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Sunday, July 29, 2018
All Gave Some~Some Gave All
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THE LIBERTY DAILY
Report: Russian Hackers Appear More Interested in Hacking US Power Grids Than Elections
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-15/russian-hackers-attacking-u-s-power-grid-aviation-fbi-warns
President Trump Supports ‘Heroes’ of ICE, Pummels Open-Border and Pro-Crime Democrats in Weekly Address to the NationFLASHBACK: James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas Films Twitter Staff ADMITTING on Camera They ‘Shadow-Ban’ Conservatives as a ‘Strategy’ (VIDEO)https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/01/12/james_okeefes_project_veritas_twitter_ready_to_give_trumps_private_dms_to_doj.html |
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![FLASHBACK: James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas Films Twitter Staff ADMITTING on Camera They ‘Shadow-Ban’ Conservatives as a ‘Strategy’ [VIDEO]](https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/Gi8dNL-Wu2xjFU8vDFpfrsyKAS9LYXqPGIVtppUF8YpZT1iWi1NhF6D8aCix0KLLOtjVoWiWFpg5WBg-NpZFiCgiF8fZiv6HFS_nkmK0jqkwkfZ8WCsR09ggGUjd7WGWcSYGFDmi)
Sorry If You’re Offended, But Socialism Leads to Misery and Destitution
Posted by The Daily Signal
On the same day that Venezuela’s “democratically” elected socialist president, Nicolas Maduro, whose once-wealthy nation now has citizens foraging for food, announced he was lopping five zeros off the country’s currency to create a “stable financial and monetary system,” Meghan McCain of “The View” was the target of internet-wide condemnation for having stated some obvious truths about collectivism.
During the same week we learned that the democratic socialist president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, is accused of massacring hundreds of protesters whose economic futures have been decimated by his economic policies, Soledad O’Brien and writers at outlets ranging from GQ, to BuzzFeed, to the Daily Beast were telling McCain to cool her jets.
In truth, McCain was being far too calm. After all, socialism is the leading man-made cause of death and misery in human existence. Whether implemented by a mob or a single strongman, collectivism is a poverty generator, an attack on human dignity, and a destroyer of individual rights.
It’s true that not all socialism ends in the tyranny of Leninism or Stalinism or Maoism or Castroism or Ba’athism or Chavezism or the Khmer Rouge — only most of it does. And no, New York primary winner Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t intend to set up gulags in Alaska. Most so-called democratic socialists — the qualifier affixed to denote that they live in a democratic system and have no choice but to ask for votes — aren’t consciously or explicitly endorsing violence or tyranny.
But when they adopt the term “socialism” and the ideas associated with it, they deserve to be treated with the kind of contempt and derision that all those adopting authoritarian philosophies deserve.
But look: Norway!
Socialism is perhaps the only ideology that Americans are asked to judge solely based on its piddling “successes.” Don’t you dare mention Albania or Algeria or Angola or Burma or Congo or Cuba or Ethiopia or Laos or Somalia or Vietnam or Yemen or, well, any other of the dozens of other inconvenient places socialism has been tried. Not when there are a handful of Scandinavian countries operating generous welfare-state programs propped up by underlying vibrant capitalism and natural resources.
Of course, socialism exists on a spectrum, and even if we accept that the Nordic social-program experiments are the most benign iteration of collectivism, they are certainly not the only version. Pretending otherwise would be like saying, “The police state of Singapore is more successful than Denmark. Let’s give it a spin.”
It turns out, though, that the “Denmark is awesome!” talking point is only the second most preposterous one used by socialists. It goes something like this: If you’re a fan of “roads, schools, libraries, and such,” although you may not even be aware of it, you are also a supporter of socialism.
This might come as a surprise to some, but every penny of the $21,206 spent in Ocasio-Cortez’s district each year on each student, rich or poor, is provided with the profits derived from capitalism. There is no welfare system, no library that subsists on your good intentions. Having the state take over the entire health care system could rightly be called a socialistic endeavor, but pooling local tax dollars to put books in a building is called local government.
It should also be noted that today’s socialists get their yucks by pretending collectivist policies only lead to innocuous outcomes like local libraries. But for many years they were also praising the dictators of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the nation’s most successful socialist, isn’t merely impressed with the goings-on in Denmark. Not very long ago, he lauded Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela as an embodiment of the “American dream,” even more so than the United States.
