ACTION

China has repeatedly refused to act in good faith, blocking or heavily restricting U.S. access to Chinese domestic markets. Beijing has further discouraged foreign imports through a series of tariffs, subsidies, and other barriers to free trade, like its history of currency manipulation, artificially devaluing the yuan in order to make Chinese goods cheaper in the U.S.

Arguably the most damaging tactic used by the Chinese government is industrial espionage and theft of intellectual property. In addition to corporate espionage, the Chinese government, as a precondition for gaining access to Chinese markets, forces foreign companies to hand over intellectual property (inventions, designs, and other “creations of the mind”), passing it along to Chinese companies, which then produce cheaper knock-offs that directly compete with the foreign company.

The U.S. Trade Representative has estimated that America loses as much as $600 billion per year due to intellectual property theft by China.

Enter President Trump, who made immigration enforcement and renegotiating fairer trade deals the centerpieces of his 2016 presidential campaign.

If the official numbers are to be believed, the Chinese economy ($13.4 trillion GDP) ranks second globally behind the U.S. ($20.5 trillion GDP). However, there are a couple of caveats.

One, the Chinese economy, at a third smaller than the U.S., is spread out over four times the population. That population is aging faster than the American population, which means in the coming years it will be less productive and more expensive to care for.

Second, a recent, in-depth analysis by five economists from the Chinese University of Hong Kong and the University of Chicago found the Chinese have been over-reporting economic growth by an average of 1.7% per year for at least a dozen years, meaning the Chinese economy is roughly 20% smaller than officially reported.

And you can be absolutely certain that President Trump is aware of this and much more in his negotiations with China, which have been chaotic and tumultuous of late.

One day President Trump is praising Chinese President Xi Jinping, the next calling him an “enemy.” Such hyperbolic and inflammatory rhetoric is part of the “whiplash” strategy that Trump says is his M.O., but it sends waves of panic through economic markets. Trump’s recent demand that U.S. companies pull out of China made for even more uncertainty.

Then, of course, we have escalating tariffs.

In early 2018, President Trump levied $9 billion in tariffs on imports such as solar products and large appliances, months later adding $25 billion in new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. Then, in the last year, Mr. Trump targeted another $200 billion in imports from China for tariffs, with another $300 billion targeted by the end of 2019.

To state the obvious, tariffs are bad. They drag down economic growth by taxing American consumers, who are spending more in the form of higher-priced imports, reducing their purchasing power. The damage is compounded by increasing uncertainty in economic markets, which sidelines capital and reduces investment, and therefore job creation and economic growth. Retaliatory actions taken by China are another painful blow.

The U.S. trade deficit with China was roughly $420 billion in 2018, but trade deficits are not necessarily bad. Most of us have a “trade deficit” with Walmart and Amazon, but because their lower-priced goods allow us greater purchasing power, our lives are considerably better for the arrangement. With China, the issue is not so much the trade deficit as the unfair practices that drive it.

President Trump claims we are winning the trade war, but in a trade war even winning is painful. It is the economic equivalent of chemotherapy — painful and destructive, but the hope is you purge the disease (in this case, China’s unfair trade practices) while harming the patient as little possible.

The president is well aware of this, as evidenced by his recent admission of second thoughts about the trade war, and the acknowledgment it could lead to a short recession. The Congressional Budget Office predicts the average American family will pay an extra $580 for goods next year due to the trade war.

President Trump feels he has a very strong hand, touting a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that is a net benefit for the U.S., and hinting that a new U.S.-Japan trade agreement will be announced soon. Plus the fact that the U.S. is far and away the world’s most powerful economy.

After Chinese Vice Premier Liu He was quoted as saying “an escalation of the trade war is against the interest of China, the U.S. and the entire world,” President Trump said we are “winning” the trade war. He appears confident China will be ready to make a deal soon, saying, “I don’t think they have a choice.” On Monday, he praised President Xi as “a great leader,” adding that “one of the reasons that China is a great country is they understand how life works.”

