WaPo Accidentally Admits ‘Zuckbucks’ Were Used To Turn Out Likely-Democrat Voters In 2020

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Elon Musk shared a Federalist article on Twitter this week that detailed how “Zuckbucks” were used to influence the outcome of the 2020 election, and leftists are livid.

On Tuesday, the Twitter CEO linked to an October 2021 article, written by Federalist contributor William Doyle, that examines how Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg gave hundreds of millions of dollars to nonprofits such as the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) and the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) leading up to the 2020 presidential contest. CTCL and CEIR then poured these “Zuckbucks” into local election offices in battleground states around the country to change how elections were administered, such as by expanding unsupervised election protocols like mail-in voting and the use of ballot drop boxes.

Notably, Doyle’s article examines how these grants were heavily skewed toward Democrat-majority counties, essentially making it a massive, privately funded Democrat get-out-the-vote operation. Organizations such as the Capital Research Center have also released detailed analyses on the partisan distribution of these funds.

While Musk simply referred to the article as “interesting,” that was apparently too much for Washington Post columnist Philip Bump to handle. In response, Bump penned an article titled, “Musk shares baseless election claim with millions of Twitter users,” in which he attempted to smear the Twitter CEO and discredit The Federalist’s article.

“This is a common way in which Musk elevates right-wing rhetoric. He’ll often engage with fringe voices by declaring their commentary to be “concerning” — suggesting it’s just something worth mulling over,” complained Bump in melodramatic fashion.

But then Bump openly admits the purpose of “Zuckbucks” wasn’t to help election offices “promote safe and reliable voting” during the Covid outbreak, as CTCL and CEIR originally claimed, but to increase voter turnout in Democrat-majority areas.

Much of the analysis in the Federalist article centers on the idea that these investments were larger in more-Democratic counties, using that as a peg for the argument that the investments were partisan and critical to Biden’s success.

But that argument is easily countered. CTCL’s investments were often in heavily Democratic areas — because those areas often have lower turnout rates. If you want to increase turnout, the smartest place to try to do so is places where turnout is lowest. In the United States, that’s often lower-income communities and communities that have high populations of Black and Hispanic residents, two groups that often vote heavily Democratic.

In trying to explain away the disparities in “Zuckbucks” distribution, Bump instead admits a Democrat get-out-the-vote effort is exactly what happened. While Zuckerberg’s donations to CTCL and CEIR were marketed as just a good-faith initiative to ensure Covid didn’t disrupt local election administration, House Republicans later discovered that less than 1 percent of CTCL’s 2020 funds were spent on personal protective equipment.

“The argument has gone from: Private funding from CTCL for election administration offices was only meant to help the elections run smoothly,” to “CTCL poured money into Democratic strongholds to boost turnout and that’s a good thing,” tweeted Jason Snead, the executive director of the Honest Elections Project.

Whether they realize it or not, Bump and the Post are admitting the main purpose of “Zuckbucks” was to boost turnout among voters in Democrat strongholds. It’s a remarkable fact that, for once, the Post got right.

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This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

WHO Says LGBTQ/Sex Ed Starts…At Birth?!?!

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The World Health Organization (WHO), which is beholden to and enamored of the genocidal Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and whose horrendous advice triggered the destructive COVID-19 measures such as masking and lockdowns, has more awful advice for you. According to the WHO, “sexuality education starts from birth.”

It’s never too early to teach your infant about sex and how they should chop off body parts! And this is the organization to which governments (including the Biden administration) want to give complete control over pandemic responses in future?

Notice the mention in the screenshot below of “early childhood masturbation” and “gender identity.”

“[The UK Telegraph, May 13] Outrage over WHO advice on sexuality for infants

Guide argues that ‘sexuality education starts from birth’

The World Health Organisation (WHO) is under pressure to withdraw guidance for schools recommending that toddlers ‘ask questions about sexuality’ and ‘explore gender identities.’”

God help us.

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This article was published at Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

Arizona Secretary of State Says Resolution Banning the Use of Voting Machines Will Not Be Enforced

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Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes is saying that the state will not enforce a resolution that has been passed in the state legislature banning electronic voting machines.

