big change in the hundreds of judges appointed being more favorable to religious freedom and the Constitution,” he said. (For more from the author of “United States Included in Annual Christian Persecution Report” please click HERE)

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Clock Boy Hoaxster’s Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed, Punitive Sanctions Sought Against Islamists for Frivolous Suit

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Following a nearly three-hour hearing held yesterday, newly appointed District Court Judge Maricela Moore dismissed a defamation lawsuit filed by Mohamed Mohamed on his own behalf and on behalf of his 15-year old son, Ahmed Mohamed.

Ahmed is better known as “Clock Boy” for bringing a hoax clock bomb to his Irving, Texas middle school in September 2015 and causing a bomb scare that led to his arrest and suspension from school.

The motion to dismiss was filed by lawyers from the American Freedom Law Center (“AFLC”) and local counsel Pete Rowe on behalf of the Center for Security Policy (“CSP”) and Jim Hanson, two of the defendants in the defamation case, which also named as defendants the local Fox affiliate, Glenn Beck, and Beck’s production company.

Mohamed had sued Hanson and CSP for statements Hanson had made on Beck’s program about the connection between the Clock Boy hoax bomb affair, the attendant media frenzy created in large part by his father Mohamed, civilization jihad, and the Counsel on American-Islamic Relations (“CAIR”), the Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas front group in the United States that promotes civilization jihad.

During the hearing, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel David Yerushalmi explained to Judge Moore that the purpose of the lawfare-driven lawsuit was to intimidate into silence those who might comment publicly on the connection between jihad, terrorism, sharia, and Islam. As such, Yerushalmi argued,

“This case is a classic Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation or ‘SLAPP’ case and should be dismissed.”

During the lengthy hearing, Judge Moore pressed Mohamed’s lawyer, Fort Worth attorney Susan Hutchison, to provide any facts that would suggest that Hanson and the other defendants had said anything false or defamatory about Mohamed or his son during the television broadcasts. After spending a painfully embarrassing 15 minutes flipping through reams of paper, Mohamed’s lawyer was unable to provide any such evidence.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Moore took the matter under advisement but informed the parties that she would rule by the end of the day. Today, the Court published Judge Moore’s ruling dismissing the lawsuit against Hanson and CSP with prejudice.

Upon leaving the courtroom, Yerushalmi explained:

“This lawsuit filed by Clock Boy’s father is yet another example of Islamist lawfare, which is a component of the Muslim Brotherhood’s civilization jihad.”

Yerushalmi further explained that the purpose of such lawsuits, formally labelled Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (“SLAPP”), is to intimidate into silence those who might comment publicly on the connection between jihad, terrorism, sharia, and Islam.

Yerushalmi added:

“The Islamists employ the progressive mainstream media to label any public criticism of a sharia-centric, jihad-driven Islam as ‘Islamophobic,’ and they add fear and financial ruin to the equation by utilizing the legal system to file SLAPP actions,”

Now that the lawsuit has been dismissed, AFLC will petition the court for its legal fees and will seek sanctions against both the plaintiff and his attorney.

Robert Muise, AFLC’s other co-founder and senior counsel, made clear:

“AFLC was formed in large measure to take on Islamists like CAIR who use and abuse the legal system with their cynical form of lawfare to undermine our constitutional liberties—notably free speech. We have confronted these lawsuits across the country in federal and state courts and have defeated CAIR and its minions at every turn. When appropriate, we have won sanctions. This lawsuit will be no different.”

(For more from the author of “Clock Boy Hoaxster’s Defamation Lawsuit Dismissed, Punitive Sanctions Sought Against Islamists for Frivolous Suit” please click HERE)

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Rand Paul Proves That Repealing Obamacare and Balancing the Budget Work Together Just Fine

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Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. (A, 92%) has been stealing the Senate’s thunder of late, coming out in opposition to the budget proposal that is supposed to lay the groundwork for a quick repeal of Obamacare.

So what’s up with Rand? Is he just showboating, placing perfection before finally achieving a long-sought conservative goal?
Or is Sen. Paul crazy like a fox by pointing out that the rush to repeal Obamacare need not require an abandonment of basic fiscal restraint?

