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I am far more persuaded by acts than words. Progressive's love manipulating word meanings to suit their goals..
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The Great Correction, between choosing a trade or higher education, is in motion
By Salena Zito
For the past 50 years, college and university attendance has been held up as the only path to success by educators and parents alike, especially parents who attended college, so much so that the trade classes were rarely mentioned to students as a post-high school option.
That resistance to giving children an option in vocational education in the 1980s and ’90s came home to roost in the past decades when the inevitable, steep decline of available skilled workers and tradespeople hit home.
But there has been a cultural shift in the past few years that is turning that resistance to trade schools on its head. At least part of that has to do with the out-of-control costs of attending a university and the debt that follows you decades after graduation, but it also has to do with how political college campuses have become.
A new poll from Gallup has found that confidence in higher education has plunged in the past eight years. Enrollments have dropped at the same time that tuition has risen and universities have become stridently politicized in the classrooms.
The June survey showed a mere 36% of Americans have either “quite a lot” or a “great deal” of confidence in higher education, which is down from 57% just eight years ago.
Conversely, while nearly every sector of higher education has been hit with enrollment declines, trade school programs are booming, research from the National Student Clearinghouse found.
Construction, culinary, mechanic trade programs, and surgical technician programs all experienced increases in enrollment between spring 2021 and 2022, the study showed, with construction trade programs experiencing the largest enrollment increase at a whopping 19.3 percentage points year over year.
There were also significant increases in mechanic programs and culinary ones, to name just a few.
The ignorance of the education system for decades has been that trade jobs lack relevance in society. However, it seems as though it's pretty relevant to a homeowner to be able to call a plumber if a toilet is clogged, or if a business is experiencing a backup septic system, or a church basement is flooded.
No trade schools means no plumbers, no plumbers means no ability to fix the complicated systems that keep our homes and businesses functioning.
Click for the full story. https://www.
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Like a recent memo this one will also be predominantly postings of Op Ed's and Editorials I was unable to post while away and some personal comments pertaining to an article about Mike Millen.
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When progressives and radical liberals are unhappy with a SCOTUS decision they cannot accept it and move on. They respond by seeking to diminish it's authority.
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The Supreme Court Control Act
New ethics proposals from Senate Democrats are a scheme to destroy the Court’s independence.
By The Editorial Board
The Supreme Court has finished its business for the summer, but Senate Democrats never finish trashing the Justices. The Judiciary Committee that scoured Brett Kavanaugh’s high-school yearbook is preparing to pass new rules under the guise of ethics reform that are intended to put the Justices on a political leash.
The effort is led by Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and his more senior political front man, Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin. They’re playing off recent media reports that claim ethics violations without showing any real violations. But that’s enough of an excuse for claiming to want to protect the Court’s reputation while actually destroying it.
Their Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act would require the Court to establish a Code of Conduct within 180 days. It would also set disclosure rules for “gifts, income, and reimbursements required to be disclosed under the Standing Rules of the Senate and the Rules of the House of Representatives.”
Treating judges like Members of Congress is exactly the wrong model to follow. The nine Justices are appointees with lifetime tenure under the Constitution in order to insulate them from political pressure. Legislators are political actors accountable to voters for their relationships with campaign contributors and interest groups.
The Senate ethics scheme would drop the Justices into a new political maelstrom. The bill invites ethics complaints alleging that a Justice violates the new rules or “has otherwise engaged in conduct that undermines the integrity of the Supreme Court.” That open-ended standard is an invitation to groups on the left and right to file endless complaints against the Justices to create the appearance of wrongdoing or conflicts of interest.
The complaints would be handled by a five-member panel of chief judges from the circuit courts. That would further politicize the judiciary by asking lower-court judges to rule on the ethics of Justices who decide whether to hear appeals of their rulings. The judges would be under enormous pressure to act against Justices with a different judicial philosophy.
The bill also lays out “circumstances requiring disqualification” to hear a case—more commonly known as recusal. The Justices currently make their own decisions on recusal based on relatively narrow criteria such as whether they have a financial interest in a case. Political demands for recusal are becoming more common, but most can be ignored.
The Senate bill sets up a process for a three-judge panel of judges to review a “motion” by a party for recusal. Such motions would proliferate, as the parties and interests angle to eliminate a Justice they think might rule against them. The Democratic goal here is thinning the Court on a case by case basis to influence decisions. It’s a different means than packing the Court by adding Justices, but the purpose is similar.