While even top Democrats agree this trade war with China is necessary to force China to act in good faith, it will be better for all when it is over. Previous tariff skirmishes under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack scumbag/liar-nObama resulted in higher prices for American consumers, lost jobs, and slower economic growth.

And that benefits no one unless the results of the fight recoup the cost.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65100?mailing_id=4496&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4496&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

worthless-Omar, the Minnesota Democrat member of what we call the “Gang of Four,” already has a sordid past — she’s alleged to have committed tax fraud through a sham “marriage” to a man who’s likely her brother. Now she stands accused of being a home-wrecker. The Minneapolis Star Tribune, her hometown paper, reports, “A Washington, D.C., physician alleged in divorce filings Tuesday that her husband, a national political consultant, left her after becoming romantically involved with U.S. Rep. worthless-Ilhan Omar, a client of his fundraising business. … Dr. Beth Mynett said her husband, worthless-Omar consultant Tim Mynett, confessed to her that he was ‘romantically involved with and in love with’” worthless-Omar.

Not just romantically, either. It was a fairly lucrative relationship for Mynett, who reportedly raked in roughly $230,000 from worthless-Omar’s campaign since 2018, including $160,000 just this year — an off year. That’s nearly one out of every three dollars worthless-Omar spent in a district she won with 78% of the vote. It certainly calls into question whether the expenditures constitute campaign-finance violations.

As for worthless-Omar’s reaction? “I have no interest in allowing the conversation about my personal life to continue and so I have no desire to discuss it.”

She’s evidently too good for even a denial. Thus, her constituents — of whom Muslims comprise a fair percentage due to having the highest Somali population in the U.S. — face a choice in 2020. Do they circle the wagons because this unfaithful liar is a minority with a “D” after her name, or do they throw her under the bus for her legal and moral sins?  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65098?mailing_id=4496&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4496&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

San Francisco, a city described in song for its natural beauty, is descending into an abyss of homelessness, the use of sidewalks as toilets and a place you might not want to visit, much less live.

The latest, but surely not the last demonstration of insanity, is San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors’ adoption of new “person first” language guidelines meant to “change the public’s perception of criminals.” The words “convicted felon,” “offender,” “convict,” “addict” and “juvenile delinquent” are now out. These individuals will henceforth be referred to as a “justice-involved person.” Someone previously called a “criminal” will now be referred to as “a returning resident,” or “a formerly incarcerated person.”

Supervisor Matt Haney told the San Francisco Chronicle the intent is to keep people from being “forever labeled for the worst things that they have done. We want them, ultimately to become contributing citizens, and referring to them as felons is like a scarlet letter that they can never get away from.”

A noble objective, to be sure, but language has — or used to have — a purpose beyond interpersonal communication. Like so much else today, language has now been appropriated to advance political agendas.

The encroachment of euphemisms on common sense is everywhere. Illegal immigrants have become “undocumented workers.” Babies in the womb lose their humanity when they are labeled “fetuses.”

Euphemisms are most used to hide a more accurate description of behavior or status in order to avoid conflict, or not injure someone who might be offended or hurt. It fails to communicate anything meaningful, while claiming to do so. George Orwell called it “Newspeak,” or “doublespeak.”

Too often, euphemisms are used to make bad behavior appear good, or at least tolerable, and to allow one to avoid responsibility and accountability. They are interpreted according to one’s personal wishes. As Humpty Dumpty told Alice in the Lewis Carroll classic: “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”

The English language once conveyed meaning. Properly written and spoken, it suggested one was educated and capable of conversing in polite company. Today, it is often used to cover up true intentions. Consider how often “racism” is misapplied.

The proper use of language can also be redemptive. That used to be a major goal, along with punishment, of penitentiaries — the word being derived from “penitent,” suggesting the possibility of changing one’s life after admitting wrongdoing and repenting so as not to repeat bad behavior. Is anything “bad” today, or has that also become subjective?

In our muddled language and culture, one dare not suggest anyone has done anything wrong lest negative labels be attached to them. Such labels are unevenly applied. The political left often retains them to attack the right, but should the right seek to use words that accurately describe the conduct or status of another they are condemned as old-fashioned, rigid, judgmental, or worse.