Socialists like to blame every inequity, the actions of every greedy criminal, every downturn, and every social ill on the injustice of capitalism. But none of them admit that capitalism has been the most effective way to eliminate poverty in history.
Today, in former socialist states like India, there have been big reductions in poverty thanks to increased capitalism. In China, where communism sadly still deprives more than a billion people of their basic rights, hundreds of millions benefit from a system that is slowly shedding socialism.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the extreme poverty rate in the world has been cut in half. And it didn’t happen because Southeast Asians were raising the minimum wage.
In the United States, only 5 percent of people are even aware that poverty has fallen in the world, according to the Gapminder Foundation, which is almost certainly in part due to the left’s obsession with “inequality” and normalization of “socialism.”
Nearly half of American millennials would rather live in a socialist society than in a capitalist one, according to a YouGov poll. That said, only 71 percent of those asked were able to properly identify either. We can now see the manifestation of this ignorance in our elections and “The View” co-host Joy Behar.
But if all you really champion are some higher taxes and more generous social welfare, stop associating yourself with a philosophy that usually brings destitution and death. Call it something else. If not, McCain has every right to associate you with the ideology you embrace.
David Harsanyi is a senior editor at The Federalist and the author of the forthcoming “First Freedom: A Ride through America’s Enduring History With the Gun, From the Revolution to Today.”
A version of this article previously appeared on The Daily Signal website under the headline, “Sorry If You’re Offended, But Socialism Leads to Misery and Destitution.”
Mad Dog Launches Another Devastating Attack On the Media, He Has No Time for ‘Fake News’
BY WILL RACKE
Secretary of Defense James Mattis on Friday denied reports circulating in Australia’s media that the U.S. is planning to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities with the help of Australian intelligence.
“I have no idea where the Australian news people got that … I am confident it is not something that is being considered right now. I think it’s … frankly it’s fiction as best I can give you,” Mattis said, according to Tara Copp of the Military Times.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported late Thursday that officials in Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull’s government believe Washington is prepared to bomb Iranian facilities as early as August. Citing “senior figures” in the government, ABC also reported that Australian military intelligence would “likely play a role in identifying targets in Iran.”
The speculation about an impending American strike comes on the heels of a bout of saber-rattling between President Donald Trump and Iranian leaders.
Trump admonished Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Twitter late Sunday night, warning that any future threats against the U.S. would be met with “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before.”
Trump’s tweet appeared to be in response to a speech Rouhani gave earlier that day, in which he said that Americans “must understand that war with Iran is the mother of all wars and peace with Iran is the mother of all peace.”
Rouhani later shrugged off Trump’s tweet, but said Iran should respond to Washington with “action,” not words.
“There is no need for us to respond to any nonsensical comment and answer back to them,” he told his cabinet on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press. “We should respond to them with action.”
Tensions between Washington and Tehran have worsened since May, when Trump pulled the U.S. out of a 2015 agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for international sanctions relief.
The Trump administration says the deal was not tough enough and did nothing to curb Iran’s destabilizing actions in the Middle East, while Tehran has accused Washington of reneging on a good-faith agreement as a pretext for regime change.
Mattis had originally opposed withdrawing from the nuclear deal, putting him in a minority of Trump national security aides who argued the deal should be kept in place while Washington applied pressure in other areas.
Still, Mattis has consistently argued that Iran is the greatest threat to peace and stability in the Persian Gulf region.
“(Iran) cannot continue to show irresponsibility as some revolutionary organization that is intent on exporting terrorism, exporting disruption across the region,” Mattis said Tuesday at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
“The president was making very clear that they’re on the wrong track,” he added.
Secretary of Defense James Mattis on Friday denied reports circulating in Australia’s media that the U.S. is planning to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities with the help of Australian intelligence.“I have no idea where the Australian news people got that … I am confident it is not something that is being considered right now. I think it’s … frankly it’s fiction as best I can give you,” Mattis said, according to Tara Copp of the Military Times.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported late Thursday that officials in Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull’s government believe Washington is prepared to bomb Iranian facilities as early as August. Citing “senior figures” in the government, ABC also reported that Australian military intelligence would “likely play a role in identifying targets in Iran.”
The speculation about an impending American strike comes on the heels of a bout of saber-rattling between President Donald Trump and Iranian leaders.
Trump admonished Iranian President Hassan Rouhani on Twitter late Sunday night, warning that any future threats against the U.S. would be met with “consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before.”
