But the best organizational system for representative government is the nation state.
That has been the opinion of Vaclav Klaus, the former leader of the Czech Republic, who remarked in 2018, “For me, the Nation-State is the only possible way to have democracy. Democracy simply cannot exist at a higher level, as in continents, let alone global democracy in the world.”
The British leader for Brexit, Nigel Farage (pictured at right), agrees. He discussed the issue with Tucker Carlson in 2017: Nigel Farage Cheers Rebirth of Nation State. Here’s a relevant excerpt:
FARAGE: Well you say “nationalism,” I actually call it “nation-ism” — we believe in the nation state. That is the unit we identify with; that is what we feel part of; that is what we cheer for in the Olympics; and if necessary that is what we are prepared to fight for. It embodies our values, our families, our communities, our heritage, our identity, maybe even our tribe. And I think what happened in 2016 with Brexit and with Trump, and I believe is going to roll out through 2017, is a return to normality.
Back to the present, an upbeat Farage has been doing media interviews, including one with Lou Dobbs who observed that the United Kingdom is “finally a sovereign nation once again.”
Farage is hopeful that getting Brexit pushed through will inspire more successful populist campaigns in the near future:
FARAGE: It’s a funny thing, in 2016 we had the Brexit referendum; we voted to leave — it shocked everybody. And then a few months later, guess what happened — Donald J. Trump got elected as president of the USA, and after that we saw shockwaves in Italy and elsewhere, and I think now the confirmation that Brexit has happened shows you that populism — and it may be mocked and derided by many — but populism is really popular, and I think the portents for Donald Trump’s re-election are really good.
In fact I think the whole western world is going through a transformative historical change and Brexit perhaps is the most public example of that, and I’m really excited by that because what the globalists want to do — big business, big politics, big bureaucracy — is take away our democratic rights, and this is the people’s fight back.
Here’s the full interview:
]]>Of course, every crime committed by an illegal foreigner should have been prevented by immigration enforcement, but wasn’t. A top job of government is to protect the citizens [...]]]>
Of course, every crime committed by an illegal foreigner should have been prevented by immigration enforcement, but wasn’t. A top job of government is to protect the citizens from foreign enemies, and America’s open borders make that responsibility an ongoing joke. Politicians used to brag that America was a “nation of laws” but you never hear that phrase any more.
Plus, crime is a job some Americans will do, so we needn’t import foreigners to do the robbing and murdering for us.
Back to McCarthy, he began his remarks on the House floor with a denunciation of the Democrats’ outright refusal to negotiate with the president on funding for the border wall — even though top Dems like Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Chuck Schumer voted for the Secure Fence Act of 2006.
Incidentally, McCarthy is not the first member of the legislature to remember persons killed by illegal aliens: on Thursday, Senator Joni Ernst paid tribute to Sarah Root, just 21, who was killed by a drunk-driving illegal three years ago. Both the Republican-run House and Senate have held hearings in the last four years focused on the human consequences of crime caused by open borders. And Donald Trump’s 2016 GOP Convention heard from several crime victim families.
Below, on January 15, Rep. Mo Brooks recalled several Alabamians lost in crimes committed by illegal aliens.
McCarthy spoke about the crime issue starting at around 3:20:
AUDIO version here:
]]>LEADER KEVIN McCARTHY: There has been 266,000 criminal aliens arrested in the last two years. This includes charges and convictions of 100,000 assaults, nearly 30,000 sex crimes and 4000 violent killings. Three hundred Americans die every week from heroin, and more than 90 percent of heroin comes from across the southern border. And roughly 10,000 children are being smuggled into the US every year to be sold for human trafficking.
And they are celebrating a status quo that leaves 700,000 DACA-designated individuals unsure about their future. It was the best display of politics that this country is sick and tired of seeing. Zero-sum politics and nothing ever changes. Well I’d like to spend some time and reflect on Americans and their families who may not have been celebrating the status quo preserved by this majority:
1. Jerry David
2. Sherri David
3. Deputy Josie Greathouse-Fox
4. Pierce Corcoran
5. Officer Ronil Singh
6. Clinton Howell
7. Robert Page
8. Justin Lee
9. Ellie Bryant
10 Grayson Hacking
11. Dominic Durden
12. Edwin Jackson
13. Grant Ronnebeck
14. Kenneth Scott-Mahr
15. Officer Kevin Will
16. Sergeant Brandon Mendoza
17. Sergeant Cory Wride
18. Josh Wilkerson
19. Spencer Golvach
20. Kate Steinle
21. Detective Michael Davis
22. Deputy Danny Oliver
23. Bob Barry
24. Parker Moore
25. Officer Andy Chavez
26. Lauren Bump
27. Louise Sollowin
28. Serenity Reedy
29. Vanessa Pham
30. Kathleen Byham
31. Agent Brian Terry
32. Officer Henry Canales
33. Donald Mayle
34. Breanna Schneller
35. Amanda Thomas
36. Jennifer Lee Hampton
37. Officer Andrew Widman
38. Officer Rodney Johnson
39. Buddy Mason
40. Adrienne Shelly
41. Mollie Tibbetts
42. Ronald da Silva
43. Sarah Root
44. Drew Rosenberg
45. Kara Willingham
46. Oscar Navarro
47. Margaret Kostelnik
48. Andres Duran
49. Rock Jones
50. Michael Grubbs
In addition, bad immigration ideas like open borders and unexamined diversity also took a beating as their results became clear in Europe. German Chancellor Angela Merkel invited Syrians to her country beginning in 2015, and more than a million mostly muslim refugees came from around the world to occupy Europe in that year alone. Increased terror attacks followed.
