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+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Corrections from a very dear friend, tennis buddy and fellow memo reader who is closer to "Ele" than we are:
"Her name is Ele (not Elle) and her husband is Sean. and they now have 8 local restaurants."
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Everything Nadler tries continues to be so "peachy." Like the ad, "where's the beef?"(See 1 below.)Ever since becoming president Trump's property values have sunk by an estimate of $1 billion. Partly because golf is in decline, partly because the wealthy Trump haters no longer go to anything with Trump's name on it. Amazing how Trump never was considered a racist until he became president and won an election Democrats still cannot digest.
And:
Obama still cannot tell it straight. (See 1a below.)
America's decline began long before Clinton was president. He simply accelerated what was already taking place. Education and American character, which made us a great power, are in decline Homeless litter our cities. (I sent an op ed about Austin to a dear friend who lives there and asked was the thrust of the article factually correct.)
We are like a ship hit by a storm, broke from it's moorings and is aimlessly afloat.
The entire west seems un-tethered. America has been central and no longer is trusted and revered.
As I recently wrote: "when all else fails lower your standards."
PC'ism was sold as a way to rectify social wrongs by calling attention to attitudes that were found out of touch and "old fashioned." To some degree it worked. For instance, curbs have been made easier to navigate for those who are handicapped and I am sure there are a few other PC improvements. However, well intended trends, like benign waves, often become tsunamic.
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New York Times finally comes clean about how dirty it's journalism has become. (See 2 below.)
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Radical Democrat candidates are brazenly open about what they are willing to do to buy votes. (See 3 below.)
Jeff Crouere recently has become a friend and fellow memo reader. In this op ed he reflects on how America is up for sale.
And:
This from a dear friend and fellow memo reader: "Dick - I made the following comment on the WSJ comments section a couple of days ago in response to the debates:
The Democratic Party circa 2020 has raised the old fashioned corruption of handing out "walking around money" to a systemic strategy. If you don't believe that, you might recall the clip that went viral back in 2008 that showed an ecstatic woman claiming post election Obama was going pay her rent. Of course that didn't happen. But now the major candidates are offering to pay your student loan off, give you free healthcare and education, and have the rich people pay for them to change the weather. And now half the country believes them.
I understand and acknowledge that these are people running for office, and the sheer size of the field makes it a contested environment for the attention span of their constituents which could be charitably described as limited. So making claims that they themselves probably (probably?) do not believe is to be expected. Problem is, we live in the age of social media and frankly all the Republican Party needs to do is put a microphone in front of the Democratic candidates and then replay, unedited and over and over, the recorded utterances that rain like manna from media heaven. The RNC doesn't need an ad agency. The Democrats supply content willingly and most capably.
The case in point is Warren's promise to sign an executive order banning fracking and offshore drilling, although she may have left herself an escape clause by sort of stipulating which and where the targets of her edict were. I'm not sure the enumerated powers of the executive branch allow her that totalitarian tendency, but hey! that doesn't matter. But now, given the Iranian attack on the Saudi oil fields, I can only speculate how she can walk back that confidently expressed intent.
Same thing with "Beto"O'Rourke's statement about weapons confiscation. What I heard was "Elect me and I will bypass the Constitution I recently swore to uphold when I see fit."
And the people cheer.
G-d help us.
R------"
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More Good news. (See edited 5 below.)
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1) The Impeachment Motions
Jerry Nadler deserves an Oscar for pretending his probe is serious.
The Editorial Board
Democratic presidential candidates issued a gusher of words over three hours Thursday night, but one they didn’t utter was “impeachment.” That was no accident. The polls show the cause is a political loser, and maybe someone should tell Jerrold Nadler.
The House Judiciary Chairman is still trying to persuade voters that he has Donald Trump in his impeachment sights. Russian collusion wasn’t real, obstruction of justice didn’t fly, and payments to Stormy Daniels sound too much like lying about sex (and Bill Clinton ). So now Mr. Nadler is back to the old stand of arguing that Mr. Trump is enriching himself while in office.
This isn’t likely to go anywhere either, but it’s worth parsing the latest accusations to explain why. Democrats are investigating whether the Defense Department has been propping up struggling Glasgow Prestwick airport in Scotland to help the nearby Trump Turnberry golf resort. In a letter to then Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings noted the Pentagon has bought $11 million of fuel from Prestwick since October 2017. He also demanded details about a few Air Force crew members who stayed at Turnberry on a stopover this year.
The Prestwick airport, which is owned by the Scottish government, is struggling and its presence helps the Trump resort. But the Pentagon signed its contract with Prestwick in October 2016—before Mr. Trump was elected. Maybe Mr. Nadler should call Barack Obama as a witness.
