An economic policy espoused by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was found to have exactly zero support from top economists in a recent poll. . .
But in a poll from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business of 42 top economists, not one supported the basic tenets of the policy.
One question asked how much they supported the statement, “Countries that borrow in their own currency should not worry about government deficits because they can always create money to finance their debt.”
Another asked, “Countries that borrow in their own currency can finance as much real government spending as they want by creating money.”
(Read more from “Here’s How Many Top Economists Think AOC’s Policy Doesn’t Work” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/global-warming.jpg342600Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2019-03-13 20:00:132019-03-13 19:58:52Here’s How Many Top Economists Think AOC’s Policy Doesn’t Work
If you need further proof of how dysfunctional the D.C. conversation about our national debt is, look no further than the conversation around President Trump’s latest budget proposal, where House Budget Committee Democrats simultaneously attacked the budget for spending too little and too much.
“These cuts in the Trump budget aren’t a tightening of the belt or a trimming of the fat, or even a serious attempt at reining in spending,” committee Chair John Yarmuth, D-Ky., said in his opening statement. “They are extreme to a level that is malicious — a level that is intended to do harm.”
Ro Khanna, D-Calif., grilled acting Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought on proposed Medicare cuts in the budget plan. Vought pointed out that the budget increases Medicare spending every year, but that the roughly $500 billion Khanna asked about would consist of savings from “commonsense” reforms to the program.
Rep. Scott Peters, D-Calif., grilled the director about why there were proposed cuts to certain types of green energy research at the Department of Energy.
“We believe that in a time of trillion-dollar deficits,” Vought answered, “that the resources that the Department of Energy has should be devoted towards basic research that would not otherwise be done by the private sector.”
Others slammed the budget because it added too much to the debt.
Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., hounded Vought on growing debt and deficits in the wake of Republicans’ 2017 tax cut bill and even managed to quote former Republican Speaker Paul Ryan in doing so. Moulton asked Vought about President Trump’s promise to get the debt under control in eight years in 2016; Vought conceded that at the end of that time frame, the current budget would still post trillion-dollar deficits.
You can watch the full hearing here:
So, to hear Democrats tell it, the proposed budget is bad because it spends too much and creates too much debt and it’s bad because it doesn’t spend enough on federal programs.
The budget proposal claims a fig leaf of fiscal responsibility by including just under $3 trillion in mandatory spending reductions in non-defense spending over the next ten years, five years after which it also is planned to balance, based on revenue increases from a jump-started economy.
But that’s up against $7.3 trillion in added total deficits with four straight projected years of trillion-dollar budget deficits.
We’re already $22 trillion in debt. Democrats can complain about the Republican tax cuts all they want, but the national debt was growing just fine before those became law, through the very programs that they don’t want to see cut. And as much as the president’s political opponents want to blame America’s current budgetary problems on the 2017 tax cuts, this problem can’t be fixed by taxation alone.
According to numbers from October, the 585 billionaires in the U.S. have a combined net worth of about 3.1 trillion. So even if some socialist scion were to take control of our fiscal policy and tax those billionaires for literally everything they were worth, we’d have enough revenue to make about a 14 percent dent in the national debt or fully fund a 4.75 trillion federal budget for 237.4 days (just under eight months). That’s it.
Furthermore, Conservative Review’s Daniel Horowitz explained last month that “this bipartisan era of debt is worse than anything we’ve seen this generation, and it is all happening with record revenue and a booming economy.”
Unless we actually want to tax our economy back to the Stone Age, the cuts are eventually going to have to come from somewhere. And because the federal leviathan is so big and its reach is so extensive, spending cuts are going to affect some people adversely no matter how they happen. But they have to happen at some point.
We need to have a conversation about how much we want the federal government to spend, and it needs to end with us spending a lot less. Yes, this would get the easy targets like quails on cocaine and other ridiculous examples. It needs to include how much we’re going to spend on entitlement programs like Medicare in the long run. And we also need to ask questions like whether or not the Pentagon ought to have an extra $4.6 million to spend on lobster and snow crab when it hasn’t yet passed an audit.
Bottom line: Until there’s a bipartisan consensus that we shouldn’t try to spend more taxpayer money than we bring in, this conversation will remain just as broken as it was Tuesday morning. (For more from the author of “House Democrats Attack Trump Budget for Spending Too Little … and Spending Too Much” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Donald_Trump_30023082644-1.jpg20403059Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2019-03-13 19:43:522019-03-13 19:40:14House Democrats Attack Trump Budget for Spending Too Little … and Spending Too Much
At a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, Ninth Circuit nominee Kenneth Lee told a powerful story of his experience with racism as a child and the uplifting lesson his dad gave him about America.