Arizona Sen. Anthony Kern introduced the resolution to ensure that “no voting system or component or subcomponent of a voting system or component… may be used or purchased as the primary method for casting, recording and tabulating ballots used in any election held in this state for federal office” unless certain transparency measures were introduced.

The measure was approved by the Arizona House and Senate, much to the approval of patriotic Arizona Sen. Wendy Rogers, who touted the resolution on many different conservative radio shows and podcasts on Monday.

However, Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes issued a statement claiming that the government would not enforce the resolution and continue business as usual for elections in years to come.

“Senate Concurrent Resolution 1037, which expresses a desire to restrict the use of certain electronic voting machines, is non-binding and does not have the force of law. Election equipment must be certified by the federal and state government by specific requirements outlined in federal and state law,” Fontes said in his statement.

“That certification process is being followed in Arizona and all applicable election equipment being used in Arizona is certified. If those requirements or certification process were to be changed, it would require a regular bill to be passed by the legislature and signed by the governor—which is not the case for this non-binding resolution. We defer to the Attorney General’s office on all other legal questions,” he added.

Big League Politics has reported on how a majority of Arizona voters believe that fraud occurred affected the results of the 2022 midterm elections:…..

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Continue reading this article at Big League Politics.

Why Politics is More Important than Culture Right Now

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The progressive and now radical left has tightened its control over the political life of America, especially since the highly suspicious elections of 2020 and 2022. The most astute conservative thinkers, however, have long recognized that the left’s conquest of culture came before its political conquest, best represented in Breitbart’s phrase “Politics is downstream of culture.”

Academia, Hollywood, the corporate media, the judiciary, and now the military are firmly in the grip of leftists and their repugnant anti-American ideology. Chronologically, higher education was the first to fall. Since the 1960s, colleges and universities have been turning out batch after batch of indoctrinated young adults, who then scatter into various professions and infect them with the pathology now called ‘wokism’.

In response to this, some conservatives seem to advocate an abandonment approach: don’t send your children to college, don’t let them watch Hollywood movies, don’t shop in stores owned by woke corporations. As a temporary strategy, this is just fine. I support people not attending progressive and far leftist colleges or watching stupid movies, most of which have no aesthetic or cultural merit anyway, or using the services of wacky-woke corporations. But this is not a long-term strategy.

The progressive and radical left have been playing their game of cultural conquest since the 1930s. Their strategy is paying off royally. Regarding academia, this is what Antonio Gramsci called “the long march of the Intellectuals”. The left seemed to understand, way before Andrew Breitbart came along, that if you control culture, you’ll inevitably come to control politics. That said, it must be acknowledged that in some cases our institutions may not be reclaimable. The 2024 election will show us whether political institutions are a lost cause or not.

The point here is this: Conservatives cannot simply extract themselves from cultural institutions in the hope of remaining healthy and unaffected by the godless and un-American woke culture. The reason is simple: if the left controls our cultural institutions, it creates and distributes culture.

In some cases, I believe the strategy must be a wholesale replacement of cultural institutions. For example, citizen journalism replacing corporate media. Simply stop watching and reading any form of corporate media and engaging progressive social media platforms. Seek and consume honest and ethical citizen journalism of which there is much to choose from. This, at the moment at least, seems to be working pretty well.

A majority of Americans are repulsed by the obvious ideological agenda of the mainstream media and are turning to other, less dishonest sources.

Other institutions, like Hollywood or higher education, are more difficult. Conservatives cannot, for purely practical reasons, create an alternative to Hollywood or higher education which will be equally as viable as honest citizen journalism competing with and displacing corporate media. Interestingly, though, crowd funding the series The Chosen and the movie The Jesus Revolution has been spectacularly successful and indicates a broad-based appetite for cultural renewal among many Americans and in other countries. Similarly, the huge movement away from public school (and teacher union) indoctrination of America’s children by every socioeconomic parental cohort speaks volumes of how culture can be reformed and recaptured in the American tradition.