As for the Turnberry stopover, the Air Force says seven active-duty and National Guard members stayed at the Trump resort on the way to Kuwait but stayed at a Marriott on the way back. The Air Force says the crew made its reservation through a defense travel system and used the “closest available” and “least expensive” accommodations to the airfield; the Trump resort was cheaper than the Marriott; and both properties were under the per diem travel rate of $166 a night. The Air Force says crews have stayed in the area 659 times over the past four years, and only 6% went to Turnberry.
The bigger problem with the Trump-enrichment narrative is that there doesn’t seem to be much enriching, as the press has been reporting for two years. Mr. Trump’s many controversies have caused companies from Macy’s to Wayfair to cease selling Trump brands. NBC dropped the Miss USA pageant.
Newsweek reported at the end of 2017 that an analysis by currency service FairFX found that room rates across the Trump empire had plummeted in 2017 by “as much as 63% since he moved into the White House,” as bookings tanked. Among those hardest hit was the Turnberry property; the price of a room fell 57% from January 2017 to January 2018. These decreases, said FairFX CEO Ian Stafford-Taylor, “suggest that it doesn’t necessarily pay to be president.”
Financial filings show that the Trump organization’s two Scottish golf courses continue to lose millions of dollars. Mr. Trump’s 2018 federal financial disclosure showed a modest revenue increase (less than $500,000) at his Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., which has become a new favorite venue for conservative events.
Then again, revenue fell $3 million at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, perhaps due to organizations boycotting Trump properties. Overall, the President reported an $18 million drop in minimum revenue (to $434 million) compared to 2017. Mr. Trump isn’t a pauper, but the figures suggest he’s far from benefitting from the Presidency.
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Mr. Trump has fed Democratic suspicion by refusing to release his tax returns. And he is his own worst enemy when he brags about his properties or proposes hosting next year’s G-7 summit at his Doral resort. The latter is a bad idea for appearance’s sake alone, but claiming it violates the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution is implausible. If Mr. Nadler has evidence of genuine corruption or self-dealing, he ought to produce it.
Until he does, the corruption claims look like more political spin to con liberal voters into believing that House Democrats are serious about impeachment. Mr. Nadler went through an elaborate faux drama this week to hold a vote on the parameters of an impeachment probe, but if he were serious he’d demand a vote endorsing his efforts on the House floor as the GOP did in 1998 with Mr. Clinton.
That hasn’t happened because Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to protect swing-district Democrats from a risky vote. Mr. Nadler, for all his bravado, is merely going through the impeachment motions.
1a) Obama’s Incredible Movie Makeover
ByMike Turner
The former president has produced a film about a factory closing—without mentioning his own role in the drama.
Higher Ground, the production company formed last year by Barack and Michelle Obama in conjunction with Netflix, recently released its first film. “American Factory” is a documentary about a General Motors plant in Moraine, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton. The plant closed in 2008 and was reopened by a Chinese auto glass manufacturer in 2015. The film follows the lives of both the laid-off American workers and the Chinese workers brought in to run the new plant.
It’s a fascinating and at times moving film. What’s interesting about it, though, is that it never once alludes to the part Mr. Obama played in diminishing the ability of Moraine’s laid off workers to transfer to other GM plants. The president’s role wasn’t indirect and isn’t a matter of dispute: His administration’s bailout deal for GM included a backroom exclusive agreement with the United Auto Workers.
How does a nearly two-hour film telling the story of these workers fail even to mention the direct role the co-owner of the film’s production company played in creating their hardships? Did the filmmakers think no one would remember?
A quick refresher. The Obama administration’s auto bailout highly favored the UAW and its members. The GM plant in Moraine was unionized by the IUE-CWA. So—despite being one of the top GM facilities for quality, efficiency and production in the country—it was shuttered, and its employees were put at the back of the line when requesting transfers to other GM plants. Any non-UAW employees looking to transfer were forced to start as new hires, wiping clean any wages, tenure, and benefits built up during careers at other GM plants.
“American Factory” documents the UAW’s efforts to unionize the reopened auto glass factory without any mention of the same union’s direct role in the GM plant’s closure. The Dayton community was left out in the cold—thousands of jobs lost, families devastated, longtime GM workers out on the street looking for work.
In the GM bankruptcy proceeding, the Obama administration was prepared to allow the Moraine facility to be demolished and sold for scraps. But in August 2010, Sen. Sherrod Brown and I—along with other lawmakers of both parties—called on the Obama administration to step in and save the plant. The administration’s initial response was disbelief. Did we really think a company would ever come back and use it for manufacturing again? I did. Many in the community did. Which is why there’s a thriving factory there now.
