Effort to Abandon Electoral College Gains Steam. Here’s What It Would Ruin for America.

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Colorado is joining a list of states attempting to overturn the way Americans have selected their presidents for over two centuries.

The Colorado Legislature recently passed a bill to join an interstate effort called the “interstate compact,” to attempt to sidestep the Electoral College system defined by the Constitution. Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, called the Electoral College an “undemocratic relic” and vowed to sign the bill into law.

So far, 12 states representing 172 Electoral College votes have passed the initiative into law. With the addition of Colorado (which has nine votes), that number will rise to 181. They need 270 for the compact to go into effect. It would then undoubtedly be challenged in the courts.

Some major voices on the left were gleeful about the potential change.

While the Constitution, intentionally, gives wide latitude to states to create their own electoral systems, the law passed in Colorado, along with the rest of this effort, would be unprecedented. It would be the first time states potentially outsource their Electoral College votes to the will of the nation as a whole, rather than having elections determined by their own voters. The result of this, ironically, could be very undemocratic.

For instance, if the people of Colorado vote overwhelmingly for a Democrat, yet the total popular vote of the nation goes Republican, all of the state’s votes would go to the Republican, essentially overturning the will of the people in Colorado.

The Electoral College is already fairly democratic. Nearly every state switched to direct, democratic elections of electoral votes in the early 19th century, as opposed to selection by state legislatures. What the national popular vote would do is overturn the concept of federalism, which recognizes that states have unique interests that deserve representation in the electoral system. We are not just a nation of individuals, but a nation of communities and states.

Some have dismissed the Electoral College system as outmoded and unjust. But they are mistaken—the Electoral College system remains highly relevant and necessary today. The 2016 election actually demonstrated that.

In 2016, states that had gone Democratic in presidential politics for a generation flipped to Republican, in large part because of a unique candidate who appealed to their interests. While one candidate capitalized on their support, the other took them for granted and focused elsewhere. The result was a startling upset that demonstrates why the Framers wanted an Electoral College.

Without an Electoral College, candidates could more easily write off certain constituencies located in limited areas. The Electoral College binds those votes up with a larger mass of votes so that in order to win the whole, candidates have to appeal to the interests of more constituents.

Under a popular vote system, candidates could ignore entire localities and focus on driving up votes among their natural supporters.

Many on the left have also complained that the Electoral College gives an undue weight to small states, which, in their minds, are conservative. 

It’s true that small states are given a boost because Electoral College votes are based on population and Senate votes. Since every state automatically has two senators, small states do get slightly more weight per their population. But in practice, this ends up benefitting Democrats just as much as Republicans.

In 2018, for instance, the 10 smallest states sent 10 Democrats and 10 Republicans to the Senate, and the 10 largest states sent 11 Democrats and nine Republicans to the Senate.

This system of electors is not perfect, of course. But it is the best system for a large and diverse country like the United States, as it favors candidates who do the best job of appealing to diverse interests and not just the big population centers.

In fact, while the Founding Fathers disagreed on many things, the Electoral College was one thing that received the most wide acceptance, as Alexander Hamilton recorded in Federalist 68:

The mode of appointment of the chief magistrate of the United States is almost the only part of the system … which has escaped without severe censure. … I venture somewhat further, and hesitate not to affirm that if the manner of it be not perfect, it is at least excellent.

In addition to protecting diverse interests, the diffused federal nature of the Electoral College is also a vital tool to counteract election fraud and contentious recounts that could undo the public will. 

Imagine if the 2000 recount of the presidential contest between Al Gore and George W. Bush included not just Florida, but the entire nation. That’s what would have happened if the Electoral College weren’t in place to isolate election systems from each other.

It doesn’t take long to see how the new system that the Colorado bill aims for could become a nightmare to deal with in other ways, too, especially in tightly contested races.

This Twitter thread explains one highly plausible scenario in which the national popular vote is decided by around 100,000 votes—a tiny margin given the nation’s population is over 320 million.

If Colorado were to narrowly choose a Democrat, while the other states chose the Republican by a wide margin, Colorado would have no way of making the other states conduct a recount.

The people of Colorado would essentially be forced to throw the election to a candidate they didn’t support.

Even more problematic is the effort in New Jersey to strip President Donald Trump from the state ballot over his refusal to release his tax returns. This will likely be ruled unconstitutional, but consider what it would do if implemented under a national popular vote: With Trump off the ballot in all of New Jersey, it would skew the vote for the entire nation.

Interestingly, stripping a candidate from the ballot has been used as a tactic against a Republican presidential candidate before. Southern states made it nearly impossible to create ballots for Abraham Lincoln in the 1860 election, which severely depressed his support in those states.

Fortunately, because of the Electoral College, Lincoln was able to win without these states, even though he ended up with only around 39 percent of the popular vote.

If the nation had simply taken a popular vote at the time, Lincoln may never have been elected president.

At the end of the day, the Colorado law is unlikely to ever be put into effect, despite the best efforts of activists.

It’s important to note that while Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has publicly voiced support for abolishing the Electoral College, she has said it would take a constitutional amendment to do so.

“There are some things that I would like to change, one is the Electoral College,” she said in 2017 when asked about things she’d change in the Constitution. “But that would require a constitutional amendment and amending our Constitution is powerfully hard to do.”

Given the unlikeliness of such an amendment—which, according to Gallup, actually reached a high point of popularity after the 2016 election—national popular vote activists have turned to more indirect means to accomplish their ends.

This misguided attempt to subvert the Constitution and abolish the Electoral College has been cooked up for partisan purposes. It is based on the false notion that Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016 reflected a failure in our electoral system—not an abysmal candidate—and that this “relic” from the founding stands in the way of progressive dominance of U.S. politics.

Such a view is not only partisan, but historically ignorant. It overlooks all that the Electoral College has produced—chiefly, a stable political system that forces politicians to reckon with our nation’s diverse needs.

We would be wise to cling to that system and reject these machinations to upend it.

COLUMN BY

Portrait of Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: @JarrettStepman.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Josh Carter on Unsplash.

Video Interview: Facebook Insider Explains ‘Deboosting’, ‘Troll Report’ & Political Targeting

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Today Project Veritas released a new video documenting an investigation into Facebook, the largest social media company in the world.  We introduce you to our Facebook insider, taking us behind the scenes of how the tech giant “demotes bad content”, “deboosts” conservative livestreams, classifies users, and triggers special features “close to elections.” 

She provided Project Veritas with documents showing the bias evident in Facebook’s policies and actions, and how software engineers go about censoring voices on the right. 

Here’s what the Facebook insider told Veritas: 

“I think that the biggest thing, that getting the documents, getting video or still pictures of what was going on that shows that it is actually happening.  This isn’t rumors, they talk about how right-wingers, they come up with all these crazy theories, and that’s not actually happening at these social media companies. They pooh pooh it.  But here it is and it’s in your face.“

You can view the full video HERE. 

For more information and a “deep dive” into the Facebook documents, you can view our report HERE.

Other brave individuals who would like to expose fraud, corruption, and wrongdoing can contact Project Veritas by clicking HERE.

In Truth, 

Project Veritas Team

UPDATE on our Facebook investigation.

You and I have Facebook on their heels. 

Facebook just released a comment in an article in The Verge in response to our latest investigation:

“We fired this person a year ago for breaking multiple employment policies and using her contractor role at Facebook to perform a stunt for Project Veritas.  Unsurprisingly, the claims she is making validate her agenda and ignore the processes we have in place to ensure Facebook remains a platform to give people a voice, regardless of their political ideology.”

The article continues:

But Facebook says the tag has a more straightforward meaning. Starting in 2016, Facebook gave a significant News Feed boost to live videos as a way of encouraging users to broadcast live. Some pages tried to game that system by uploading pre-recorded videos through the live API, a violation of Facebook’s policies. If moderators found such a video, the “ActionDeboostLiveDistribution” tag would be applied to undo the News Feed boost otherwise applied to Live videos.

Here’s why this response to our investigation is so fascinating:

  • Facebook verifies the existence of “deboosting” conservative pages.  Veritas reached out to one of the “deboosted” page owners, Steven Crowder, who told Veritas that Facebook’s claims were “ridiculous” and he does not upload pre-recorded videos through the live API.
  • Facebook does not deny censoring political comments for users.
  • Facebook does not deny the existence of their efforts to “Coordinate Trolling on Facebook.”
  • Facebook does not deny suppressing conservative pages.  

The reality is, Facebook does not deny any of the documents of our investigation.  

Instead, Facebook tries to discredit our insider.  And The Verge entertains their attacks by promoting the manufactured comments of a corporate spokesman over the firsthand account of a brave whistle blower.  It’s shameful.

You’ll be glad to know that Veritas will not back down.  Together, you and I will continue to promote truth above all.

Stay tuned — I visited a few Facebook engineers who had a bit more to say.

RELATED ARTICLE: Michelle Malkin: I’ve Been Silicon Valley Sharia’d By Tech Totalitarians

EDITORS NOTE: This Project Veritas video and column with images is republished with permission.