Lee’s family immigrated from South Korea during his childhood. Some time after their move to the U.S., Kenneth’s parents took him and his three sisters to Disneyland, he said.
To save money on the trip, the family packed a meal of traditional Korean food, which Lee noted was “very exotic” in the U.S. 35 years ago. He said he was mocked at the park by other children for what he was eating and what his family looked like.
“Little kids started coming up. Some said it smelled. Other said it looked like feces; they used a slightly different word,” Lee said. “One of them, I remember, was pointing to my parents, making kind of faux Asian-sounding names and pulling their eyes.”
“When you’re a kid, the smallest things seem like the world to you,” the nominee recalled. The next day, he told the committee, maybe because he “felt helpless, I blamed my dad for this whole thing, and I said ‘I want to go back. I want to go back to Korea. You never asked us if we wanted to come here, move to a new country.’”
“My dad was a stoic man, but he said, ‘I know it’s tough for you; it’s tough on your sisters; it’s tough on me, your mom,’” Lee said. “‘I know it’s tough here, but you don’t want to go back,’ he said, ‘because things aren’t fair there.’”
Lee said his father told him that in South Korea, family-owned conglomerates (known as Chaebol) wield oligarchic power and influence. “‘They control the government, they control the economy, they control the laws, so you’re not gonna get a fair shot there.’”
“But, he said, here in America, things are different,” Lee recalled. “It doesn’t matter that you’re not white. It doesn’t matter you weren’t born here. It doesn’t matter that our family doesn’t have wealth or power. He said everyone here is treated equally.”
“My dad wasn’t a lawyer; he never read the Federalist Papers,” Lee concluded. “But he had a gut understanding of what makes our country and our Constitution so great, so powerful, and so unique in the world. And I’ve always remembered that.”
This answer flies in the face of concerns from committee Democrats and liberal outside groups over Lee’s views on race because of things he wrote about affirmative action as a teenager.
The answer was prompted by a question from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah. The relevant portion of the answer is below, and video of the full committee hearing is here. Watch:
“My dad … never read the Federalist Papers. But he had a gut understanding" of what makes this country great.
9th Circuit Judicial nominee Kenneth Lee tells Senate Judiciary about how his immigrant dad turned an experience with racism into a lesson about the American promise. pic.twitter.com/MYlFMlgnhi
(For more from the author of “Watch: Immigrant Ninth Circuit Nominee Explains the Lesson His Dad Taught Him About America Through the Pain of Racism” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/My_Trusty_Gavel.jpg19442592Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2019-03-13 19:35:432019-03-13 19:33:08Watch: Immigrant Ninth Circuit Nominee Explains the Lesson His Dad Taught Him About America Through the Pain of Racism
Wells Fargo CEO Tim Sloan fired back at New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at a contentious hearing in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, after the freshman legislator accused the bank of “financing the caging of children” and suggested it should bear financial liability for everything from oil spills to climate change.
Ocasio-Cortez’s inquiries come as activists increasingly seek to “deplatform” political opponents by cutting off their funding from banks and other financial services providers — a concerted effort that conservatives and libertarians have said threatens free speech.
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Maxine Waters, D-Calif., brought Sloan before the panel Tuesday as part of a broad, four-hour inquiry into widely reported fraudulent misconduct in recent years by Wells Fargo employees. But in questioning Sloan, who faced bipartisan criticism during the hearing, Ocasio-Cortez, a self-described Democratic socialist, quickly went much further.
“Why was the bank involved in the caging of children and financing the caging of children to begin with?” Ocasio-Cortez asked at one point, in an apparent reference to the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance immigration policy, which resulted in increased separations of parents suspected of criminal activity from the minors who accompanied them.
The White House has pointed out that images widely circulated on social media showing migrant children in large, fenced-off detention rooms were taken during the Obama administration.
Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) asks Wells Fargo CEO Timothy Sloan: "Why was the bank involved in the caging of children and financing the caging of children to begin with?"
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Alexandria_Ocasio_Cortez_crop.jpg623915Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2019-03-12 19:39:102019-03-12 19:34:57Ocasio-Cortez Makes Ridiculous Accusation Against Wells Fargo CEO
Minnesota Democrat Rep. Ilhan Omar’s anti-Semitism and Islamic supremacism are very likely a product of her upbringing and an accompanying U.S. policy failure on assimilation.
In her native Somalia, Omar grew up in a completely Judenrein (free of Jews) country. Many in the region have come to rely upon and promulgate anti-Jewish mysticism, folklore, and conspiracy theories, in addition to Islamic fundamentalist teachings to come to their conclusions about Jews. In much of the Middle East and North Africa, the Jews are to blame for all of one’s struggles in life. And this actually has very little to do with the State of Israel. Anti-Jewish sentiment has remained consistent in the Islamic world for centuries.
