The Patriot Post Digest 6-8-2016

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The Patriot Post Digest 6-8-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
Free Email Subscription
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Mid-Day Digest

Jun. 8, 2016

THE FOUNDATION

“The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.” —James Madison (1788.)

TOP RIGHT HOOKS

FBI Suspect Claims Democrat Nomination1

A weak candidate whose popularity is waning and who might be indicted on federal charges of mishandling classified information took to a New York City stage Tuesday night to announce she is now the presumptive nominee for the Democrat Party. Hillary Clinton claimed the title after she won the primaries for sizable states like California and New Jersey. As if it mattered. The Leftmedia gave the struggling candidate2 a boost by declaring victory Monday before the voters even headed to the polls Tuesday.

While Socialist Bernie Sanders has yet to concede, Clinton thanked him for “the vigorous debate that we’ve had” and renewed her attacks on Donald Trump. “[Make America Great Again is code for] let’s take America backwards,” Clinton jabbed. As if moving “forward” is always better. We should go back to a time when families were intact, Americans made stuff and people knew which bathroom to use without federal government diktats.

Make no mistake: Clinton is a weak candidate. When she was running against a certain first-term senator from Illinois, Clinton received 2,600,000 votes in the California primary of 2008. This primary hasn’t exactly shown Clinton’s strength, as she received only 1,840,000 votes this time around — a loss3 of 30%. Furthermore, the Real Clear Politics poll average4 shows she only has a two-point lead against Donald Trump — essentially neck-in-neck.

Clinton framed the upcoming general election as a fight between a woman who’s breaking the glass ceiling and a misogynist man. It’s about the only reason left that Clinton can give to try to persuade supporters.

“Thanks to you, we’ve reached a milestone,” Clinton gushed. “The first time in our nation’s history that a woman will be a major party’s nominee. Tonight’s victory is not about one person. It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible.” Of course, she never mentioned how “pro woman” she was when Bill Clinton was, er, cavorting with female aides and interns5…

Leftmedia Circle the Wagons6

Hillary Clinton is the Leftmedia’s candidate. This was made clear yet again when they declared her primary victory2 a day early. But it’s also painfully clear when it comes to the Clinton Foundation7. As readers of these pages will recall, Bill and Hillary Clinton, supposedly “dead broke” upon leaving the White House in 2001, soon began the Clinton Foundation to do philanthropic work around the world. Or so they said. In reality, of course, it was nothing more than a slush fund for the two to enrich themselves and avoid the inconvenience of paying so much in taxes.

Worse, the former first couple used the Foundation to peddle influence with foreign governments while Hillary was secretary of state. More than a dozen nations secured approval from Clinton’s State Department for major arms deals — after donating to the Clinton Foundation. No doubt that was mere coincidence…

Put another way, the nation’s top diplomat took money under the table in exchange for favors for other governments and influential people. To say that’s not how U.S. foreign policy should work is a gross understatement.

In fact, we believe the Clinton Foundation was a primary consideration for Hillary when she chose to operate a private email server instead of a State Department account. What better way to hide her utterly corrupt money laundering operation?

But is any mainstream media outlet talking about this? Are any reporters asking Hillary about anything other than what it feels like to make history — or “herstory” as one outlet put it? No, nothing but softball questions8 for Clinton. Instead, the 24-hour talkingheads would rather bloviate about Trump University. Trump’s no innocent bystander9, but the bias is incredible, even if it’s something by which we’ve never been surprised.

Millions Mired in Massive Student Debt10

The government program that gave Americans loans for higher education made enrollment at U.S. colleges increase 25% from 2002 to 2012. The government’s stated goal was to increase training in America’s work force. It was supposed to improve America’s economic health. That plan didn’t work.

America’s current and former students now owe $1.2 trillion in debt. Millions of Americans who took the loans are in default11. “New research shows a significant chunk of that investment backfired, with millions of students worse off for having gone to school,” according to The Wall Street Journal. “Many never learned new skills because they dropped out — and now carry debt they are unwilling or unable to repay. Policy makers worry that without a bigger intervention, those borrowers will become trapped for years and will ultimately hurt, rather than help, the nation’s economy.”

