Obama Administration Not Finished yet With Executive Actions, Regulations

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On Monday, President Barack Obama issued his fifth executive order since the Nov. 8 election. In this case, it was to create a National Invasive Species Council to compile a report by 2020 on how to prevent such species from affecting climate change, food safety, and even military readiness.

Citing national security concerns, Obama issued another order on Friday blocking Chinese firm Fujian Grand Chip from buying Aixtron, a German company operating in California that produces crystalline layers used as semiconductors in U.S. weapons systems.

Executive orders aren’t the only means for Obama to act without Congress before he leaves office on Jan. 20.

A new policy on highly skilled immigrants, restrictions on for-profit colleges, and energy efficiency standards are among the matters that the administration wants that don’t require congressional authorization that the Obama administration is moving aggressively in the post-election to complete before Obama exits on Jan. 20.

Executive actions and administrative regulations were planned and considered before the election and not a result of Republican Donald Trump’s victory, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said at a White House press briefing, noting executive actions and regulations take “a lot of preparation.”

“I’m not going to rule out additional executive actions that the administration may take between now and January 20—after all, the president of the United States is the president of the United States until Jan. 20,” Earnest told The Daily Signal, adding:

But what I can rule out are any sort of hastily added executive actions that weren’t previously considered that would just be tacked on at the end. But are there some actions that have been in the pipeline for quite some time that could be announced between now and Jan. 20? That possibility certainly exists, but I don’t have anything to preview at this point.

Politico reported the list of Obama administration actions before leaving office includes:

A U.S. citizenship and immigration policy to make it easier for employers to sponsor highly skilled immigrants;

An Education Department policy to provide debt relief to students at for-profit colleges;

The Transportation Department is moving to ban cellphone calls on commercial flights;

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration could limit exposure to beryllium, a metal used in electronics and aerospace industries believed to pose lung cancer risks; and

The Department of Health and Human Services is seeking to change how doctors and hospitals get paid for administering drugs under Medicare Part B.

The fact that Trump could overturn much executive or administrative actions doesn’t appear to have caused pause, as the Federal Register has grown by 9,000 pages since Nov. 8, said Ryan Young, a fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Gina McCarthy, the Environmental Protection Agency administrator, seemed eager for more action in a memo to staff sent to employees after the Nov. 8 election, which was obtained by the Washington Examiner.

“As I’ve mentioned to you before, we’re running—not walking—through the finish line of President Obama’s presidency,” McCarthy wrote. “Thank you for taking that run with me. I’m looking forward to all the progress that still lies ahead.”

Whether the regulations or executive actions are hasty shouldn’t really be the key question, said James Gattuso, a senior research fellow who studies regulatory issues for The Heritage Foundation.

“As far as I’m concerned, if it takes a long time to adopt rules or actions, or if they fly through the process, it doesn’t matter if it’s a bad rule,” Gattuso told The Daily Signal.

Regulations, he said, can be more tedious to overturn than executive orders or executive actions. However, the 1996 Congressional Review Act could be used to roll back many of those regulations, Gattuso said.

The law allows Congress, with the president’s signature, to scrap regulations it opposes, bypassing previous legal procedures in place, while forbidding bureaucrats from imposing rules that are substantially the same.

“No president is willing to sign a bill overturning their own regulation, but they are willing to overturn their predecessor’s regulations,” Gattuso said. “This is a once in a decade chance, really a once in several decades’’ opportunity, to roll back regulations.”

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and 21 House committee chairmen warned against a rush for regulations in a letter to agency heads, pledging to used the Congressional Review Act if need be. The Nov. 15 letter from House Republicans said:

As you are aware, such action often involves the exercise of substantial policymaking discretion and could have far-reaching impacts on the American people and the economy. Considering these potential consequences, we write to caution you against finalizing pending rules or regulations in the administration’s last days.

By refraining from acting with undue haste, you will ensure that agency staff may fully assess the costs and benefits of rules, making it less likely that unintended consequences will harm consumers and businesses.

Moreover, such forbearance is necessary to afford the recently elected administration and Congress the opportunity to review and give direction concerning pending rulemakings.

Should you ignore this counsel, please be aware that we will work with our colleagues to ensure that Congress scrutinizes your actions—and, if appropriate, overturns them—pursuant to the Congressional Review Act.

On Nov. 8, the Federal Register contained 78,300 pages, and as of Dec. 2, it had increased to 87,297 pages, Young said. Further, since Election Day, there were 144 new proposed regulations from federal agencies, and 243 regulations that were finalized.

“We could see a midnight rush the likes of which we haven’t seen before,” Young, of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told The Daily Signal. (For more from the author of “Obama Administration Not Finished yet With Executive Actions, Regulations” please click HERE)

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SHOCK: Senate to Vote on Letting Democrats Keep Control of the FCC

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Multiple sources confirm that the nightmare scenario identified by ATR is indeed likely to occur: Senate Democrats have picked off enough Republicans to force a vote next week on reconfirming Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel to the FCC, resulting in at best an initial 2-2 deadlock on the committee if Tom Wheeler, the current chairman, follows precedent and resigns, leaving only four commissioners at the FCC until another is confirmed. That would delay action on President Trump’s job creation agenda at the agency, which is bad enough.