The rancorous presidential election ranked as the most consequential 2016 event, where the nation-state candidate won, not the status-quo globalist. Immigration enforcement was a vital part of candidate Trump’s appeal to voters, one he made from the day of his announcement.
The #2 item, the BREXIT divorce of Britain from the European Union, was largely based upon the voters’ rejection of the open borders required by the EU.
In the #4 event, the Orlando nightclub murders were committed by the Omar Mateen, the son of Afghan muslims in another second-generation immigrant problem.
The #5 listing of worldwide terror attacks notes murders in the Middle East, along with horrific jihads in the Brussels airport and in Nice, France. The European attacks have been made possible by open borders welcoming historic enemies from the Islamic world.
So that’s four items out of 10 that are news headliners with permissive immigration as a central or important part. But the scribblers still haven’t figured out that not all diversity is equal.
]]>AP Poll: US Election Voted Top News Story of 2016, ABC News, December 21, 2016
The turbulent U.S. election, featuring Donald Trump’s unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton in the presidential race, was the overwhelming pick for the top news story of 2016, according to The Associated Press’ annual poll of U.S. editors and news directors.
The No. 2 story also was a dramatic upset — Britons’ vote to leave the European Union. Most of the other stories among the Top 10 reflected a year marked by political upheaval, terror attacks and racial divisions.
Last year, developments related to the Islamic State group were voted as the top story — the far-flung attacks claimed by the group, and the intensifying global effort to crush it.
The first AP top-stories poll was conducted in 1936, when editors chose the abdication of Britain’s King Edward VIII.
Here are 2016’s top 10 stories, in order:
1. US ELECTION: This year’s top story traces back to June 2015, when Donald Trump descended an escalator in Trump Tower, his bastion in New York City, to announce he would run for president. Widely viewed as a long shot, with an unconventional campaign featuring raucous rallies and pugnacious tweets, he outlasted 16 Republican rivals. Among the Democrats, Hillary Clinton beat back an unexpectedly strong challenge from Bernie Sanders, and won the popular vote over Trump. But he won key Rust Belt states to get the most electoral votes, and will enter the White House with Republicans maintaining control of both houses of Congress.
2. BREXIT: Confounding pollsters and oddsmakers, Britons voted in June to leave the European Union, triggering financial and political upheaval. David Cameron resigned as prime minister soon after the vote, leaving the task of negotiating an exit to a reshaped Conservative government led by Theresa May. Under a tentative timetable, final details of the withdrawal might not be known until the spring of 2019.
3. BLACK MEN KILLED BY POLICE: One day apart, police in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, fatally shot Alton Sterling after pinning him to the ground, and a white police officer shot and killed Philando Castile during a traffic stop in a suburb of Minneapolis. Coming after several similar cases in recent years, the killings rekindled debate over policing practices and the Black Lives Matter movement.
4. PULSE NIGHTCLUB MASSACRE: The worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history unfolded on Latin Night at the Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando. The gunman, Omar Mateen, killed 49 people over the course of three hours before dying in a shootout with SWAT team members. During the standoff, he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
5. WORLDWIDE TERROR ATTACKS: Across the globe, extremist attacks flared at a relentless pace throughout the year. Among the many high-profile attacks were those that targeted airports in Brussels and Istanbul, a park teeming with families and children in Pakistan, and the seafront boulevard in Nice, France, where 86 people were killed when a truck plowed through a Bastille Day celebration. In Iraq alone, many hundreds of civilians were killed in repeated bombings.
6. ATTACKS ON POLICE: Ambushes and targeted attacks on police officers in the U.S. claimed at least 20 lives. The victims included five officers in Dallas working to keep the peace at a protest over the fatal police shootings of black men in Minnesota and Louisiana. Ten days after that attack, a man killed three officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. In Iowa, two policemen were fatally shot in separate ambush-style attacks while sitting in their patrol cars.
7. DEMOCRATIC PARTY EMAIL LEAKS: Hacked emails, disclosed by WikiLeaks, revealed at-times embarrassing details from Democratic Party operatives in run-up to Election Day, leading to the resignation of Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other DNC officials. The CIA later concluded that Russia was behind the DNC hacking in a bid to boost Donald Trump’s chances of beating Hillary Clinton.
8. SYRIA: Repeated cease-fire negotiations failed to halt relentless warfare among multiple factions. With Russia’s help, the government forces of President Bashar Assad finally seized rebel-held portions of the city of Aleppo, at a huge cost in terms of deaths and destruction.
9. SUPREME COURT: After Justice Antonin Scalia’s death in February, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, to fill the vacancy. However, majority Republicans in the Senate refused to consider the nomination, opting to leave the seat vacant so it could be filled by the winner of the presidential election. Donald Trump has promised to appoint a conservative in the mold of Scalia.
10. HILLARY CLINTON’S EMAILS: Amid the presidential campaign, the FBI conducted an investigation into Clinton’s use of a private computer server to handle emails she sent and received as secretary of state. FBI Director James Comey criticized Clinton for carelessness but said the bureau would not recommend criminal charges.