“Wardrobe malfunction,” has been a recent favorite, a euphemism for showing off what were once considered “private” body parts.

If you are unemployed, you are “between jobs” or a “consultant.” “Underserved community” means the politicians aren’t getting all the money they want. A corollary: you are no longer poor, you are “economically disadvantaged.” The list is endless.

Instead of applying euphemisms, San Francisco should be seeing to the homeless (“previously housed individuals”?) and the filthy streets that now require maps so people can avoid stepping in human waste.

Tony Bennett may have left his heart in San Francisco, but the city seems to lost its mind there too.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/65070?mailing_id=4494&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4494&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Oklahoma has also already reached an $85 million settlement with Teva and a $270 million settlement with OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma over opioids. But litigation is widespread. The Wall Street Journal notes, “More than 2,000 states and municipalities have sued opioid makers and distributors in federal litigation in Ohio. Another 250 or so have filed lawsuits in state courts where they hope local judges and juries will provide a more sympathetic audience.”

For years now, the U.S. has found itself facing a true opioid crisis. Tens of thousands of Americans are dying of overdoses each year — in numbers exceeding those killed in car crashes or by so-called “gun violence” (homicide and suicide, combined).

Who’s to blame? Two years ago, our Arnold Ahlert wrote:

The foundations of our current opioid crisis were laid back in the late 1990s. Pharmaceutical companies, doctors and government were all involved. Drug companies misleadingly promoted opioids to treat chronic pain, and government officials at different levels bought into that promotion, requiring insurance policies to cover the drugs. Government also pushed doctors to prescribe opioids via a “Pain as the Fifth Vital Sign” campaign run in the 1990s and 2000s.

Pharmaceutical companies are popular bogeymen. The compelling narrative is that faceless corporations are grossly profiting from the suffering of sick people. There is also serious cronyism afoot as “Big Pharma” tries to rig government regulation and interference in its favor and works in cahoots with insurance companies to determine what patient gets which drug and for how much.

But that’s a black-and-white view of a gray issue. American pharmaceutical companies are also doing the lion’s share of worldwide drug development. Research and development isn’t free, and the relatively few drugs that do make it to market after years of work and government hoops must cover resources put into the many drugs that don’t make it to market. Prices are controlled in other countries, so unfortunately the American consumer bears the brunt of the cost.

As for addicts, well, it’s complicated. A patient who takes more than the prescribed dosage only to find himself addicted and seeking the next high bears responsibility for himself. Doctors who prescribe 30 days of opioids when three days and some Ibuprofen will do likewise own some blame. And now we have tort lawyers and power-grabbing attorneys general swooping in to increase their money or power as a result of a crisis. Bankrupting America’s pharmaceutical companies won’t put a dent in the profits of your local meth or fentanyl dealer.

On a final note, it’s worth mentioning that $200 million from Purdue’s settlement will go to the National Center for Addiction Studies and Treatment at Oklahoma State University, where AG Hunter’s son is employed. Another $60 million went to trial lawyers. Again, the word cronyism comes to mind.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65078?mailing_id=4494&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4494&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body

COLLEGE QUID PRO QUO: “The company that administers the SAT college admissions test is replacing the so-called adversity score with a tool that will no longer reduce an applicant’s background to a single number, an idea that the College Board’s chief executive now says was a mistake,” according to Time magazine, which goes on to explain that “the revised tool will provide a series of data points from government sources and the College Board that are seen as affecting education.” Dropping the adversity score is good. But replacing it with yet another affirmative-action tool is still beyond the scope of what the College Board’s role should be.

ANNALS OF THE ABSURD: “A federal appeals court has ruled that Idaho must pay for a transgender inmate’s surgery,” reports The Daily Caller. “Thirty-one-year-old Adree Edmo is a convicted sex offender who is scheduled to be released from jail in 2021. The sex offender was diagnosed with gender dysmorphia in 2012, identifies as a woman, and is currently housed in a men’s prison.” According to Edmo’s attorney, “They treat a prisoner with diabetes, or other chronic conditions. So, we have a medically recognized condition that’s very treatable and we have been trying to get her [sic] the treatment that she [sic] very much needs.” In other words, you will be made to care.