The Founders anticipated this political temptation, which is why they created the judiciary as a separate and co-equal branch of government under Article III. While Congress established the lower federal courts, the Constitution created the Supreme Court, which sets its own rules. Congress has no constitutional power to tell the Justices how to run the Court.
The supposed justification for this radical remaking of the Court is a series of media articles that reveal little more than that Justices have rich friends. They have on occasion even flown on private jets, oh my. In the latest supposed scandal, the staff of Justice Sonia Sotomayor is reported to have encouraged the sale of her books coinciding with her appearances at universities. In none of these cases has anyone found a real conflict of interest involving the Justices and a case or ruling.
The partisan nature of this exercise is clear from the one-sided efforts at fact-finding. Last week Messrs. Whitehouse and Durbin sent a letter to Leonard Leo, who advised President Trump on judicial nominations and is friends with some of the conservative Justices.
The letter requests “an itemized list of all gifts, payments, and items of value . . . to any Justice of the Supreme Court or a member of the Justice’s family which you had a role in facilitating or arranging.” We could find no evidence of similar curiosity about the liberal Justices and their friends.
Damaging the Court has been Mr. Whitehouse’s explicit goal since progressives lost their majority and the Court as a second legislature. In 2019 he and four other Senate Democrats wrote a notorious amicus brief in a gun-rights case that said “the Supreme Court is not well.” The brief threatened, mob-style, that if the Court didn’t “heal itself,” it might have to be “restructured.”
Democrats don’t currently have the votes to break the Senate filibuster and pack the Court, but watch out when they do. Meantime, their ethics ruse is an attempt to intimidate and control the Justices by other means. It deserves to be called out as a betrayal of the Constitution that would destroy judicial independence.
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Bidenomics and the Boom in DEI and ESG Jobs
Young grads are finding employment helping companies not run afoul of progressive orthodoxies.
By Allysia Finley
How many environmental justice majors does it take to calculate the CO2 emissions of a light bulb? This isn’t a joke. Businesses now employ scads of college grads to do this.
For years America’s political class has lamented that too many college grads are working in low-paying jobs that don’t require post-secondary degrees. The diversity, equity and inclusion and environmental, social and governance industries—DEI and ESG, respectively—are solving for this problem while creating many others.
In the modern progressive era, young graduates are finding remunerative employment as sustainability coordinators, DEI officers and “people partners.” Instead of serving up pumpkin soy lattes, they’re quantifying corporate greenhouse gas emissions and ensuring employers don’t transgress progressive cultural orthodoxies.
But making a customer a cup of fancy coffee serves a useful function. The same can’t be said of most DEI and ESG jobs, which are among the fastest growing professions in the modern economy. Consider some of the more than 34,500 LinkedIn search results for “diversity and inclusion” and “sustainability” jobs in New York.
•Wells Fargo is looking for a “tech diversity, community & sustainability communications consultant” who can “collaborate and consult with stakeholders to drive . . . understanding of audience impacts to guide messaging to reduce key risk.” Translation: a progressive who can run interference with Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Biden administration banking regulators.
•The National Football League is seeking a “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Senior Program Coordinator” who “will be a strategic, empathetic planner who works collaboratively to manage sensitive high-priority League and/or Club-specific initiatives and projects.” Applicants must be able to handle “highly confidential information.” Like, say, the emails of former Las Vegas Raiders coach Jon Gruden?
•Deloitte has a posting for a “Tax Senior” in “Sustainability, Climate & Equity-Renewable Energy.” “The ideal candidate,” the company says, “will monitor current and proposed tax legislation and regulations related to renewable energy and sustainability, as well as implement client outreach strategies.” In other words, Deloitte is hiring consultants to help its clients pocket more green subsidies.
Since January 2021, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, jobs in human resources and environmental consulting have increased 23.6% and 8.3%, respectively. In the first 2½ years of the Trump presidency, the fields grew only 2.7% and 4.5%. These figures don’t include the various in-house ESG and DEI jobs that companies have added.
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Carter, Biden and American Malaise
A combination of domestic morass and bumbling leadership ties two presidents together across the decades.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
When Jimmy Carter ran for president, the first U.S. senator to endorse him was Delaware’s Joe Biden. Mr. Carter later wrote in his White House diary that the first-term Democrat had been his “most effective supporter during the 1976 campaign.” In 2021 Mr. Biden was the first president since Mr. Carter left office 40 years earlier to visit him in Plains, Ga. “Those guys love each other,” a former Biden aide told Maureen Dowd of the New York Times.