Stories that did not make the top 10 included Europe’s migrant crisis, the death of longtime Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and the spread of the Zika virus across Latin America and the Caribbean.
Robots are getting smarter, faster and cheaper, so naturally business is using more [...]]]>
Robots are getting smarter, faster and cheaper, so naturally business is using more of them to cut costs.
Below, robots build cars in Tesla’s Fremont California factory.
The good news is that some manufacturing is moving back to the US to save transportation costs. The bad news is the new factories will need far fewer human workers because robots will be doing a lot of the work. Therefore, if Trump is elected and can improve the inequitable trade deals, the resulting number of jobs returned to America may well be disappointing.
Pat Buchanan reported in 2012 that “the United States since 2000 has lost six million manufacturing jobs and 55,000 factories.” So it’s not a figment of Trump’s imagination that government trade deals have failed American workers.
As a result of the technological forces reducing jobs, Washington should wake up and reduce immigration accordingly, because. . .
Automation makes immigration obsolete.
The record immigration that we have now is entirely inappropriate to what America needs.
]]>Why robots, not trade, are behind so many factory job losses, By Paul Wiseman, Associated Press, November 2, 2016
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump blames Mexico and China for stealing millions of jobs from the United States.
He might want to bash the robots instead.
Despite the Republican presidential nominee’s charge that “we don’t make anything anymore, “manufacturing is still flourishing in America. Problem is, factories don’t need as many people as they used to because machines now do so much of the work.
America has lost more than 7 million factory jobs since manufacturing employment peaked in 1979. Yet American factory production, minus raw materials and some other costs, more than doubled over the same span to $1.91 trillion last year, according to the Commerce Department, which uses 2009 dollars to adjust for inflation. That’s a notch below the record set on the eve of the Great Recession in 2007. And it makes U.S. manufacturers No. 2 in the world behind China.
Trump and other critics are right that trade has claimed some American factory jobs, especially after China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and gained easier access to the U.S. market. And industries that have relied heavily on labor — like textile and furniture manufacturing — have lost jobs and production to low-wage foreign competition. U.S. textile production, for instance, is down 46 percent since 2000. And over that time, the textile industry has shed 366,000, or 62 percent, of its jobs in the United States.
But research shows that the automation of U.S. factories is a much bigger factor than foreign trade in the loss of factory jobs. A study at Ball State University’s Center for Business and Economic Research last year found that trade accounted for just 13 percent of America’s lost factory jobs. The vast majority of the lost jobs — 88 percent — were taken by robots and other homegrown factors that reduce factories’ need for human labor.
“We’re making more with fewer people,” says Howard Shatz, a senior economist at the Rand Corp. think tank.
General Motors, for instance, now employs barely a third of the 600,000 workers it had in the 1970s. Yet it churns out more cars and trucks than ever.
Or look at production of steel and other primary metals. Since 1997, the United States has lost 265,000 jobs in the production of primary metals — a 42 percent plunge — at a time when such production in the U.S. has surged 38 percent.
Allan Collard-Wexler of Duke University and Jan De Loecker of Princeton University found last year that America didn’t lose most steel jobs to foreign competition or faltering sales. Steel jobs vanished because of the rise of a new technology: Super-efficient mini-mills that make steel largely from scrap metal.
The robot revolution is just beginning.
The Boston Consulting Group predicts that investment in industrial robots will grow 10 percent a year in the 25-biggest export nations through 2025, up from 2 or 3 percent growth in recent years.
The economics of robotics are hard to argue with. When products are replaced or updated, robots can be reprogrammed far faster and more easily than people can be retrained.
And the costs are dropping: Owning and operating a robotic spot welder cost an average $182,000 in 2005 and $133,000 in 2014 and will likely run $103,000 by 2025, Boston Consulting says. Robots will shrink labor costs 22 percent in the United States, 25 percent in Japan and 33 percent in South Korea, the firm estimates.
CEO Ronald De Feo is overseeing a turnaround at Kennametal, a Pittsburgh-based industrial materials company. The effort includes investing $200 million to $300 million to modernize Kennametal’s factories while cutting 1,000 of 12,000 jobs. Automation is claiming some of those jobs and will claim more in the future, De Feo says.
“What we want to do is automate and let attrition” reduce the workforce, he says.
Visiting a Kennametal plant in Germany, De Feo found workers packing items by hand. He ordered $10 million in machinery to automate the process in Germany and North America.
That move, he says, will produce “better quality at lower cost” and “likely result in a combination of job cuts and reassignments.”
But the rise of the machines offers an upside to some American workers: The increased use of robots — combined with higher labor costs in China and other developing countries — has reduced the incentive for companies to chase low-wage labor around the world.
Multinational companies are also rethinking how they spread production across the globe in the 1990s and 2000s, when they tended to manufacture components in different countries and then assemble a product at a plant in China or other low-wage country. The 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, which disrupted shipments of auto parts, and the bankruptcy of the South Korean shipping line Hanjin Shipping, which stranded cargo in ports, exposed the risk of relying on far-flung supply lines.
“If your supply chain gets interrupted and your raw materials are coming from offshore, all of a sudden shelves are empty and you can’t sell product,” says Thomas Caudle, president of the North Carolina-based textile company Unifi.