Trump’s tweet appeared to be in response to a speech Rouhani gave earlier that day, in which he said that Americans “must understand that war with Iran is the mother of all wars and peace with Iran is the mother of all peace.”
Rouhani later shrugged off Trump’s tweet, but said Iran should respond to Washington with “action,” not words.
“There is no need for us to respond to any nonsensical comment and answer back to them,” he told his cabinet on Wednesday, according to The Associated Press. “We should respond to them with action.”
Tensions between Washington and Tehran have worsened since May, when Trump pulled the U.S. out of a 2015 agreement that limited Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for international sanctions relief.
The Trump administration says the deal was not tough enough and did nothing to curb Iran’s destabilizing actions in the Middle East, while Tehran has accused Washington of reneging on a good-faith agreement as a pretext for regime change.
Mattis had originally opposed withdrawing from the nuclear deal, putting him in a minority of Trump national security aides who argued the deal should be kept in place while Washington applied pressure in other areas.
Still, Mattis has consistently argued that Iran is the greatest threat to peace and stability in the Persian Gulf region.
“(Iran) cannot continue to show irresponsibility as some revolutionary organization that is intent on exporting terrorism, exporting disruption across the region,” Mattis said Tuesday at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
“The president was making very clear that they’re on the wrong track,” he added.
Obama Administration Funded al-Qaida Front
Written by R. Cort Kirkwood
The Obama Administration OK’d a $200,000 grant to a terrorist front with the help of World Vision, the Christian evangelical aid organization. And at least $115,000 of it actually went to the terror group.
That’s the latest news from a long parade of Obama’s blunders, except this time the result is even more shocking than his garden-variety foul-ups, given the group that received the money: an affiliate of al-Qaida.
Terror Designation
The funding story opens, wrote Sam Westrop in National Review, “in October 2004, when the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) designated the Khartoum-based Islamic Relief Agency (ISRA), also known as the Islamic African Relief Agency (IARA), as a terror-financing organization. It did so because of ISRA’s links to Osama bin Laden and his organization Maktab al-Khidamat (MK), the precursor of al-Qaeda.”
Summary: OFAC declared that ISRA, which was connected to Osama bin Laden, was a terror group.
That designation included all of ISRA’s American affiliates, one of which “illegally transferred over $1.2 million to Iraqi insurgents and other terror groups, including, reportedly, the Afghan terrorist Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In 2010, the executive director of IARA-USA and a board member pled guilty to money-laundering, theft of public funds, conspiracy, and several other charges.”
But that didn’t stop the administration or World Vision from eventually passing money to ISRA, Westrop reported. USAID sent $723,405 to World Vision to “improve water, sanitation and hygiene and to increase food security in Sudan’s Blue Nile state,” with $200,000 of that total promised to ISRA.
Amazingly, a USAID official told Westrop that “World Vision had alerted it in November 2014 to the likelihood of ISRA being on the terror list,” which prompted USAID to order World Vision to “suspend all activities with ISRA.” World Vision would have to wait to distribute the money until OFAC decided whether ISRA was on the terror list.
World Vision, Estrop reported, tired of waiting for OFAC’s decision and threatened to disburse the money within a week if it didn’t hear anything.
World Vision’s statement stunned USAID officials, who complained that World Vision’s behavior “doesn’t make sense.” USAID official Daniel Holmberg emailed a colleague: “If they actually said that they wanted to resume work with ISRA, while knowing that it was 99% likely that ISRA was on the list then I am concerned about our partnership with them, and whether it should continue.”
OFAC’s decision did not please World Vision. In January 2015, OFAC denied World Vision the license to do business with ISRA. World Vision appealed that decision to “Obama-administration official Jeremy Konyndyk (who then served as director of USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance) to apply to OFAC for a new license from USAID to pay ISRA ‘monies owed for work performed.’”
World Vision claimed that “their whole program will be jeopardized” if they didn’t cough up the money to the terrorists.
Threat Made, Money Transferred
After Sudanese officials threatened to kick World Vision out of the country, supposedly as “punishment” for canceling the grant, the Obama Administration caved:
Incredibly, on May 7, 2015 — after “close collaboration and consultations with the Department of State” — OFAC issued a license to a World Vision affiliate, World Vision International, authorizing “a one-time transfer of approximately $125,000 to ISRA,” of which “$115,000 was for services performed under the sub-award with USAID” and $10,000 was “for an unrelated funding arrangement between Irish Aid and World Vision.”