In the past, the thinking among parents and students heading to university was that taking out loans was an investment that would pay off in the form of higher wages down the road. But a report by nonpartisan think tank Third Way discovered that about 40% of students who enrolled in nonprofit colleges and took on debt in 2005 only earned $25,000 six years later — no better than holding only a high school diploma.

Americans have taken on debt with little to show for it. And for what? Mike Rowe, who stared in “Dirty Jobs,” said in a Prager University video12 most Americans are chasing their dream jobs regardless of the skills they possess or the need for those jobs. It could be the government, in giving out these loans, enabled Americans to pursue careers that don’t actually contribute to society. Can someone say “education bubble”?

BEST OF RIGHT OPINION

Jeff Jacoby: A Civil Rights Hero? Muhammad Ali Was Anything But13
Walter Williams: Elitist Arrogance, Part II14
Ryan Anderson: Government Must Stay Neutral in Transgender Debate15

For more, visit Right Opinion16.

FEATURED RIGHT ANALYSIS
Of Wall Street and Main Street17

By Lewis Morris

With Donald Trump focused on making outrageous statements and stirring controversy, the job of presenting substantive GOP policy positions falls to House Republicans. In two separate recent announcements that are part of the GOP’s Better Way Agenda18, Speaker Paul Ryan (WI) and Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling (TX) presented some ideas to undo years of destructive leftist economic policies.

Hensarling, speaking19 at the Economic Club of New York, unveiled a plan to get of rid of the Democrats' 2,300-page Dodd-Frank financial regulatory behemoth in favor of a more market oriented regulatory scheme.

“It wasn’t deregulation that created the great financial crisis of 200820,” Hensarling correctly noted. “It was mostly dumb regulation by the Washington elite.”

The Dodd-Frank law, named after two Democrats who promptly retired from Congress, passed along party lines and has done far more harm than good since it was signed by Barack Obama in 2010. Has anyone noticed our anemic “recovery” since this law was implemented? Yeah, there’s a correlation21.

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The Patriot Post Digest 6-8-2016
From The Federalist Patriot
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Dodd-Frank was the biggest federal overreach into the financial sector since the Great Depression, and it came fresh on the heels of ObamaCare. Democrats told us their financial “reform” was meant to make financial institutions more responsible for their actions — to end “too big to fail” — but in the end it merely created a bubble of protection around government-favored banking institutions, codifying “too big to fail.” And it did so by implementing a whole new scheme of fees and costs that were passed along to taxpayers.

“The ultimate goal of the Left,” Hensarling said, “is to turn our large, money-center banks into the functional equivalent of utilities so that Washington can politically allocate credit.”

The plan Hensarling presented Tuesday would give financial institutions a “market-based, equity-financed Dodd-Frank off ramp,” allowing them to opt out of the regulatory law if they can prove their financial stability.

The burden of proof includes a provision that banks hold a 10% leverage ratio, a measure of capital held against total assets that determine the amount of borrowing a bank can do. This is currently higher than banks currently enjoy under Dodd-Frank, and has therefore drawn the ire of some on Wall Street, but the tradeoff is a greater degree of independence from government influence in day-to-day and long-term decision making.

Hensarling also pointed out that many community and smaller banks could easily make the leverage threshold, which would stymie Democrats' attempts to essentially nationalize the banking system under a few large “too big to fail” institutions.

While Hensarling focused on banks, Ryan turned his focus toward alleviating poverty. Speaking in the DC suburb of Anacostia, Ryan offered some details of the Better Way anti-poverty agenda22. The plan seeks to put more control in the hands of state and local jurisdictions, allowing them to administer benefits, measure results on federal programs, and better police waste and fraud.

Ryan’s announcement was light on details, and it did not include his prior anti-poverty prescriptions like social service block grants or expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit. (And Heritage Foundation poverty expert Robert Rector has a list23 of ways to improve Ryan’s proposal.) This step, instead, was designed to start a conversation to find a new way to combat the problems that years of statist policies have failed to solve.