So companies have been returning to the United States, capitalizing on the savings provided by robots, cheap energy and the chance to be closer to customers.
“They don’t have all their eggs in that Asian basket anymore,” Caudle says.
Over the past six years, Unifi has added about 200 jobs, bringing the total to over 1,100, at its automated factory in Yadkinville, North Carolina, where recycled plastic bottles are converted into Repreve yarn. Unmanned carts crisscross the factory floor, retrieving packages of yarn with mechanical arms — work once done by people.
In a survey by the consulting firm Deloitte, global manufacturing executives predicted that that the United States — now No. 2 — will overtake China as the most competitive country in manufacturing by 2020. (Competitiveness is measured by such factors as costs, productivity and the protection of intellectual property.)
The Reshoring Initiative, a nonprofit that lobbies manufacturers to return jobs to the United States, says America was losing an average of 220,000 net jobs a year to other countries a decade ago. Now, the number being moved abroad is roughly offset by the number that are coming back or being created by foreign investment.
Harold Sirkin, senior partner at Boston Consulting, says the global scramble by companies for cheap labor is ending.
“When I hear that (foreigners) are taking all our jobs — the answer is, they’re not,” he says.
In his convention acceptance speech, Trump remarked, “Of all my travels in this country, nothing has affected me more deeply than the time I have spent with the mothers and fathers who have lost their children to violence spilling across our border.”
On Wednesday, two moms, Agnes Gibboney and Laura Wilkerson, whose sons were murdered by illegal aliens appeared on Fox News to remind citizens of the importance of law and borders.
Ronald Da Silva (left, son of Agnes Gibboney) and Joshua Wilkerson (right) were both murdered by illegal aliens.
Laura Wilkerson’s case is particularly disturbing because when she says her son Joshua was tortured, that’s a shorthand way of saying how brutally he was beaten to death by a fellow high school student, an illegal alien from Belize. The young killer, Hermilo Moralez, would be a perfect Obama DREAMer if he hadn’t savagely murdered his classmate and been locked up since 2010.
]]>BRIAN KILMEADE: A critical topic during tonight’s final debate will be illegal immigration, an issue that’s important to all Americans, has not come up yet by the way in a debate, but for our next guests it’s literally life-and-death. I’m talking about Laura Wilkerson and Agnes Gibboney; both had sons killed by illegal immigrants, and have taken action in their honor. They now advocate for the families of other victims through this organization, it’s called the Remembrance Project, and they join us right now.
Laura, Agnes, thanks so much. I want to find out about your sons, but I also want to find out why you see Donald Trump is a great hope for you. Agnes?
AGNES GIBBONEY: Because he was the only one that pointed out the big issues in this country the illegal immigration which is a tremendous problem in this country. A lot of our children or family members are being slaughtered by the illegal aliens who should never be in this country.
KILMEADE: And Laura, that’s something he brought up the day he came down the escalator.
LAURA WILKERSON: Yes he did, and we’re so grateful; we’ve been pushing here trying to get the word out about really has happened for five years or so, and he got it out in about two minutes, and we are forever grateful for him to give us that voice.
KILMEADE: And then all of a sudden we find out there through through these Wikileaks that said behind closed doors that Hillary Clinton, she’d love a society with open trade and open borders. Your reaction, Agnes.
GIBBONEY: I am outraged because of open borders, my son is six feet under, because the guy that murdered my son had been previously deported, and my family legally immigrated to the United States. It took us 13 years — do it the right way.
KILMEADE: From where?
GIBBONEY: I was born in Hungary. From Hungary, we went to Brazil. So from Brazil we immigrated here, but it took us 13 years.
KILMEADE: And how was your son killed?
GIBBONEY: This gang member wanted to shoot his friend in the back. he was hiding in the backyard and my son went to visit his children and his girlfriend hadn’t gotten home so he was talking with his friend on the driveway and he came from behind and shot him and he got a bullet in his arm.
KILMEADE: And Laura tell me about what happened with Josh.
WILKERSON: Josh was at school one day and he was asked for a ride home by a classmate. We didn’t know at that time he was an illegal brought here by his parents when he was 10 years old from Belize. He wanted Josh’s truck to scrap for money, and he beat him, he strangled him, he basically tortured him, and then he beat him over the head with a closet rod, then he tied him up after death with 16 ropes or so around his neck, to his back, to his back belt loop. He then rinsed him off, rinsed the crime scene off. He carried Josh to our truck, bought two dollars worth of gas, put Joshua in the field and set him on fire.
KILMEADE: How do you get over that?
WILKERSON: You don’t; you learn to live with it every day. It’s by the grace of God that we can get up and face another day. Our strongest point is we don’t want this happen to another mother. It’s just got to quit.
KILMEADE: And now your organization’s in 28 states with sadly, with families who have gone through the same exact thing. What makes you think that Donald Trump will be someone not like many other politicians who say one thing and unable to execute once they’re in?
WILKERSON: I believe him. I believe in what he tells us and he has assured us that he will help implement a program for our families once he gets in. There are 325 places to help illegals navigate the system; there are zero for American families. We’ve got to put America first.
KILMEADE: All right. Thanks so much. Again, you’re in 28 states combining together, and you have a candidate supporting the movement.
