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from American Thinker
What I Learned in the Peace Corps in Africa: Trump Is Right
Americans think it is a universal human instinct to do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It's not. It seems natural to us because we live in a Bible-based Judeo-Christian culture. We think the Protestant work ethic is universal. It's not. My town was full of young men doing nothing. They were waiting for a government job. There was no private enterprise. Private business was not illegal, just impossible, given the nightmare of a third-world bureaucratic kleptocracy.
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from Competitive Enterprise Institute
RIGHT-CENTER BIAS
Regulation in the technology sector (beyond the absolute minimum necessary) is worse than government merely picking winners and losers—not just because government picks only losers, but because it fosters stagnation in the entire tech ecosystem. Antitrust in particular (the original “regulatory dark matter”) arbitrarily cherry picks among business models as such, imposes rigid frameworks, invites cronyism, and bestows protectionist favors. Protectionism happens even at the global level, as Microsoft and Google discovered when record fines were imposed upon them via antirust models those nations learned from the U.S. That antitrust operates as a longstanding form of corporate welfare is the root of its irresistibility. Antitrust regulation asserts political monopoly control over economic sectors, but is always marketed as the opposite.
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s rule against small dollar loans will hurt the working poor most, warns a new report from the Competitive Enterprise Institute. “Millions of Americans will have few other options to cover urgent expenses like rent, a car payment, or a medical emergency if regulators succeed in shutting off access to small dollar loans,” said Daniel Press, CEI policy analyst and author of the report, How the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's Payday Loan Rule Hurts the Working Poor. “Congress has an opportunity now to help consumers by stopping the pay day loan rule from going into effect.”
7 Reasons to Oppose the Federal Payday Loan Rule
In October last year, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued their final rule regulating small dollar lenders, who issue loans between $100 and $500 over a two-week period for an average 15 percent fee. Later that year, a bipartisan group of congressmen introduced a resolution of disapproval that would overturn the rule through the Congressional Review Act.
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from The Heritage Foundation
RIGHT BIAS, MIXED, think tank in Washington, D.C
Stop Extending Bad Policy—Let the Tax Extenders Die
Every few years Congress extends expiring tax provisions, called tax extenders. 2018’s package consists mostly of expired tax subsidies. Tax extenders pick winners and losers through the tax code; they slow economic growth and reduce opportunity for those who do not receive special tax favors. It would be a shame if Congress upended the success of the just-passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Congress should allow all 35 tax extenders to expire.
How the Great Books Are Revolutionizing College Admissions Tests
You may remember taking the SAT or the ACT. Hours and hours of memorizing techniques and tricks, all to get that perfect score to unlock your college dreams. These tests have monopolized the college entrance process, and in recent years—in the case of the SAT in particular—have been tied to the controversial Common Core standards. The Classic Learning Test offers an alternative to the SAT and ACT. As opposed to these standardized tests, the Classic Learning Test measures a student’s knowledge of great works of literature and applied mathematical skills.
Why Trump’s Meeting With Kazakhstan President Was So Important
The White House welcomed Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, for a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday. This was the first working visit by the head of state from a Central Asian republic to the White House since Trump’s inauguration almost one year ago. Nazarbayev’s visit was timely, and offered Trump an opportunity to demonstrate America’s geo-political, security, and economic interests in Central Asia. The U.S. has developed good relations with Kazakhstan since the 1990s. Those ties are still going strong, but more can be done. Central Asia is a region often ignored by U.S. policymakers until it is too late. The U.S. needs to show a more enduring and strategic engagement with the region and Nazarbayev’s visit to the White House is a great place to start.
The Supreme Court Quietly Gives Religious Liberty a Big Win
Religious liberty and freedom of conscience won big at the Supreme Court last week, just in time for Religious Freedom Day on Jan. 16. The justices declined last week to hear a legal challenge against a Mississippi law that protects citizens, small businesses, government employees, and charities from official discrimination by government if they believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. The Mississippi law benefits people on both sides of the marriage debate because when a government can punish one group of citizens for dissenting from cultural orthodoxy, it can punish any group for any belief.
Why We Are a Republic, Not a Democracy
Many people whine that using the Electoral College instead of the popular vote and majority rule is undemocratic. I’d say that they are absolutely right. Not deciding who will be the president by majority rule is not democracy. But the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to ensure that we were a republic and not a democracy. In fact, the wor mocracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or any other of our founding documents. John Adams warned in a letter, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.” Democracy can easily devolve into tyranny by majority rule. The Founders understood this danger, and so they placed numerous checks on the power of the majority.
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Stop Extending Bad Policy—Let the Tax Extenders Die
Every few years Congress extends expiring tax provisions, called tax extenders. 2018’s package consists mostly of expired tax subsidies. Tax extenders pick winners and losers through the tax code; they slow economic growth and reduce opportunity for those who do not receive special tax favors. It would be a shame if Congress upended the success of the just-passed Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: Congress should allow all 35 tax extenders to expire.