Jumping Into Medicare For All With Eyes Wide Shut

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Preview:

  • The unveiling of the ballyhooed House of Representatives Medicare for All Act of 2019 bill will be met with chants of “equal healthcare for all!”
  • A key feature of the Medicare-for-All bills is the elimination of private health insurance that duplicates benefits offered by the government. Given the coercive nature of the existing Medicare program, we should be very concerned
  • Will we be somehow punished if we do not want to enroll in the new government program? Will there be an “individual mandate” penalty? Hopefully we’ll know before the bill is passed and we can find out what’s in it.
  • Patients and physicians should be free to pay for services and accept payment for services without being subject to penalties.
  • Medicare for All could be one of those concepts that “seemed like a good idea at the time” – just like diving head first off a cliff into an inviting but shallow pool of water.

The unveiling of the ballyhooed House of Representatives Medicare for All Act of 2019 bill will be met with chants of “equal healthcare for all!” While the country will be forced into a government-run program, the limousine liberals and champagne socialists will keep their array of medical care choices — whether on or off the record.

A key feature of the Medicare-for-All bills is the elimination of private health insurance that duplicates benefits offered by the government. Given the coercive nature of the existing Medicare program, we should be very concerned. Medicare Part A (hospital insurance) is mandatory for those eligible for Medicare who receive Social Security payments. If beneficiaries want to opt out of Part A, they must forfeit all of their Social Security payments — including paying back any Social Security benefits received up to the time Part A was declined. So a “beneficiary” is punished for saving federal dollars by declining to be on the government healthcare dole.

Enrollment in Medicare Part B (all physician and most outpatient services) is not mandatory but beneficiaries are financially coerced to enroll. The standard 2019 Part B premium amount is $135.50 per month, progressing to $460.50 based on income. But if a beneficiary doesn’t sign up for Part B when first eligible, he must pay a lifelong penalty of 10 percent for each full 12-month period that he could have had Part B. So if the beneficiary waited 3 years before signing up, he would pay a 30 percent higher premium throughout his lifetime.

Medicare Part D (prescription drugs) also imposes penalties on those who do not sign up when eligible unless they are in a Medicare Part C/Medicare Advantage HMO that covers drugs. The lifetime penalty is not trivial: one percent per month of the average monthly premium (currently about $33) for all the months they were not signed up.

Will we be somehow punished if we do not want to enroll in the new government program? Will there be an “individual mandate” penalty? Hopefully we’ll know before the bill is passed and we can find out what’s in it.

Another troubling aspect of a new government health program is the lack of an articulated budget or cost controls. According to the Medicare Board of Trustees 2018 Report, Medicare’s Part A trust fund will be depleted in 2026, three years earlier than the 2017 projection. Our 2017 healthcare costs were $3.5 trillion with $1.2 trillion attributed to Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Apparently, financing would depend on monies earmarked for existing federal health programs, heavily taxing “the rich” and an unspecified increase in everyone’s taxes.

In addition to notoriously underestimated cost projections, Medicare underpayments to hospitals must be addressed. Hospitals receive 88 cents on the dollar from Medicare and 90 cents on the dollar from Medicaid for their expenditures on these patients, translating to reimbursements of $41.6 billion and $16.2 billion, respectively, below actual costs. Currently, hospitals make up the shortfall with higher payments from private insurance — which will no longer exist. Slashing oft maligned CEO salaries would be a drop in the bucket. Hospital workers — unionized or otherwise would not accept pay cuts.

So how will the inevitable funding shortfall be addressed? Private practitioners may be enticed by the promise of a steady stream of patients and income or strong-armed into submitting to lower reimbursement or by new licensing requirements. Of course, many of us remember being paid with IOUs from the California Medicaid program.

The promise of completely “free” medical care of every sort imaginable gives one pause. What happens when the money runs out? Because Medicare defines what care is reimbursable as  “medically necessary,” the simple answer is to decrease covered services. But by then, the private health insurance industry would be decimated and our options limited.

Proponents of government-sponsored healthcare say people want it. But a 2019 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that enthusiasm wanes when folks are told they would (1) lose their private insurance, and/or (2) pay more taxes and/or (3) have longer waits.

Direct pay independent physicians may be the salvation. Many Medicare patients are paying for direct primary care where a modest monthly fee direct to the physician guarantees full access to a physician, inexpensive medications and lab tests. Some specialists treating various chronic conditions such as diabetes also use this model to provide patients with timely individualized quality care.

The same people who clamor for a woman’s reproductive choice are strangely silent about everyone else’s freedom to choose the type of medical care they want. Patients and physicians should be free to pay for services and accept payment for services without being subject to penalties.

Medicare for All could be one of those concepts that “seemed like a good idea at the time” – just like diving head first off a cliff into an inviting but shallow pool of water.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is by sasint on Pixabay.

The Income Tax: Still the Root of All Evil

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February 25 is a momentous day in American history. It is the day in 1913 the 16th Amendment took effect.

February 25 is a momentous day in American history. It is the day in 1913 the 16th Amendment, authorizing a federal income tax, took effect with the certification of Secretary of State Philander C. Knox.

Because of the crucial effects the income tax has had on America, one would hope that there would be some serious discussion of it in the media. But that hope is routinely disappointed.

But serious consideration of the effects of the income tax has occurred. For example, in his 1954 book, The Income Tax: Root of All Evil, Frank Chodorov showed how the abrogation of citizens’ property rights by the income tax leads to the expansion of government far beyond reason and corrupts Americans and America’s experiment in liberty in the process. And because Chodorov’s analysis brings us back to first principles, it is worth remembering his understanding of the Constitutional revolution it caused.

“A government is as strong as its income. Contrariwise, the independence of the people is in direct proportion to the amount of their wealth they can enjoy. We cannot restore traditional American freedom unless we limit the government’s power to tax.”

“Trace this wholesale infringement of our rights to the power acquired by the federal government in 1913 to tax our incomes—the Sixteenth Amendment…where the doctrine of natural rights has been all but abrogated in fact, if not in theory.”

“Getting something-for-nothing from government… this trade is often made, and… government is able to enter into it because of its income-tax revenues.”

“The government says to the citizen: ‘Your earnings are not exclusively your own; we have a claim on them, and our claim precedes yours; we will allow you to keep some of it, because we recognize your need, not your right; but whatever we grant you for yourself is for us to decide.'”

“The right of decision as to the disposition of your property rests in the government by virtue of the Sixteenth Amendment…it gives the government a prior lien on all the property produced by its subjects.”

“When the Sixteenth Amendment became part of the Constitution, the American political order, which rested on the axiom of inalienable rights, underwent a major operation.”

“The Constitution of 1789 barred the income tax. The Founding Fathers could not have put it in, even if they had a mind to, and there is no evidence that they had… They had come by freedom the hard way and they meant to hold on to it.”

“A people who remonstrated so vigorously over a measly tea tax could hardly have understood the idea of letting their pockets be picked. The suggestion would have sounded preposterous.”

“In the important matter of taxation, the Constitution quite definitely granted the new government very limited powers: import tariffs and excise taxes… As a consequence, it was a weak government, in the sense that it could not become bothersome; and the freedom of the people made them strong, so that wealth multiplied and the country flourished.”

“On the whole, previous to the Civil War the government of the United States confined itself to the business for which it was created, that of protecting people in the enjoyment of their God-given rights. It should not be forgotten that the Founding Fathers, agreeing with John Locke… thought of government principally as an instrument for safeguarding private property; and that was considered the prime business of the United States government until 1860. The dictum that “all men are created free and equal” held in the matter of taxes… No one, and no group, could be singled out by the government for special spoliation.”

“[The Sixteenth Amendment] was a revolution… every activity of government turned Santa Claus by the income tax.”

“Thus, the immunities of property, body and mind have been undermined by the Sixteenth Amendment. The freedoms won by Americans in 1776 were lost in the revolution of 1913.”

“The Sixteenth Amendment changed our country economically, politically, and morally… the Sixteenth Amendment has widened the area of government power, and as a consequence has reduced the area of liberty.”

“The Internal Revenue Bureau quite sensibly takes the view that every one of us is a potential lawbreaker, as far as the income-tax law is concerned… It has a war against society on its hands, and to win that war it must make use of the artifices of war, such as espionage, deception, and force… If this setting produces corruption, we must look to the law, not to the human beings involved, for cause.”

“Corruption… is simply the inevitable consequence incident to the operation of an immoral law. Of far greater concern is the use of income taxation to undermine the principles of republican government and to make a mockery of our tradition of freedom.”

“The income tax, by transferring the property of earners to the State, has disintegrated the moral fiber of Americans to such a degree that they do not even recognize the fact.”

“The income tax, by attacking the dignity of the individual at the very base, has led to the practice of perjury, fraud, deception, and bribery.”

“With the advent of income taxation, socialism was unavoidable…The more power the government exercises the less freedom will the people enjoy.”

“From the very beginning of the Union it has been customary for Congressmen to try to wangle out of the federal government some special privilege for their more influential supporters, or some appropriation of federal funds for spending in their states… However, before 1913…[but] The manna that fell from Washington was hardly enough to buy up the independence of the states or the votes of their citizens. No candidate for Congress could offer his constituents gifts paid for by the citizens of other states.”