The Washington Post used the language of criminality: Why was Trump lurking behind Clinton? How body language dominated the debate. October [...]]]>
The Washington Post used the language of criminality: Why was Trump lurking behind Clinton? How body language dominated the debate. October 10, 2016
A man who has been caught on tape gloating about groping women — and panting like a dog after a married woman — should not be seen stalking a woman in front of millions of television viewers. Not if he wants to improve his image, anyway.
But Donald Trump, looming behind Hillary Clinton like a mob boss, only reinforced his perception as a schoolyard bully in the second presidential debate Sunday night…
CNN’s body language expert Janine Driver called Trump’s movements a “pre-assault indicator.”
Candidate Trump did not sit and stay during the debate.
Do Democrats not understand how patronizing and ultimately harmful it is to their candidate to portray her as a tiny weakling who must be protected from a dominant man?
Hillary Clinton is running to be Commander in Chief, not school board member. If elected, she will be standing toe to toe with some very dangerous foreign leaders who want to take advantage of America’s growing weakness, as engineered by Obama.
Do liberals believe that Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un and other overseas autocrats are gentlemen with perfect manners?
No, they will try to dominate Hillary in every way possible. Just a month ago, the Red Chinese snubbed President Obama by not providing a staircase for him to exit Air Force One when he arrived in Hangzhou for a G20 meeting. He was forced to leave the airplane via a basic ramp in the rear as a result of the calculated insult.
You can be sure that America’s nuclear-armed enemies will not be any nicer to a female president. A commander in chief who understands how dominance figures into leadership may be a better choice.
Movement analyst Tonya Reiman appeared on Fox Business Monday to discuss her observations. She was asked by host Maria Bartiromo, “What would be your most important takeaway in terms of body language?”
“Don’t lurk over the other candidate,” she responded. “That was unbelievable — the hovering. For a man that size, it’s almost menacing to be hanging over her that way. And the other thing about that is, the reason you have a town hall is so that one person sits while the other stands and gets all the attention. So him walking around throughout the entire time took complete posture away from her, so nobody’s really listening to her because they’re watching him lurk.”
And if any women should be worried about “menacing” men in connection with this election, it should be the American women who will be endangered by the more than one million Syrians and other Muslims that Clinton has promised to resettle into this country during her first term.
]]>JEFF SESSIONS: “You’re going to hear the best laid out law enforcement plan to fix this country’s immigration system that’s been stated in this [...]]]>
JEFF SESSIONS: “You’re going to hear the best laid out law enforcement plan to fix this country’s immigration system that’s been stated in this country, maybe forever! It is going to be so good you’re gonna be proud and pleased about that. . . It’s going to be a special night tonight.”
That’s high praise from America’s top sovereignty defender in Washington.
Curiously, Senator Sessions was actually booed by the Arizona audience when he enthused about John McCain’s victory against a primary opponent. Pro-sovereignty citizens naturally despise McCain for his support for amnesty. I chalk up Sessions’ unnecessary congratulations to McCain as a combination of Sessions’ deep politeness and the Senate group loyalty.
And as promised, Trump’s policy speech was filled with sensible strategies to return immigration to lawfulness. Read a transcript here.
Below, Trump and Sessions conferred in the Capitol last year. Senator Sessions was an early immigration policy advisor to Trump.
Donald Trump was not the first person to notice that the globalized economy of [...]]]>
Donald Trump was not the first person to notice that the globalized economy of elite trade deals and open borders has not fulfilled its promise of more prosperity for all, but he has been one of the loudest. So his candidacy has reminded citizens that their economic struggles to survive are at least partially the result of government policies that favor the elites.
One example: America is no longer a majority middle-class nation, according to a 2015 Pew Research study:
The Rasmussen pollsters have recently produced some interesting surveys to reflect the Americans growing understanding that the government is actually acting agains their economic interests. One poll found that more than two-thirds of voters think government colludes with business against the people, which is a shocking opinion really. It reflects the belief that we now live in an oligarchy, not under a representative government. No wonder Trump’s pledge to kick out the corruption has found an audience.
Most Think Government, Big Business Work Together Against America, Rasmussen Reports, July 06, 2016
Most voters feel government and big business are a deadly combination.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 68% of Likely U.S. Voters think government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors. Seventeen percent (17%) do not, but just as many (15%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Another poll found that Americans “strongly agree” with returning manufacturing to the this nation and were willing to pay more for US-produced consumer goods, although no numbers were included.
Finally, below is a survey about trade. Voters largely believe globalist trade deals have been bad for the country, but the pols don’t care what the citizens think.
The elites don’t change course because they have accrued so much political power that they can do what they please to enrich themselves. If Hillary Clinton is elected president, the family will probably become billionaires by the time she leaves office. Remember that she claimed they were “dead broke” when Bill left the presidency, but now the couple is worth $111 million.
]]>Voters Aren’t Happy with NAFTA, Other Free Trade Deals, Rasmussen Reports, July 5, 2016
Donald Trump has vowed to renegotiate NAFTA and other international free trade deals if elected president, saying they are costing U.S. jobs and killing the economy. Supporters say the trade deals lower prices for American consumers. Voters are not big fans of free trade deals like NAFTA but also strongly believe that the politicians negotiating those deals don’t care what they think anyway.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 50% of Likely U.S. Voters think the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Canada and Mexico needs to be renegotiated. Just 27% disagree, but nearly as many (23%) are not sure. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Interestingly, support for renegotiation was slightly higher at 56% in June 2008 when Republican presidential candidate John McCain was defending NAFTA, while his Democratic opponent Barack Obama was calling for changes in it. Now, however, Obama and presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton are defending the 1994 pact which lowers nearly all trade barriers between the three countries from attacks by the likely 2016 GOP nominee.