Abe Greenwald described the anti-Jewish folklore that permeates the Islamic world in an article for Commentary magazine earlier this year. “In the Greater Middle East, from which Omar’s family hails, conspiracy theory is the coin of the realm, and much self-inflicted grief is blamed on dark Jewish magic,” Greenwald wrote in January, in reacting to Omar’s earlier anti-Semitic comments.
In recent years, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) conducted a global anti-Semitism survey. Throughout most of the Islamic world, anti-Semitism remained overwhelming, widespread, and consistent. However, Somalia was not included in the anti-Semitism survey, possibly for safety reasons, as it is largely a failed state.
The values of Somalia are as far removed from American values as you can get. In Somalia, Islam is the only acceptable religion. Everyone must be a Muslim or be prepared to face tremendous consequences for “insulting Islam.” This is something that Rep. Omar appears to have no issue with, although she rejects a Jewish-based state in the Middle East. Omar remains active in the internal politics of Somalia. She recently endorsed a candidate for president there.
Moreover, blasphemy laws in Somalia maintain that blasphemy of Islam (not accepting Islam as your faith or mocking Islam) is punishable by multiple years in prison, or even a death sentence if necessary. The constitution of Somalia maintains that “Islam is the religion of the State,” adding that “No religion other than Islam can be propagated in the country.”
These restrictions in the Somali constitution are completely antithetical to the Western values that we hold so dear in the United States. Yet when Somali refugees make their way to the United States, it appears that for the most part, the Somali values system remains intact.
See, for example, this investigative video from filmmaker Ami Horowitz on the Somali community in Minnesota:
It has become quite clear that too many in the Somali community in Rep. Omar’s district have failed to adopt Western values. It’s certainly legitimate to ask whether it’s ever a good idea to import individuals whose values and customs are so foreign to Western values. Logic may tell us that these refugees may find a more accommodating home elsewhere in the Islamic world. But legislators and past presidents who have imported these communities en masse have also imposed U.S. policies that have worsened the issue. These policies allow the pooling together of refugee communities, essentially encouraging them not to assimilate.
And these U.S. sanctuary policies, coupled with broken immigration and refugee policies, have turned Somali refugee communities, particularly the one in Ilhan Omar’s district, into Islamic terrorism recruitment havens.
Somali refugees in Ilhan Omar’s Minnesota district have become the terrorist recruitment capital of the United States. As ISIS came to power, dozens of Somalis left Minnesota to link up with the Islamic terrorist groups. But long before ISIS, others in Omar’s district routinely hopped on the next flight out to join al Shabaab- and al Qaeda-linked groups in Africa.
We cannot ignore the alarming statistics from Rep. Omar’s district. “FBI stats show 45 Somalis left to join the ranks of either the Somalia-based Islamic insurgency al-Shabab, or the Iraq- and Syria-based ISIS combined. And as of 2018, a dozen more had been arrested with the intention of leaving to support ISIS,” Fox News reported in February.
Given what we know about Ilhan Omar, we should not at be at all surprised when we continue to hear about her Islamic supremacist connections and anti-Semitic rhetoric. Omar is an unassimilated refugee who has, according to the sums of public evidence in front of us, rejected the American way. And if U.S. policies continue to defer to the customs of the homelands of refugee communities, in addition to entirely ignoring the anti-American customs of migrant communities, we can surely expect to see many more Ilhan Omars join the ranks of Congress. (For more from the author of “The Roots of Ilhan Omar’s Extremism and Anti-Semitism” please click HERE)
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) hasn’t been in office very long and we’ve all seen right through her. We know she’s a hypocrite. She likes to tout her Socialist ideas that “benefit everyone” and the “community as a whole” but really, she’s talking out of both sides of her mouth. She wants everyone to share their hard earned money but she doesn’t want to share hers. She wants “dark money” out of politics, but only if that money is someone other than hers.
After all, just a few days ago a Federal Election Commission (FEC) complaint was filed against Ocasio-Cortez, saying her chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabart, allegedly created multiple LLCs to funnel campaign contributions from various political action committees (PACs). Of course, the Congresswoman denied the claims, saying there was “no [FEC] violation.”
AOC is such a hypocrite that the Republican National Committee created a video, called “hypAOCrite” (like the pun?) showing just how much of an imposter she truly is. The video features the Congresswoman’s hearing testimony where she talks about the dark money in politics and how politicians hide the skeletons in their closet in order to get elected. As she’s saying the words, news headlines about her alleged FEC violation take over the screen.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Julia_Cumming_interviewing_Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez_at_an__Anger_Can_Be_Power__Event-1.jpg16831898Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2019-03-11 21:26:092019-03-16 19:22:52This Video Exposes AOC for the Hypocrite She Truly IS
Emergency 911 records recently obtained by Operation Rescue reveal that a Planned Parenthood abortion facility in the Frandor area of Lansing, Michigan, callously ordered an ambulance to run without sirens in an apparent attempt to keep the public from being alerted to a medical emergency that was unfolding inside the abortion business.