They also resemble each other. Mr. Carter’s presidency was mired in inflation, an energy crisis, foreign-policy failures and public unpopularity. So is Mr. Biden’s.
In policy and politics, the parallels between the Carter and Biden presidencies—at least outwardly—are striking. Start with the way the two men obtained the highest office. Both triumphed in crowded Democratic primaries and struggled to clinch their nominations by presenting themselves as enlightened moderates—on board with their party’s liberal wing, but not so crazy as to alienate average Americans.
Both ran in the fall as healing correctives to controversial predecessors. Mr. Carter made his bid to a nation exhausted by Vietnam and inflation and still reeling from Watergate. The promise of moral (and religious) leadership tapped into a public mood. Yet the nation remained deeply divided and Mr. Carter only narrowly beat Gerald Ford.
Forty-four years later, the country was similarly turbulent. Donald Trump had come into office a controversial figure, and Democrats added to the foment with a special-counsel probe into false claims of Russian collusion, an impeachment proceeding, investigations into Mr. Trump’s family and businesses, and daily accusations that he was a dictator-in-waiting. Add to this a pandemic that thrust much of the nation into lockdowns, school closures, mask mandates and media-stoked anxiety. Mr. Biden, campaigning from his basement, hammered the controversial Republican on moral grounds and highlighted two modest promises: to handle Covid better, and to be the anti-Trump. As in 1976, the challenger won, but narrowly.
Despite the promises of healing and moderation, Messrs. Carter and Biden both governed in a far more liberal fashion than they had campaigned. They both had an unfortunate knack for creating or exacerbating the types of messes that infuriate Americans.
Mr. Carter made reducing unemployment his first priority. His disastrous solution was an ambitious spending program, accompanied by pressure on the Federal Reserve to expand the money supply. Fed Chairman G. William Miller, whom Mr. Carter appointed in 1978, didn’t move aggressively enough to raise rates, and inflation soared from 5.8% when Mr. Carter took office to 13.5% when he left.
Mr. Biden similarly chose a spending blowout as his first initiative—the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. The bill larded out $1,400 checks to individuals, air-dropped $350 billion on state and local governments, and dumped money on education. It came after earlier Covid relief bills in 2020 and was followed by further spending on infrastructure and green initiatives. Inflation soared from 1.4% when Mr. Biden took office to 9.1% by June 2022, although it has since eased.
Both men damaged America’s energy security. Mr. Carter inherited a nation trying to recover from a global oil shock. He made it worse with a windfall profits tax and a crazy environmental agenda on top of another oil crisis. Gasoline prices in 1976 averaged 61 cents a gallon. By 1980 they were $1.25 a gallon.
Mr. Biden was hit by energy problems stemming from Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. But on his first day in office, the president declared war on fossil fuels, and prices were climbing well before Vladimir Putin launched his attack. Mr. Biden inherited average gasoline prices in 2020 of $2.39 a gallon. In June 2022, they peaked above $5.
Both men reflexively turned to government as the answer to every problem, demagoguing the private sector and weighing it down with new regulations that stifled economic growth. Mr. Carter saddled the country with two entirely new cabinet departments, 15 major environmental bills and price controls. Mr. Biden moved quickly to reimpose nearly every regulation the Trump administration had dismantled, and added plenty more. He appointed the most antibusiness cabinet in history.
Soaring inflation, rising interest rates, regulatory assault and worrying economic indicators spooked markets in both eras, wiping out vast amounts of wealth. Two years into the Carter administration, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had lost 23% of its value. A Bank of America analysis for clients in October 2022 found that the first half of Mr. Biden’s second year had been the worst for the S&P 500 since 1872.
The Carter and Biden years were similarly shaped by foreign-policy fiascoes, the consequence of naive notions about sanctions, multilateralism and appeasement. Both men weakened America on the world stage and invited aggression—and often from the same bad actors. Mr. Carter appeased a belligerent Soviet Union, which invaded Afghanistan; Mr. Biden appeased a belligerent Russia, which invaded Ukraine. Mr. Carter contended with an Iranian revolution, Mr. Biden with the threat of a nuclear Iran. Mr. Carter in 1979 granted formal diplomatic recognition to communist China; Mr. Biden continues to coddle the regime, despite its hostility to human rights and Western interests. The Iranian hostage crisis effectively ended Mr. Carter’s ambitions for re-election. Mr. Biden opened his presidency with a chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal—during which 13 U.S. troops died at the hands of a suicide bomber.