But there is an even more disturbing possibility: If Wheeler follows through on his threat not to resign, it would mean Democrats would retain control of the FCC well into Trump’s presidency.

The FCC is a huge deal economically, overseeing a portion of the economy – television, radio, the Internet, mobile – roughly equal in size to the healthcare sector.

Moreover, under Obama the FCC has been a massive weapon of regulatory control, imposing public utility-style regulation of broadband, with a serious negative impact on investment and job creation. In that and many other ways, the FCC has been politicized and corrupted under Obama Democrats.

Imposing a Democratic FCC on a Republican president is completely outrageous and no Republican should vote for it. It is inconsequential whether it is paired with Republican Ajit Pai’s renomination, because he is already slated to stay on the FCC for another year and can be easily reconfirmed next year.

Under these circumstances, a Senate vote on Jessica Rosenworcel has nothing to do with her qualifications or record on the FCC.

It is a simple referendum on one thing: should an Obama FCC be forced on President Trump and rewarded for its outrageous regulatory assault on the U.S. economy by retaining power? (For more from the author of “SHOCK: Senate to Vote on Letting Democrats Keep Control of the FCC” please click HERE)

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WHEN A PICTURE IS WORTH A MILLION WORDS: Faces of White House Staffers Priceless as President Trump Arrives

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So sad:

On Wednesday, however, the White House staff, along with the rest of America, listened as Obama discussed the election results in a televised address… And their faces said it all.

161110-white-house

After President Trump’s inauguration, I would like to ask that any former member of Valerie Jarrett’s Secret Service detail (why she warranted such a force is worthy of its own investigation) contact me. I have a case of beer I would like to send each and every one of you. (For more from the author of “WHEN A PICTURE IS WORTH A MILLION WORDS: Faces of White House Staffers Priceless as President Trump Arrives” please click HERE)

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Trump’s Win Isn’t the End, Says Levin. Time to Hold This New ‘GOP Monopoly’ Accountable

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Wednesday night on the “Mark Levin Show,” Conservative Review’s Editor-in-Chief addressed the historic election that swept Republicans into power and placed Donald Trump in the White House.

Levin offered his congratulations to President-elect Donald Trump, but he reminded his audience that it was not Trump who defeated Hillary Clinton. Rather, the constitutional conservatives who went forth and voted for him are the real victors.

Listen:

Trump won by running on “one of the most conservative policy records and agendas of any modern president,” Levin said.

“It wasn’t until later when you, when WE held his feet to the fire … insisting that he embrace conservative principles” that he was able to do so, Mark remarked.

Donald Trump has won. The Republicans control the government.

Now it’s time to get to work on implementing that conservative agenda. “And we’re going to insist that on these very, very important conservative issues upon which many of you voted — that this Republican monopoly advance our principles … the principles they said that they would institute,” Levin said.

“We’re going to insist on it.” (For more from the author of “Trump’s Win Isn’t the End, Says Levin. Time to Hold This New ‘GOP Monopoly’ Accountable” please click HERE)

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2 GOP Senators Advocate Post-Election Vote on Supreme Court Nominee

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Two Republican senators are breaking ranks with GOP leadership over the confirmation of President Barack Obama’s stalled Supreme Court nominee.

Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., predicted that Merrick Garland would be confirmed by the Senate during the lame-duck session of Congress. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., has also advocated for action on Garland’s nomination in the post-election session.

“My prediction is this: If Hillary Clinton wins next Tuesday, Garland will be confirmed before January,” Isakson said Friday, according to The Huffington Post.

Isakson said he believes Garland would be a better alternative than potential Clinton nominees.

“He’s probably a lot more conservative than anybody she would appoint. If Donald Trump wins, there probably won’t be a confirmation of Merrick Garland,” Isakson said.

Garland, who currently is the chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, was appointed by Obama in March to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in February.

Isakson’s comments clash with statements made by fellow Republican senators, including GOP leaders who have ruled out confirmation during the lame-duck session.

“We’ve already made it very clear that a nomination for the Supreme Court by this president will not be filled this year,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said in September.

Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn was even more blunt when asked by CNN about possibility: “No.”

In recent weeks, several Republican senators have suggested blocking Clinton’s nominees if she is elected president.

“I am going to do everything I can do to make sure four years from now, we still got an opening on the Supreme Court,” said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., according to a recording obtained by CNN.

At a Colorado rally in October, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told reporters that there is a historical precedent for the court operating with fewer than nine members.

“I think there will be plenty of time for debate on that issue,” Cruz said. “ … I would note, just recently, that Justice [Stephen] Breyer observed that the vacancy is not impacting the ability of the court to do its job. That’s a debate that we are going to have.”

Breyer, a Supreme Court justice appointed by President Bill Clinton, told MSNBC in October, “The court, when it began at the time of the Constitution’s writing, had six members. They had six members for several years. They had 10 members for several years after the Civil War. They functioned with an even number of members.”

Meanwhile, Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, have been upfront about their intention to block potential Clinton court nominees.