ABORTION RESTRICTIONS BLOCKED: “A federal judge on Tuesday temporarily blocked a Missouri law banning abortions after eight weeks, one of the most restrictive proposals nationwide. … ‘The various sections specifying prohibitions on abortions at various weeks prior to viability cannot be allowed to go into effect on August 28, as scheduled,’ U.S. District Judge Howard Sachs, a Carter appointee, wrote in an 11-page opinion. … Sachs wrote in his ruling that the law conflicts with Supreme Court precedent, which said that states could not interfere with a woman’s right to abortion until a fetus is viable after 24 weeks of pregnancy.” (The Hill)

Business & Economy

NEW SECURITIES LEADER: According to CNSNews.com’s Terence Jeffrey, “Entities in Japan have surpassed entities in Mainland China as the top foreign holders of U.S. Treasury securities, according to the latest estimate published this month by the Treasury.” As of June, Japan owned $1,122,900,000,000 in Treasury securities, which is slightly higher than China’s $1,112,500,000,000. “That marked the first time since May 2017 that entities in Japan have owned more U.S. Treasury securities … than entities in China,” Jeffrey notes. Better an ally than an enemy.

SEEING THE WRITING ON THE WALL: “The maker of OxyContin, Purdue Pharma, and its owners, the Sackler family, are offering to settle more than 2,000 lawsuits against the company for $10 billion to $12 billion,” NBC News reports. The timing isn’t coincidental. On Monday, Johnson & Johnson was ordered to pay $572 million over its role in the opioid epidemic.

National Security

IMMIGRATION UPDATE: Twenty miles of new border barriers were authorized this week by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, according to The Hill. “The Army Corps of Engineers determined that lower-than-expected contract costs could allow for another 20 miles of barrier.” Meanwhile, The Washington Free Beacon reports, “Thousands of would-be illegal immigrants are being returned to await asylum hearings in Mexico as part of a program the Trump administration has credited with curbing the recent wave of family migration at the southwestern border.”

RUSSIA’S HARD FEELINGS: “Republican and Democratic U.S. senators said Russia refused to grant them visas for a visit to Moscow next week, amid disagreement within Washington and among U.S. allies over whether the country should be readmitted to the Group of Seven,” Reuters reveals. The two senators are Chris Murphy and Ron Johnson, both of whom sit on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Murphy and Johnson also support levying sanctions on Russia.

Other Notables

SCALIA NOMINATED: “President Trump on Tuesday officially tapped Eugene Scalia, son of the late Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, to be his administration’s next secretary of labor. The president forecast his nomination of Scalia last month, just days after Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta resigned amid criticism of his kid-gloved handling of Florida prostitution charges against the late billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.” (National Review)

TFCC SINKS: CNSNews.com reports that the U.S. Navy’s Task Force Climate Change (TFCC) was surreptitiously shuttered in March. The decade-old TFCC was a pet project of Barack scumbag/liar-nObama tasked with gauging “how climate change affects or could affect Naval and national security operations.” Retired Navy Rear Admiral Jon White, a former TFCC director, groused, “It all goes back to the White House.” Yes it does. Because the Trump administration wants to focus on actual military readiness.

Closing Arguments

POLICY: The racist origins of minimum-wage laws (Foundation for Economic Education)

POLICY: Why climate action flopped at the G7 summit (National Review)

HUMOR: CNN apologizes to Stalin and Mao after comparing them to Trump (The Babylon Bee)  

But Afghanistan is not the only place where ISIS is once again seeking to regain regional power. Syria and Iraq remain in the crosshairs. As The New York Times notes, “The Islamic State can still tap a large war chest of as much as $400 million, which has been hidden in either Iraq and Syria or smuggled into neighboring countries for safekeeping. It is also believed to have invested in businesses, including fish farming, car dealing and cannabis growing. And ISIS uses extortion to finance clandestine operations: Farmers in northern Iraq who refuse to pay have had their crops burned to the ground.”