The late 1970s and the Biden years even share oddly similar social upheaval, with public angst over race-conscious governance, gay rights, education, court decisions and rising crime. Americans by the Carter years were growing angry over the rampant use of quotas and affirmative action. Mr. Carter chose activist judges who doubled down on the recently decided Roe v. Wade, setting off cries of judicial politicization. The 39th president was accused of rolling over to teachers unions to aid his re-election bid. Despite Mr. Carter’s campaign promise to reduce crime, America’s cities grew more dangerous.
Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and their fellow progressives preach an “equity” agenda that has unleashed a new round of public backlash. The Supreme Court in June 2022 reversed Roe v. Wade, a decision the left gaslighted as a new era of judicial politicization. Mr. Biden’s support of teachers unions infuriated parents whose kids were left in lockdown. The left’s embrace of the “defund the police” movement and soft-on-crime prosecutors helped fuel a surge in violent crime reminiscent of the ’70s.
The combination of domestic morass and bumbling leadership saddled both men with short honeymoons, toxic disapproval ratings, and midterm difficulties. A January 1978 CBS News/New York Times poll found Mr. Carter with an economic net approval rating of minus 8 points. That was the lowest of any president approximately a year into his term—until December 2021, when polling averages found Mr. Biden at minus 13.
For all that, the comparison isn’t fair to Mr. Carter. In 1977 he took the reins of a nation already beset by the Great Inflation, sky-high crime and declining U.S. oil production. With the help of a Democratic Party that was far saner than today’s version, he pushed some good policies, such as deregulation of airlines, trucking and railroads. Historians often describe the Carter administration as “engulfed” by domestic and foreign crises that overwhelmed the inexperienced president.
Mr. Biden has no such excuses. He inherited an economy that was rounding the Covid corner, poised to roar back as vaccines rolled out and lockdowns lifted. A year before Mr. Biden was elected president, the U.S. became a net energy exporter for the first time since 1952. And he certainly can’t blame inexperience. Except for his four years after leaving the vice presidency, he has held office continuously since January 1971. He was elected to the Senate in 1972 at 29 and remained there until 2009.
He took office with another big advantage: He had Mr. Carter’s experience as a cautionary tale. The late 1970s are a textbook example of the perils of easy money, government micromanagement and weak foreign policy. Mr. Biden lived—and served in the Senate—through them. He had to work hard to make things go so wrong. As Sen. Tom Cotton quipped last year: “Jimmy Carter has a defamation case against anyone comparing him to Joe Biden.”
Another point of similarity lies in the responses to the elections of 1978 and 2022. Presidents usually view midterm losses as a rebuke and a call to readjust. Mr. Carter viewed his as more a judgment on his party than himself. He continued with his quixotic agenda, undaunted. Mr. Biden, in hock to his progressive wing, and spinning the GOP’s modest gains as a Democratic “win,” also ignored his unpopularity. Both men chose not to heed the political winds.
In Mr. Carter’s case, the result was a landslide loss in 1980. The Reagan revolution changed the nation’s political demographics and redrew its electoral map. In 1984, Reagan carried 49 states and 525 electoral votes, the widest margin in history.
Will Mr. Biden suffer a similar fate? His agenda is creating a similar backlash. Americans are deeply disillusioned. They live in what is supposed to be the most vibrant political system in the world, yet they are astonished by the daily failure of competence. Congress seems no longer capable of legislating. Democrats have abandoned federalism, the electoral system and the concept of equality. The administrative state rules all. Mr. Biden grandstands even as he resolutely refuses to work with Republicans. Judges—at both the federal and state levels—act as de facto policy makers. The country is yearning for change.
What an opportunity for the party of free markets and free people. The conservative movement has another chance to recapture the imagination of a malaise-beset public. But it will require a focus on innovative ideas. It needs a governing party willing to embrace its constitutional duties and stand accountable. One that recommits itself to proven policies that get government out of the way. One that will tackle the truly big problems that are slowly but inevitably dragging the U.S. toward European-style socialism.
Mostly it will take a leader. There was no Reagan revolution without Reagan. What Donald Trump’s supporters love most about him is his fight—his willingness to take on taboo issues, to punch back at critics. What he lacks is a philosophy. The Republican Party has a bench of younger, accomplished leaders who have adopted the Trump fighting spirit—but who also have the vision and message. Conservative voters now must decide if their loyalty to Mr. Trump is worth risking this unique political opening.
