Is Donald Trump ‘profoundly unconservative’?

No. It doesn’t match his shrinking regulations and limiting government

by Allan H. Ryskind   Allan H. Ryskind, a former editor and owner of Human Events, is the author of “Hollywood Traitors” (Regnery, 2015)

December 31, 2019

Prominent liberal Fareed Zakaria insists that Donald Trump “has been profoundly unconservative” because he’s abandoned what “Republicans used to call the core of their agenda — limited government.” But it’s hard to take the charge seriously, even though some conservatives have sent his piece around for comment to see if he’s onto something. Yet no politician in recent memory has restricted the reach of government at both the federal and state level more than the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Mr. Trump’s drastic shrinking of federal economic regulations, opening vast expanses of federal lands for energy exploration, drawing overseas businesses home with tax breaks and passing major tax cuts for corporations and individuals have generated an explosion of well-paying jobs, personal wealth and soaring wages, as well as the lowest level of unemployment for minorities on record. Some 7 million new jobs have been created during Mr. Trump’s presidency and more than 100 million American shareholders have watched the market jump 55 percent since his election.

You’d think Mr. Zakaria would be celebrating Mr. Trump’s low-tax, pro-growth economic agenda as not only core Republicanism but virtually Reaganesque. Increasing prosperity by stimulating market forces without enacting high taxes and big government programs is, of course, how conservatives try to keep government limited.

Mr. Zakaria concedes that Mr. Trump has delivered what conservatives have wanted in the realm of “social and cultural policy,” such as “appointing judges, tightening rules related to abortion and asylum, etc.” but suggests they have little to do with taming the Leviathan.

Really? Stacking the courts with judges steeped in the philosophy of federalism is, of course, precisely the way to limit government on both the economic and cultural fronts. Mr. Zakaria may ignore the threat, but Democratic Party presidential candidates, along with their media support groups, are panicked over the president’s court selections.

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The hypocrisy of the Left when it comes to  protecting Obama or Biden is  simply amazing that  they get away with it.    It is up to the conservative media to expose them.  Nancy

The Iran deal was never meant to stop Iran from building a bomb—it was supposed to delay it until disaster happened on someone else’s watch

By Lee Smith   Lee Smith is the author of The Consequences of Syria

EXCERPTS FROM THIS ARTICLE:  

JCPOA advocates claim Trump left the U.S. and the entire world vulnerable by leaving the Iran deal. The JCPOA, they say, was working. This is not true and hasn’t been true since the very beginning of the deal, at least not on the terms sold to Congress and the U.S. public. From the start, Iran was given secret loopholes that made it appear they were meeting the publicly stated terms of deal. Among other recent violations: The Iranians have exceeded the amount of uranium they’re allowed to enrich; they’ve exceeded the levels of purity of enriched uranium; they’ve violated the types of centrifuges they were allowed to spin; and injected uranium into centrifuges they were not allowed to use for enrichment.

Perhaps most tellingly, Iran’s nuclear archives, which Israel seized from a Tehran warehouse in January 2018 and made public months later, show that the regime never gave up its intentions to build a military nuclear program, despite promises in the JCPOA to never pursue nuclear weapons……

The most infamous payoff was the $1.7 billion in cash the administration shipped off to the IRGC on wooden pallets in exchange for U.S. citizens held hostage by the regime. The White House said that there was no “quid pro quo,” that it was Iran’s money to begin with—$400 million the pre-revolutionary government had deposited in 1979 to buy U.S. arms, plus interest. But the U.S. had already used the $400 million to compensate terror victims of the Islamic Republic. That was Iran’s money. The $400 million the Obama administration used to “pay back” the Iranians belonged to the U.S. taxpayer.

The administration argued that the U.S. had to pay the ransom in cash because Tehran had been cut off from the financial system and there was no other way to transfer the funds. That was not true. The Obama administration had wired payments to Iran before and after the wooden pallets episode. The Iranians wanted cash so it would be harder to track their terror financing…….

The Obama administration even paid the Iranians when they violated the deal. The Iranians overproduced reactor coolant, (heavy water, a key ingredient in nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons) in violation of the JCPOA, and the administration offered to buy it for $10 millionto keep them in compliance. But that wasn’t enough for Tehran—or the White House. In exchange for giving up the nuclear-related material they had promised not to have in the first place—the heavy water—the regime then demanded more nuclear material in exchange. And the American administration agreed: In January 2017, Obama greenlighted the shipment of 130 tons of uranium to Iran.

 BEGINNING OF THE ENTIRE ARTICLE

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What better way to slow the growth of a dynamic country such as ours, than to impose restrictive and time consuming environmental regulations.  Was  that  possibly  the plan of the Green/Globalist/Marxist Movement?   Ya think???   Nancy

Getting Closer to ‘Shovel Ready’

Environmental impact statements shouldn’t take 13 years and more than 16,000 pages.

Traffic backs up on Interstate 70 near Silverthorne, Colo., Jan. 7, 2018. PHOTO: THOMAS PEIPERT/ASSOCIATED PRESS

EXCERPT FROM THIS ARTICLE:  On Thursday the Trump Administration released a proposed rule to streamline NEPA reviews. One highlight is that the process would have presumptive limits: two years and 300 pages for a full environmental impact statement; or a year and 75 pages for a smaller environmental assessment. Thorny cases could go longer with written approval by “a senior agency official of the lead agency.”

If you visit an aging American megaproject—say, the Hoover Dam—you’ll probably see a startling statistic about how quickly it was built. Congress authorized the damming of the Colorado River in 1928, construction started in 1931, and the 726-foot concrete wonder opened in 1936. That’s a “shovel ready” job.