The decision was a “great relief,” a World Vision official said, because the ISRA terrorists had threatened a lawsuit. That of course, “would have damaged our reputation and standing in Sudan.” A senior USAID official thought funding the terrorists was “good news and a great relief, really!”
Then, to put something of a galling period on this story, an ISRA official actually asked USAID how it could get off the terror list.
For its part, World Vision denies any wrongdoing, claiming in a lengthy post at its website that it paid money owed for services performed.
The bottom line? “Obama-administration officials knowingly approved the transfer of taxpayer dollars to an al-Qaeda affiliate, and not an obscure one but an enormous international network that was often in the headlines.” (Emphasis added.)
Estrop offers more details about the transaction, but the key point is that the Obama Administration not only approved the the $200,000 grant but did so knowing that at least $115,000 of it was going to a terrorist front.
Photo: Katsapura/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Sharyl Attkisson: I Don't Think I Was the Only Reporter the Government Surveilled
BY DEBRA HEINE
Although investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson has strong forensic evidence that her home computer was remotely accessed by government entities, nothing has been done about it. The Department of Justice should be paying attention, because Attkisson believes she wasn't the only person who was improperly spied on during the Obama years.
Attkisson shared her story during a House Oversight and Reform hearing on Tuesday about H.R. 4382, the Free Flow of Information Act, which would enshrine journalist-source protection into federal law.
Reps Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) introduced the Free Flow of Information Act in November of 2017 "to protect the exercise of freely reporting critical information to the American public by establishing federal protection from compulsory disclosures for journalists."
Attkisson was reporting on the Benghazi scandal for CBS News in late 2012 when her computer records were surveilled by a government entity on multiple occasions. She is now the host of Full Measure, a Sunday public affairs program.
She told Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC) at the hearing on Tuesday that there was no doubt in her mind that the government had intruded into her computer.
"There's an actual fingerprint on the software that is used for this that they recognize themselves -- or that can be recognized -- that it's very unique," she explained. "It's a government proprietary software. And not only that, they didn't just look at my computer records, according to forensics. They planted three classified documents in my computer, they had a keystroke monitoring program in there, they used Skype -- which was on my computer -- to secretly activate it to exfiltrate files and listen in on audio."
She noted that a lot of people, including her, didn't know that Skype could be used for such purposes, but it's just one of many tools spooks use to access your computer remotely.
"I don't believe I was unique in terms of the only journalist this happened to," she added. "I was just one who found out about it because I had intel sources."
Attkisson explained to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) that it had never occurred to her that the government would be spying on her, as it sounded "so wildly crazy." However, two different individuals in the intelligence community -- who didn't know each other -- had approached her with the information indicating that she was being surveilled. She said the intelligence sources told her that they were seeing practices being employed that "used to be strictly forbidden or controlled, but were now being done more liberally."
Attkisson continued: "With help of another confidential source, and a FBI unit chief who helped connect me, we were able to get the first forensics exam, and they were literally blown away, according to them, when they saw this evidence. They were so shocked because there was a time when this would never have been done."
She noted that she could not and would not reveal her source, but "it's a government-connected person who knows exactly what government surveillance software does and looks like," she explained.
Before she and her legal team were able to present all of the evidence in court, her case was dismissed, Attkisson said.
"We presented some overviews and it was considered at the time plausible and we survived many motions to dismiss along the way, but after we added a telephone company to the lawsuit a couple months back, there was new considerations and the case was dismissed."
But Attkisson encouraged interested parties to look at the forensics -- especially at the DOJ, "for the sake of trying to find who did it or identify for their own purposes. Because I think they should be concerned and I don't think I was the only one. I think they really ought to be on that, personally," Attkisson added.
Attkisson has good reason to feel frustrated.
In 2013, she turned to DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz for help, handing over one of her personal home laptops to be examined. The investigation seemed to begin honestly and diligently, but over time became a half-baked exercise in obfuscation and stonewalling.
In a post at The Hill on March 1, 2018, Attkisson admits that she was advised by some of her intel sources not to trust the IG with her computer. She writes: “But I figured there was little downside. We already had our irrefutable forensics findings from our examinations. If the IG probe was competent and honest, as I expected it might be, then it could turn up names of the government actors responsible. If not, no harm done.”