America can bounce back from the Biden malaise. It has the desire, the energy, and the formula. It needs a leader.
Ms. Strassel writes the Journal’s Potomac Watch column. This is adapted from her new book, “The Biden Malaise: How America Bounces Back from Joe Biden’s Dismal Repeat of the Jimmy Carter Years,” forthcoming July 18.
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Biden's attempt, after SCOTUS' recent decision, proves, once again, he is one of the scummiest president's in recent history. He learned well from Obama.
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Biden’s latest student loan forgiveness plan would cost taxpayers $475B, analysis says
President Biden's SAVE plan could cut monthly loan payments to zero
By Anders Hagstrom
President Biden's revamped student loan forgiveness plan will cost U.S. taxpayers $475 billion over 10 years, according to an analysis released Monday.
The University of Pennsylvania's Penn Wharton budget model updated its estimate for Biden's plan--dubbed SAVE--this week after the Supreme Court struck down the initial plan.
"About $200 billion of that cost will come from payment reduction for the $1.64 trillion in loans already outstanding in 2023. We estimate that about 53 percent of the current loan volume will move to SAVE after it goes active in July 2024, implying that about $869 billion will be subject to enhanced subsidies under SAVE," the group wrote.
"The remainder of the budget cost, or about $275 billion, comes from reduced payments for about $1.03 trillion in new loans that we estimate will be extended over the next 10 years," it continued.
President Biden's revamped student loan forgiveness plan will cost U.S. taxpayers $475 billion over 10 years, according to an analysis released Monday. (AP Newsroom)
The new cost estimate is more than $100 billion higher than Penn Wharton's initial model released earlier this year. Biden's White House defended its student loan actions in a statement Tuesday morning.
"We remain committed to the idea that a college credential is one of the best tools for building a stronger America. But we cannot bury the dreams unlocked by college under mountains of unaffordable debt. Through this process we will work swiftly and tirelessly to make that relief a reality for borrowers," the statement read.
Biden's SAVE plan follows an income-driven loan repayment plan, allowing borrowers to match their monthly loan payments to their current income and family size. Republicans have blasted the plan as yet another overreach by Biden that may face problems in courts.
BIDEN CALLS SCOTUS DECISION "UNTHINKABLE," OUTLINES NEW PATH TO STUDENT LOAN FORGIVENESS
The plan could reduce borrowers’ monthly payments to zero dollars, cut monthly payments in half or save those that do make payments by at least $1,000 a year, the White House said in a statement.
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I have written, in the past, I attended a presentation by Mike Milken to the Drexel Burnham Institutional Sales force, of which I was a member for 10 years to the date. (I opened and ran the Atlanta Institutional Sales Office.) The meeting was at our New York Headquarters.
After attending, I wrote a letter to Fred Joseph, who, at the time, was running our firm, and stated I was uncomfortable with what Mike had to say about creating a "Dynasty."
There is no doubt Mike was ambitious, was taking our firm to the apex of Wall Street's most powerful and profitable firms. We were eating Salomon's lunch and were creeping up on venerable Goldman.
Joseph never responded and several days after I wrote news broke about Milken and his nefarious activities etc. validating my suspicions.
I have no personal animus towards Milken. I am glad to know he has conquered his various cancer issues and wish him a long and healthy life.
If he wants to spend his fortunes on redeeming his reputation that is his right.
That said, Milken's activities also helped to destroy an honorable firm run by Tubby Burnham, one of the most decent people I had the distinct pleasure of getting to know and greatly respected.
Specifically, in my own case, the sudden demise of Burnham cost me well over $1.3 million in stock value as well as my job. This value, I admit, was attributed, in large part, to the period of success Milken's questionable efforts created.
It also cost thousands of others millions, their jobs and security. Thousands experienced significant periods of depression and family grief, including, I suspect, a tragic car suicide.
The Milken article did not reveal he is going to establish a fund to partially reimburse any Burnham employees. Once again, as in the Biden corruption matter, it appears there are two sets of justice. Mike's burnishing of his own reputation but nothing for Milken's direct peer victims.
One might argue I sound like California blacks seeking reparations.
You decide.
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Bond King, Felon, Billionaire Philanthropist: The Nine Lives of Michael Milken
The former financier is putting $500 million into the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream
By Miriam Gottfried
Michael Milken wants to live forever.