So, what are we to do for long term victory in the battle for the soul of America? Strangely, I think the answer lies in a reversal of Breitbart’s formula: culture is (now) downstream of politics. It’s the classic formula of every totalitarian regime – and yes, that’s where we are headed. Take control of government by strong political victory, especially the federal executive branch and its administrative leviathan.

If you control government as the radical left now does, you control funding for education and many other cultural institutions. That translates to increased funding for woke curricula, clubs, and activism in both American universities and international universities (such as $787 million American dollars for gender studies at Kabul University). If you control government, you can weaponize the Justice Department to go after your political opponents and prosecute certain causes (such as the pro-life movement and parents against the sexualization of their children in public schools under Biden).

The left has unquestionably made culture a form of politics. No longer is culture or its creations a space to reflect on, study, or experience the sources of both our shared humanity and our shared citizenship. Nor will it ever be with a massive, censorship-driven, radical leftist government at the center of society. Culture is now an authoritarian tool for promoting woke politics aiming for tyrannical control over this nation’s citizens.

Winning the 2024 presidential election (and the United States Congress) is the only formula for taking back the culture. If the left wins in 2024, it will continue to make all forms of culture simply a form of politics using an increasingly weaponized administrative state under its control. Of course, I’m not advocating that we take back the White House and Congress to conduct a sort of reverse-conquest of cultural institutions. I don’t believe we need to, since the majority of Americans reject this obscene woke ideology and retain the American values that founded the Republic.

The work of the next conservative government, possibly under the leadership of Trump, will be to cleanse the government of corruption and remove the government from where it ought not to be: people’s homes, schools, churches, and social media platforms. Imagine, for example, what parents might do in reforming their school systems without a weaponized Justice Department labeling them “domestic terrorists” and threatening to pursue legal action against them. Take our government back, reign in the corruption, and let the American people pour into our cultural institutions and reform them without fear of a weaponized ruling class now threatening our God-given rights and Constitutional system.

In Praise of Americans Who Have Given Their All

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The war in Ukraine, brutally slogging along some 5,000 miles from the U.S., involves another people but it serves as a reminder to Americans of what it takes to keep one’s country safe, free, and prosperous. It also reminds us that there are dangers in this world that can only be stopped by people willing to put themselves in harm’s way to protect the rest of us.

People are the heart of a nation’s strength, especially those comparatively few who step forward to serve their community and their country in military service. Wars are rather rare, but the nation’s future can hang in the balance when war comes and the loss of life that results in defeating an enemy can number in the thousands, sometimes the tens of thousands.

Our history is punctuated with such crises and sacrifices. Citizen-patriots rose to the challenge of securing America’s birth nearly 250 years ago, with some 8,000 new Americans giving their all to defend our fledgling republic.

The Civil War, two world wars, operations against terrorists who have attacked America at home and Americans abroad, and wars to protect U.S. interests not just in our hemisphere but also in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, have resulted in the loss of nearly 700,000 Americans.

These men and women did not seek death; it came to them through their service. Their motivations included protecting the lives of those they loved; defending their homeland that has provided opportunity and freedom previously unknown in history; and facing dangers loyally alongside their brothers and sisters with whom they trained, deployed, and surged into combat as they answered their nation’s call.

These warriors were someone’s son or daughter; they might have been a husband or wife, father or mother, sister or brother. They were surely friends. They meant something to someone, and their loss struck deep to those whose lives they touched. These realities are why we have memorials to the fallen; cemeteries dedicated to their internment; poems, books, songs, and speeches written in their honor; and specific occasions, like Memorial Day, set aside on which to reflect on all of this.

This Memorial Day, take a moment to think about what our country would be like without the sacrifice made by those who ensured our birth as a nation, who maintained our union, and who have defended our homeland and way of life across two and a half centuries.

Many people serve in a vast number of ways. But some have served to the point of making the ultimate sacrifice. Remembering them is the point of Memorial Day…..

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This article was published by The Daily Signal and is reproduced with permission.