During a radio interview in October, McCain said that Senate Republican leadership would “be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up.”

Similarly, Lee has said he believes there would be little difference between Garland and a potential Clinton nominee.

“As a former law clerk … I don’t believe there would be a real substantive distinction, a real noticeable difference between the voting pattern of a justice who would be appointed by a President Hillary Clinton … and Merrick Garland,” Lee told reporters in October.

Until Friday’s statement from Isakson, Flake was a lone voice advocating for lame-duck confirmation of Garland.

“I think the principle ought to be for Republicans to confirm the most conservative jurist that we’re able to confirm,” Flake told CNN’s Jake Tapper in September. “And if we do lose the election, then we ought to move swiftly, I think, to confirm Merrick Garland.”

Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network, said that supporting Garland would be detrimental to conservative values.

“Garland would provide the fifth vote to undermine First Amendment free speech and freedom of religion, to gut the Second Amendment right to bear arms, and to invite unelected agency bureaucrats, like those at the EPA, to micromanage every aspect of American life,” Severino told The Daily Signal in an email.

Ilya Shapiro, a fellow in constitutional studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told The Daily Signal via email that it the distinction between a “moderate” and a “radical’ Supreme Court justice nominated by a Democrat president is not great.

“Justices appointed by Democratic presidents vote together north of 95 percent [of the time] on they key controversies that split the Court,” Shapiro said. “In that sense, it doesn’t matter whether the next nominee is a ‘moderate’ or ‘radical’ progressive. Moreover, on the issues that produce a heterodox split — typically the left/right ‘principled’ against the centrist ‘pragmatic’–a more [left-wing] nominee might be better. For example, Judge Garland inevitably defers to government interests in law enforcement cases, which Justice Scalia assuredly did not.”

Writing for National Review last week, Heritage Foundation experts James Wallner and John Malcolm argued that senators shouldn’t rubber-stamp a president’s judicial nominees.

“To preserve our cherished liberties and our constitutional system of government, both the executive and the legislative branches must engage in robust give and take about the kinds of men and women who ought to be confirmed to life-tenured positions in the judicial branch,” they wrote. “And senators have a sworn obligation to reject nominees who, they believe, would fail to uphold the Constitution.” (For more from the author of “2 GOP Senators Advocate Post-Election Vote on Supreme Court Nominee” please click HERE)

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Amnesty Would Cost Taxpayers Trillions, National Academy of Sciences Report Indicates

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The long-term costs to taxpayers of immigrants and their descendants are detailed in a new report from the National Academy of Sciences.

The findings in the report indicate that if amnesty for illegal immigrants were enacted, the government would have to raise taxes immediately by $1.29 trillion and put that sum into a high-yield bank account to cover future fiscal losses generated by the amnesty recipients and their children.

To cover the future cost, each U.S. household currently paying federal income tax would have to pay, on average, an immediate lump sum of over $15,000.

The National Academy of Sciences report, “The Economic and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration,” provides fiscal balance projections for immigrants and their descendants over 75 years.

The fiscal balance of an individual equals all government taxes paid minus all benefits received. Federal, state, and local benefits and taxes are included in the estimates.

The NAS report, released a few weeks ago, shows that the fiscal balances of immigrants vary greatly according to education level: Immigrants with low education levels impose substantial fiscal costs that extend far into the future. The government benefits they will receive greatly exceed the taxes they will pay.

This is critical because current illegal immigrants have very low education levels.

Around 10 million adult illegal immigrants currently are in the U.S. Nearly half don’t have a high school diploma. Overall, adult illegal immigrants are six times more likely to lack that diploma than are U.S.-born residents.

Illegal immigrants currently receive routine government services such as roads, sewers, and police and fire protection. The children of illegal immigrants currently receive heavily subsidized public education at an average cost of $12,000 per child per year.

Children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S. are eligible for the same welfare benefits (such as food stamps, Medicaid, Obamacare, and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) as children born to U.S citizens.

Because illegal immigrant families already receive many government benefits and services, they currently impose a fiscal cost on taxpayers. The benefits they receive exceed taxes paid.

Amnesty or “earned citizenship” would provide current illegal immigrants access to an additional level of expensive government entitlements and benefits.

All of the major “comprehensive” immigration reform or “earned citizenship” bills debated in Congress since 2006 would have granted nearly all current illegal immigrants eligibility for future Social Security and Medicare benefits after 10 years of work. These bills also would have given amnesty recipients access to almost the entire U.S. welfare system, after modest delays.

In effect, amnesty would give current illegal immigrants access to the same government benefits as immigrants who are here legally. Thus, as a general rule of thumb, the long-term fiscal balance of an illegal immigrant, after amnesty, would be roughly equal to the cost of a current legal immigrant with the same age and education level.

The NAS report does not distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. But, as noted, the report does provide fiscal projections for immigrants at different education levels. Because the education level of adult illegal immigrants is approximately known, the NAS projections enable us to project the future fiscal costs of illegal immigrants if they were granted amnesty or “earned citizenship” as a group.