Earlier this year, President Donald Trump declared that ISIS had been defeated and its caliphate destroyed, and it was. However, ISIS’s defeat geographically does not mean that all the members of the terrorist movement are dead. Clearly, like any criminal organization, if the good guys aren’t there to vigilantly police and address any criminal actions, then those groups will inevitably grow. Barack scumbag/liar-nObama infamously shrugged off ISIS as the “JV team” only to have it practically take control of half of Iraq, spreading its terroristic rule over 12 million people. Trump would be wise to act carefully in drawing down U.S. troops so as to prevent a repeat of scumbag/liar-nObama’s folly.  

~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65037?mailing_id=4492&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4492&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Once upon a time, the value assigned to higher education — specifically at four-year colleges and universities — was on an ascending trajectory. Not so any longer. Between the rising costs of obtaining degrees, many of which come with very dim prospects for employment, and the proven indoctrination that is epidemic on the campuses of many institutions of higher learner, the reputation and worth of a college degree has taken a hit of late. So says the Pew Research Center’s latest survey.

Released last week, the report showed that only half of those surveyed viewed colleges and universities as having a positive impact on our country, down 10 points from seven years ago. Meanwhile, almost 40% deemed higher education as having a negative impact, an increase of 12 percentage points over that same window of time.

In both the Pew and a separate Gallup study, costs and indoctrination are cited as the driving factors devaluing institutions, yet, the value of a functional degree remains high. A full 91% surveyed in a 2018 Pew publication identified that a college degree is important or essential in the success of the younger generation. But America has at least one generation of college-educated individuals, carrying degrees like gender or interdisciplinary studies with little pay or functional value or they’ve been instructed that being malcontented Millennials is acceptable and, oh, by the way, we’re going to pay off your school debt.

The forgiveness of school debt is one of the key drivers of the Democrats’ platform. A great deal of focus is on their primary corral of candidates and, while “free stuff” is grossly irresponsible, it’s also appealing to their demographics.

The magnitude of that promise is astonishing. According to Credit.com, as of June 2019, there’s $1.52 trillion in unpaid student debt. Loans have been taken under the premise that these men and women would exit the college classroom prepared for employment, create wealth, and repay the institutions of lending for services provided.

Elizabeth dinky-Warren wants elimination of this debt through some redistribution scheme of taking from those who have money to pay for the debt of others who have less. Essentially, she’s saying let’s just print some more money and borrow another trillion or so from China — or whatever her conjured up logic is to deal with the debt held by 45 million student borrowers.

Please remember that the famed minority-wanna-be-dinky-Warren enjoyed favored status as a “Native American” while on faculty of Harvard, which charges between $47,000 to almost $68,000 annually for tuition, and is the driving force behind easing the access to loaned money and now wants all who hold the debt to walk away from their responsibilities. Both she and commie-Bernie Sanders are unashamedly luring our next generation into the lie of socialism and government dependency.

As government subsidies increase for the purpose of defraying the burden on students and parents attempting to pay for college, it makes a market distortion. Prices charged by colleges and universities are not forced to reflect consumer ability to pay or demand for a range pricing. With subsidies, institutions of higher learning can also be institutions with ever-increasing costs that reflect a subsidized market.

The 2018-2019 average tuition for college is $21,370. That’s an 145% in tuition costs compared to 1971 prices while wages have increased only 28% over that same window of time. Bottom line, the easier it’s been to borrow money and obtain educational funding subsidies, the higher costs have risen on campus.

Just like it sounded good to give easy access to loans for mortgages in the mid-2000s but the ability for individuals to repay that debt was removed, and now in the student-loan arrangement, creating a crisis, not from any free market force but because of a manufactured scenario that was logically unmanageable.

As dinky-Warren predicts a crisis of student debt, she helped create it — just as the mortgage market failures were created by a government interference that, while rooted in good intentions, constructed a situation that had a predictably poor outcome.