“The ink was hardly dry on the Sixteenth Amendment before the heretofore picayune federal patronage began to blossom… The laws multiplied and the appropriations grew bigger… buying votes with political favors.”

“However, this weakness of democracy is only as dangerous as the amount of the citizens’ wealth the government has at its disposal. Before 1913 the American government was comparatively poor and political jobbery was correspondingly limited in scope. When the government acquired this power of confiscating the national wealth, the corruption was limited only by the amount that expediency would permit it to confiscate.”

“This centralization of power, which the Founding Fathers feared and sought to prevent by constitutional safeguards, is made possible only by income taxation… the atomic bomb that has virtually destroyed the Union.”

“Somehow, a Mississippian sees no immorality in forcing a Pennsylvanian to support his local economy…[but] the immediate beneficiary of federal grants to local projects is the politician who solicits it, and the ultimate beneficiary is the federal bureaucracy. Everybody else pays.”

“The American Revolution was unique in history… because it made possible the establishment of a government based on a new and untried principle, namely, that the government has no power except what the governed have granted it. That was a shift in power that had never occurred before.”

“A new American revolution was initiated in 1913, when the government was invested with the power to confiscate private property… that this power over the economy of the country put into the hands of the American government a means of liquidating the sovereignty of the citizenry.”

“As a result of income taxation, we now have a government with far more power than George III ever exercised… an inevitable consequence of income taxation. The citizen is sovereign only when he can retain and enjoy the fruits of his labor. If the government has first claim on his property he must learn to genuflect before it. When the right of property is abrogated, all the other rights of the individual are undermined, and to speak of the sovereign citizen who has no absolute right of property is to talk nonsense. It is like saying that the slave is free because he is allowed to do anything he wants to do except to own what he produces.”

Those who want others’ money for their purposes meet such complaints with the argument that “taxes are the price we pay for civilized society.” But as Frank Chodorov knew, Oliver Wendell Holmes said that over a century ago, before the income tax could dramatically increase citizens’ burdens, and give us less civilization in exchange.

Certainly, no tax on incomes got into the Constitution. That was unthinkable. A people that had but recently kicked over the traces because of taxes far less onerous would hardly have countenanced an income tax. They knew their freedom.

The general welfare is not improved by the increasing load of taxation. On the contrary, the upward climb of civilization is retarded in exact proportion to the levies.

COLUMN BY

Gary M. Galles

Gary M. Galles

Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. His recent books include Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies (2014) and Apostle of Peace (2013). He is a member of the FEE Faculty Network.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column with images is republished with permission.

Ripping the Mask off KGB Activity in Our Midst

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Once upon a time there was a country named the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—the USSR. Actually, there was no real union and the country collapsed December 26, 1991. The West cheered the collapse, announcing victory and the end of the Cold War. The notion of “the Soviets” was forgotten and the words the Soviets have disappeared from our lexicon. That was a crucial, international mistake in the West, because the collapsing part was the Socialist economy, which couldn’t compete with capitalism, while the other part, the Soviet System-a hard line leftist regime stayed largely intact. Now we are paying a dear price for our incompetence and lack of action. Knowledge is Power!

In fact, nothing substantial was changed in Russia, except the name of a country. We are dealing now with the Russian Federation under the leadership of a former KGB counterintelligence officer Vladimir Putin. The old regime of the Soviet System is running the country: Socialist economy that had collapsed was replaced by oligarchic-crony capitalism under the KGB’s leadership. Moreover, a substantial number of problems continue to plague the world as they have for a hundred years—Soviet Socialism is fighting capitalism of Western civilization and its bastion, the American Republic. Writing about that for a long time and analyzing the current events, I have renamed Soviet Socialism as Soviet Fascism.

Anyone who has observed the general political climate in America knows that conspiracy theories surrounding allegations that President Trump has connections to the Russian government abound. I too am uncovering a kind of conspiracy, from an opposing point of view and aisle —about the constant collaboration of the Democrat Party and its members with Russia, about the Obama/Putin conspiracy, and about attempts to undermine Trump’s presidency, attacking him and all members of his family personally for the last three years. As a former Soviet attorney, I know the real reason for the Dems doing that—“Offense is the best defense” and this is the only way for the Dems to survive. They have to cover up their criminal conduct over the last several decades.  

Yes, There is an Axis of Evil

I wrote this in my column two years ago: “Knowing the Russian methods, agenda, and its proclivity to mold Soviet style charlatan-leaders around the world to engineer cadres of fifth columnists, I believe there are two types of people committing betrayals: Those who do not like the political system established by our Founding Fathers and are trying to transform it– they are currently collaborating with the KGB to destroy the country, and those people who haven’t a clue about the KGB infiltrations, hence becoming their unwitting accomplices. Both groups constitute a huge help to President Putin, who is running the anti-Trump show… “

Using the term KGB, I mean the entire Russian Intelligence Service–a collective image of several Intel agencies. Those three letters are familiar to the vast majority of Americans and they really represent the Soviet Gestapo, the mighty vehicle of dispersing globally the ideology of Soviet Socialism, I renamed Soviet Fascism. American foreign policy blunders and fatal mistakes by our top Intel, have greatly helped the KGB to spread their ideology in the 20th century. Their methods are easily recognizable: lies, fraud, deceit, cheating, and the like. They are charlatans fooling, deceiving, and indoctrinating decent people.

Look at the world of the year 2019: Stalinist North Korea, Communist China, Russian mercenaries in Syria and Ukraine, the terrorist Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, and all their affiliates, Iran, the Taliban, socialist Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have now established the critical mass for an Axis of Evil, fighting for control and power under Kremlin’s umbrella and ideological leadership. Watch Pakistan and Turkey, they are on their way to join the Axis. All of them adhere to the ideology of Soviet Fascism, inculcated by Moscow over many decades–they are all the enemies of a peaceful, prosperous world, using the same tactics, strategy, methods, and tricks taught by the KGB—dispersing their ideas globally… If you want to know how to deal with the above mentioned countries, you must know KGB’s methods, as each country is fighting on different fronts under the same leadership…

I am giving you this information for a reason. If you haven’t read my books and columns, you don’t know that the KGB started their infiltration into the Middle East in the 1950s. Yasser Arafat was recruited by the KGB in 1957. Many tribal based Islamic terrorist groups have been created in the Middle East since then and they are all (men and women) under Russian leadership and coordination. Watch now how Islamism intertwined with radical Socialism is fighting Western civilization. A major wave of infiltration into America, with the subsequent recruitment and corruption of its citizens started in the 1960s, predominantly under the supervision of KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov…  

Do You See What I See?

American Dems did not escape the KGB influence and infiltration they were attracted by it; I’ve been reporting this for the last thirty years. Based on the historical reports, there were several if not many “Red Flags” to deal with the KGB. We did not—the Dems ate up the Soviet propaganda, giving them the Soviets time to multiply and do overwhelming harm to our institutions and laws. We have to understand the gravity of the mistakes that were made, so this never happens again. Russia is the foremost enemy of Western civilization while the KGB is in power and Andropov’s design is alive and well, still working on destruction of capitalism on American soil today…   

Trump called his intelligence leaders “passive and naive” after reading reports about their testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Passive—definitely, but I would use another adjective—incompetent. If not, then they ignored the “Red Flags” deliberately. Now, Democrats are seizing on President Trump’s latest feud with his intelligence chiefs to cast themselves as the party that is taking national security more seriously today. This an attempt to divert your attention from the crime the Dems have committed for decades. Here is an example of several “Red Flags” showing the Dems’ working under the KGB’s supervision in Virginia …

There is a real political crises in Virginia in February 2019. At first, it was an attempt to enact a late-term abortion law by Governor Northam, then a racist photo of him came to light. Today, the three top Democrat officials in command, the top of the State power, have been incriminated in different scandals. It is hard to believe the depth of State corruption in Virginia. Yet, in my writings about radical socialism that only hurts people for the last thirty years, I just called it Soviet Fascism and analyzed the action of the former Virginia’s Governor Terry McAuliffe. What you know today is only half of Virginia’s story. I’ll try to give you the rest…

Terry McAuliffe was a prominent member of Clinton’s mafia, inculcating and corrupting everybody around in the State of Virginia for many years. Today, I saw him acting and speaking like a typical mafia apparatchik, lying, cheating, always harming the American interests, as designed by Andropov. Let me give you the current story missed by the FBI, and maybe missed deliberately.

The Anti-Defamation League described the event this way: “A torchlight rally by white supremacists that descended into violence in Charlottesville in August 2017, drew participants from at least 35 states and spoke to the ability of the self-described alt-right fringe movement to mobilize adherents nationwide.” The analysis of 200 participants came one day after Richard Spencer, the leader of the demonstration on Aug. 11 and 12, 2017 returned Saturday with fewer than 50 followers to the home of the University of Virginia as it celebrated its bicentennial and posted a video of a planned, 10-minute “flash mob.”