In the Obama economy, investment was tough to come by. With a punitive and outdated tax code, international investment was nearly impossible to attract. State and local officials—especially Moraine Mayor Elaine Allison —worked relentlessly and were able to convince a Chinese manufacturer to invest in and rebuild this once-great factory. Today that company employs several thousand people in what was its start-up operation in America.
Of course, none of this took away the suffering endured by the community. My father worked at GM for 44 years, including at the Moraine GM factory campus, and was a member of the IUE-CWA. In Mr. Obama’s GM bailout, he lost his health insurance coverage. So did many other retirees.
The hypocrisy of this Obama-backed film is astounding. Mr. Obama fails to acknowledge his direct role in creating the hardships the Moraine workers weathered. He had nothing whatsoever to do with the plant’s reopening—that was all the work of state and local officials and community leaders.
To put the point bluntly: If the president had his way, there would have been no plant to make a documentary about. “American Factory” would have been “Abandoned Parking Lot.”
Mr. Turner, a Republican, represents Ohio’s 10th Congressional District. He served as mayor of Dayton, 1994-2002.
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2) The New York Times Has Abandoned Liberalism for Activism
By Andrew Sullivan
Posted By Ruth King
The New York Times, by its executive editor’s own admission, is increasingly engaged in a project of reporting everything through the prism of white supremacy and critical race theory, in order to “teach” its readers to think in these crudely reductionist and racial terms. That’s why this issue wasn’t called, say, “special issue”, but a “project”. It’s as much activism as journalism. And that’s the reason I’m dwelling on this a few weeks later. I’m constantly told that critical race theory is secluded on college campuses, and has no impact outside of them … and yet the newspaper of record, in a dizzyingly short space of time, is now captive to it. Its magazine covers the legacy of slavery not with a variety of scholars, or a diversity of views, but with critical race theory, espoused almost exclusively by black writers, as its sole interpretative mechanism.
Don’t get me wrong. I think that view deserves to be heard. The idea that the core truth of human society is that it is composed of invisible systems of oppression based on race (sex, gender, etc.), and that liberal democracy is merely a mask to conceal this core truth, and that a liberal society must therefore be dismantled in order to secure racial/social justice is a legitimate worldview. (That view that “systems” determine human history and that the individual is a mere cog in those systems is what makes it neo-Marxist and anti-liberal.) But I sure don’t think it deserves to be incarnated as the only way to understand our collective history, let alone be presented as the authoritative truth, in a newspaper people rely on for some gesture toward objectivity.
This is therefore, in its over-reach, ideology masquerading as neutral scholarship. Take a simple claim: no aspect of our society is unaffected by the legacy of slavery. Sure. Absolutely. Of course. But, when you consider this statement a little more, you realize this is either banal or meaningless. The complexity of history in a country of such size and diversity means that everything we do now has roots in many, many things that came before us. You could say the same thing about the English common law, for example, or the use of the English language: no aspect of American life is untouched by it. You could say that about the Enlightenment. Or the climate. You could say that America’s unique existence as a frontier country bordered by lawlessness is felt even today in every mass shooting. You could cite the death of countless millions of Native Americans — by violence and disease — as something that defines all of us in America today. And in a way it does. But that would be to engage in a liberal inquiry into our past, teasing out the nuances, and the balance of various forces throughout history, weighing each against each other along with the thoughts and actions of remarkable individuals — in the manner of, say, the excellent new history of the U.S., These Truths by Jill Lepore.
But the NYT chose a neo-Marxist rather than liberal path to make a very specific claim: that slavery is not one of many things that describe America’s founding and culture, it is the definitive one. Arguing that the “true founding” was the arrival of African slaves on the continent, period, is a bitter rebuke to the actual founders and Lincoln. America is not a messy, evolving, multicultural, religiously infused, Enlightenment-based, racist, liberating, wealth-generating kaleidoscope of a society. It’s white supremacy, which started in 1619, and that’s the key to understand all of it. America’s only virtue, in this telling, belongs to those who have attempted and still attempt to end this malign manifestation of white supremacy.
I don’t believe most African-Americans believe this, outside the elites. They’re much less doctrinaire than elite white leftists on a whole range of subjects. I don’t buy it either — alongside, I suspect, most immigrants, including most immigrants of color. Who would ever want to immigrate to such a vile and oppressive place? But it is extremely telling that this is not merely aired in the paper of record (as it should be), but that it is aggressively presented as objective reality. That’s propaganda, directed, as we now know, from the very top — and now being marched through the entire educational system to achieve a specific end. To present a truth as the truth is, in fact, a deception. And it is hard to trust a paper engaged in trying to deceive its readers in order for its radical reporters and weak editors to transform the world.