When the investigation was complete, the IG’s office stonewalled Attkisson, refusing to let her see the final report. She was advised to file a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. She writes: “I did so; under the law, a response was due within about 30 days. It’s been years.”
The IG eventually released what Attkisson's attorney called a “wiped summary -- not the actual report or notes -- with spin that implied there had been no intrusion. This was quickly presented, publicly, by then-Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), who had gotten a copy of the summary with lightning speed; and it was dutifully reported by some in an unquestioning press."
In late February of this year, Attkisson discovered that the hard drive of one of her personal computers was secretly switched out with another while it was in the custody of the Justice Dept. inspector general:
Re: My govt. computer intrusions...What would you think if I told you the hard drive of one of my personal computers was secretly switched out w/another while in custody of the Justice Dept. Inspector General-- before they gave it back to me? (Tick-tock.) #GettingCloserToAnswers
Attkisson explains:
Not long ago, my forensics team asked if I used that Apple computer after the IG returned it. My team was conducting a new exam. “No,” I replied, “it hasn’t functioned since before I gave it to the IG. I just stored it when they returned it. Why?”
“Because -- that’s not your hard drive inside the computer they gave back to you,” they told me. “ … We know the serial number on the hard drive when you bought it. We recorded the same serial number on our earlier forensics exams. This is a different hard drive. Completely different serial number. Not even close.”
I would never have known if we hadn’t gone back in that computer for additional forensics.
In addition to somebody changing the scope of the IG investigation midstream, and the office withholding from me the notes and the report on my own complaint, somebody also switched out my hard drive before the IG returned it to me.
Attkisson asks: "What does all this mean to the integrity of the DOJ’s inspector general?"
Nothing good obviously, since the same IG botched its report on the FBI Hillary Clinton email investigation, and is currently investigating the FISA abuse scandal involving the FBI and DOJ.
Report: Russian Hackers Appear to Eye US Power Grids, Not Elections
By Wanda Carruthers
State-sponsored Russian hackers appear to have a greater interest in the U.S. power grid than meddling in the fall midterm elections since reports indicate that so far only two Senate Democrats up for re-election had online accounts tampered with, The New York Times reported Friday.
There's little evidence of Russian military hackers in U.S. elections or state election systems, U.S. intelligence officials and representatives from technology companies maintain, but report there has been quite a lot of evidence pointing to foreign agents implanting malware on electric grids across the country.
The Department of Homeland Security revealed this week Russia's military intelligence agency had infiltrated power plant control rooms across the U.S., citing "hundreds of victims." However, there is no indication any efforts were made to actually disrupt U.S. power systems.
It appears hackers gained access through a network of power plant contractors, perhaps for the sole purpose of showing that they could succeed. The White House has said little about the claims, according to the Times, except to stress the administration's efforts to provide cyber security to state and local elections systems.
Gen. Paul M. Nakasone, director of the National Security Agency and commander of U.S. Cyber Command, said in a presentation at the Aspen Forum earlier this month he had set up a Russia "small group," the Times reported. He did not elaborate on what role it played in defending government networks or offensively conducting covert operations.
As for infiltrating midterm elections, Microsoft officials reported last week they detected an intrusion into two congressional staff offices last fall. One of the lawmakers affected was Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri. The company did not identify the other lawmaker affected by the hacking.
Is America’s birth rate about to start booming?
Shutterstock
Sometimes a society’s values change sharply with almost no one noticing. In 1968, according to a Gallup survey, 70 percent of American adults said that a family of three or more children was “ideal” — about the same number as Gallup surveys starting in 1938. That number helps explain the explosive baby boom after Americans were no longer constrained by depression and world war.
Those values and numbers didn’t last. By 1978, Gallup reported that only 39 percent considered three or more children “ideal.” The numbers have hovered around there ever since, spiking to just 41 percent in the late-1990s tech boom.
The change in values and behavior took time to register. Just before the 1972 presidential election, then-President Richard Nixon and a Democratic Congress goosed up Social Security benefits. They figured the baby-boom generation was just delaying producing a baby boom of its own. Wrong. Social Security has needed patching up ever since.
Similarly, the 1970s showed sharp increases in female workforce participation, divorce and single-parent households, as well as decreased participation in voluntary organizations — all unanticipated.