On The Front Lines

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WASHINGTON, DC — Warning against unconstitutional power grabs and overreaches by the IRS, The Rutherford Institute has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to restrict the tax agency’s authority to carry out warrantless searches of innocent taxpayers’ bank accounts and financial records as part of its efforts to identify and pursue the funds of associated family members and friends with delinquent taxes.

In an amicus brief filed with the Supreme Court in Polselli v. IRS, The Rutherford Institute and Cato Institute argue that the sweeping investigatory power wielded by the IRS—to circumvent the Fourth Amendment by carrying out warrantless searches of the bank accounts and records of innocent people merely because they may be associated with a delinquent taxpayer—offends every constitutional sensibility on the right to privacy.

“The Supreme Court needs to rein in the IRS’ unconstitutional power grabs,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “This practice of investigating the bank records of innocent taxpayers because they may have family members or associates who are delinquent on their taxes is merely a perverse form of guilt by association. At a minimum, Fourth Amendment protections should not disappear just because sensitive information is shared with third parties, such as banks and attorneys.”

The case arose after an IRS Revenue Officer, seeking to collect underpaid federal taxes by Remo Polselli, served summonses on the banks of Polselli’s wife and attorney in order to find account and financial records concerning Polselli. The IRS agent did not notify Polselli’s wife or attorney of the summonses, but the banks voluntarily did so. Polselli’s wife and attorney subsequently filed motions in federal district court to quash the IRS’s summonses. In siding with the IRS, the district court held that Polselli’s wife and attorney are not entitled to notice of the summons and have no right to even be heard on their motions to quash the summonses. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and, not wanting to “significantly impede the IRS’s ‘expansive information-gathering authority,’” interpreted a federal statute to rule that the IRS may summon the recordkeeper of any person without notice to that person if the summons was issued in aid of the collection of an assessment against a delinquent taxpayer. Although the Sixth Circuit acknowledged that the IRS may be able to access information regarding blameless third parties, which could then be shared with the Department of Justice for a criminal prosecution, the court brushed aside such concerns as “conjectural fears.”

In support of the appeals by Polselli’s wife and attorney to the Supreme Court, attorneys for The Rutherford Institute and Cato argued that the statute should be interpreted consistent with the Fourth Amendment’s privacy values and protections against unreasonable searches so that the IRS cannot sweep up sensitive information of innocent people who coincidentally happen to have the same employer, lawyer, or accountant as a delinquent taxpayer.

Ethan H. Townsend, Michael B. Kimberly, and Emmett A. Witkovsky-Eldred of McDermott Will & Emery LLP advanced the arguments in the amicus brief in Polselli v. Internal Revenue Service.

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This article was published by The Rutherford Institute and is reproduced with permission.

‘Like a Cancer’: CCP Requires Party Cells in All Foreign Companies in China

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You mean companies that operate in China have to sell out their ethics to be in the country? Who knew? All the way back in 1993, the mass murdering Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was already requiring all foreign companies operating in China to have an internal CCP cell. And no, the law hasn’t changed.

The CCP has Party plants in every single company in China, and all companies in the country are answerable to the CCP. Chinese law, as accessible online, clearly states the CCP may “establish its branches in companies to carry out activities of the Chinese Communist Party.” That would be the same CCP that runs the world’s worst dictatorship and has killed some 500 million people.

Not to mention China’s “civil-military fusion,” where everything in the economic and tech spheres is accessible to the Chinese military. Foreign companies (including US companies) cannot maintain ethics and operate in China under CCP rule. It’s one or the other. Every company operating in China is complicit in CCP crimes.

A New Federal State of China (NFSC) representative said on Justin Barclay’s show:

“[Companies are] entering [the] China market for ‘getting rich’…the CCP will not give you [a] free stake, okay. They will always get something from you…so in 1993…it’s called Company Law of the PRC [People’s Republic of China]. In 1993 they are asking every single foreign company that came into China, including joint stock companies, to establish a Party cell within the company…they want every single foreign company [to have] a CCP Party cell.”

She said a small Communist cell planted in China by Russian Communist Vladimir Lenin sparked the movement that took over China within 27 years.