The next day, President Trump stated: “those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the K.K.K., neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.” President Trump is right. In my opinion, the event was orchestrated by an un-American criminal cabal, a false flag collaboration of the DNC with KGB’s political operatives. It was done to undermine Trump’s presidency in the best traditions of Stalinist methods and tricks. I can identify two members-coordinators of criminal cabal: Terry McAuliffe and Andrew McCabe. The FBI had missed this “Red Flag”. I have written about the agenda of Clinton’s mafia for decades. To grasp the details, please read in this e-magazine my column Revelation, April 26, 2018.

When Roger Stone complained about the fascist tactics of his arrest with 27 armed men, George Stephanopoulos insisted that it was “a standard operation.” And he is right, it is a standard operation of the KGB in the fascist regime of Russia. And when I saw it in America, Andropov’s design and his legacy stunned me. In front of me was his complete combination of the media working with security forces—the way Andropov planned them acting together… Please remember, it was Bill Clinton, who made political operative, George Stephanopoulos, a member of the media: you saw the result. Just read my books and columns to know who George really is…

I purposely showed you the inextricable connection between Dems, FBI, and the KGB acting in cahoots for the last several decades. Trump is right again about the Dems: “Dems ‘Killing Great State of Virginia.’” I would add: This is not the face of Virginia, but the historical face of the Democrat Party. There is another vivid example of radical Socialism in a criminal cabal–the Dems, FBI, and KGB’s connection. Like in Stalinist Russia, the war against all religions was permanent, but the Catholic Church was dismantled at once and completely by Stalin. That same culture war waged by Soviet fascism is now raging in America: Bill O’Reilly and others warned us constantly. The episode with the Covington Catholic High School boys in January 2019 was a sequence in the ongoing culture war waged by the criminal cabal of Socialist mafia:

“One of these days, conservatives are going to wake up to the fact that we are in a cold WAR against the left in this country. Maybe then they’ll stop falling for these obvious decoys. But even the shameful, deceptive, biased media still has the capability of surprising us, apparently, because what they did to a group of students from Covington Catholic High School … was nothing less than despicable. Maybe we shouldn’t have been surprised, given what this very same media did to Brett Kavanaugh last year. But damn, this was disgusting. This was reprehensible. This was the “enemy of the people” with their masks fully off.” The Left Views MAGA Hats as Equivalent to KKK Hoods, UnFiltered Patriot, Posted 20 Jan 2019

I agree with every word written above—it is naked Truth for me—a collaboration of the criminal cabal with the media. Yet, I have mine, a very different approach to the events that occupied media for several days in the end of January 2019. It is the same culture war going on for decades…

Second Lady Karen Pence recently took a job at a Christian school, and a negative leftist propaganda blast against Christianity followed the event immediately. Soon after that the second religious topic piled in on top of the first: the controversy was followed by another blow for Christian education when Catholic schoolboys were accused of being rude to a Native American and Army veteran, Mr. Phillips. You know the essence of the story, as framed by the media. I don’t want to repeat it. My focus is the negative force of the criminal cabal fighting Christianity, as this force is very familiar to all people coming from the Socialist countries to America. The entire incident was engineered during the March for Life in January 2019, where people celebrated life.

This is not the first time Phillips thrust himself into this kind of confrontation.  “In 2015, Phillips was verbally attacked by a group of Eastern Michigan University students who were dressed as Native Americans during a theme party near the town of Ypsilanti, according to news reports,” wrote the Washington Post. “Phillips had approached the group, informing them that their celebration was racially offensive, a local Fox News station reported. One of the students threw a beer can at him, Phillips told the news outlet.”

Who is Mr. Phillips in reality? As I found out, he is not a Vietnam veteran as he claimed, and his aggressive approach to the kids from the Catholic School had a definite motivation. With his militant drum-bit, his face with a stern antagonistic expression, he was provoking the kids to act. For me he was a typical leftist provocateur-activist. And it wasn’t only his group of people acting destructive against the kids. By a “pure” coincidence, another, no less suspicious group of people has appeared in front of the Catholic kids—the Black Hebrew Israelites. I had never heard of them and found a description of their provocative actions during the incident:   

“A group of half a dozen (Black) Hebrew Israelites had, in fact, been goading and preaching at both the Native Americans and high schoolers, using profanity and highly provocative language, for nearly an hour.” Who are the Black Israelites at the center of the viral standoff at the Lincoln Memorial? By Sam Kestenbaum, January 22, 2019.

Meanwhile, a Catholic student quietly urged classmates to refrain from making any comments that might aggravate the situation created by Phillips and the Black Hebrew Israelites. I believe this is the actual picture of the incident and my intent is to identify the organizer-coordinator of the ‘coincidental encounter’—someone who arranged this meeting of the three groups on the March for Life to provoke the Catholic kids wearing red caps Make America Great Again. The actions of the aggressors, speak for themselves—to attack and provoke children of a Catholic School, wearing the red caps to accuse Catholic Church of racism.  A simple piece of cloth—the red MAGA caps have become the main target for thugs in the Socialist mob. It was clear to me–the incident was pre-arranged by the same anti-Trump campaign run by Putin’s KGB…

The recent wave of racist statements, wearing of blackface, KKK photos, and anti-Semitic remarks by Democrats currently holding public office are fueling racism in the United States today. This is a vivid demonstration of the ideology of Soviet Fascism the Dems adhere to.  As a matter of fact, since President Reagan, Republicans have never been aggressive enough defending capitalism against the ideology of Soviet Fascism, fighting only the symptoms of this ideology. The first thing for Republicans to do is that of fighting the nucleus of the problem and calling a spade a spade–the real name of the ideology is Soviet Fascism. The Republicans have a duty to educate Americans and the world in the aggressive, vicious, and merciless   ideology of Soviet Fascism that is striving to take over the world by spreading a fraudulent Soviet Socialism globally.

Don’t Allow Andropov’s Design for America Succeed!

My books and columns have given you ample of examples how the evil ideology influenced an ill-informed population with propaganda, hoax, deception, and fraud. This is the way Socialist mafia proceeds, as Socialist ideology itself represents a gigantic fraud, a well-decorated and wrapped in false promises fraud. Socialism takes—Capitalism creates. Just look at the “Green New Deal” –a colossal fraud aimed at stopping the social mobility of Trump’s capitalism, which has already shown the remarkable ability of a free market economy to resurrect this nation from Obama’s Socialism. Do you remember Andropov’s design? I believe Soros is behind the Deal, sponsoring the fraud. To grasp it you have to read my writings to know why and when Stalin invented Political Correctness to fight opposition. The Dems are doing just that, using PC, lying and deceiving you to subvert American capitalist economic system today…  

Andropov’s plan is working well and Americans are more open to socialism than ever before in our nation’s history. That would seem to indicate that Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are the future of the Democratic Party. Trump’s attitude may not please moderate voters, but his approach to the issues is a lot closer to the mainstream of America than anyone presenting a real threat to him in 2020. As the Democrat Party morphs into the party of “Abolish ICE,” “open the borders,” “give away healthcare,” “give away college,” and “guarantee everyone a green job,” they are going to find themselves well outside the political mainstream. And there’s no doubt that this is an accurate view of where the “promises” primaries are headed. The Democrat Party is obsessed and possessed by identity politics—the main Stalinist formula to divide and conquer. Just watch the Dems’ candidates for 2020, a constellation of ignorance intertwined with arrogance and fraud to deceive you–A very dangerous combination!!!

It is an ironical situation in America today: the Party, a major national leader, which has been soft on Socialism/Communism for four decades, allowing criminals to infiltrate all aspects of America’s society, destroying and betraying our values system, is running the House today and proclaiming itself a “guard of national security.” What a shame and fiasco! They are like the phony victim and provocateur Jussie Smollett—they are totally responsible for all enormous destruction of the American system produced from within during the last 3-4 decades! They have to be exposed like he has been! By the way, Nigeria is a country being run by the KGB the way Venezuela was for the last 3-4 decades… Both are KGB’s scams. Today, Soviet Fascism is going on all around us, by hoaxes, from Tawana Brawley to Jussie Smollett to stage and inflame the race issue to damage our society…Our Intel is still sleeping and the coup against President Trump is going on…

Many people asking why Smollett did that. I have my answer to racial crime committed: It is politically motivated act, a criminal plot, which manufactured a hoax by staging and inflaming racism in America to blame President Trump! This is a case that intertwined politics, law, culture, and ideological agenda to get rid of Trump’s presidency. In my opinion, there are more bad actors in this crime outside the action or one of the three is a political operative with the idea. The action and method are well planned with all elements of Soviet Fascism: lies, fraud, deception and identity politics. Someone within the Law Enforcement in Chicago had a whiff of the ideology and appointed 24 investigators to the case. Bravo to him or her! Now the country will grasp the variety of methods and tricks used by Soviet Fascism fighting Trump and our capitalist economic system for the last decades…  

Yes, the Dems and ignorant Republicans are responsible for all devastating events our nation has experienced for the last decades and until they are out of power the following disasters events will continue: Mass shooting, shooting in the schools, an open season on the police officers, the crime on the Southern border, new Caravans will be formed the way the European Muslim invasion was executed by the KGB. Two hundred-year war of Socialism against Capitalism had been brought to America’s soil by two American Manchurian Presidents and the ideological battle will be resolved here, on the American soil, if we want to survive…

The leaders like Trojan Horses, Bernie and AOC, an energetic kindergarten girl with a diploma in economy will pop up to deceive and defraud you. They are acting and speaking in unison, as if trained by the same KGB’s school. It is not a coincidence that 16 Governors are against Trump’s national emergency. In fact, the national emergency was supposed to be declared after Clinton’s presidency in the first day George W. Bush took the office to prevent the attack on 9/11—our embassy in Moscow was warned… But Bush’s intelligence saw a soul in Putin’s eyes. What a shame!