Today even modest public works, including roads, bridges and airport runways, can spend years in limbo, no thanks to the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. That 1970 law requires an environmental study of any major project that involves federal funding or permitting. NEPA hasn’t been overhauled in 40 years, which is why the Trump Administration deserves applause for moving last week to modernize it.

Everybody wants to protect the environment. But NEPA isn’t doing the job sensibly. No single agency has responsibility for its enforcement, unlike the Clean Water Act or the Clean Air Act. There’s no obligation for the feds to keep a specific timeline. Environmental assessments and impact statements are often monstrously detailed, since agencies and sponsors are trying to make them litigation proof.

The result is a regulatory morass. From 2013 to 2017, the average final impact statement took more than four years and ran 669 pages, the Council on Environmental Quality said last summer. The longest file was for a contentious 12-mile expansion of Interstate 70 in Denver. The final report ran 8,951 pages, plus another 7,307 pages of appendices. The whole rigmarole took 13 years.

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GUEST EDITORIALS

EDITORIAL: TRUMP – Existential Threat to New World Order

EDITORIAL – The ongoing attacks by the political establishment on President Donald Trump –which began even before he was elected – are without parallel in history. The savagery, frenzy, and outright hysteria displayed by the President’s enemies within the Democrat Party, the media, and the various power centers of the globalist elites have no prior precedent.

This President has been spied on, lied about, made the subject of phony foreign dossiers, insulted, ridiculed, scorned, mocked and threatened. We have witnessed Hollyweird celebrities advocate for blowing up the White House, demand the President be beaten, jailed or even assassinated, and his children tortured and sexually abused.

We have seen politicians in Washington try to convict the President of non-existent crimes, investigate him and his family members for everything from tax returns to guests at his hotels, project on to him crimes that they themselves have committed, and seed his Administration with leakers and double-agents.

No other President in American history has been treated in such a shameful manner. Not Lincoln. Not FDR. Not Nixon. Not Reagan.

What is it about this President that has roused such demons in his political foes?  What is it about this President that drives his opponents to the brink of insanity? What is it about this President that so terrifies and terrorizes the Pelosis, Schiffs, Schumers and the George Soroses?

Is it simply that he is not part of the club, a brash outsider with a different style? Is it merely because he’s outspoken and tramples on political correctness? Is it because he’s sometimes unpresidential in his demeanor ( at least in their minds )?

Not at all. After all, aren’t these the same folks who loved Bill Clinton whose extracurricular activities involved cigars and staining blue dresses in the Oval Office?

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‘Social credit score’: China set to roll out ‘Orwellian’ mass surveillance tool

China is developing a new high-tech system of mass surveillance and coercion aimed suppressing political dissent among its 1.4 billion people, while forcing American and Western businesses to conform to the government’s communist policies if they want to operate there.

The system that critics call an Orwellian national-level control system has been dubbed the Social Credit System (SCS) and was set for launch in the coming year, although recent reports from China now say the rollout could be delayed until 2021.

The massive system has been tested in several major Chinese cities and uses millions of surveillance cameras linked to supercomputers containing massive databases. Face and voice recognition technology then identifies and monitors people with the goal of controlling behaviors that range from dissident political activity to jaywalking, ostensibly as part of a financial credit monitoring system similar to those used in the West.

Vice President Mike Pence called out the program in a recent speech, warning that China’s surveillance state is “growing more expansive and intrusive — often with the help of U.S. technology.”

“By 2020, China’s rulers aim to implement an Orwellian system premised on controlling virtually every facet of human life — the so-called social credit score,” Mr. Pence said. “In the words of that program’s official blueprint, it will ‘allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven, while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.’”

Facial recognition tools are widely used now in China bolstered by cameras deployed along streets, on buildings, in train stations, in classrooms and subway lines. With the emergence of next-generation 5G telecommunications technology, the reach of the surveillance networks is only expected to increase.

As part of the stepped-up surveillance, the Chinese government announced this month that all who purchase SIM cards for mobile phones must first produce a facial recognition print.

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10 Reasons Why Blacks Should Leave the Democratic Party by Larry Elder

Elizabeth Warren Has a Plan, Oh My

She may not win the nomination, but her ideas show where the American left wants to go

“American citizenship is eroding”

November 2019  • • Victor Davis Hanson

The following is an abridged version of a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 2, 2019, during the College’s 175th anniversary gala. Videos of this and other speeches delivered during the gala are available at fourpillars.hillsdale.edu.

Today many condemn the idea of nationalism by connecting it to race hatred (e.g., white nationalism). But historically, the modern nation-state has proven uniquely suitable to preserving individual rights. The American nation in particular was successful in uniting individuals of different races, ethnic backgrounds, and creeds into one people based on shared principles, a unique physical space, and a common national story. Our nation is the best example in human history of positive nationalism.

The key to this benign nationalism is American citizenship, based on an understanding of American exceptionalism and formed by the American melting pot. But today, our citizenship is eroding and, along with it, American nationalism in the positive sense is disappearing.

American citizenship is eroding in three ways.

First, we are blurring the line between mere residents and citizens. We have between 45-50 million non-native-born residents in the U.S. today—the largest absolute number we’ve ever had. There’s no legal problem with the 30 million of them who have green cards or have acquired citizenship—although even 30 million is a challenge for the American melting pot to assimilate and integrate.

But we also have, according to a recent Yale and MIT study, about 20 million people who are here illegally. In regard to them, the classical ingredients of American citizenship—the right to leave or enter the country as one pleases, for example, or to vote in elections, or to reside here as long as one pleases—are being blurred.

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