Based on the education level of illegal immigrants, the NAS figures project that the net fiscal cost (benefits minus taxes) for 10 million adult illegal immigrants after receiving amnesty would have a net present value of negative $1.29 trillion.

The concept of “net present value” is complex; it places a much lower value on future expenditures than on current expenditures. One way to grasp net present value is that it represents that total amount of money that would have to be raised today and put in a bank account earning 3 percent interest above the inflation rate in order to cover future costs.

As noted above, this means that if amnesty were enacted, government would have to immediately raise taxes by $1.29 trillion and put that sum into a high-yield bank account to cover the future fiscal losses that will be generated by the amnesty recipients and their children.

And to cover the future cost, each U.S. household currently paying federal income tax would have to pay, on average, an immediate lump sum of over $15,000.

Of course, if the federal government were to grant amnesty, it would not actually raise current taxes by $1.29 trillion and put the money in a high-yield bank to cover the future costs. Instead, in the government’s normal pattern, the costs would be unfunded and passed on to future years.

Converting a net present value figure into future outlays requires information on the exact distribution of costs over time; unfortunately, that data is not provided by the National Academy of Sciences. However, a rough estimate of future net outlays to be paid by taxpayers (in constant 2012 dollars) for illegal immigrants after amnesty is around $3.6 trillion over 75 years.

Advocates of amnesty have suggested that low-skill immigrants generate large-scale positive economic results that benefit U.S. workers. The NAS report finds no evidence of such effects.

On the other hand, the report clearly shows that the continuing inflow of low-skill immigrants into the U.S. creates large fiscal burdens for taxpayers in the present and the future.

Moreover, granting amnesty is likely to generate even greater flows of illegal immigrants into the United States, adding even more costs. (For more from the author of “Amnesty Would Cost Taxpayers Trillions, National Academy of Sciences Report Indicates” please click HERE)

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Miller’s Statewide Ads Go After Murkowski Dynasty and Chairmanship

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The Joe Miller campaign today discussed a television ad and radio ad currently running statewide in Alaska, which confronts head-on the issue of Lisa Murkowski’s seniority, as well as her position as chair of the Senate Energy Committee: two of the centerpieces of her campaign messaging.

In Miller’s television ad, Lisa Murkowski: Imperial Senator, which began running over the weekend, the candidate charges, “The 36-year Murkowski dynasty has led Alaska down a dead end road.” The reference is to her father Frank Murkowski first winning the seat in the U.S. Senate in 1980 and then appointing his daughter Lisa to fill it, when he became governor in 2002.

In the ad, Frank can be seen raising Lisa’s hand in her senate office, announcing, “Hey, hey, hey, pay tribute to Caesar.”

Miller counters in the ad, “The government is the servant, not the master.”

The ad also highlights that while Murkowski has touted “fighting for Alaska,” much more of the state has been closed to resource development, and just during the last several months the federal government seized wildlife management control of 100 million acres of Alaska land, over one quarter of the state.

This has happened while Murkowski was chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and chair of the Subcommittee on Appropriations for Interior and the Environment.

In fact, Congressional Quarterly reported that Murkowski specifically stated she was not willing to use the power of the purse to reign in rogue federal agencies: “The top Senate Republican appropriator for the EPA indicated Thursday that she won’t write a spending bill for the agency that rolls back regulations — an approach that she hopes will win Democratic backing.”

Murkowski has not used the power she has to confront federal overreach.

A Miller radio ad currently playing in the state features Murkowski screaming, “I’m the chairrrrmmmmaaaannnn!,” at a 2014 election night event as she held a chair over her head.

The narrator states, “That’s exactly what we’re afraid of . . .” and goes on to point out the big government mindset she brings to the position, which is doing more harm than good for Alaskans.

“Lisa Murkowski has used the Energy Committee to push policies that will only end in fewer jobs, a weaker economy, and higher energy costs for all Alaskans,” the narrator states.

Murkowski is also hit for her support of cap-n-trade, carbon taxes, and increased federal mandates that create barriers to economic growth.

The ad further criticizes Murkowski for her past and present support of cutting Alaskans’ Permanent Dividend Fund (PFD) payments to fund bureaucrats and special interests, without seriously addressing the state’s budget. Miller has called the decision to cut the PFD in half, “The most regressive tax in Alaska state history, and perhaps the most regressive tax in American history.” In response, he initiated the “Save-The-PFD” recall petition in July.

“The feedback from both our television and radio ads has been phenomenal,” said campaign spokesman Randy DeSoto. “Many voters have been enlightened to how Lisa Murkowski’s rhetoric about fighting for and being the ‘Conservative Voice for Alaska’ in Washington does not match reality.”

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Eastern Europe Arms Itself Against Russian Military Aggression

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Countries across Eastern Europe are militarizing to defend themselves from Russia, underscoring how Kremlin brinkmanship could spark a regional conflict.

“If you’re in Estonia, or Latvia, and Russia’s sitting there on your border, it’s scary,” Jill Russell, teaching fellow in the Defense Studies Department at King’s College London, told The Daily Signal. “And those countries want a capability to defend themselves.”