The billionaire, who made his name in the 1970s and ’80s as the architect of the high-yield bond market before pleading guilty to securities and tax violations and spending nearly two years in prison, next year plans to begin unveiling a 300,000-square-foot monument to social mobility and capitalism in Washington, D.C.
At 77 years old and with a fortune some estimate at more than $10 billion, Milken is thinking about his legacy. Three decades after a partial ban from the securities industry forced him to abandon his finance career, he is trying to ensure that he is remembered for his contributions to capital markets, medical research and education—not for his felony convictions.
The wealth that Milken has achieved, through his own investments and those made by his family office, speaks to the scale and success of his comeback. He has poured $500 million of his fortune into establishing the D.C. complex, which sits across the street from the U.S. Treasury and catty-corner from the White House and will house a public exhibition space known as the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, in addition to conference and event spaces and offices for his Milken Institute think tank.
In a rare interview, Milken described his new center as “a beacon of hope and a symbol of upward mobility for everyone.”
Children and grandchildren: Milken and his wife, Lori, read and discuss books with their 10 grandchildren.
Drexel diaspora: People who worked with Milken at Drexel Burnham Lambert went on to found influential investment firms, including Apollo, Ares Management and Leonard Green.
Turning point: Milken read the book ‘Corporate Bond Quality and Investor Experience’ while a student at UC Berkeley. It led him to key insights about the high-yield bond market.
Global conference: 4,500 people attended this year’s Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Home Run Challenge: Milken attended more than 20 Major League Baseball games over a three-to-four week period to raise money for his Prostate Cancer Foundation.
Milken in April published “Faster Cures,” a book that is part memoir, part a recounting of his efforts to bring the results of medical research to patients more quickly. He has said he also plans to write a book about his work on education and another about his time on Wall Street at the now-defunct investment bank Drexel Burnham Lambert, which he says has been chronicled extensively but not accurately.
This past spring, Milken hosted 4,500 people, most of whom paid at least $25,000 apiece, at the 26th annual Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, Calif. The event draws the upper echelons of Wall Street, tech entrepreneurs, politicians, medical researchers, public health experts and nonprofit leaders. A few weeks later, he embarked on his 27th annual Home Run Challenge, during which he attended more than 20 Major League Baseball games over a three-to-four-week period to raise money and awareness for his Prostate Cancer Foundation.
Milken, who has three children and 10 grandchildren, has already cheated death once. Shortly after his release from prison in 1993, he received a diagnosis of terminal prostate cancer and was told he had 12 to 18 months to live. He survived thanks to a relentless pursuit of the latest treatments and a dramatic change in diet. Longevity is one focus of the Milken Institute.
On stage at this year’s conference, the former financier seemed more frail. Friends say they heard the beeping of medical equipment in the background of phone calls with him during a health scare a few years ago from which he now appears to have recovered.
“Sometimes when I see him, I think he’s worn out, but then I learn he has been around the world twice,” said Mark Attanasio, managing partner of credit-investment firm Crescent Capital and a Drexel veteran.
Milken was once one of the most highly compensated people on Wall Street, collecting more than $1 billion from Drexel between 1983 and 1987, including more than $550 million in 1987 alone. Indicted as part of a sweeping insider-trading investigation, he pleaded guilty in 1990 to charges that included cheating Drexel clients by reporting false prices for securities they had sold, and helping a client evade taxes by creating false losses. He was fined $200 million and paid an additional $400 million in civil settlements and spent 22 months in a federal prison in Northern California.
Milken and his family have given over $1.5 billion to charitable causes. He has created programs supporting inner-city students, high-performing educators and research scientists working at the cutting edge of treatments for cancer and other life-threatening diseases. In 2014, George Washington University named its school of public health after the Milken Institute following a $50 million gift from the think tank and Milken’s family foundation. The Prostate Cancer Foundation, which Milken founded in 1993, is widely credited with revolutionizing the way the disease is researched and treated by lowering the hurdles to funding for promising ideas and encouraging collaboration among research scientists.
In 2020 then-President Donald Trump pardoned Milken at the urging of a number of prominent backers, including Rudy Giuliani, who served as Trump’s personal attorney throughout his presidency. Giuliani’s prosecution of Milken in the 1980s helped launch his successful bid to be mayor of New York. Milken was one of the first people to call Giuliani after the latter was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000, according to people familiar with their relationship.