Is a similar values shift happening now? Maybe so, suggest George Mason University associate professor Philip Auerswald and Palo Alto hedge-fund manager Joon Yun in an article in The New York Times. They point out that the American fertility rate — the number of children per woman age 15 to 44 — has hit a post-1970s low.
Birth rates typically drop during recessions and rise a bit during booms. They did drop notably from 2007 to 2009. But the latest data don’t show a rebound, despite significant growth and record-low unemployment.
The trend varies among demographic groups. Native-born Hispanics and blacks used to have birth rates above the replacement rate (2.1 births per woman). Now they’re below replacement, almost as low that of as native-born whites and Asians, which are down only a bit. The immigrant birth rate remains above replacement level among blacks, but only barely above among Hispanics, and below among whites and Asians.
One possible consequence: Those often-gleeful predictions that whites will soon be a minority will not be realized so soon, or maybe ever. Nor is it clear, as sociologist Richard Alba has suggested, whether often-intermarrying Hispanics and Asians will see themselves as aggrieved minorities.
Those values and numbers didn’t last. By 1978, Gallup reported that only 39 percent considered three or more children “ideal.” The numbers have hovered around there ever since, spiking to just 41 percent in the late-1990s tech boom.
The change in values and behavior took time to register. Just before the 1972 presidential election, then-President Richard Nixon and a Democratic Congress goosed up Social Security benefits. They figured the baby-boom generation was just delaying producing a baby boom of its own. Wrong. Social Security has needed patching up ever since.
Similarly, the 1970s showed sharp increases in female workforce participation, divorce and single-parent households, as well as decreased participation in voluntary organizations — all unanticipated.
Is a similar values shift happening now? Maybe so, suggest George Mason University associate professor Philip Auerswald and Palo Alto hedge-fund manager Joon Yun in an article in The New York Times. They point out that the American fertility rate — the number of children per woman age 15 to 44 — has hit a post-1970s low.
Birth rates typically drop during recessions and rise a bit during booms. They did drop notably from 2007 to 2009. But the latest data don’t show a rebound, despite significant growth and record-low unemployment.
The trend varies among demographic groups. Native-born Hispanics and blacks used to have birth rates above the replacement rate (2.1 births per woman). Now they’re below replacement, almost as low that of as native-born whites and Asians, which are down only a bit. The immigrant birth rate remains above replacement level among blacks, but only barely above among Hispanics, and below among whites and Asians.
One possible consequence: Those often-gleeful predictions that whites will soon be a minority will not be realized so soon, or maybe ever. Nor is it clear, as sociologist Richard Alba has suggested, whether often-intermarrying Hispanics and Asians will see themselves as aggrieved minorities.
Also, the sharp drop in the Hispanic birth rate combined with the sharp drop of Hispanic (especially Mexican) immigration post-2007 means a lower proportion of low-skill immigrants competing for jobs with low-skill Americans. Asian immigrants may outnumber Hispanics and arrive with significantly higher skill levels. So many immigrants from African countries like Nigeria and Ghana. Their capacity for expanding the economy rather than competing for low-skill jobs may point to unexpected growth.
*Having a child out of wedlock is the norm for women in their 40s
*New Yorkers are having less babies
*Women in 30s having more babies than younger moms
*New Yorkers keep having fewer babies
Other familiar trends may be reversed. Fewer young people would get caught in the trap of incurring huge college debt for worthless degrees or none at all if, as the Manhattan Institute’s Aaron Renn suggests, enrollment in higher education, already declining, starts plunging. Might young people bypass college and find constructive jobs and marry and raise families as their counterparts did in the postwar years?
That’s suggested by a recent trend reversal. During the sluggish 2008-2013 economy, young Americans stayed put in tiny child-unfriendly apartments in hip central-coastal cities like New York and San Francisco, and paid high rents resulting from stringent environmental restrictions. This was hailed as a move toward progressive attitudes. But evidently not. As Newgeography proprietor Joel Kotkin has noted, since growth returned, young people have been heading to child-friendly suburbs and exurbs, ditching subway cards for SUV fobs.
All of which raises the possibility of current stubbornly low birth rates being on the verge of a rise, away from the economically and culturally divided low-birth-rate society described in Charles Murray’s “Coming Apart,” and toward something suggested by Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again.”
For the moment, these countertrends are just possibilities. But since persistently low birth rates lead to population loss, economic stagnation and low creativity, let’s hope some of them come true.