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3) Democrats Are Buying
Votes To Win In 2020
By Jeff Crouere
As the country careens toward the 2020 presidential election, the Democrats have a clear strategy. In Congress, they will spend all their time harassing and investigating President Trump and his administration instead of doing anything for the American people. Their presidential candidates cannot talk about the economy because it is very strong. In fact, President Trump’s policies have worked so well that our unemployment rate is at a historic low and more people are working today than at any time in our nation’s history.
Instead of discussing real issues and admitting the success of the Trump agenda, the Democratic presidential candidates have decided to engage in an auction to buy the votes of the American people. The candidates are trying to outbid each other to gain support among primary voters.
For example, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has announced a plan to increase Social Security payments to 64 million Americans by $200 per month. The ultra-rich will face tax increases and pay their “fair share” to fund this $150 billion per year program.
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (D-VT) would fund his plan to offer free college tuition and eliminate student debt by taxing “Wall Street speculation.” In his view it is only fair for Wall Street to fund benefits for “all the working families in this country.”
What Warren and Sanders are offering will be expensive, but the cost of their programs pale in comparison to the audacious plan offered by another Democratic presidential candidate, entrepreneur Andrew Yang. Over the course of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination this previously unknown businessman has pushed his way into the top 10. In the first two candidate debates, Yang received little airtime, but used it effectively to differentiate himself from the other candidates.
He is clearly trying to appeal to millennial voters with his casual look of a jacket and no tie and his offer to pay Americans $1,000 per month. According to a study by the Tax Foundation, this “freedom dividend” will cost a cool $2.8 trillion per year. Yang proposes a set of five additional taxes to pay for this program including a European style value added tax (VAT); however, a Tax Foundation report concludes that the revenue raised will fund less than half of the total cost of the program.
The specifics are not important to Yang, who stresses style over substance. To emphasize his unique approach, Yang prepped for the third Democratic presidential candidate debate Thursday night in Houston by boxing and crowd surfing with his supporters.
On Thursday night, Yang took advantage of the media spotlight by offering to pay 10 lucky families $1,000 per month for a year. This sample “freedom dividend” giveaway will be funded by Yang’s campaign and his attorneys claim that it is legal to reward ten random families.
Unfortunately, the real problem is not whether the payments are illegal, but that the “freedom dividend” giveaways are a disincentive for Americans to work and be productive. If Americans receive a continual stream of free benefits from the government, there is no incentive for them to support their families by becoming industrious and contributing to our private sector economy.
The Founding Fathers did not create a constitutional republic 243 years ago for our federal government to reward every American with $12,000 per year for doing nothing. This stunt is another in a long line of Democratic Party proposals that are an insult to the legacy of our Founding Fathers, who endured tremendous sacrifices to establish this “shining city on a hill.”
When our country was created, it would have been an insane idea for any Founding Father to advocate that it is the responsibility of the American government to reward able bodied Americans with financial assistance. Our federal government should provide a “hand up” to those in need of assistance, not a handout for those who can take care of themselves.
Our federal government should aid Americans who are truly needy, such as those who are sick, disabled, or elderly. It is certainly not the role of government at any level to provide free cash to Americans unwilling to work.
Yang continues this disturbing trend in the Democratic Party to buy the votes of Americans with handouts. Among the current field of Democratic presidential candidates, there are proposals for free healthcare, free education, the elimination of all student debt and now free cash.
Yang is hoping this stunt will catapult him into the top tier of Democratic presidential candidates in this election. With such an unimpressive field, his gambit may work, but it is unfortunate that his main message is to give people free money.
A better approach is what President Trump has achieved in our economy. He has provided tax cuts, reduced government regulations and given Americans an opportunity to succeed. Fortunately, Americans have taken full advantage of the President’s proposals and our economy has become the envy of the world.
This county was built into the world’s only superpower by Americans who enjoyed risk taking and engaged in courageous exploration. Americans have an exceptional history of bold entrepreneurship and hearty individualism. It would be a travesty if we abandoned that history to follow the lead of so many ruined socialist and communist nations who saw citizens not as partners in a successful future, but as just subjects of the state receiving crumbs from an almighty government.
With such contrasting visions of our government and the future of the country, the stakes could not be higher in the all-important 2020 presidential election.
Jeff Crouere is a native New Orleanian and his award winning program, “Ringside Politics,” airs locally at 7:30 p.m. Fridays and at 10:00 p.m. Sundays on PBS affiliate WLAE-TV, Channel 32, and from 7-11 a.m. weekdays on WGSO 990-AM & www.Wgso.com. He is a political columnist, the author of America's Last Chance and provides regular commentaries on the Jeff Crouere YouTube channel and on www.JeffCrouere.com. For more information, email him at jeff Crouere.
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