We’re learning that education has a value, but its costs are inflated by government interference. Wise up.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65050?mailing_id=4492&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4492&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

Obviously, the president cannot compel U.S. companies to do as he says; America is not communist China. But that’s the point — it appears that Trump’s message was primarily intended for Beijing. He rightly blames China for this trade war and has no intention of backing down. Indeed, Trump’s comments in context demonstrate his thinking: “Our Country has lost, stupidly, Trillions of Dollars with China over many years. They have stolen our Intellectual Property at a rate of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year, & they want to continue. I won’t let that happen! We don’t need China and, frankly, would be far better off without them. The vast amounts of money made and stolen by China from the United States, year after year, for decades, will and must STOP. Our great American companies are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China…”

News of the latest round of tariffs sent markets plunging, especially the Asian markets. In an effort to mitigate some of the effects of Trump’s tariffs by making Chinese goods cheaper, Beijing let its currency, the yuan, drop to an 11-year low. However, by early Monday Beijing was signaling to Washington that it wants to “calm” things down to seek an end to this trade war. Trump’s announcement on Sunday that Japan and the U.S. had agreed “in principle” to a new bilateral trade deal may have also played a significant factor in China’s sudden call for calm.

Again, this ongoing trade war is one Trump did not start, but he has willingly taken up the fight. It’s no secret that China has been playing dirty on trade for a long time. And it’s not as if Beijing has suddenly decided to change its ways. Earlier this year, Vietnam accused China of mislabeling its products as “Made in Vietnam” in an effort to avoid U.S. tariffs. While there is no way to avoid the impact of fighting this trade war, and there’s plenty to criticize Trump over, one thing for which he should rightly be commended is his willingness to stand and fight for the American people.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/articles/65058?mailing_id=4492&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4492&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

BLUE-STATE OBSTRUCTION: “A coalition of 20 Democratic attorneys general announced Monday they are suing to block the administration’s new rules that would allow immigrant families who are in the U.S. illegally to be detained while their deportation hearings are taking place. The 19 states and the District of Columbia said they are responsible for ensuring the health and safety of children at detention facilities inside their boundaries, so they have standing to sue in order to protect their health.” (The Washington Times)

PURSUING THE DEATH PENALTY: “Federal prosecutors in Pittsburgh said Monday that they intend to seek the death penalty against the man accused of gunning down 11 people at a synagogue last year,” NBC News reports. As our Mark Alexander revealed at the time, the suspect “was inspired, in part, because Donald Trump is the most PRO-Israel president since Ronald Reagan.”

IRAN OLIVE BRANCH: On Monday, President Donald Trump declared, “If the circumstances were correct or right, I would certainly agree to” meeting Iran President Hassan Rouhani. He added, “But in the meantime, they have to be good players.” Rouhani is currently not being a good player. According to The Daily Caller, “Iran’s parliament is preparing a bill to sanction top Trump administration officials and their supporters in Congress for what regime officials described as ‘their long animosity towards Iran.’” Rouhani also personally responded, “First the U.S. should act by lifting all illegal, unjust and unfair sanctions imposed on Iran.”

AND THEN THERE WERE THREE: Presidential candidate loose lips liar-Joe Biden is an indisputable frontrunner no more, according to Monmouth University polling. In a new survey, “Vermont Sen. commie-Bernie Sanders, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth dinky-Warren, and … loose lips liar-Biden are currently bunched together in the national Democratic presidential preference contest. … The poll finds a virtual three-way tie among commie-Sanders (20%), dinky-Warren (20%), and loose lips liar-Biden (19%) in the presidential nomination preferences of registered Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters across the country. Compared to Monmouth’s June poll, these results represent an increase in support for both commie-Sanders (up from 14%) and dinky-Warren (up from 15%), and a significant drop for loose lips liar-Biden (down from 32%).”