Born in Los Angeles in 1946, Milken grew up in a middle-class community in the San Fernando Valley. His father, Bernard, was an accountant and a lawyer. His mother, Ferne, who died earlier this year at age 99, stayed home with him and his younger brother, Lowell. Milken attended public schools, including the University of California, Berkeley, where—after initially focusing on science and math—he decided to major in finance and business.
While at Berkeley, Milken read a book called “Corporate Bond Quality and Investor Experience” that examined, among other things, yield charts and default rates for bonds issued by railroads, utilities and industrial companies between 1900 and 1943.
The data revealed something surprising, he recounted in “Faster Cures:” While risk and return had always been presumed to be directly correlated, the reality was that the market had historically overestimated the risk of higher-yielding investments. Investors actually got lower returns on a portfolio of high-grade bonds than they did on a portfolio of low-grade ones over time because the higher yields more than made up for the higher level of defaults.
Milken continued his work on high-yield bonds while pursuing an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. When he graduated in 1970, he joined the staff of Drexel, where he had previously worked as a consultant.
Bonds issued by Drexel were the primary source of financing for the likes of cable-industry titan Ted Turner, cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, fiber-optic entrepreneur William McGowan and casino magnate Steve Wynn.
“There was an entrepreneurial zeal in that firm that I haven’t seen since,” said Ted Virtue, a Drexel alumnus who now runs private-equity firm MidOcean Partners.
Drexel soon recognized an opportunity in financing the fledgling private-equity industry. It began providing the riskier, more junior tranche of debt, allowing firms like KKR to do multibillion-dollar deals for companies such as Beatrice Foods and R.J.R. Nabisco, despite having relatively small pools of cash.
Drexel also financed so-called corporate raiders—activist investors who sought to push corporate executives and boards to make changes that would increase their share price.
Milken regularly made his staff defend their choices, people who worked for him said. He pioneered the use of cash-flow focused measures such as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, to determine a business’s ability to repay its debt.
“We all went to the Milken school of capital markets” and studying balance sheets, said Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black, who worked with Milken at Drexel. Black and his wife, Debra, founded the Melanoma Research Alliance under a branch of the Milken Institute, and the Black family has contributed millions of dollars to Milken causes such as the Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream.
His propensity to dole out financial advice got him into trouble in the late 1990s, when regulators accused him of violating his ban from the securities industry by counseling Fox Chair and News Corp Executive Chairman Rupert Murdoch and billionaire Revlon owner Ronald Perelman on deals they were evaluating. News Corp is the parent company of Wall Street Journal publisher Dow Jones.
Milken denied the charge, saying he had received legal advice that the activities he engaged in were allowed under the ban. He settled with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 1998 and agreed to return the $47 million in fees he had received from the two moguls but didn’t admit wrongdoing.
Such concerns cropped up again in 2013 when Guggenheim Partners said it received an inquiry from the SEC about its relationship with Milken, whom it described as a client, over whether he was violating his ban in his dealings with the asset manager. The agency later dropped that inquiry.
In 2015 Guggenheim paid the SEC $20 million to settle a number of separate claims, including that it failed to disclose in its annual regulatory filing a potential conflict of interest involving a $50 million loan that its then-executive Todd Boehly took from Milken, according to people familiar with the matter. Milken also provided early capital for a credit hedge fund that Boehly launched while at Guggenheim, the people said. Boehly is now CEO of holding company Eldridge. Milken and Eldridge have invested in several companies together—including Morton Salt, Reddy Ice and Mauser Packaging Solutions—and have made loans and bought debt together.
Forbes pegs Milken’s wealth at $6 billion, but some in his orbit say he could easily be worth double that. A good portion of his fortune is tied up in private investments that are difficult to value independently. Milken declined to share details about his wealth.
He is still married to his high-school sweetheart, Lori. While they own other properties, their primary residence is the same house they bought when they moved to L.A. from New York in 1978.
Milken’s work on prostate cancer has also made him an influential figure in medical research, where he has developed a reputation for being data-driven and impatient with bureaucracy. Every year he hosts a summit for scientists working on prostate cancer.
“Mike looked at the problem of cancer like a business problem to be solved,” said Dr. Karen Knudsen, CEO of the American Cancer Society. “He wasn’t focused on the flashy. He really focused on what is going to make a difference.”
When the Prostate Cancer Foundation lacked the resources to fund a major study Knudsen needed to conduct to advance her research, she said, Milken introduced her to executives from a pharmaceutical company who he thought would be interested in the science. The company ended up funding the study.