“It’s like a cancer, cancerous cell. They multiply and grow in your body without you realizing it. And only after 27 years they successfully subverted the previous legitimate government…[the CCP plants in companies] see everything, and they report to this [CCP] United Front…they’re a weapon.”

Here’s from the law mentioned above, in its amended 2018 version:

“Article 19 The Chinese Communist Party may…establish its branches in companies to carry out activities of the Chinese Communist Party. The company shall provide necessary conditions to facilitate the activities of the Party.”

The CCP has oppressed and killed its own people for decades, and now it really is out to conquer the world. Unfortunately, foreign companies—including US companies—are helping the CCP achieve that goal.

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This article was published by Pro Deo et Libertate and is reproduced with permission.

BOMBSHELL: Obama Admin Had No ‘Actual Evidence’ Of Collusion By Trump When It Launched Crossfire Hurricane Investigation

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The Obama administration possessed no real evidence that then-candidate Donald Trump colluded with Russian government officials when it launched its investigation into the Trump campaign leading up to the 2016 election, according to a new bombshell report.

On Monday [5/15/23], Special Counsel John Durham released the findings of his years-long investigation into the origins of the FBI’s surveillance of the Trump campaign in the months before, during, and after the 2016 presidential contest. Despite the agency’s claims that the inquiry — commonly referred to as Crossfire Hurricane — was predicated on the belief that Trump’s campaign was colluding with Russian officials leading up to the election, Durham’s report found the FBI had no evidence to warrant such an investigation.

“Indeed, based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the instant investigation, neither the U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane Investigation,” the report reads.

The baseless investigation into the Trump campaign started after Australian intelligence notified the FBI about “concerning comments” from George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign policy advisor for the Trump team, about the Russians purportedly having dirt on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. In his report, Durham details the recklessness with which leading FBI officials, such as then-Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and then-Deputy Assistant Director for Counterintelligence Peter Strzok, launched Crossfire Hurricane and further revealed that the FBI did not possess evidence of Trump-Russia collusion as late as March 2017.

The FBI launched a full investigation “without (i) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (ii) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence agencies, (iii) interviews of witnesses essential to understand the raw information it had received or (iv) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence,” the report reads. “In addition, FBI records prepared by Strzok in February and March 2017 show that at the time of the opening of Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI had no information in its holdings indicating that at any time during the campaign anyone in the Trump campaign had been in contact with any Russian intelligence officials.”

Durham furthermore notes how the FBI’s launching of Crossfire Hurricane — which was “based on raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence” — also reflected “a noticeable departure from how it approached prior matters involving possible attempted foreign election interference plans aimed at the Clinton campaigns.” In one instance, “FBI Headquarters and Department officials required defensive briefings to be provided to Clinton and other officials or candidates who appeared to be targets of foreign interference,” according to the report.

Meanwhile, the FBI did not notify Trump or his team when launching inquiries into campaign officials such as Papadopoulos, Carter Page, Paul Manafort, and Michael Flynn.

Durham’s report also highlights the baselessness of the Steele Dossier, which the FBI used in its application to acquire a FISA warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. In the months leading up to the 2016 election, Perkins Coie, a law firm acting on behalf of the Clinton campaign, hired Fusion GPS to conduct opposition research on Trump and his affiliates. Led by Glenn Simpson, Fusion GPS acquired the help of former British spy Christopher Steele to “investigate Trump’s ties to Russia.” On July 5, several weeks before the launch of Crossfire Hurricane, Steele provided the FBI with a series of derogatory stories concerning Trump’s alleged ties to Russia. These reports are what became known as the Steele Dossier.

“As noted, it was not until mid-September that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators received several of the Steele Reports,” the Durham report reads. “Within days of their receipt, the unvetted and unverified Steele Reports were used to support probable cause in the FBI’s FISA applications targeting Page.”

Durham ultimately concluded the FBI failed to corroborate any of its key claims regarding the Dossier, writing, “Our investigation determined that the Crossfire Hurricane investigators did not and could not corroborate any of the substantive allegations contained in the Steele reporting.”

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This article was published by The Federalist and is reproduced with permission.