ANOTHER REPUBLICAN BITES THE DUST:  “Wisconsin GOP Rep. Sean Duffy on Monday abruptly announced plans to resign from Congress, saying his family recently learned that his soon-to-be born child has a serious heart condition. Duffy … is the father of eight children, with another due in October.” (Fox News)

FEC RESIGNATION: “The Republican vice chairman of the Federal Election Commission resigned Monday, leaving the election oversight agency without enough members to vote on enforcement actions. Matthew S. Petersen [said] that he submitted his letter of resignation … to the White House Monday morning. It said that he will leave the agency by the end of the week. ‘It’s just the right time,’ said Petersen, who has won wide praise for his steady and thoughtful approach to election issues, his dedication to the First Amendment, and battles to fend off the regulation of technology and the internet.” (Washington Examiner)

Closing Arguments

POLICY: The proof is in: Tariffs are hurting the U.S. economy (The Daily Signal)

POLICY: Purchasing a gun from Walmart is not nearly as easy as the Left claims (The New American)

HUMOR: scumbag/liar-nObama slams greedy rich people from his new $15 million Martha’s Vineyard estate (Genesius Times)  

President Trump is upset that Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen called his interest in purchasing Greenland “absurd.” Her dismissive response should have come as no surprise. In 1946, when President Harry Truman tried to purchase Greenland, Secretary of State James Byrnes wrote that the proposal “seemed to come as a shock” and an insult to Danish officials, who turned it down.

That was a big mistake. As part of his deal, Truman had offered to trade parts of the Point Barrow district of Alaska, including the rights to any oil discovered there, to Denmark, in exchange for parts of Greenland. The Danes dismissed the idea just as they did Trump’s proposal. In 1967, the richest oil strike in U.S. history was made in the Point Barrow area. Bad move, Denmark! Sad!

With that blunder in their rearview mirror, you would think that Danish leaders would at least hear Trump out. The president’s idea of buying Greenland is far from absurd. Today we have a military base in Greenland, so there is no need to buy it for that purpose. But Greenland has enormous unexplored stores of natural resources, including zinc, lead, gold, iron ore, diamonds, copper and uranium, that Denmark has been unable or unwilling to exploit.

It also has large, untapped stores of rare-earth elements, such as praseodymium or dysprosium, that are critical to the production of everything from electric cars to smartphones and lasers. Today, the United States gets many of these rare-earth elements from China, which makes Americans dependent on Beijing. The Wall Street Journal reports that Beijing may cut off access to those minerals in its trade dispute with Washington, and China is also trying to corner the market for rare-earth elements in Greenland. Buying Greenland would put those strategically valuable minerals in U.S. hands.

But what makes Greenland particularly valuable to the United States is global warming. The unavoidable receding of Arctic sea ice will open a new sea route in the Arctic that can be used for both commercial and military vessels. In May, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an address at the Arctic Council Ministerial Meeting in Finland in which he pointed out that “steady reductions in sea ice are opening new passageways and new opportunities for trade. This could potentially slash the time it takes to travel between Asia and the West by as much as 20 days.” He added that the emerging “Arctic sea lanes could become the 21st-century Suez and Panama canals.”

He’s right. A recent report in the New York Times notes that as sea ice melts and “Arctic routes become more direct, voyage times could fall to less than three weeks in some cases, making Arctic shipping potentially more attractive than the southern routes in coming decades.”

The United States and its allies have a major interest in not allowing these Arctic sea lanes to fall under Russian or Chinese control. “Do we want the Arctic Ocean to transform into a New South China Sea, fraught with militarization and competing territorial claims?” Pompeo asked in Finland. Purchasing Greenland would help the United States to better secure these emerging strategic passageways.

In 1946, the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Truman that Greenland was “completely worthless to Denmark.” Today, Denmark may not feel that way. But rather than getting offended, Copenhagen should entertain Trump’s offer. After all, it would not be the first time Denmark sold the United States one of its overseas possessions. In 1916, it sold the Danish West Indies (now the U.S. Virgin Islands) to President Woodrow Wilson. So, we’ve long ago established that parts of Denmark are for sale; there’s no harm haggling over the price.