The line coming from the GOP leadership in Congress is that the budget resolution that sets the framework for repealing Obamacare has to move quickly. There’s no time for monkeying around with current spending levels in this budget, they say, because it would cause unneeded distractions and controversies over what spending to cut and where. The battle to address the federal government’s massive spending and unsustainable deficit trajectory will happen later this spring, in the budget for fiscal year 2018.

(n.b., Remember that the budget Congress is working with is actually from last year, since they never completed the appropriations process for fiscal year 2017. This gives them the chance to pass a budget resolution for the rest of the fiscal year, through October 2017, and then start over on schedule with a second budget for FY 2018 this spring.)

But what Sen. Paul points out is that maintaining the current spending trajectory, even in a budget plan that sets up repealing Obamacare, means Republicans voted for a framework that increases the national debt by more than $9 trillion over the next 10 years. All while simultaneously advancing an Obamacare repeal plan that neither fully repeals the law right away nor proposes its replacement.

Agree or disagree with Paul’s approach, he’s got some real points here. And then he delivers the coup de grace to the leadership’s arguments by wrangling a vote on a substitute budget that actually balances.

Sen. Paul’s alternative proposal would have balanced the budget by 2024 while still setting the stage for Obamacare’s repeal. Most importantly, it didn’t lay out a specific blueprint for how the budget cuts would be realized to achieve that goal, instead setting target numbers for the individual committees in Congress to decide what to cut and how.

In other words, he did what leadership insisted it couldn’t do because there was no time. And yet only 13 Republicans joined Sen. Paul in his amendment to accomplish both Obamacare repeal and budget sanity.

The Republican deal-with-the-debt-later tactic would be more understandable if there were any reasonable standard of trust that conservatives could deal with. But after years under Obama — of Republicans promising that they would fight for balanced budgets “later” — the trust that later will ever come has been eroded.

And with Sen. Paul proving how easy a basic balanced budget proposal is procedurally, there’s simply no excuse to let there be any separation between balanced budgets and Obamacare repeal. (For more from the author of “Rand Paul Proves That Repealing Obamacare and Balancing the Budget Work Together Just Fine” please click HERE)

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Named and Shamed: Tom Cotton Calls out Cory Booker’s Disgraceful Sessions Chicanery

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Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark. (C, 76%) penned an impassioned Facebook post Tuesday afternoon, calling out Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. (F, 14%) for testifying against Donald Trump’s attorney general pick, Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. (C, 78%).

Sen. Cotton referred to the unprecedented event of a sitting senator testifying against another sitting senator nominated for a Cabinet position a “disgraceful breach of custom.”

Cotton expressed his belief that Booker’s “shameful” decision to cast aspersions on a fellow senator (whom, just last year, he was “honored to have partnered with”) is part of a ploy to be elected president in 2020:

“Senator Booker is better than that, and he knows better.” (For more from the author of “Named and Shamed: Tom Cotton Calls out Cory Booker’s Disgraceful Sessions Chicanery” please click HERE)

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Netanyahu Is Sounding the Alarm on Obama’s Anti-Israel Terrorist Collusion

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While most politically-minded Americans were keeping up with the confirmation hearings Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was busy lambasting the Obama administration for colluding with terrorists to pass an “anti-Israel resolution” in the United Nations.

Netanyahu corrected the suggestion some have made that the U.N. Security Council’s decision, which ruled that Israel is illegally “occupying” its own land, follows the policies of previous United States administrations.

Netanyahu’s announcement came after Israeli news outlets reported Tuesday that the United States embassy could remain in Tel Aviv during Donald Trump’s presidency, breaking from the president-elect’s pledge to relocate to Jerusalem.

Other reports, however, stated that the Trump administration will move ahead with the relocation, despite liberals’ concerns that the decision would only lead to more violence in the Middle East. If Trump remains true to his campaign promise, it will send a clear message to Israel that America’s terrible foreign relations track record under Obama has come to an end. If he doesn’t, Bibi will surely take notice. (For more from the author of “Netanyahu Is Sounding the Alarm on Obama’s Anti-Israel Terrorist Collusion” please click HERE)

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4 Ways Obama’s Final Speech Was a Load of Crap

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Tonight, in Chicago — the nation’s murder capital, Barack Obama boasted of his self-styled achievements as president, and gave a preview of his future as the nation’s first activist former president. The setting provided a bitter irony for Obama’s self-praising. Chicago is both where Obama honed his activist chops, and is one of the places most negatively affected by his policies. A perfect allegory for a failed presidency.