Only 29% of voters now believe most U.S. free trade agreements with other countries have been good for America. Forty-nine percent (49%) say they have been bad for the country instead. Just six percent (6%) say these agreements have had no impact. Sixteen percent (16%) are undecided. This is a more critical assessment of the deals than voters had eight years ago.
Republicans and voters not affiliated with either major party are more critical of NAFTA and free trade deals in general than Democrats are.
But only seven percent (7%) of all voters think politicians listen most to voters when it comes to trade issues. Forty-nine percent (49%) say politicians listen most to whoever makes the biggest contribution to them, while 28% say business leaders come first. Eight percent (8%) believe politicians listen most to other world leaders on trade issues. These findings are little changed from the 2008 presidential campaign season.
(Want a free daily e-mail update? If it’s in the news, it’s in our polls). Rasmussen Reports updates are also available on Twitter or Facebook.
The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on June 30 and July 3, 2016 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
A little over a year ago, just 43% of Americans felt free trade was good for the country. Forty percent (40%) said it takes away American jobs, but 50% felt it was good for consumers.
Sixty-two percent (62%) of Republicans and unaffiliated voters by a 52% to 24% margin think NAFTA needs to be renegotiated. Only 38% of Democrats agree.
The findings are nearly identical when it comes to free trade agreements in general. Most GOP and unaffiliated voters think they are bad for America. Democrats are far less likely to agree and, in fact, are a bit more likely to believe that they are good for the country.
But voters in all three parties are in general agreement that politicians listen more to big contributors and business leaders than to voters when it comes to trade issues.
Men and those 40 and over are more critical of NAFTA and free trade agreements in general than women and younger voters are.
But voters under 40 were Bernie Sanders’ most enthusiastic supporters, and in his unsuccessful bid against Clinton for the Democratic nomination, Sanders also was critical of America’s free trade deals. Perhaps this helps explain why this age group is the most likely to be undecided on these questions.
Among voters who think NAFTA needs to be renegotiated, 76% believe most U.S. free trade agreements with other countries have been bad for America. Sixty-two percent (62%) of those who think NAFTA is fine as is feel that most free trade deals have been good for this country.
The U.S. economy historically has had an average annual growth rate of 3.3% but has fallen short of that number in every year of Obama’s presidency. Still, his fellow Democrats give the president positive marks for his economic performance and think Clinton would do more of the same. Trump, on the other hand, is expected to make the economy better by all voters – except Democrats.
Most voters still believe the U.S. economy is unfair to the middle class. But voters say that economic growth is more important than economic fairness, and they give a thumbs up to policies that expand the economy over policies that promote fairness.
Trump has edged ahead of Clinton in our latest weekly White House Watch survey.
The [...]]]>
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) erased the border with Mexico to a degree.
Globalization encompasses immigration, outsourcing and so-called free trade, all of which have been job-killers for working people. But the globalist economy works very well for powerful elites in business and politics, so the system has continued long past the time when it was shown to be a failed faith.
(See also the annotated version of the speech which includes footnotes for the facts cited.)
]]>Full transcript: Donald Trump’s jobs plan speech, Politico, June 28, 2016
Remarks as prepared for delivery:
Declaring America’s Economic Independence
It is great to be here. I’d like to thank Alumisource and all the amazing workers here for hosting us.
Today, I am going to talk about how to Make America Wealthy Again.
We are thirty miles from Steel City. Pittsburgh played a central role in building our nation.
The legacy of Pennsylvania steelworkers lives in the bridges, railways and skyscrapers that make up our great American landscape.
But our workers’ loyalty was repaid with betrayal.
Our politicians have aggressively pursued a policy of globalization – moving our jobs, our wealth and our factories to Mexico and overseas.
Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache.
When subsidized foreign steel is dumped into our markets, threatening our factories, the politicians do nothing.
For years, they watched on the sidelines as our jobs vanished and our communities were plunged into depression-level unemployment.
Many of these areas have still never recovered.
Our politicians took away from the people their means of making a living and supporting their families.
Skilled craftsmen and tradespeople and factory workers have seen the jobs they loved shipped thousands of miles away.
Many Pennsylvania towns once thriving and humming are now in a state despair.
This wave of globalization has wiped out our middle class.
It doesn’t have to be this way. We can turn it all around – and we can turn it around fast.
But if we’re going to deliver real change, we’re going to have to reject the campaign of fear and intimidation being pushed by powerful corporations, media elites, and political dynasties.
The people who rigged the system for their benefit will do anything – and say anything – to keep things exactly as they are.
The people who rigged the system are supporting Hillary Clinton because they know as long as she is in charge nothing will ever change.
The inner cities will remain poor.
The factories will remain closed.
The borders will remain open.
The special interests will remain firmly in control.
Hillary Clinton and her friends in global finance want to scare America into thinking small – and they want to scare the American people out of voting for a better future.
My campaign has the opposite message.
I want you to imagine how much better your life can be if we start believing in America again.
I want you to imagine how much better our future can be if we declare independence from the elites who’ve led us to one financial and foreign policy disaster after another.