Indeed, a Greenland purchase would be in keeping with a long history of presidential land acquisitions. In 1803, Thomas Jefferson bought the Louisiana territory from France. In 1819, President James Monroe bought Florida from Spain. In 1854, President Franklin Pierce, in the Gadsden Purchase, bought part of New Mexico and Arizona from Mexico. In 1867, President Andrew Johnson bought Alaska from Russia. In 1898, President William McKinley bought the Philippines from Spain. And in 1903, President Theodore Roosevelt rented the Panama Canal Zone from Panama and Guantanamo Bay from Cuba. If Denmark won’t sell Greenland, maybe we can rent it!

On Monday, Trump tweeted a picture of a gleaming Trump high-rise amid small huts on the Greenland coast and declared, “I promise not to do this to Greenland!” But the idea of buying Greenland is no joke. It actually makes a lot of strategic and economic sense.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/65007?mailing_id=4488&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4488&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body  

The latest claims against the Trump administration over its enforcement of the “public charge” provision in federal immigration law are nonsensical. There is nothing “racist” or “immoral” about this requirement at all.

On Aug. 14, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) published its new rule on how it will determine if “an alien applying for admission or adjustment of status is inadmissible … because he or she is likely at any time to become a public charge.” Being a “public charge” means that an individual is unable to support himself and instead relies on public benefits such as welfare. This is a long-standing principle of U.S. immigration law, first implemented at the federal level in 1882.

It is common sense — and a smart choice in the best interests of the country as a whole — to try to ensure that new, legal immigrants to our country are self-sufficient individuals who will be a net plus for our economy, rather than a drag on expensive medical, housing, welfare, and other public assistance programs paid for by the American taxpayer at both the state and federal level.

These programs are a major source of our trillion-dollar budget deficits and the increase in our public debt. Why would we want to bring in immigrants who will only add to that deficit and that debt?

The statute does not define “public charge,” but leaves that up to the federal government. Congress articulated our immigration policy that “aliens within the Nation’s borders not depend on public resources to meet their needs, but rather rely on their own capabilities and the resources of their families, their sponsors, and private organizations.” This is intended to prevent damage to the economy and increased public debt, of course, but also to ensure that “the availability of public benefits not constitute an incentive for immigration to the United States.”

In the past, federal rules focused only on “the receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance or institutionalization for long-term care at Government expense.” This definition essentially ignored the numerous other costly public benefits the government provides. Thus, if an alien was receiving non-cash benefits under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance and food stamp programs; Medicaid; and housing vouchers and subsidies, he was not considered a “public charge” on the taxpayer.

The administration’s new rules simply define the public charge requirement to reflect today’s system of government benefits. In other words, it brings reality into the system.

In short, the rule insists that to become a permanent resident in the U.S. with eventual access to U.S. citizenship; to be admitted as a legal immigrant on a visa; or to change your status and extend your stay or apply for citizenship when you are already legally in the country, an individual must not be reliant on, or likely to become reliant on, such welfare programs.

There are numerous exceptions in the new rule. For example, it does not apply to humanitarian-based immigration programs. This ensures that refugees, asylum seekers, victims of sex-trafficking, or other special cases such as victims of qualifying criminal activity (including domestic violence) won’t be barred by the public charge requirement.

It does not apply to aliens who serve in the U.S. military or to pregnant women and aliens under the age of 21 who receive Medicaid benefits. It also won’t apply to Medicaid benefits paid for emergency medical or school-based services (such as provided under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).

Additionally, if DHS decides that an immigrant is not admissible because of the public charge rule, in limited circumstances, DHS will offer the aliens the opportunity to post a public bond. The amount of the bond will vary depending on the alien’s circumstances.

This rule protects U.S. taxpayers by ensuring that new immigrants to the U.S. will not add even more spending to the welfare and entitlement programs already driving American debt to unsustainable levels.

It also ensures that the U.S. is granting entry to those who are self-reliant, rewarding such industrious immigrants with the privilege of staying and working in the U.S. and eventually gaining access to the most prized possession of all — American citizenship.  ~The Patriot Post

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/65012?mailing_id=4488&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4488&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body