And by going outside the protective umbrella of NATO and U.S. security guarantees, the military buildup in post-Soviet Europe highlights a budding rift in security priorities across the Continent.

“The states of Eastern Europe inevitably see their security focus as being the need to deter an increasingly antagonistic Russia,” said Ben Wheatley, honorary research fellow in the School of History at the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. “Therefore, the Eastern European states concentrate on building up their conventional armed forces to meet this threat.”

“The closer you are to Russia, the more you don’t care about terrorism,” Russell said.

Recent media headlines have painted modern East-West tensions as a new Cold War. However, some experts say the military buildup among post-Soviet countries across what the Kremlin considers its “near abroad” (essentially the former territory of the Soviet Union) might be the early stages of a regional arms race, and a reflection of centuries-old power struggles.

“Russia’s near abroad has once again become a flashpoint,” Russell said, adding:

But there’s not an ideological component, that is what defined the Cold War. Russia wants to show it’s still a great power … This isn’t at all like the Cold War.

What we are really in is a standard power struggle over frontiers. What’s unfortunate is that the frontier countries are peopled with those not necessarily interested in being pawns in a great power struggle—and are wanting to break free from Russian dominion.

“There is no doubt the conflict in the East is a localized affair rather than a new Cold War,” Wheatley told The Daily Signal.

Ready for War

Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—NATO’s three Baltic member countries—increased their collective spending on new military equipment from $210 million in 2014 to $390 million in 2016, according to a report by IHS Jane’s, a commercial British defense analysis and intelligence firm.

By 2018, the three Baltic countries are expected to spend around $670 million a year on new military equipment. By 2020, the region’s defense budget will be $2.1 billion, up from $930 million in 2005.

Latvia and Lithuania have had the two fastest-growing military budgets in the world since 2014, according to IHS Jane’s.

“This growth is faster than any other region globally,” Craig Caffrey, principal analyst at IHS Jane’s, said in the report.

“The increase in defense spending in the Baltics is largely linked to the growing confrontation between Russia and the West, often described as the ‘new Cold War,’” said Alex Kokcharov, principal analyst at IHS Country Risk. “We have seen political confrontation between Russia and the West in the past two and a half years escalate to military assertiveness, and we don’t see this ending anytime soon.”

Poland, also a NATO member, has doubled its military spending since 2006, reaching $9.2 billion in 2016. Polish military spending has increased in eight of the past 10 years, with an 18 percent jump in 2015 alone.

For its part, the Kremlin also boosted its military spending by 28.6 percent in 2015—Russia’s largest defense budget increase since 2002.

This combination of escalating military firepower and the will to use it has some worried that a miscalculated act of brinkmanship, or nationalistic fervor run awry, could spark a broader regional conflict.

“It’s a regional war—and something more,” Tarik Cyril Amar, associate professor of history at Columbia University, told The Daily Signal. “It’s not merely a regional conflict. I think it’s connected to many larger processes.”

“They [Russia] are operating where they were always operating, in their near abroad,” Russell said. “Everything is about taking back territory that was historically Soviet.”

Breakdown

Tensions with Russia have been spiraling toward a nadir since the Kremlin annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and followed up with military operations in eastern Ukraine.

Russian military brinksmanship has taken many forms across the region, including the buzzing of NATO ships and aircraft by Russian warplanes, subversive propaganda campaigns, cyberattacks, and covert efforts to stir up separatism among minority Russian populations.

Contributing, more broadly, to the breakdown in relations between Russia and the West are accusations of Russian cyberattacks to affect the U.S. presidential election, and Moscow’s financial support for far-right political parties in Western Europe.

The deployment of military hardware and troops to Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave and occupied Crimea (including bombers and missiles capable of carrying nuclear weapons) and Russia’s scorched-earth bombing campaign in Syria also have the West on edge.

For the time being, the Baltic states and Poland haven’t given up on NATO. In fact, the alliance’s military presence in Eastern Europe is set to expand dramatically.

To reassure its eastern members and to send a message of deterrence to Moscow, NATO has announced plans to deploy military units to Eastern Europe in numbers unmatched since the Cold War.

At the NATO summit in July in Warsaw, Poland, alliance leaders formally announced the planned deployment of four combat battalions to Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania on a rotational basis beginning next year.

The battalions will be fielded by Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The U.K. announced last week that it was bolstering its planned force to be stationed in Estonia from 500 to 800 troops.

These deployments are in addition to a previously announced U.S. plan to deploy about 3,500 troops to Eastern Europe on a rotational basis.

The deployments are considered “tripwire forces,” presumably meant to deter Russia from an attack due to the risk of spurring a massive NATO response to defend forward units.

“They’re really just notional forces,” Russell said, referring to the NATO units. “They’re not at all capable of doing anything offensive into Russia.”

The rotational NATO units planned for the Baltics and Poland are not a realistic threat to Russian forces, Wheatley said, but they have a deterrence value.

“Their installment in reality guarantees peace in the Baltic region and Poland, as Russia would never attack NATO units in open conflict,” the U.K. research fellow said.