In the final year of the Obama presidency, under the guidance of his former chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel, Chicago’s murder rate has spiked. This is directly the result of president Obama’s war on cops. Rather than put themselves in danger through aggressive policing, Obama’s friends in the Black Lives Matter movement have made their neighborhoods more dangerous, with police just staying out of certain neighborhoods.

Chicago is Obama’s legacy. Tonight he tried to put a shine on his legacy. But the facts tell a different story.

Obamacare

Obama once again touted success with Obamacare. He crowed about millions more now insured. That may be true, but at what cost? He even, with no hesitation, said that health costs are growing at their “lowest rate in 50 years.” As CR’s Daniel Horowitz recently explained Obamacare is more expensive than if nothing had been done … especially when it comes to Medicaid.

The cost of covering an individual in the subpar Medicaid program was $3,247 per individual in 2011 before Obamacare was enacted. In 2015, according to data from the Department of Health and Human Services, the cost of enrolling an individual in Medicaid doubled to $6,366 per individual. And that is only for the second year of implementation. The cycle of regulation, public funding, overutilization, and lack of ability to peg the cost to the service has created a circuitous death spiral of unaffordable costs and unsustainable subsidies.

But it’s not just that. Millions of middle class Americans now have coverage they can’t afford to use. Before the election Bloomberg highlighted the problem:

Harris is one of many people with Obamacare plans that feature high out-of-pocket costs that can put health services out of reach. That’s because the insurance coverage Harris and others like her have purchased is designed not to kick in until patients have spent thousands of dollars.

She’s not alone. While the Affordable Care Act has pushed the uninsured rate in the U.S. near a record low, a Commonwealth Fund study this year found that about four in 10 adults in ACA plans aren’t confident they could afford care if they got sick.

Obamacare has also been a drag on the overall economic outlook for millions of Americans. The full-time employer mandate has meant more people are working part-time and in need of multiple jobs. The CEO of Carl’s Jr., a Trump supporter, said in January of 2015 that ‘Obamacare has caused millions of full-time jobs to become part time.” A statement that even Politifact had to rank as “half true” — a moniker they use when the facts buttress an argument but the editors of Politifact don’t like the outcome.

Oh and about that lowest health cost claim, CNNMoney reported in September of 2016 that healthcare costs rose the most in 32 years. Speaking of Politifact, they gave a similar claim by Hillary Clinton during the campaign a rating of FALSE.

National Security

Obama told the nation that we are safer because of his presidency. He touted that no foreign terrorist organization has attacked American soil. Of course, he is parsing words. As the Daily Wire wrote in December of 2016, many of the jihadi attacks in America have been inspired by jihadi organizations or the jihadis were trained by those organizations.

The list compiled by the Daily Wire reports on “the major, verifiable radical Islamic attacks over the last eight years.” The Daily Wire further explains that there have been other attacks in which jihad is suspected but not verified. The thirteen attacks highlighted include the Little Rock military recruiting station attack, the Fort Hood attack, the Boston Marathon bombing and subsequent firefight, a beheading in Moore Oklahoma, a Queens hatchet attack, the execution-style murders of two cops in Brooklyn, the Garland draw Mohammed attack, the Chattanooga recruiting station attack, the San Bernardino Christmas party attack, the Orlando night club attack, the St. Cloud mall attack, the New York/New Jersey bomber, and the Columbus Ohio State University attack.

“Climate Change”

Obama also took credit for his climate change agenda. Something he has always believed poses a greater threat to world peace than radical Islamic terrorism. Jack Welch, the former CEO of GE, explained on CNBC why Obama’s focus on climate change has hurt the nation as a whole.

Jack Welch, former chairman and CEO of General Electric, said Thursday the Obama administration’s heavy focus on combating climate change is “radical behavior” that’s holding back the economy.