Considering two American Manchurian Presidents, plus the examples I have presented in my writings, you can evaluate for yourself the depth of the KGB infiltration on the American soil. For many years, I am writing about the main problem of the world–the ideology of Soviet Fascism–a logical continuation of the ideology of Socialism/Communism. Don’t be surprised by Rep. Ilhan Omar and her Anti-Semitic statement—Anti-Semitism is an integral part of Soviet Fascism. Islamism and Socialism are fighting together against Western civilization, by Andropov’s Globalism and open borders. Our Congress has a lot of Socialists, now they have several Islamists working together for the Dems. Don’t be surprised by the terrorist activities in Omar’s district. This is the problem of a modern pluralistic America and the world today—The KGB never sleeps…

My column was close to be completed when a cascade of bombshells in the air stopped my writing. I needed to digest and analyze the news. It took me several days to grasp the general tendency of the events. As I understood the agenda, Putin’s KGB had prepared for the massive ultimate battle to get rid of dully elected President Trump. The upcoming 2020 election will be that last battle to defeat him. I see the KGB’s actual attempt to coordinate and weaponized all fronts of the war against capitalism to this upcoming election. It will be done through the Democrat Party, its DNC, and all 2020 candidates for the presidency, (some of them are sponsored by the KGB), plus an army of political operatives, socialist mafia, and activists-propagandists. Watch money coming from abroad and from billionaires like a KGB agent–George Soros…

In addition to this, I united under the name of the “Axis of Evil” the entire lingering global threat that America and Americans face from transnational gangs, drug cartels, Islamism, socialist mafia, and international terrorist organizations. If you read my books and columns, you know that all thugs mentioned above are acting with KGB’s teaching under the Russian umbrella.  Meanwhile, don’t underestimate AOC and Bernie, both are vocal, speaking in unison as students of the same KGB’s school, and both very efficient propagandists of Soviet Socialism, I renamed Soviet Fascism. Watch how the media amplifies their voices, making them the hero-leaders of the American future, advertising both. The Republican leadership has two immediate tasks:

  1. To learn the ideology of Soviet Fascism and disseminate the knowledge among the American public.
  2. To present to the public the work of Tom G. Palmer: The Morality of Capitalism.

Those two sources will expose the Dems’ Socialist mafia for what it really is and help Republicans to win the 2020 election.

My fellow Americans! God gave us this last chance to save our county—President Donald J. Trump! Don’t allow Dems’ Socialism to take over the American Republic. Fight the ideology of Soviet Fascism and save the legacy of our Founding Fathers and the American Republic!

Knowledge is Power! Good Luck my beloved America the Beautiful!

To be continued www.simonapipko1.com or at www.drrichswier.com/author/spipko/.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Javardh on Unsplash.

“Restaurant Recession” Hits NYC Following $15 Minimum Wage

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This will be a rough year for full-service NYC restaurants as they try to navigate a future with significant economic headwinds and significantly higher labor costs from the city’s $15 an hour minimum wage.

An article in the New York Eater (“Restaurateurs Are Scrambling to Cut Service and Raise Prices After Minimum Wage Hike“) highlights some of the suffering New York City’s full-service restaurants are experiencing following the December 31, 2018 hike in the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour, which is 15.4% higher than the $13 minimum wage a year earlier and 36.4% higher than the $11 an hour two years ago. For example, Rosa Mexicana operates four restaurants in Manhattan and estimates the $15 mandated wage will increase their labor costs by $600,000 this year. Here’s a slice:

Now, across the city, restaurant owners and operators are reworking their budgets and operations to come up with those extra funds. Some restaurants, like Rosa Mexicano, are changing scheduling. Other restaurateurs are cutting hours and staffers, raising menu prices, and otherwise nixing costs wherever they can.

And though the new regulations are intended to benefit employees, some restaurateurs and staffers say that take home pay ends up being less due to fewer hours — or that employees face more work because there are fewer staffers per shift. “The bottom line is, we have to reduce the number of hours we spend,” says Chris Westcott, Rosa Mexicano’s president and CEO. “And unfortunately that means that, in many cases, employees are earning less even though they’re making more.”

In a survey conducted by New York City Hospitality Alliance late last year, about 75% of the more than 300 respondents operating full-service restaurants reported they’ll reduce employee hours this year because of the new wage increases, while 47% said they’ll eliminate jobs in 2019.

Note also that the survey also reported that “76.50% of respondents report reducing employee hours and 36.30% eliminated jobs in 2018 in response to mandated wage increases.” Those staff reductions are showing up in the NYC full-service restaurant employee series from the BLS, see chart above. December 2018 restaurant jobs were down by almost 3,000 (and by 1.64%) from the previous December, and the 2.5% annual decline in March 2018 was the worst annual decline since the sharp collapse in restaurant jobs following 9/11 in 2001.

As the chart shows, it usually takes an economic recession to cause year-over-year job losses at NYC’s full-service restaurants, so it’s likely that this is a “restaurant recession” tied to the annual series of minimum wage hikes that brought the city’s minimum wage to $15 an hour at the end of last year. And the NYC restaurant recession is happening even as the national economy hums along in the 117th month of the second-longest economic expansion in history and just short of the 120-month record expansion from March 1991 to March 2001.

Here’s more of the article:

“There’s a lot of concern and anxiety happening within the city’s restaurant industry,” says Andrew Rigie, executive director of the restaurant advocacy group. Most restaurant owners want to pay employees more, he says, but are challenged by “the financial realities of running a restaurant in New York City.” Merelyn Bucio, a server at a restaurant in Soho that she declined to name, says her hours were cut and her workload increased when wage rates rose. Server assistants and bussers now work fewer shifts, so she and other servers take on side work like polishing silverware and glasses. “We have large sections, and there are large groups, so it’s more difficult,” she says. “You need your server assistant in order to give guests a better experience.”

At Lalito, a small restaurant in Chinatown, they used to roster two servers on the floor, but post wage increases, there’s only one, who is armed with a handheld POS (point of sale) system, according to co-owner Mateusz Lilpop. Having fewer people working was the only way for him to reduce costs, he says. Since the hike, labor costs at Lalito have risen about 10 percent — from 30 to 35 percent to 40 to 45 percent of sales, he says.

These changes get passed onto the diner, some restaurateurs argue. Service can suffer due to fewer people on the floor, or more and more restaurateurs will explore the fast-casual format over full-service ones. Some restaurants are also raising prices for customers. According to the NYC Hospitality Alliance’s survey, close to 90 percent of respondents expect to raise menu prices this year. Lalito’s menu prices have increased by 10 to 15 percent. Lilpop says, and it’s not just the cost of paying his staff driving prices up — it’s a ripple effect from New York-based food purveyors’ own labor cost increases.

“If you have a farmer that has employees that are picking fruit, he has to increase his labor costs, which means he has to increase his fruit prices,” Lilpop says. “I have to buy that fruit from him at a higher rate, and it goes down the chain.”

A few economic lessons here.

  1. A reduction in restaurant staffing that results in a decline in customer service (e.g., longer wait times, less attentive wait staff, etc.) is equivalent to a price increase for customers.
  2. The increases in the city minimum wage to $15 an hour, in addition to directly increasing labor costs for restaurants, also affects the labor costs of companies that supply food, liquor, restaurant supplies, menus, etc. and causes a ripple effect of indirect higher operational costs throughout the entire restaurant supply chain as described above.
  3. Even for workers who keep their jobs, a higher minimum wage per hour doesn’t necessarily translate into higher weekly earnings, if the reduction in hours is greater than the increase in hourly wages. For example, 40 hours per week at $13 an hour generates higher weekly pre-tax earnings ($520) than 33 hours per week at the higher $15 an hour ($495).

Prediction: This will be a rough year for full-service NYC restaurants as they try to navigate a future with significant economic headwinds and significantly higher labor costs from the city’s $15 an hour minimum wage.

This article was reprinted from the American Enterprise Institute.