Our friends in Britain recently voted to take back control of their economy, politics and borders.
I was on the right side of that issue – with the people – while Hillary, as always, stood with the elites, and both she and president Obama predicted that one wrong.
Now it’s time for the American people to take back their future.
That’s the choice we face. We can either give in to Hillary Clinton’s campaign of fear, or we can choose to Believe In America.
We lost our way when we stopped believing in our country.
America became the world’s dominant economy by becoming the world’s dominant producer.
The wealth this created was shared broadly, creating the biggest middle class the world had ever known.
But then America changed its policy from promoting development in America, to promoting development in other nations.
We allowed foreign countries to subsidize their goods, devalue their currencies, violate their agreements, and cheat in every way imaginable.
Trillions of our dollars and millions of our jobs flowed overseas as a result.
I have visited cities and towns across this country where a third or even half of manufacturing jobs have been wiped out in the last 20 years.
Today, we import nearly $800 billion more in goods than we export.
This is not some natural disaster. It is politician-made disaster.
It is the consequence of a leadership class that worships globalism over Americanism.
This is a direct affront to our Founding Fathers, who wanted America to be strong, independent and free.
Our Founding Fathers Understood Trade
George Washington said that “the promotion of domestic manufactur[ing] will be among the first consequences to flow from an energetic government.”
Alexander Hamilton spoke frequently of the “expediency of encouraging manufactur[ing] in the United States.” The first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, warned that: “The abandonment of the protective policy by the American government… must produce want and ruin among our people.”
Our original Constitution did not even have an income tax. Instead, it had tariffs – emphasizing taxation of foreign, not domestic, production.
Yet today, 240 years after the Revolution, we have turned things completely upside-down.
We tax and regulate and restrict our companies to death, then we allow foreign countries that cheat to export their goods to us tax-free.
As a result, we have become more dependent on foreign countries than ever before.
Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s time to declare our economic independence once again.
That means reversing two of the worst legacies of the Clinton years.
America has lost nearly one-third of its manufacturing jobs since 1997 – even as the country has increased its population by 50 million people.
At the center of this catastrophe are two trade deals pushed by Bill and Hillary Clinton.
First, the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Second, China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.
NAFTA was the worst trade deal in history, and China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization has enabled the greatest jobs theft in history.
It was Bill Clinton who signed NAFTA in 1993, and Hillary Clinton who supported it.
It was also Bill Clinton who lobbied for China’s disastrous entry into the World Trade Organization, and Hillary Clinton who backed that terrible agreement.
Then, as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton stood by idly while China cheated on its currency, added another trillion dollars to our trade deficits, and stole hundreds of billions of dollars in our intellectual property.
The city of Pittsburgh, and the State of Pennsylvania, have lost one-third of their manufacturing jobs since the Clintons put China into the WTO.
Fifty thousand factories across America have shut their doors in that time.
Almost half of our entire manufacturing trade deficit in goods with the world is the result of trade with China.
It was also Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, who shoved us into a job-killing deal with South Korea in 2012.
As reported by the Economic Policy Institute in May, this deal doubled our trade deficit with South Korea and destroyed nearly 100,000 American jobs.
As Bernie Sanders said, Hillary Clinton “Voted for virtually every trade agreement that has cost the workers of this country millions of jobs.”
Trade reform, and the negotiation of great trade deals, is the quickest way to bring our jobs back.
To understand why trade reform creates jobs, we need to understand how all nations grow and prosper.
Massive trade deficits subtract directly from our Gross Domestic Product.
From 1947 to 2001 – a span of over five decades – our inflation-adjusted gross domestic product grew at a rate of 3.5%.
However, since 2002 – the year after we fully opened our markets to Chinese imports – that GDP growth rate has been cut almost in half.
What does this mean for Americans? For every one percent of GDP growth we fail to generate in any given year, we also fail to create over one million jobs.
America’s “job creation deficit” due to slower growth since 2002 is well over 20 million jobs – and that’s just about the number of jobs our country needs right now to put America back to work at decent wages.
The Transpacific-Partnership is the greatest danger yet.
The TPP would be the death blow for American manufacturing.
It would give up all of our economic leverage to an international commission that would put the interests of foreign countries above our own.
It would further open our markets to aggressive currency cheaters. It would make it easier for our trading competitors to ship cheap subsidized goods into U.S. markets – while allowing foreign countries to continue putting barriers in front of our exports.
The TPP would lower tariffs on foreign cars, while leaving in place the foreign practices that keep American cars from being sold overseas. The TPP even created a backdoor for China to supply car parts for automobiles made in Mexico.
The agreement would also force American workers to compete directly against workers from Vietnam, one of the lowest wage countries on Earth.
Not only will the TPP undermine our economy, but it will undermine our independence.
The TPP creates a new international commission that makes decisions the American people can’t veto.
These commissions are great Hillary Clinton’s Wall Street funders who can spend vast amounts of money to influence the outcomes.
It should be no surprise then that Hillary Clinton, according to Bloomberg, took a “leading part in drafting the Trans-Pacific Partnership”.
She praised or pushed the TPP on 45 separate occasions, and even called it the “gold standard”.
Hillary Clinton was totally for the TPP just a short while ago, but when she saw my stance, which is totally against, she was shamed into saying she would be against it too – but have no doubt, she will immediately approve it if it is put before her, guaranteed.