Not only have leftists not solved these problems, they have exacerbated them. In our view, that’s been their goal all along — a cynical power grab that also has the benefit of creating dependents who will always vote Democrat. Thus it was no surprise when Democrats shot down Hensarling’s and Ryan’s proposals without even listening to the details. Any plan that decentralizes power or takes away the federal government’s control over banks and taxpayers is, by definition, against “progressive” policy. Any substantive conversation to arise from these proposals is unlikely to include meaningful input from the Left.

MORE ORIGINAL PERSPECTIVE

ANALYSIS: The Californication of ObamaCare24
Investigation Into Clinton’s Email Not a ‘Security Review’25
Shocker: TransCanada Taking Oil Business Elsewhere26
Detroit Writer: Hey, Let’s Kill School Choice Supporters27
Visa-Sharing Agreement Without the Sharing28
Disgraced VA Director to Be Rehired?29
WaPo Worries German Muslims Heading to Gas Chambers30

TOP HEADLINES

N. Korea Restarts Plutonium Production31
D.C. Passes $15 Minimum Wage32
Trump’s First Endorsed Candidate Got Destroyed33 

For more, visit Patriot Headline Report34

OPINION IN BRIEF

Jeff Jacoby: “It is true that in his later years, [Muhammad] Ali lent his name and prestige to altruistic activities and worthy public appeals. … But when Ali was in his prime, the uninhibited ‘king of the world,’ he was no expounder of brotherhood and racial broadmindedness. On the contrary, he was an unabashed bigot and racial separatist and wasn’t shy about saying so. In a wide-ranging 1968 interview with Bud Collins, the storied Boston Globe sports reporter, Ali insisted that was as unnatural to expect blacks and whites to live together as it would be to expect humans to live with wild animals. … This was not some inexplicable aberration. It reflected a hateful worldview that Ali, as a devotee of Elijah Muhammad and the segregationist Nation of Islam, espoused for years. At one point he even appeared before a Ku Klux Klan rally. … In 1975 … Ali argued vehemently in a Playboy interview that interracial couples ought to be lynched. … Ali was many fine things, but a champion of civil rights wasn’t among them. Martin Luther King at one point called him ‘a champion of segregation.’ If later in life Ali abandoned his racist extremism, that is to his credit. It doesn’t, however, make him an exemplar of brotherhood and tolerance. And it doesn’t alter history: At the zenith of Ali’s career, when fans by the millions hung on his every word, what he often chose to tell them was indecent and grotesque.”

SHORT CUTS

Insight: “In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State.” —Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008.)

Upright: “The saddest aspect of the minimum wage story is the damage it does to human beings. The current hourly wage for a fast-food restaurant cashier is $7.25 to $9 per hour. That produces a yearly salary of $15,000 to $20,000, plus fringes. That’s no great shakes, but it is honest work and a start in life. It might be the very best some people could do. Enter the arrogance and callousness of the elite. Their vision of what a person should earn, expressed by higher minimum wages, destroys people’s best alternative without offering a superior one in its place. Maybe the elite believe that welfare, unemployment compensation and possibly engaging in illegal activities are a superior alternative to earning an honest and respectable living on a cashier’s salary. That is a despicable vision.” —Walter Williams

Equality? “I think women should register for the selective service. I see no reason not to.” —U.S. Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James

Non Compos Mentis: “Speaker Ryan is wrong [to label Trump’s attacks on Judge Curiel racist], and Speaker Ryan has apparently switched positions and is now supporting identity politics, which is racist.” —Trump surrogate Jeffrey Lord

“Tolerant” leftists: “We really ought to round up the lawmakers who took money to protect and perpetuate the failing charter-school experiment in Detroit, sew them into burlap sacks with rabid animals, and toss them into the Straits of Mackinac.” —Detroit Free Press editorialist Stephen Henderson

Late-night humor: “Bernie Sanders campaigned in California … ahead of the state’s Democratic primary, and even checked out the famous carousel at the Santa Monica Pier. But it got a little awkward when the music stopped and Bernie still wouldn’t admit that the ride was over. ‘This is gonna be a contested carousel!’” —Jimmy Fallon

Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis!
Managing Editor Nate Jackson

Join us in daily prayer for our Patriots in uniform — Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen — standing in harm’s way in defense of Liberty, and for their families.