A longtime GOP supporter, Welch told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” the priority on preventing climate change spills over into “all kinds of policies throughout the different agencies.”

The result, he said: “You get an economy that won’t move. You get ozone regs that are wacky.”

“You [also] get a reduced military,” he added — saying the U.S. needs to rebuild its national defenses to combat the threat from the so-called Islamic State terrorist group. “You can’t be sitting here with the real threat of a caliphate and ISIL … and talking about climate change.”

The Obama focus on ‘climate change’ has led to a weaker, less prosperous, and less safe America. Hardly an accomplishment to crow about. Not to mention that now some scientists think we are headed into a new ice age.

Jobs

Obama also once again tried to paint the nation’s employment picture as rosy. He boasted about how he “unleash[ed] the longest stretch of job creation in our history.” While it may be factually correct, it belies the type of job growth and the stagnant rate of growth.

Because of Obamacare, there have been a disproportionate number of part-time jobs created. The labor force participation rate is still anemically low.

CR’s John Gray has blown a hole in Obama’s jobs record. Back in 2015 he laid out the case, which hasn’t changed much.

Obama Touts This. Currently at 5 percent, the unemployment rate is at the lowest level since Obama became president. In addition, the president has “created” about 8.1 million net new jobs since 2009 – a little less than the 8.7 million that were lost during financial crisis in 2008 and 2009.

But Not This. Those rosy unemployment numbers fail to factor in millions of people only marginally attached to the workforce, or those who would like to work, but have quit looking for employment out of frustration at the lack of opportunities. When those workers are factored in, the real unemployment rate, otherwise known as the underemployment rate is now 9.9 percent – nearly twice the rate of the “official” metric.

More importantly, a growing share of the population is no longer participating in the workforce altogether. The labor force participation rate has dropped to 62.4 percent, or nearly 94 million American not in the labor force; labor force participation has not been this low since 1977. Those are just a few of the areas that Obama tried to take “credit” for improving. He then went on to talk about areas he would be judging President-elect Trump on, signaling that he would not step aside quietly to let his successor govern, as is the precedent with past presidents.

Tonight’s speech was a powerful reminder of how much better the nation will be when the ink in Obama’s pen runs dry, and his government cell phone contract is dropped. Then all he’ll have is a soapbox, where he can utter “just words.” (For more from the author of “Named and Shamed: Tom Cotton Calls out Cory Booker’s Disgraceful Sessions Chicanery” please click HERE)

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George Soros Is “Renting” Christian “Mascots” to Stop Jeff Sessions’ Nomination

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Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), a longtime student and teacher of both Bible and Constitution, will meet this week in confirmation hearings with the Senate Judiciary Committee, seeking approval as U.S. Attorney General. Like most Americans, including his fellow evangelicals, Sessions knows that lawlessness, open borders, crime and drugs destroy lives and weaken our nation.

George Soros will be at the hearings too. Not in person, of course, but in the form of evangelical and Catholic “mascots” who accept his funding and share in his agenda. Soros, an atheist billionaire, has also funded Ready for Hillary PAC, as well as activists for open borders, amnesty, Islamic “refugee” migrations to the West and many other culture-wrecking efforts in Europe and America.

Soros Knows how to “Rent-An-Evangelical”

The Soros network’s New America Foundation aptly refers to its sponsorship of religious mascots as “Rent-An-Evangelical.” Soros began funding Rev. Jim Wallis’s leftist journal Sojourners over a decade ago, to teach Biblical catchphrases and “the faith narrative” to previously secular Democrats, in the hope of peeling off Christian values voters.

In 2011, Wallis famously denied being on Soros’s payroll — until he was caught with the money. Richard Cizik, former policy head of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), admitted it. Wallis and Cizik are busy teaching a new generation to use selective Bible quotes and buzzwords to push a post-American, globalist agenda. Socialists have long beguiled Christian citizens with “faith” optics and words ornamenting their projects.

Their technique, tempting not only to liberals, is to cherry-pick Bible verses while ignoring the whole counsel of Scripture. The Soros-Left then organizes its network to swarm an event or person, like Senator Sessions. Their large, subsidized media then dutifully parrots their divisive message. Think: Saul Alinsky for the Digital Age.