She will do this just as she has betrayed American workers for Wall Street throughout her career.
Here’s how it would go: she would make a small token change, declare the pact fixed, and ram it through.
That’s why Hillary is now only saying she has problems with the TPP “in its current form,” – ensuring that she can rush to embrace it again at her earliest opportunity.
If the media doesn’t believe me, I have a challenge for you. Ask Hillary Clinton if she is willing to withdraw from the TPP her first day in office and unconditionally rule out its passage in any form.
There is no way to “fix” the TPP. We need bilateral trade deals. We do not need to enter into another massive international agreement that ties us up and binds us down.
A Trump Administration will change our failed trade policy – quickly
Here are 7 steps I would pursue right away to bring back our jobs.
One: I am going to withdraw the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which has not yet been ratified.
Two: I’m going to appoint the toughest and smartest trade negotiators to fight on behalf of American workers.
Three: I’m going to direct the Secretary of Commerce to identify every violation of trade agreements a foreign country is currently using to harm our workers. I will then direct all appropriate agencies to use every tool under American and international law to end these abuses.
Four: I’m going tell our NAFTA partners that I intend to immediately renegotiate the terms of that agreement to get a better deal for our workers. And I don’t mean just a little bit better, I mean a lot better. If they do not agree to a renegotiation, then I will submit notice under Article 2205 of the NAFTA agreement that America intends to withdraw from the deal.
Five: I am going to instruct my Treasury Secretary to label China a currency manipulator. Any country that devalues their currency in order to take advantage of the United States will be met with sharply
Six: I am going to instruct the U.S. Trade Representative to bring trade cases against China, both in this country and at the WTO. China’s unfair subsidy behavior is prohibited by the terms of its entrance to the WTO, and I intend to enforce those rules.
Seven: If China does not stop its illegal activities, including its theft of American trade secrets, I will use every lawful presidential power to remedy trade disputes, including the application of tariffs consistent with Section 201 and 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 and Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962.
President Reagan deployed similar trade measures when motorcycle and semiconductor imports threatened U.S. industry. His tariff on Japanese motorcycles was 45% and his tariff to shield America’s semiconductor industry was 100%.
Hillary Clinton, and her campaign of fear, will try to spread the lie that these actions will start a trade war. She has it completely backwards.
Hillary Clinton unleashed a trade war against the American worker when she supported one terrible trade deal after another – from NAFTA to China to South Korea.
A Trump Administration will end that war by getting a fair deal for the American people.
The era of economic surrender will finally be over.
A new era of prosperity will finally begin.
America will be independent once more.
Under a Trump Presidency, the American worker will finally have a President who will protect them and fight for them.
We will stand up to trade cheating anywhere and everywhere it threatens an American job.
We will make America the best place in the world to start a business, hire workers, and open a factory.
This includes massive tax reform to lift the crushing burdens on American workers and businesses.
We will also get rid of wasteful rules and regulations which are destroying our job creation capacity.
Many people think that these regulations are an even greater impediment than the fact that we are one of the highest taxed nations in the world.
We are also going to fully capture America’s tremendous energy capacity. This will create vast profits for our workers and begin reducing our deficit. Hillary Clinton wants to shut down energy production and shut down the mines.
A Trump Administration will also ensure that we start using American steel for American infrastructure.
Just like the American steel from Pennsylvania that built the Empire State building.It will be American steel that will fortify American’s crumbling bridges.
It will be American steel that sends our skyscrapers soaring into the sky.
It will be American steel that rebuilds our inner cities.
It will be American hands that remake this country, and it will be American energy – mined from American resources – that powers this country.
It will be American workers who are hired to do the job.
We are going to put American-produced steel back into the backbone of our country. This alone will create massive numbers of jobs.
On trade, on immigration, on foreign policy, we are going to put America First again.
We are going to make America wealthy again.
We are going to reject Hillary Clinton’s politics of fear, futility, and incompetence.
We are going to embrace the possibilities of change.
It is time to believe in the future.
It is time to believe in each other.
It is time to Believe In America.
This Is How We Are Going To Make America Great Again – For All Americans.
We Are Going To Make America Great Again For Everyone – Greater Than Ever Before.
Thank you.
TRUMP: We have a great politician here. We have a man here who really helped me, and he’s the one person I sought his counsel because he’s been spot on, he’s so highly respected. Has anybody ever heard of Senator Jeff Sessions?
(Crowd roars.)
Jeff, come up, where’s Jeff? Get over here, Jeff. Look at him, he’s like 20 years old. Unbelievable guy. Say hello.
SESSIONS: Donald, welcome to my hometown, Mobile, Alabama. The American people, these people, want somebody in the Presidency who stands up for them, defends their interest, and the laws and traditions of this country. We welcome you here. Thank you for the work that you’ve put into the immigration issue. I’m really impressed with your plan. I know it will make a difference. And this crowd shows a lot of people agree with that. Congratulations. Welcome, and God bless.
TRUMP: He was so great, such a help.
In fact, Senator Sessions did help Trump create his position paper on immigration. It is a reassuring sign of Trump’s seriousness about the subject that he consulted such an outstanding expert and leader. Trump’s website includes the paper: Trump Immigration Reform. It’s good to see America’s Senator get some much deserved recognition.
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