COLUMN BY

Mark J. Perry

Mark J. Perry

Mark J. Perry is a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a professor of economics and finance at the University of Michigan’s Flint campus.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column with images is republished with permission. Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons | CC BY 2.0

Picking up the Pieces of a Broken Venezuela

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Nicholas Casey has lived in Caracas for three years, but the stories are still jarring. The Andes bureau chief for the New York Times, Casey has had a front-row seat for the unraveling of Venezuela – but even he probably wasn’t prepared for the desperation he’s seen these past several months. Men and women of what was once Latin America’s richest country eating rotten food to survive. Mothers so poor and malnourished that they’re giving birth to stillborn babies – or miscarrying them altogether. Millions of people leaving what’s left of their homes to set out on foot over the mountains for a chance to survive.

“The walking,” Casey writes, “will begin before dawn — before the clouds broke against the mountaintops, before the trucks took over the highway, even before anyone in the town woke up to check the vacant lot where scores of Venezuelan refugees had been huddling through the night… Rolling suitcases behind them, some trudge along highways their salaries so obliterated by Venezuela’s hyperinflation that bus tickets are out of reach. Others try to hitchhike for thousands of miles until they reach Ecuador or Peru.”

Driven by fear, hunger, violence, the Venezuelans are fleeing by the tens of thousands every day in one of the worst refugee crises of the modern century. The 125-mile journey over the two-mile-high Andes Mountain pass is treacherous and cold – but to many, their only chance. Columbia, if they can make it, is where they can start over – far away from the political unrest so many years in the making.

Once the home of oil reserves as large as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela has become a nightmare of corruption and mismanagement coming to an ugly head under President Nicolás Maduro. Inflation, now at a jaw-dropping 833,997 percent, sent the country spiraling. “Customers are standing in hours-long lines at banks to take out a daily limit, set so low that it barely covers the price of a cup of coffee.” The wave of poverty is sweeping Venezuelan children under, killing them at a shocking rate as store shelves sit empty, and food scarcely exists. Even as early as 2017, the country’s people were losing weight at a frightening rate, an average of 24 pounds when things were much better than they are today.

Now, the people who remain are spilling into the streets of Caracas, demanding that Maduro let the shipping containers of U.S. and foreign aid into the country – a decision he refuses to make. In a sick show of force, Maduro refuses to ease his people’s suffering, ordering the military to turn away thousands of pounds of food, medicine, hygiene kits, and humanitarian aid at the border. Trucks, filled with life-saving supplies, are being blocked on bridges, while boxes — piled sky-high – sit unopened on the Columbian side. With his country on the brink, opposition leader Juan Guaido continues to plead with world leaders for help. President Trump has helped lead that charge, building the international pressure for Maduro to step down.

“I ask every member of the Maduro regime: End this nightmare of poverty, hunger and death. LET YOUR PEOPLE GO. Set your country free! Now is the time for all Venezuelan Patriots to act together, as one united people. Nothing could be better for the future of Venezuela!” the president tweeted. “We are here to proclaim that a new day is coming in Latin America. In Venezuela and across the Western Hemisphere, Socialism is DYING – and liberty, prosperity, and democracy are being REBORN…”

Across the border in Columbia, impromptu refugee camps are popping up everywhere, as locals rally to do what they can. “I put myself in their situation, and as a mother of two children, I have to do something,” one woman said in a parking lot where Columbians offer the travelers showers, oatmeal, and jackets. “People came arriving with their shoes totally broken and destroyed,” Martha Duque told Casey. “But the hardest wasn’t seeing their shoes, it was seeing their feet: the lacerations, the blisters that were filled with blood.” She, too, has heard the heartbreaking stories. Mothers leaving their children behind. Wives offering their bodies to other men so their families can eat. “He would give her 20,000 pesos,” one explained — the equivalent of $6.

This is the legacy of a broken Venezuela, where there is no freedom, no hope, and no future for the people without help. President Trump is doing everything he can, while others call the church to urgent prayer. Pray, Vice President Mike Pence has asked Americans, for a spiritual and physical breakthrough. Pray for the military to let the supplies through to the starving. Pray for the suffering of the Venezuelan people to end. In a country of boundless opportunity and blessing like ours, very few of us have an inkling of the pain and hurt outside these borders. May it drive us to our knees in gratitude — and compassion for those who go without.

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column with images is republished with permission.

Trump Weighs in on Jussie Smollett’s Arrest

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President Donald Trump weighed in on Twitter after actor Jussie Smollett was arrested Thursday and charged with felony disorderly conduct for filing a false police report following an alleged hate crime hoax.

“[Jussie Smollett]—what about MAGA and the tens of millions of people you insulted with your racist and dangerous comments!? #MAGA,” Trump wrote on Twitter Thursday.

Smollett, known for his role on the show “Empire,” is accused of orchestrating a fake hate crime against himself in Chicago in January. He claimed that two white men attacked him while he was walking home from a restaurant late at night. Smollett, who is gay, told police that the men poured a bleach-like substance on him and tied a rope around his neck like a noose while shouting racist and homophobic slurs.

Some media outlets reported that Smollett said the alleged attackers wore “Make America Great Again” hats popularized by Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, but Smollett said during a “Good Morning America” interview on Feb. 14 that he never said that.

That interview took place before Smollett’s story began to crumble. Two brothers, Olabinjo and Abimbola Osundairo, were arrested for allegedly attacking Smollett before being released Friday without charges. Smollett allegedly paid the brothers to carry out the attack.

The Chicago Police Department addressed the Smollett controversy during a press conference Thursday.

“This announcement today recognizes that ‘Empire’ actor Jussie Smollett took advantage of the pain and anger of racism to promote his career,” Chicago PD Superintendent Eddie Johnson said. “I am left hanging my head and asking why? Why would anyone, especially an African-American man, use the symbolism of a noose to make false accusations?”

RELATED VIDEO: Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Jackson on Jussie Smollett. NOTE: YouTube took down this video. Wonder why?

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column with images is republished with permission. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities for this original content, email licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The featured image by geralt on Pixabay.

Arkansas Pulls the Trigger on Roe v Wade

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While the U.S. Senate gears up for what should be a no-brainer vote on infanticide, the states are nudging their own needles to the pro-life side. Arkansas is the latest, thanks to Governor Asa Hutchinson (R) — and hardly the last.

Tuesday, with a nationwide protest over late-term abortion raging, Arkansas became the fifth state to make it clear where they stand if the issue ever returns to states. The minute Roe v. Wade is overturned, a growing number of states will already be prepared. Under the “trigger law” that Hutchinson just signed, Arkansas would immediately ban abortion if the ruling pro-lifers have been praying for ever came down.

Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, and South Dakota have similar laws on the books — and Kentucky and Tennessee may be next. “It’s time for the United States to redress and correct what many believe is a grave injustice and a crime against humanity which is being perpetuated by the decisions of Roe v. Wade,” said the Arkansas bill sponsor. Under the law, abortion will be completely outlawed, except in medical emergencies. It also, LifeNews points out, allows abortionists to be prosecuted.

“In 2017, the abortion advocacy group NARAL predicted that 13 states immediately would ban abortions if the high court overturns Roe. Last year, the Center for Reproductive Rights put their estimate at 22 states,” Michaiah Bilger reports. After another year like this one, who knows how high that number could go? If you live in Kentucky or Tennessee, help us get to 24! Contact your state leaders and support trigger laws like Arkansas’s.

Tony Perkins’ Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC column with images is republished with permission.

Story about Unaccompanied Alien Children in Florida Shelter is Humorous and Infuriating

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This is a story from UPI last week that has been languishing in my posting queue.

It’s a longish story, but worth reading if you want to know more about life (the good life) in a shelter for the “children” who have come across our border illegally and unaccompanied.

Unaccompanied alien teens
Here come the Unaccompanied Alien Children!

I’m only going to bring your attention to a couple of points, one that made me laugh, the other that should infuriate you as it did me!

The point that makes me laugh is this! 

The Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter (never mind that they are not refugees!) houses up to 1,600 youths older than 13.  However, in almost every paragraph (there are 53 paragraphs!) in the story the teens are referred to as “children.”  In fact, the word “child” or “children” is used a whopping 63 times (twice in some paragraphs) while the word “teen” or “teenager” is never used, not even once!

Just that one little linguistic trick is meant to direct your thinking so that you imagine hundreds of little children missing mommy and daddy and crying themselves to sleep each night.

And it infuriates me to read that 670 of the “children” are 17 and older and as they age-out at 18, a big hunt begins to find them “sponsors” to take charge of them so that they aren’t turned over to ICE.

Here are the opening paragraphs of the UPI story,

Feb. 13 (UPI) — A month after federal officials removed the last child from a facility in Texas, 1,600 unaccompanied migrant children are being housed at a so-called temporary emergency shelter in Florida.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services invited UPI and other media on Wednesday to tour the facility in Homestead, Fla., which is located in a former Job Corps facility near the Homestead Air Reserve Base. It is used as a shelter for what HHS calls “unaccompanied alien children,” or UAC — migrants between the ages of 13 and 17 who have no lawful immigration status and no legal guardians able to provide care in the United States.

Since March 2018 more than 6,000 children have been placed at the site and about 4,450 have been discharged to what the department considers suitable sponsors — generally a parent or some other relative — in the United States, according to HHS.