U.S. warplanes and land units constantly cycle through Eastern European countries in an ongoing series of exercises. The U.K. also has announced it will send Typhoon fighters to Romania as part of an air policing mission.

Grassroots Defense

Paralleling the rise in defense budgets, the ranks of civilian volunteer militias in the Baltic countries have swelled since Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine in 2014. The change reflects the deadly seriousness with which politicians and populations in the region consider the possibility of war with Russia.

Conscription has been reinstated in Lithuania, where the government also recently issued a guerrilla warfare manual for the country’s 3 million citizens.

Estonia’s standing army comprises about 6,000 troops out of an overall national population of 1.3 million. Meanwhile, the country’s Defense League—a civilian paramilitary group—holds weekend partisan warfare training events for its 25,400 volunteers.

Civilians of all stripes spend their weekends tramping through forests with heavy rucksacks, training in military skills such as how to lay landmines and plant booby traps.

Like many post-Soviet countries, the legacy of World War II paramilitary units runs deep in the Baltic states and Poland, where citizens fought against both Nazi and Red Army invaders.

Tensions with Russia also have rattled longtime NATO holdouts Sweden and Finland. The two Scandinavian countries, which claimed to be neutral interlocutors between NATO and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, have forged closer ties with the Western military alliance since 2014.

“Sweden is no longer part of any buffer zone,” former Swedish Defense Minister Sten Tolgfors told The Wall Street Journal. “That’s an idea from the old days.”

Brothers at Arms

Ukraine is the epicenter of modern East-West tensions, and could be a flashpoint for future conflicts.

A war between Ukraine’s armed forces and a combined force of pro-Russian separatists and Russian regulars has killed 10,000 people and displaced about 1.7 million from their homes in the Donbas, Ukraine’s embattled southeastern territory on the border with Russia.

Despite a 17-month-old cease-fire, heavy artillery, rocket attacks, and tank shots still occur daily along the front lines in the Donbas. So do military and civilian casualties.

The war in Ukraine has not spilled over into a broader conflict involving NATO countries as many feared it would in 2014.

Today, NATO members such as the U.S., Canada, and Poland have military training missions ongoing in Ukraine, but NATO troops are not directly involved in combat operations in the Donbas.

“There was never any possibility of NATO combat troops being stationed in Ukraine,” Wheatley said.

The Ukrainian military was a ragtag force in the opening days of the conflict. Its soldiers were not prepared for combat, and reserves of weapons and ammunition had been depleted by decades of plundering by corrupt oligarchs and arms dealers.

In a speech at a military parade on Ukrainian Independence Day, Aug. 24, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko signaled a long-term plan to build up the nation’s military to counter the Russian threat.

Even though Ukraine has a long way to go to match Russian firepower, some fear the current conflict could spark an arms race between the two former Soviet states.

Since the war in the Donbas began in 2014, Ukraine has fielded more than 300,000 soldiers, both recruits and draftees.

Ukraine increased its military budget by 23 percent in the year after the war began, and military spending is set to increase by 10 percent each year going forward.

Ukraine’s overall military strength went up by 25 percent—from 200,000 to 250,000 troops—in the two years since the war began in 2014. Ukraine currently has a reserve force of more than 80,000 men and women.

The composition of Ukraine’s armed forces also has evolved during the past two years.

About 17,000 women currently serve in the Ukrainian military, 10,000 of them in combat units. On June 3, Ukrainian women were officially allowed to serve in combat units, although many women already had served unofficially in combat roles within civilian volunteer battalions. Ukrainian women are also eligible to be drafted as officers.

Ukraine’s military now comprises 70 percent contract soldiers, a jump from 60 percent before the war began. An average of 6,000 servicemen signed contracts to join Ukraine’s armed forces each month this year. Ukrainian officials expect 65,000 new contract military personnel in 2016.

To boost recruitment, military officials bumped up the salary for active duty volunteers to about $275 a month—well above Ukraine’s monthly minimum wage of about $54.

Ukraine also reconstituted its National Guard, folding into its ranks the myriad civilian volunteer battalions that formed in the early days of the war when the regular army was caught on its back foot.

Russia’s military campaign in eastern Ukraine has hardened Ukrainians’ attitude toward their eastern neighbors.

In 2011, 84 percent of Ukrainians had a favorable opinion toward Russia. Today, 72 percent of Ukrainians have an unfavorable opinion about Russia, and 77 percent consider Russia to be a threat to its neighbors, according to the Democratic Initiatives Foundation, a Ukrainian think tank.

After more than two years of war, there also has been a turnaround in Ukrainians’ attitudes toward military service. In the post-Soviet period, military service was not held in high regard in Ukraine, and often was considered a life path for those with limited options.

Today, soldiers in uniform are a common sight on the streets and train stations of any Ukrainian city or town. Veterans groups have sprouted up, and a subculture of bearded war veterans wearing stylized T-shirts—much in the model of America’s post-9/11 veteran generation—has emerged.

“Soldiers and officers will feel once again not only their social responsibility, but also society’s respect and esteem to their defenders,” Poroshenko said at the Independence Day parade.