Expect the usual suspects chosen from Soros’s tame Christian groups to appear at or comment on the hearings:

Sojourners, Wallis’s journal. Its recent diatribes include: “Resistance is Patriotic — and Christian,” “NAACP President and Colleagues Stage Sit-In at Sen. Jeff Sessions Office, and this pro-Islamist critique of Christians in government.

Faith in Public Life (FPL), a putatively Catholic organization which, as Wikileaks revealed, was paid by Soros to try to influence Pope Francis’ visit to the U.S., and spin it as a win for pro-choice Democrats. FPL’s leader, John Gehring, has chimed in against Sessions here and here. See Rev. Robert Sirico’s worthy critique of “Soros’s Catholic Useful Idiots” here.

People Improving Communities through Organizing (PICO), which also took Soros money to spin Pope Francis’ visit. PICO’s contribution to the Sessions debate was published here.

Members of the Evangelical Immigration Table (EIT), a public relations campaign, launched by the secular National Immigration Forum (NIF) of Soros, Ford, Carnegie and other foundations.

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, one of the organizations which a Podesta email cited as part of a “revolution” Democrats hoped to support inside the Catholic church. This organization claimed during the election that “Trump-Pence is the Most Anti-Catholic Ticket in Modern History.”

The Bible is not Globalist or Open Borders

Thankfully Americans are waking up to the Progressive machine, fueled by Soros and friends. In 2016, thousands of Christians signed a “Call to Repentance and Renewal” to ministers advancing progressive chaos in our cities and nation. A short “must see” video followed, which documents Soros’s Formula.

Jeff Sessions is a faithful public servant who deserves our support against these heavily subsidized radicals. As a prosecutor in Alabama, Jeff Sessions worked to desegregate schools. He prosecuted and bankrupted the KKK. But leftists distort his record to pretend that he is somehow tainted by “racism.”

Nor are Sessions’ views on immigration in any way extreme or unbiblical, As Sessions wrote:

It is not mainstream, but extreme, to continue surging immigration beyond any historical precedent and to do so at a time when almost 1 in 4 Americans age 25 to 54 does not have a job. What we need now is immigration moderation: slowing the pace of new arrivals so that wages can rise, welfare rolls can shrink and the forces of assimilation can knit us all more closely together.

Immigration laws are a necessary part of a just society. As we read the whole Bible, we’re taught to love ourselves, our families, our neighbors, our cities, as well as the stranger (ger in Hebrew) who comes lawfully as a blessing. What we see in the Bible is not open borders, but wise welcome.

Let us welcome Senator Sessions to the Trump administration. (For more from the author of “George Soros Is “Renting” Christian “Mascots” to Stop Jeff Sessions’ Nomination” please click HERE)

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Israeli Soldiers: Hand of God Protected Them Through Pillar of Cloud During Battle With ISIS

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Israeli soldiers captured on video a pillar of cloud that strangely hovered over the boundary between Syria and Israel, protecting the soldiers from ISIS during a battle.

The Israeli soldiers videotaped the phenomenon that occurred during a battle with ISIS in the Golan Heights. The men called the pillar of cloud the “hand of Hashem,” or the hand of God, which protected them.

According to Israel News Online, the cloud was comprised of dust, cloud and rain and “did NOT cross the border fence into Israel. It sat like a barrier between ISIS and Israel.” Israelis have called the storm “divine intervention,” reported Israel Today.

“Huge miracle! Notice how God stopped this enormous storm exactly on the border,” Yifat Romano posted on Israel News Online‘s Facebook page. “Thank you, Father!”

Nissim Nahoum wrote, “The Creator of the world is protecting us.”

When asked about how the cloud protected the soldiers, Israel News Online responded, “Well there have been no ISIS attacks since then. I wonder what they thought of it. That may be the case if the cloud was there or not as we retaliated at the time. Impossible to say for sure.”

Here is the video, which was captured by an Israeli soldier:

(For more from the author of “Israeli Soldiers: Hand of God Protected Them Through Pillar of Cloud During Battle With ISIS” please click HERE)

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