American prosperity of Trump era marks real turning point in history
BY ARTHUR LAFFER, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR
Gross domestic product, or GDP, is the measure of choice when assessing the health of any economy, especially in the United States. GDP, which is measured at annual rates, includes the value of production of all goods and services produced in a country. In the one year since President Trump took office, the first quarter of 2017 through the first quarter of 2018, real GDP grew at a 2.55 percent annual rate. This is higher than the growth for six of the eight years former President Obama was in office, or even five of the eight years when former President George W. Bush was in office.
Moreover, the economic growth rate in the first year of Trump in office is higher than the average annual growth rate for the entire presidencies of both Obama at 2.05 percent and Bush at 1.71 percent. For the full 65 years from the first quarter of 1953 through the first quarter of 2018, annual real GDP growth in the United States averaged 2.95 percent, which is still substantially higher than the first year under Trump.
The growth rate for the second quarter of 2018 is 4.1 percent. This is a nice sign of American prosperity and is the strongest quarter of economic growth since the third quarter of 2014. Net exports contributed about 1 percent, while the change in private inventories subtracted 1 percent. Lots of changes like this happen on a quarter by quarter basis and should not be taken too seriously.
The Commerce Department releases its quarterly estimates, but it has also revised a lot of historical numbers, although usually by only very small amounts. Perhaps its biggest revision was for the first four quarters of the Trump presidency. What had been an estimated annual growth of 2.82 percent was revised down to 2.55 percent, even though the first quarter of 2018 itself was revised up from 2 percent to 2.2 percent. This example is only meant to show the fragility of these numbers.
While the GDP growth of any one quarter can be offset, revised or magnified in subsequent quarters, a pattern appears to be emerging under the stewardship of the Trump administration, which makes a lot of sense, at least to me. I believe that people individually, and the economy collectively, respond strongly to economic incentives.
Other economists do not concur on this point. Jason Furman, the top economist for Obama, disagrees with me on the effects that Trump policies have on real GDP growth. In fact, using the ploy of damning with faint praise, he said of the 2017 tax cuts in a recent debate, “I think policy can make a difference. The tax cuts will make a very, very small positive difference, probably about half of one-tenth of 1 percent.”
History tells us a very different story than the naysayers. Lowering taxes and decreasing regulation has had powerful effects on growth over long periods of time. Taxes have a very important impact on employment, jobs, output and growth. An economy quite simply cannot be taxed into prosperity. The tax cuts signed by Trump stand in stark contrast to the tax increases under Obama. Corporate and personal tax rates were way too high. The Republican bill reduced those tax rates a lot. It included 100 percent expensing of capital expenditures, territorial taxation, and the elimination of state and local tax deductions to promote growth.
Trump has also waged war on debilitating regulations, including eliminating the Affordable Care Act individual mandate, along with reducing other health care and energy regulations as well. Monetary policy is now refocusing on market forces rather than zero interest rates, which means that money will flow to where it is needed, not to where some university professors believe it should go.
When it comes to trade, there are problems and risks in the vision Trump is carrying out. Trade should be free and with minimum barriers placed on American exports to other countries and foreign exports to the United States. We should, as a world, move to zero tariffs everywhere. We should eliminate other barriers and trade subsidies. Obviously, such an ideal world is not plausible, but there is no reason we cannot try.
Foreigners produce some things better than we do, and we produce some things better than they do. Both Americans and foreigners alike would be foolish in the extreme if Americans did not sell foreigners those products Americans make better than foreigners in exchange for those products foreigners make better than Americans do. It is a winning strategy for everyone and makes for great prosperity around the world.
Finally, we have had a serious government spending problem in the United States for years. The economist Milton Friedman was famous for saying “government spending is taxation.” He is completely correct. If a country taxes people who work and pays people when they do not work, then it is unsurprising if a lot more people choose not to work.
The latest GDP figure is a great number that aids our recovery from the awful 16 years under Bush and Obama. It will also reduce deficits in the long term if such robust economic growth continues. But the challenge is far from over. We have a lot of work to do to fan the flames of prosperity and to hold at bay the prosperity killers. But one step forward is still one step forward, and it is a heck of a lot better than one step backward.
Arthur B. Laffer is chairman of Laffer Associates. He was an economic adviser to the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump and served as an economic adviser to the White House during the Reagan administration.
G’ day…Ciao…Helen and Moe Lauzier
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