“This parade will signal to our international partners that Ukraine is capable of defending itself, but requires further support,” Poroshenko said. “Finally, our parade is a signal to our enemy as well. Ukrainians are ready to carry on the fight for their independence.” (For more from the author of “Eastern Europe Arms Itself Against Russian Military Aggression” please click HERE)

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What the Founders Thought About the Value of a ‘Classical’ Education

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The generation that produced the U.S. Constitution lived at a time when liberal education was being rethought, redefined, stretched, and challenged.

The Founders lined up on different sides of that debate. They argued over whether or not a liberal education worthy of the name had to be a classical education based on instruction in the Greek and Latin languages. They divided into factions we might call, for convenience, “classicists” and “anti-classicists.”

Among the things most surprising is how early in the Colonial period objections were raised to the teaching of Greek and Latin; how widespread the resistance was; how many very famous Americans weighed in on the debate; and how modern the arguments brought by the anti-classicists sound.

The past is different and distant from us, and yet, in this case, the similarities are striking, leading one to wonder if there is a timeless element to America’s quarrel over the means and ends of good education. We sound like them to a surprising degree, and they sound like us. But not exactly, and the differences do matter.

The anti-classicists appeared in print as early as 1735—40 years before the Revolution. In that year, an anonymous Philadelphian called for a system of private education that would recognize the needs of different students and their families.

Debate Over Dead Languages

Not everyone was destined to be a scholar. Not everyone aspired to the professions of law, theology, or medicine. A thriving society needed farmers and tradesmen, clerks and accountants. Why should these children spend precious years trying to master languages they would soon forget? Why teach them Latin when what they needed in life were skills in English grammar and composition?

This anonymous author cited the English empiricist John Locke, who ridiculed the folly of wasting time teaching Latin to students who would never use it.

Over the ensuing 70 or 80 years, these arguments found renewed expression among some of America’s most articulate statesmen and reformers. Future scholars, they allowed, could continue to devote their childhood to mastery of Greek and Latin, but a young, ambitious, expansive republic on the rise needed to train its citizens in plain and vigorous English and in modern foreign languages for the sake of commerce in goods and ideas.

The nation needed to equip them for a vocation; to provide them with a utilitarian education for the sake of tangible “advantages” in life; to lay the groundwork for progress in science and the discovery of new knowledge; to offer a “universal” education (one open to common people, not just the elite); and to promote a distinctly American, even nationalist, education free from the dead hand of Europe’s antiquated ways of teaching and learning.

(These calls for reform sound like we’ve stepped into a modern debate over STEM education in our schools today.)

To understand the Founders and liberal education, we need to know first that among the Founders, there were champions of the classics who had every intention that Greek and Latin remain central to liberal education in the American republic; second, that there were dissenters who objected strenuously to the classics’ powerful grip on American education; and third, that even the champions of the classics tossed onto the rubbish heap some of the most venerable of the ancients.

All three parts of this argument matter if we want to arrive at a balanced judgment of the Founders and liberal education.

The takeaway from this is that the Founders’ legacy for classical and liberal education is a mixed one: It depends on which ones we quote.

Founders Against Founders

Classical and liberal education have proven to be resilient. So has the opposition. Classicist and anti-classicists alike would be partly pleased, partly disappointed, and partly alarmed if they could visit 21st-century America and the jumble of public schools, private schools, home schools, online schools, classical schools, and vocational schools that make up our educational “system.”

Among the “classicists” we find the ornery New England statesman John Adams, our second president. As an adult, Adams maintained his skill in Latin and Greek along with proficiency in a number of modern languages. Adams read widely in ancient and modern history, philosophy, constitutionalism, and political theory. His indebtedness to liberal learning could not have been greater.

Adams argued that the stability and durability of the young United States rested on the twin pillars of knowledge and virtue, a common refrain among the Founders.

Though a voracious reader of the classics himself, Thomas Jefferson, Adams’ bitter rival during the early years of the republic, was somewhat ambivalent and spoke rather disparagingly of the classicists: “They pretended to praise and encourage education, but it was to be the education of our ancestors. We were to look backward, not forward, for improvement.”

One of the earliest critics of the prevalence of the classical languages was Benjamin Franklin.

His opposition to a certain kind of instruction in Greek and Latin came not from any anti-elitism, but from a conviction that time spent in this way had become an impediment to education, even an impediment to liberal education, depending on how we define liberal learning.

If “liberal” meant a broad, generous education for a man of the world able to navigate through polite society, then Latin and Greek seemed cramped and pedantic.

Franklin himself was a multilingual, learned man of cosmopolitan tastes and interests, yet he still opposed the classics. Why?

Flexibility

Franklin aimed at a utilitarian education that would equip ordinary citizens for their professions, including competence in their own language.

Education must be useful. The curriculum must include, he wrote in 1749, penmanship, drawing, English grammar and style, public speaking, history (with an emphasis on politics), geography, chronology, morality, natural history, and what his generation called “good breeding.”

The ultimate aim of this useful education was public service to the community. Franklin wasn’t opposed to the training of classical scholars, but not everyone was destined to be a scholar, and a practical education suited to the needs of a dynamic and prosperous society could not pretend everyone was going to be an academic.