At the time of UPI’s visit, 1,575 children were being sheltered at the facility — 1,143 males and 432 females.

Now check this out!  43% of the “children” are between 17 and 18 years old! (Or, they could be older, see my next post!)

The south campus houses 905 children between the ages of 13 and 16, including 634 males and 271 females, while all 17-year-olds at the facility live on the north campus, which houses 509 males and 161 females.

In case you wondered what happens when the “children” turn 18:

Three months before a “child” turns 18, the sponsor hunt begins in earnest.

Children who turn 18 while in custody at a shelter are considered undocumented immigrants and are released to authorities, Weber said.

There were 21 such cases at the Homestead facility last month and 90 in the past year, the Homestead program coordinator said.

A team of case managers at the facility focuses on finding sponsors for children within three months of their 18th birthday and the program coordinator receives daily reports regarding their status in the two weeks before those children turn 18.

Read the whole story, it is worth your time.

Remember, YOU are paying for all of this!  And, more are on the way!  You MUST scream at your elected officials—‘Enough is enough!’—and do it at every opportunity!  Today, you might tell the President (again!) by going to the White House comment page and voicing your opinion.

RELATED ARTICLE: Refugee Resettlement Contractor wants Rep. Ilhan Omar to Tone it Down

EDITORS NOTE: This Frauds, Crooks and Criminals column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is by Pixabay.

Trump Administration Leads Effort To Decriminalize Homosexuality Around The World

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The Trump administration, led by U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, is reportedly launching an effort to decriminalize homosexuality in dozens of countries across the world.

The administration is launching the campaign Tuesday evening in Berlin and will fly in a number of European LGBT activists to discuss how to end laws in countries that make it illegal to be gay, according to officials who spoke with NBC News. The campaign will focus its efforts on countries in the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean.

“It is concerning that, in the 21st century, some 70 countries continue to have laws that criminalize LGBTI status or conduct,” a U.S. official said.

The campaign was at least partially launched because Iran recently hanged a man due to his homosexuality — an incident that Grenell, who is openly gay, slammed publicly in commentary for the German news outlet BILD.

“Politicians, the U.N., democratic governments, diplomats, and good people everywhere should speak up – and loudly,” Grenell wrote. “Barbaric public executions are all too common in a country where consensual homosexual relationships are criminalized and punishable by flogging and death.”

In November, Grenell called out the United Nations General Assembly for overwhelmingly voting to accuse Israel of human rights violations, suggesting the assembly should instead vote on whether or not being gay is a crime.

“It will out the human rights hypocrites,” he tweeted.

According to officials, the administration will likely be working with the United Nations, along with other international organizations, in its efforts to abolish the criminalization of homosexuality.

The Daily Caller reported Monday that Grenell is also one of three people being considered for UN ambassador after former State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert dropped out of the running. 

Grenell did not return a request for comment for this article.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders launched his 2020 presidential bid on Tuesday by accusing the president of being “a homophobe,” while gay rights organizations have accused the Trump administration of actively engaging in hate against gay people.

COLUMN BY

Amber Athey

Amber Athey

White House Correspondent. Follow Amber on Twitter.

RELATED ARTICLE: Here’s Who Is In The Running To Be The Next UN Ambassador.

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column with images is republished with permission.

The Left Wants to Transform Our Election System. It’s a Recipe for 1-Party Rule.

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Democrats intend to save “democracy” by putting themselves in charge of elections.

As absurd as that sounds, it really is a part of the inappropriately named “For the People Act of 2019,” or H.R. 1, moving through the House of Representatives.

The Heritage Foundation created a list of the law’s provisions, which you can read here. The Conservative Action Project also provided this quick rundown of the bill:

• Forces states to implement mandatory voter registration, removing civic participation as a voluntary choice, and increasing chances for error.

• Mandates that states allow all felons to vote.

• Forces states to extend periods of early voting, which has shown to have no effect on turnout.

• Mandates same-day voter registration, which encourages voter fraud.

• Limits the ability of states to cooperate to see who is registered in multiple states at the same time.

• Prohibits election observers from cooperating with election officials to file formal challenges to suspicious voter registrations.

• Criminalizes protected political speech by making it a crime to ‘discourage’ someone from voting.

• Bars states from making their own laws about voting by mail.

• Prohibits chief election officials in each state from participating in federal election campaigns.

• Mandates free mailing of absentee ballots.

• Mandates that states adopt new redistricting commissions.

The bill is more or less a grab bag of progressive priorities, much like the Green New Deal.

Like the misguided movement to abolish the Electoral College, H.R. 1, in the name of democracy, takes a blow torch to the concepts federalism and self-government enshrined in our Constitution.

As the above summary makes clear, H.R. 1 has numerous provisions that would undermine free speech rights, upend the way America conducts elections, encourage voter fraud, and turn election oversight into little more than a partisan weapon to bludgeon foes.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who seems to have positioned herself at the forefront of every piece of radical legislation coming out of the House, dismissed the idea that H.R. 1 is a “power grab” by Democrats.

She had to make an almost immediate correction after that tweet, as the legislation has not yet passed the House. Even if it did, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has said it wouldn’t pass in the Senate, where Republicans hold a majority.

Ocasio-Cortez has a penchant for missteps, but she’s a good barometer for where the progressive base in America is.

In this bill, the left has shown it is willing to make a “naked attempt to change the rules of American politics to benefit one party,” as McConnell noted. But beyond that, H.R. 1 is most concerning for the devastating effect it would have on our federal republic.

National Review’s David French summed it up perfectly:

At its essence, the bill federalizes control over elections to an unprecedented scale, expands government power over political speech, mandates increased disclosures of private citizens’ personal information (down to name and address), places conditions on citizen contact with legislators that inhibits citizens’ freedom of expression, and then places enforcement of most of these measures in the hands of a revamped Federal Election Commission that is far more responsive to presidential influence.

Certainly, the effort to get around the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision through a constitutional amendment to get money out of politics is misguided and an assault on free speech. It is at odds with our right to free speech and, in the end, would mostly benefit insiders and incumbents who know how to play the Washington game of navigating arcane campaign finance laws.

Further, it would require donors to disclose their own private information in the name of “transparency.”

This is how democracy descends into mob rule. It’s why the Founders erected barriers to guard against a tyrannical majority. Given the way progressives brazenly attack and shame dissenters on college campuses—and increasingly in public life—it is all the more urgent that individual privacy rights be protected. Privacy is a cornerstone of liberty.

Perhaps the most concerning aspect of H.R. 1 is what it would do to American election laws and how it would not just undermine, but bulldoze any semblance of federalism left in our political system.

H.R. 1 would stop state legislatures from drawing up their own congressional districts and would mandate independent commissions in their place.

As I’ve written in the past, getting rid of legislative redistricting, sometimes known as “gerrymandering,” is a “cure” worse than the disease. Redistricting will always be partisan, no matter who does it. Laws to prevent this would simply drive partisan redistricting underground, where it would be done in secret by an unelected, uncountable commission rather than openly by a legislature.

Again, even if this were good policy, it assumes that the federal government has the right to dictate how states run their elections. It would take away the right of the citizens of a state to make their own choices on these issues.

H.R. 1 contains other violations of federalism—and the Constitution—including mandates to restore voting rights to felons as soon as they are released from prison and stop states from finding and removing ineligible voters.

And it gets worse.

After nationalizing American election laws, H.R. 1 would put them all under the watchful eye of a “revamped” Federal Election Commission. This is perhaps the most brazenly partisan element of the bill.

The Federal Election Commission currently allows six members (though it currently only has four), with a requirement that four members sign on to any decision in order for it to pass. It has an even number of Republican and Democratic appointees—thus, it takes both parties to agree to prosecute a violation of federal law. This prevents the party in control of the White House from enforcing the law in a partisan fashion.

H.R. 1 would change that by making the commission a five-person body comprised of the president’s appointees, with the president’s party able to appoint three of the five. This would make the commission into a partisan body beholden to the president. 

Proponents say this would end the current “deadlock,” but in reality it would turn the commission into a partisan tool to be used by the president. It would be an egregious concentration of power, especially given the way the rest of the bill would nationalize American elections.

While the Framers weren’t unanimous about how much power states should have relative to the federal government, none would have thought it a good idea to give near-tyrannical power to an unelected body of five people, which is what H.R. 1 would essentially do.

The “For the People Act” really is little more than a progressive power grab intended to manipulate election rules to favor liberals, and it is an anti-democratic bill that would upend America’s electoral system.

As with the Green New Deal, it is a vehicle for introducing ideas that would fundamentally transform our republic into something we would not recognize at all.

COMMENTARY BY

Portrait of Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is an editor and commentary writer for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast.Send an email to Jarrett. Twitter: @JarrettStepman

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with images is republished with permission. The featured photo is by Arnaud Jaegers on Unsplash.

Report on Covington Students Finds ‘No Evidence’ of ‘Offensive or Racist Statements’

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A report that examined the January encounter between students from Covington Catholic High School and a Native American activist near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington found “no evidence” of “offensive or racist statements.”  