The Lansing Planned Parenthood, which is located in a strip mall, dispenses abortion-inducing drugs but does not conduct surgical abortions. It also provides post-abortion follow-up exams.
The call, which took place on March 15, 2018, indicated that a 38-year-old woman had fainted and hit her head hard on the floor. It appeared that the person who placed the 911 call was a bystander, and not on Planned Parenthood’s staff. . .
Before the address of the emergency or the condition of the woman could be given to the 911 dispatcher, the caller was heard saying, “No sirens! They said no sirens.” . . .
“The first thought, even before anything else, was to make sure the ambulance ran without sirens. A woman was laying on the floor dazed and vomiting, but ordering no sirens was Planned Parenthood’s first priority. Silent running is known to delay emergency responders from reaching the scene and getting timely help to the people who need it,” said Troy Newman, President of Operation Rescue, which documents medical emergencies at abortion facilities. (Read more from “Planned Parenthood Sends Woman to the Hospital, Demands Ambulance With ‘No Sirens'” HERE)
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is headed towards releasing a trove of evidence in a controversial case involving alleged sex trafficking by billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.
The Miami Herald filed the motion to unseal documents related to a settlement made in 2017 by Epstein’s former partner Ghislaine Maxwell and a woman accusing Maxwell of coercing her into a prostitution operation involving Epstein.
“We’re grateful that the court ruled the summary judgment papers are open and they are moving to expedite having them unsealed,” said the Miami Herald’s lawyer Sanford Bohrer.
Epstein agreed to plead guilty to two counts of prostitution under a controversial agreement made in 2008, but numerous other parties were granted immunity from federal prosecution.
The agreement was made under former Miami U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, who is now working as the secretary for the Department of Labor in President Donald Trump’s administration.
(Read more from “Federal Court May Reveal Trove of Evidence to the Public in Epstein Sex Trafficking Case” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/image-profile-picture-prison-17573.jpg11811200Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2019-03-11 20:12:092019-03-11 20:09:51Federal Court May Reveal Trove of Evidence to the Public in Epstein Sex Trafficking Case
Press Secretary Sarah Sanders sparred with the press Monday afternoon during a rare briefing at the White House. . .
“Referring to the recent anti-Semitism controversies with Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, Trump told the donors: ‘The Democrats hate Jewish people.'” Axios reported. “Trump said he didn’t understand how any Jew could vote for a Democrat these days. Trump talked about how much he’d done for Israel, noting his historic decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.”
H.Res.183 was spineless, watered down & filled w moral equivalency & double standards. Watch my floor speech explaining my NO vote to this resolution. Name names & remove Rep Omar from @HouseForeign. No double standards! pic.twitter.com/Rj17P6MHFI
LMAO. All this just to avoid calling out Omar's blatant anti-Semitism. "Let's a pass a resolution condemning all the bad things. All of them! That way they won't notice THIS bad thing!" https://t.co/KVt4NNOUTV
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/SarahHuckabeeSanders-3.jpg512512Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2019-03-11 19:52:072019-03-11 19:49:37Sarah Sanders Spars With the Press: Ask Democrats Whether or Not They Hate Jews
A diver in South Africa survived an experience out of a biblical passage last month when he ended up almost being swallowed by a whale.
Rainer Schimpf, 51, was snorkeling off the coast of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, when he ended up in the path of a Bryde’s whale, which opened his jaws and engulfed him headfirst.
“We were very astonished that out of nowhere this whale came up,” he told Sky News. “I was busy concentrating on the sharks because you want to know if the shark is in front of you or behind you, left or right, so we were very focused on the sharks and their behavior — then suddenly it got dark.”
Schimpf, who has worked as a dive operator for over 15 years, said he was in the water with two others for just a matter of minutes before the whale appeared. He had happened to be with a group recording a sardine run, which is where marine animals such as dolphins, whales, and sharks gather fish into bait balls.
“So my next thought was that the whale may take me down into the ocean and release me further down, so I instantly held my breath,” he told Sky News. “Obviously he realized I was not what he wanted to eat so he spat me out again.” (Read more from “Diver Survives After Being Scooped up in Whale’s Mouth” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/LPC34983.jpg357500Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2019-03-11 16:20:102019-03-16 19:21:14Diver Survives After Being Scooped up in Whale’s Mouth