How the Great Books Are Revolutionizing College Admissions Tests
You may remember taking the SAT or the ACT. Hours and hours of memorizing techniques and tricks, all to get that perfect score to unlock your college dreams. These tests have monopolized the college entrance process, and in recent years—in the case of the SAT in particular—have been tied to the controversial Common Core standards. The Classic Learning Test offers an alternative to the SAT and ACT. As opposed to these standardized tests, the Classic Learning Test measures a student’s knowledge of great works of literature and applied mathematical skills.
Why Trump’s Meeting With Kazakhstan President Was So Important
The White House welcomed Nursultan Nazarbayev, president of Kazakhstan, for a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday. This was the first working visit by the head of state from a Central Asian republic to the White House since Trump’s inauguration almost one year ago. Nazarbayev’s visit was timely, and offered Trump an opportunity to demonstrate America’s geo-political, security, and economic interests in Central Asia. The U.S. has developed good relations with Kazakhstan since the 1990s. Those ties are still going strong, but more can be done. Central Asia is a region often ignored by U.S. policymakers until it is too late. The U.S. needs to show a more enduring and strategic engagement with the region and Nazarbayev’s visit to the White House is a great place to start.
The Supreme Court Quietly Gives Religious Liberty a Big Win
Religious liberty and freedom of conscience won big at the Supreme Court last week, just in time for Religious Freedom Day on Jan. 16. The justices declined last week to hear a legal challenge against a Mississippi law that protects citizens, small businesses, government employees, and charities from official discrimination by government if they believe that marriage is between one man and one woman. The Mississippi law benefits people on both sides of the marriage debate because when a government can punish one group of citizens for dissenting from cultural orthodoxy, it can punish any group for any belief.
Why We Are a Republic, Not a Democracy
Many people whine that using the Electoral College instead of the popular vote and majority rule is undemocratic. I’d say that they are absolutely right. Not deciding who will be the president by majority rule is not democracy. But the Founding Fathers went to great lengths to ensure that we were a republic and not a democracy. In fact, the wor mocracy does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, or any other of our founding documents. John Adams warned in a letter, “Remember democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet, that did not commit suicide.” Democracy can easily devolve into tyranny by majority rule. The Founders understood this danger, and so they placed numerous checks on the power of the majority.
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from Independent Sentinel
RIGHT BIAS
All the Things Not As Important to Democrats As People Here Illegally
Democrats are threatening to shut down the government on behalf of 800,000 illegal immigrants because they believe it will lead to their Progressive Electoral Majority.
Watch Jim Acosta Get Kicked Out of the Presser
CNN’s Jim Acosta is a troll who tries to make every event about himself. While the President was holding a presser in the White House with the President of Kazakhstan, Acosta rudely tried to make it about the DACA meeting with lying Durbin.
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from Medium Community
Assange Keeps Warning Of AI Censorship, And It’s Time We Started Listening
Throughout the near entirety of human history, a population’s understanding of what’s going on in the world has been controlled by those in power. The men in charge controlled what the people were told about rival populations, the history of their tribe and its leadership, etc. When the written word was invented, men in charge dictated what books were permitted to be written and circulated, what ideas were allowed, what narratives the public would be granted access to.
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from The Spokesman-Review
Newspaper in Spokane, Washington
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from USA Today
Apple to hire 20,000, open new campus and pay $38 billion tax bill on overseas profits
Apple, which has come under major criticism for building much of its popular products in China, announced a sweeping set of moves partially tied to the recent tax bill, including paying $38 billion in taxes from profits made overseas and opening another corporate campus.
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from The Washington Post
Newspaper in Washington, D.C.
In Venezuela, money has stopped working
A friend recently sent me a photograph that tells a powerful story about the situation Venezuelans find themselves in now. It’s not a very good picture, really, just a blurry cellphone shot of trash: some wrapping material, an old CD — the detritus left behind after a store was looted last week in San Felix, a city in the country’s southeast. Strewn about in the trash are at least a dozen 20-bolivar bills, small-denomination currency now so worthless even looters didn’t think it was worth their time to stop and pick them up. In theory, according to the “official” exchange rate, which long ago lost even a hint of connection with reality, each of those bills is worth $2. In fact, as Venezuela sinks deeper and deeper into the first hyperinflation the Western Hemisphere has seen in a generation, bolivar banknotes have come to be worth basically nothing: Each bill is worth about $0.0001 at the current exchange rate, meaning you need to have 100 of them to equal one penny.
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from WND (World Net Daily)
[Information from this site may not be reliable.]
'SPLC is now a hate group itself. It's a money-grabbing slander machine'
It’s not clear exactly when the Southern Poverty Law Center, which years ago famously battled the KKK, turned against Christians and conservatives, but the evidence that it has is overwhelming. The group routinely lashes out at any organization that opposes abortion, transgenderism, or other left-wing causes, publicly calling them “haters.”
'SPLC is now a hate group itself. It's a money-grabbing slander machine'
It’s not clear exactly when the Southern Poverty Law Center, which years ago famously battled the KKK, turned against Christians and conservatives, but the evidence that it has is overwhelming. The group routinely lashes out at any organization that opposes abortion, transgenderism, or other left-wing causes, publicly calling them “haters.”
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