Market Volatility Compresses As Debt Ceiling Looms

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Volatility in stock, bond, currency, and gold markets continue to contract as they pause awaiting not only the next meeting of the Federal Reserve but also the resolution of the current political battle over the debt ceiling.

Depending on who is doing the talking, and what “extraordinary measures” are used by the US Treasury to shuffle money around, the US government will be close to running out of money in the next week or so.

Markets appear to act as if this threat is mostly political theatre, as none of the major markets are currently acting as if the US is really about to default on its sovereign debt.

For example, if the markets truly thought the US would not be paying interest on US treasury bonds, which is the reserve asset of the world as well as our own banking system,  Treasury bonds should be falling sharply in value, discounting that these bonds could become worthless.  Falling bond prices would translate into sharply higher interest rates, since the price of a bond and its yield, are mathematically connected at the hip. Such a collapse in price would harm everyone who owns them, which is most of the world.

Bonds, however, are only drifting gently lower right now.  However, their decline over the past year is largely responsible for our serious bank failures of late.

Likewise, the value of the dollar should be falling sharply, roiling international trade and banking as well.  That is currently not happening either.  The dollar has been drifting lower of late but recently has bounced back up a bit.  If we simply start to print money to pay all of our bills, that can hardly be expected to help the value of the dollar.

If the “reserve” of the international banking system were really about to default, then one would expect gold prices to be rising sharply.  They aren’t. Gold, of course, is the only recognized international reserve, not an obligation issued by a government, and hence, can’t default.  But of late, its price has been drifting lower, not rising in concern.   Having fallen just $4 short of an all-time high in early May, it has meandered down from about $2,060 per ounce to about $1,960 per ounce as we write.  This $100 dollar slide would seem an odd thing to do if the US were really about to default.

And stocks would hardly be comfortable with a default if that were really about to be the case but their action has been mostly sideways with contracting volatility.

Thus, it would seem the markets are sanguine about how the debt ceiling talks will end up.  The markets apparently feel that once again we will see some kind of resolution before it is too late or we will have selected shut down of some government agencies as we have seen before.  Closing the National Parks or Passport control is surely inconvenient and damaging to communities that need tourism, but such closures will not wreck the country.

The markets have had to go through this process several times before, and depending on the severity, and how “default” is handled, will dictate the extent of losses and the time necessary to come back from those losses. The last big debt ceiling crisis was in the summer of 2011.  It created several weeks of volatile action in the markets, including a decline in stocks of about 21%.  Afterwards, markets continued their advance which lasted for several more years.  However, the US government suffered its first bond rating downgrade and lost its AAA rating with Standard&Poors with a “negative outlook” going forward. 

There was another disturbance in 2013 that was milder.

There are both good and bad in the market’s reactions to these present events.  The good news seems to be that markets just don’t believe that our political leadership is that stupid and that most of this is political brinksmanship designed to extract concessions from the other side.  There are other things to worry about such as the FED interest rate policy, declining economic growth, and earnings reports softening.

The bad news comes on two fronts.  Firstly, the markets are quite unprepared if talks truly run off the rails and the US has to default in some form.  If you are unprepared,  when reality reveals itself it can lead to rapid panic. Secondly, the two arguing parties might feel greater urgency to solve the problems if the markets were putting them under pressure. The current sideways action just will not be sufficient to catch the attention of our camera-seeking political leaders.

History suggests that what damage is done will be temporary, assuming all other market factors are reasonable.

However, a true default could be much worse and more long-lasting.  Then again, getting spending constraints would be a positive for the markets and the economy.

The long-term problem is the current huge build-up of deficits is unsustainable. We cannot keep racking up deficits like this.  Spending is far outpacing both economic growth and revenues and the trend seems permanent.

Current Republican leadership knows this and also feels this time, as opposed to previous times, the debt ceiling crisis will be blamed on the Democrats. Current polling does show the public largely supports the Republican plans to trim spending. All that is being asked are quite modest cuts in spending and the return of unspent Covid relief money. They are quite willing to sign on to a debt ceiling increase if some modest common sense things are done.