Another Founder named Benjamin—Benjamin Rush—in 1789 argued for “liberal education” (his words) without instruction in Greek and Latin at all. Note the flexibility of the phrase “liberal education.” It could be divorced from classical education. Rush regretted the prominence of the “dead languages” as an obstacle to the promotion of “useful knowledge.”

By being so specialized, he thought, classical education could never meet the demands of “universal knowledge.” That is to say, it obstructed not only the progress of practical knowledge, but also the spread of knowledge through all levels of society that would make participatory government possible. The times demanded a new system of education to meet the needs of a new kind of government and society.

The criticism articulated by Franklin, Rush, and others formed part of a much larger story. We see by the end of the 18th century the opening of a distinct divide in educational theory and practice that runs right down to the present.

The emerging industrial, mass democratic, utilitarian, market-driven age turned out to have very different expectations for the kind of people schools ought to produce.

Importance of the Ancients

It should be noted, however, that opponents of classical education did not wage a war of extermination against the classics themselves: 1) They still wanted scholars to master Greek and Latin; 2) they still wanted the ancients read in good English translations; and 3) they wrestled with the inescapable question of whether an education for everyone could be built on instruction in the Greek and Latin languages.

At the same time, the defenders of the classical languages were not necessarily supporters of the whole of the Greek and Roman tradition. They were selective in their judgments. They even rejected parts of the ancient heritage that today many advocates of classical education in particular consider to be foundational to the whole tradition.

Indeed, for the generation of 1787, for the culture that gave the United States its Constitution, the ancient world and its authors and their ideas mattered very much. The Greeks and Romans provided examples of success and failure, models to follow and models to avoid.

If any of the Founders rejected the study of Greek and Latin, that did not mean they rejected reading the ancients in good modern translations. It did not mean removing grammar, logic, and rhetoric from the curriculum—the trinity of subjects at the very heart of liberal education.

That even the generation of 1787 argued about education reminds us that the problem of education in American society and politics has never been a settled question. Not even close. (For more from the author of “What the Founders Thought About the Value of a ‘Classical’ Education” please click HERE)

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Lisa Murkowski and Her SuperPAC’s PFD Grab Election Scam

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Long before Alaska’s current fiscal crisis, Lisa Murkowski was an advocate of raiding the Permanent Fund for State expenditures. Even after 83% of Alaskans voted to stop the PFD Grab, Murkowski either sponsored or voted for three separate raids on the PFD.

When Lisa Murkowski decided to mount a 2010 general election challenge to the Republican nominee she promised to support, a SuperPAC called Alaskans Standing Together was formed.

The group was led by numerous Alaska-based corporations, including GCI, Unicom, Jim Jansen (owner of Lynden Transport), and other Alaska corporations. These corporations poured more than $1.8 million into the six-week effort to stop Republican nominee Joe Miller and assassinate his character.

No less than $575,000 of those funds came directly from leadership and corporate sponsors of the Alaska’s Future campaign that spent millions to convince State leaders to steal $666 million of your Permanent Fund earnings, costing every Alaskan more than $1,000 of their 2016 PFD.

Also playing along with the scam was the entire leadership structure of the Republican-controlled Alaska State Legislature, including Senate President Gary Stevens and Speaker of the House Mike Chenault.

Here’s one of the lying ads from 2010:

In retrospect, that effort was even more extraordinary than it appeared at the time. The case made by Murkowski and her supporters in 2010 was that Joe Miller’s economic plan would collapse Alaska’s economy and precipitate a state financial crisis that would end in the imposition of a State income tax and a PFD Grab. This was done with exactly zero evidence for such a claim. It was a lie, flat-out.

What made the campaign scam even more incredible was Speaker Chenault’s top staffer, Tom Wright, appearing in a Lisa Murkowski campaign ad claiming that Joe Miller was “so off the wall that the direction he wants to take us will bankrupt Alaska.”

Here’s that lying ad:

Yet Speaker Mike Chenault and Tom Wright, with a direct hand in every State budget since 2005, have actually presided over the bankrupting of Alaska, resulting in the theft of half of every Alaskan’s PFD and proposals for a whole array of new taxes and tax increases, including the imposition of a State income tax. It could rightly be said that Mike Chenault, with more influence over the state fiscal situation than any other Alaskan, is the architect of the State’s fiscal crisis.

Make no mistake about it, the Murkowski’s Alaskans Standing Together effort to discredit Joe Miller was no accident. It was a scam. It was executed with willful intent to cover Lisa Murkowski’s long history of support for stealing the PFD to fund big government.

Earlier this year, when Lisa Murkowski affirmed her support for the current PFD grab, the scam had come full circle. Like her father before her, who appointed her to the United States Senate, Murkowski has always been supportive of stealing your PFD to fund big government and special interests.

But she’s not alone. Many of the same players who supported her election scam in 2010 are now both funding Alaska’s Future campaign to steal the PFD, and Senator Murkowski’s current campaign for re-election.

It’s time to send this den of thieves packing, and it starts on November the 8th with rejecting Lisa Murkowski.