“We see no evidence that students responded with any offensive or racist statements of their own,” the report dated Feb. 11 from the detective agency Greater Cincinnati Investigation read. The report was commissioned by the Catholic Diocese of Covington, which is in Kentucky.

Nick Sandmann and other students of Covington Catholic High, who were in Washington to attend the March for Life in January, faced harsh criticism in mainstream and social media based on a video showing a portion of their encounter Jan. 18 with Nathan Phillips, 64, on the National Mall.

“The immediate world-wide reaction to the initial video led almost everyone to believe that our students had initiated the incident and the perception of those few minutes of video became reality,” wrote Bishop Roger Foys of the Covington Diocese in a letter earlier this week.

“In truth, taking everything into account, our students were placed in a situation that was at once bizarre and even threatening. Their reaction to the situation was, given the circumstances, expected and one might even say laudatory,” Foys added.

In the video of the encounter, Sandmann and some of the other boys are wearing red “Make America Great Again” caps. Sandmann stands smiling, facing Phillips as he beats a hand drum and chants just inches away.

Sandmann said his group was verbally attacked by some in a group called the Black Hebrew Israelites.

“We found no evidence of offensive or racist statements by students to Mr. Phillips or members of his group,” the report stated. “Some students performed a ‘tomahawk chop’ to the beat of Mr. Phillips’ drumming, and some joined in Mr. Phillips’ chant.”

The report concluded with a statement that the firm had not been able to get in touch with Phillips.

“Mr. Phillips’ public interviews contain some inconsistencies, and we have not been able to resolve them or verify his comments due to our inability to contact him.”  

COLUMN BY

Rachel del Guidice

Rachel del Guidice is a reporter for The Daily Signal. She is a graduate of Franciscan University of Steubenville, Forge Leadership Network, and The Heritage Foundation’s Young Leaders Program. Send an email to Rachel. Twitter: @LRacheldG.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column with video and images is republished with permission. Photo: Screenshot from YouTube video posted by user KC NOLAND.

The Green New Deal Mirrors Mao’s Great Leap Forward

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The Mises Institute’s William L. Anderson published an article titled “AOC and the Green Great Leap Forward.” Anderson wrote:

When Baby Boomers were in college a half-century ago, many saw Mao as their political hero, a man with great vision who had the political will to do what was necessary to advance the fortunes of his own people. That he was a murderous tyrant who presided over mass death that exceeded even the killings of World War II was irrelevant or even ignored.

Today, we are told by her adoring press that Alexandria Occasio-Cortez is the New Visionary, a person who is far-seeing and knows what we have to do in order to survive the coming consequences of climate change. That her grand vision is little more than a mass-depopulation scheme is ignored, and we ignore it at our peril.

I believe that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a clear and present danger to our Constitutional Republican form of government.

The Great Leap Forward

It is important to understand history in order to realize how dangerous the Green New Deal is. Let’s look at the last time this type of massive government reorganization of society happened. It was tried in China under Mao Zedong. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Overall, the radicalization of policy that led to the Great Leap Forward can be traced back to the anti-rightist campaign of 1957 and a major meeting of China’s leaders at the resort city of Qingdao in October of that year. 

In the Encyclopedia Britannica’s study of the Great Leap Forward found:

[I]n Chinese history, the campaign undertaken by the Chinese communists between 1958 and early 1960 to organize its vast population, especially in large-scale rural communes, to meet China’s industrial and agricultural problems. The Chinese hoped to develop labour-intensive methods of industrialization, which would emphasize manpower rather than machines and capital expenditure. Thereby, it was hoped, the country could bypass the slow, more typical process of industrialization through gradual accumulation of capital and purchase of heavy machinery. The Great Leap Forward approach was epitomized by the development of small backyard steel furnaces in every village and urban neighbourhood, which were intended to accelerate the industrialization process.

[ … ]

After intense debate, it was decided that agriculture and industry could be developed at the same time by changing people’s working habits and relying on labour rather than machine-centred industrial processes. An experimental commune was established in the north-central province of Henan early in 1958, and the system soon spread throughout the country.

Under the commune system, agricultural and political decisions were decentralized, and ideological purity rather than expertise was emphasized. 

What were the outcomes of the Great Leap Forward?

Encyclopedia Britannica’s study of the Great Leap Forward found:

The program was implemented with such haste by overzealous cadres that implements were often melted to make steel in the backyard furnaces, and many farm animals were slaughtered by discontented peasants. These errors in implementation were made worse by a series of natural disasters and the withdrawal of Soviet support. The inefficiency of the communes and the large-scale diversion of farm labour into small-scale industry disrupted China’s agriculture seriously, and three consecutive years of natural calamities added to what quickly turned into a national disaster; in all, about 20 million people were estimated to have died of starvation between 1959 and 1962.

This breakdown of the Chinese economy caused the government to begin to repeal the Great Leap Forward program by early 1960. 

In an article titled “AOC’s Green New Deal Is a U.S. Version of Mao’s Disastrous Great Leap Forward” the Foundation for Economic Education’s Dr. William Anderson, a Professor of Economics at Frostburg State University, wrote:

In what its supporters have claimed is “visionary,” congressional media darling Alexandria Occasio-Cortez (AOC) has released her short-awaited Green New Deal, and she has called for nothing short of the destruction of life as we have known it:

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said she has no qualms about acknowledging a so-called “Green New Deal” will mean unprecedented governmental intrusion into the private sector. Appearing on NPR, she was asked if she’s prepared to tell Americans outright that her plans involve “massive government intervention.”

We cannot predict what would be the outcome if the Green New Deal Resolution was fully implemented. What we can say is it would require a massive government takeover of all means of production with the stated goal of “saving the planet.”

As George Santayana wrote, ” “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

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Ocasio-Cortez’s Gardening Advice Echoes the Hubris of Mao’s Great Leap Forward

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New directions in national policy, 1958–61

Great Leap Forward

AOC’s Green New Deal Is a U.S. Version of Mao’s Disastrous Great Leap Forward

EDITORS NOTE: The featured photo is by Alfonso Castro on Unsplash.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Says She Opposes Capitalism. A Recently Taken Photo Suggests Otherwise…

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There are many who speak loudly against capitalism, all the while still enjoying its benefits. To illustrate this point, just look at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez texting from her iPhone, wearing a Movado watch, and drinking a Starbucks coffee. A democratic socialist, who thinks of capitalism as an immoral system, seems to enjoy the goods provided by big corporations. It is not only Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, however; this is common behavior in Western societies.

This behavior derives from the confusion between political ideology and practical politics. Political ideology is a theoretical framework of how society should work, whereas practical politics is the actual implementation of these ideas in the real world. Because of this confusion, people fall into two fallacies. First, they focus on ideological principles rather than practicalities. Second, they judge policies by their intentions rather than their results.

Starting with the first fallacy, take the example of the term “capitalism.” Countries such as the US, Canada, and Sweden are, in principle, capitalist countries, despite the fact that they differ tremendously in terms of economic and social policies. Nevertheless, people view “capitalism” as something negative and universal in its definition and applications.

The majority thinks of capitalism as it was perceived in the 19th century; a system associated with the unrestrained power of big corporations and the exploitation of the working class. That’s why many free-market advocates, in order to distinguish capitalism from this negative connotation, use other terms, such as free-market capitalism, crony capitalism, etc.

A survey conducted by the Harvard Kennedy School showed that most Americans aged 18 to 29 don’t support capitalism while not supporting socialism, either. Specifically, 42 percent of young Americans support capitalism, and 33 percent support socialism.

While, in principle, capitalism is related to private property, voluntary exchange, operation for profit, and free markets, it is not perceived as such. According to another poll, the vast majority of people tend to agree with the statement, “Most people are better off in a free market economy, even though some people are rich and some are poor.” Although people disagree with capitalism, they seem to agree with the results it produces.

The second fallacy comes through judging policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results. The famous saying “That wasn’t real communism” finds its roots in this particular fallacy. In contrast to Nazism, an ideology associated with racism and hatred, communism was presentedby Marx and Engels as a goal for an ideal society where everyone would be equal. Marx described this society with the famous slogan: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’’ with socialism being the transition to communism.

Based on this premise, the crimes and failures of communist regimes are discarded because they don’t fit with the ideal society Marx described. Political assassinations, forced labor camps, famines, and mass killings are thought of as not real communism and disregarded or overlooked by modern socialists. Once again, political ideology is confused with practical politics.

Political ideologies often lead us to fallacies and false conclusions. I suppose that even if Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez read this article, she probably wouldn’t change her views on capitalism. Nonetheless, if someone tells you they don’t like capitalism (and they are not wearing a hammer and sickle cockade), ask them what exactly they disagree with. In the end, they might just agree with you.

This article was reprinted from Speak Freely.

COLUMN BY

Evangelos Andreou

Evangelos Andreou is a student of Political Science at Panteion University and Economics at the American College of Greece. He is also a Local Coordinator at European Students for Liberty.

RELATED ARTICLE: 9 Big Questions About Democratic Socialism

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column with images is republished with permission. The featured image is by Evangelos Andreou