The Democrats for their part are now a radical party and turmoil serves radical political ends.  Some of their most progressive members are now suggesting street violence. For most of the last few months, the Biden Administration flatly refused to even talk to the Republicans knowing full well the end date was coming soon.  Then they tried trotting out a strange 14th Amendment Theory.  The section of that amendment had to do with integrating the previous states of the Confederacy back into the Union and making it clear,  the Union would not be responsible for Confederate debts. The position that this applies to the current circumstance is absurd on its face and one only a constitutional ignoramus could make.

Other novel theories suggest money once appropriated by one Congress is binding on the debt management of another Congress.  But if acts of one Congress of one party are an unquestionable obligation of another Congress run by another party, nothing would ever change.  That is not the way the system of checks and balances works. Democrats remain convinced they can blame the “crisis” on the Republicans but their desperation indicates that Speaker McCarthy has them and the President cornered.  They seem to feel there are no problems always spending more than you take in. The bogus nostrums of Modern Monetary Theory seem to have taken up permanent residence in the Democrats’ brains.

Both the market complacency and the view that this is just another period of political brinksmanship do seem to miss the serious nature of what we are dealing with.

We really can’t go on like this as a nation.  The debt burden is now way beyond political posturing. Not that far in the future, the laws of economics will apply to the US just as it has to other countries.  We are already in the worst inflation we have suffered in 40 years, an indication we are closer to the breaking point than many think.  We are having a rolling banking panic and we are not even in recession.  If we nose into recession later this year, revenue will fall (it already is) and expenditures will rise, making the deficit widen once again.

Other great empires have been brought to their knees by financial calamity and both citizens and markets, become collateral damage to government financial mismanagement.  Who is to say we are so special as to avoid the consequences of spending forever more than we receive in revenue?

No, we need some sober leadership that gets expenditure and revenues back into balance.  However, financing this great country with such chaotic procedures is a burden on all of us and very difficult for the markets to figure out.

The great leader that unified Germany Otto von Bismark is credited with this pithy observation: “There is a Providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.”

We worry about how much longer that may be true.

 

 

 

 

Arizona GOP Calls for More Aggressive Response to Border Crisis

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Arizona Republicans are asking for more aggressive action on the southern border at the state and federal level, as the end of Title 42 is raising more questions than answers.

On the state level, a group of state House Republicans, Reps. Lupe Diaz, Michael Carbone, and Michele Pena, Gail Griffin, and Tim Dunn, urged Democrat Gov. Katie Hobbs to make use of all the resources currently available to mitigate the crisis.

“The State of Emergency in Arizona’s border counties that former Governor Ducey declared on April 20, 2021, is still in effect and continues as long as these conditions exist,” the lawmakers wrote. “And over $240 million remains in the Border Security Fund, which the Legislature established to prevent illegal entry into the country, solidify infrastructure, and combat other harms at the border. We call upon you to take immediate action and activate all available state resources to keep our communities safe from these dangerous and unprecedented threats.”

Hobbs held a news conference earlier this week where she criticized the Biden administration but stopped short of declaring an executive order sending National Guard troops down to the border, yet said it may be on the table.

Meanwhile, Maricopa County Supervisor Thomas Galvin wrote a letter to Biden directly, calling for “additional emergency resources” to help the county deal with humanitarian concerns.

“Your administration has procrastinated and failed to deliver a policy that streamlines due process, addresses security concerns, and preserves human dignity,” Galvin wrote.

“Unfortunately, for Arizona generally, and Maricopa County specifically, the federal government is needlessly creating a humanitarian issue with very real consequences for the economy and security on our communities which are still reeling from the social impact of the pandemic,” he later added.

Maricopa County does not touch the southern border, but it is the most populated county in the state. According to Fox 10 Phoenix, some NGOs will use Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport as a sendoff point to get migrants to where they hope to end up.

When it comes to resources being granted, Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls asked the president to declare a national state of emergency to have more resources brought to smaller border communities like his, The Center Square reported Thursday.

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This article was published by The Center Square – Arizona and is reproduced with permission.