Since as early as 2009, Milken has been contemplating a physical space dedicated to highlighting the goals of his think tank, according to Michael Klowden, former CEO of the Milken Institute who organized much of the planning for the Milken Center. Milken had originally conceived of it as a library and began looking at real estate in California. Only later did he decide that the facility, which is expected to cost over $1 billion, should be located in Washington, where much of the Milken Institute’s policy work is centered.
The exact contents of the exhibits hasn’t been finalized, and the Milken Institute declined to make available anyone involved in their design. A video posted on the center’s website describes a massive digital tree-shaped installation dubbed the “Tree of Generations,” that is expected to contain searchable recordings of noteworthy individuals recounting their paths to success and will allow visitors to add their own stories. Organizers initially hope to collect 10,000 interviews, Klowden said.
Among those who have been interviewed are former Goldman Sachs partner and U.S. government official Dina Powell McCormick, chef and entrepreneur Wolfgang Puck and retired National Basketball Association player John Salley.
Attanasio of Crescent said the center is consistent with Milken’s lifelong priorities.
“A lot of the things he did in the 1990s, people thought he was just rehabilitating himself, but he has followed through on all of them,” he said. “Everything Mike does, he’s in with both feet.”
Write to Miriam Gottfried at Miriam.Gottfried@wsj.com
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How Congress Can Stop Biden’s Regulatory Onslaught
If they stay united, House Republicans can use the power of the purse to restrain unilateral executive action.
By Phil Gramm and Mike Solon
Before the rise of the regulatory state, America’s economic exceptionalism flowed from clear constitutional boundaries between the spheres of individual freedom and government power. All major federal initiatives were circumscribed by the Constitution and required legislation by both houses of Congress followed by the president’s signature. With rare exceptions, major policy changes required broad bipartisan support to gain a majority in the House and overcome a potential filibuster in the Senate. The result was economic and political stability enforced by checks and balances. While political inertia frustrated elected officials, the benefits of unparalleled economic certainty and unmatched freedom to work, save and invest delivered unequaled prosperity.
With the rise of the regulatory state, every sector of the economy can now be significantly altered by presidential action through executive initiatives with little basis in law. Checked only by the delayed restraints imposed by the courts, presidents now assert unilateral powers so that presidential elections alone produce dramatic shifts in public policy.
Based on almost every conceivable measure of federal power, America’s historic economic certainty and the constitutional system of checks and balances that provides it are under siege by President Joe Biden’s “whole government” regulatory onslaught. In a closely divided Congress, timely defense of our constitutional system and limited government now depends on the ability of a five-vote House Republican majority to restore the power of the purs
With the national debt issue postponed until after the 2024 elections and aggregate spending capped for the next two fiscal years, the Republican House must now decide not only what to fund but also what not to fund. Since the power of the purse is the power to ban, limit and restrict the use of federal funds, it embodies the power to restrain executive action.
Whereas the risk of default on the public debt was overhyped, the economic risk of Mr. Biden’s aggressive assertion of regulatory power seldom is mentioned in any analysis of productivity growth falling to a 75-year low, real wage declines and the lurking recession. Barack Obama’s regulatory excesses produced stagnation and a failed recovery, but the crippling cost of Mr. Biden’s regulatory burden could trigger our first regulatory recession.
Two famous examples of the power of the purse to limit executive action are the 1976 Hyde amendment prohibiting federal funding for abortion and the 1976 Byrd amendment banning federal funding for forced busing. On taxpayer funding for abortion, agencies were using executive authority to implement policy Congress had never legislated. The American people strongly opposed taxpayer funding for abortion as did then Sen. Biden. Congress used the power of the purse to prohibit the use of federal funding for abortion.
Forced busing evolved from a policy to promote the desegregation of public schools. As the monetary and time cost of cross-county busing grew, public opposition swelled even in the black community, and in 1976 Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia used the power of the purse to defund forced busing. Sen. Biden voted for the prohibition and later joined Sen. Tom Eagleton to author the 1977 amendment that strengthened the original Byrd amendment.
Given their five-vote majority, House Republicans must pick their targets wisely. The limits on spending must unite Republicans and be overwhelmingly popular among the American people. Any area where Democrats have shown support for limiting the president’s executive authority should be fertile ground for amendments.
An obvious target is Mr. Biden’s actions circumventing Congress and agreeing with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to impose an international minimum tax on large international companies, most of which are owned by American investors. Remarkably, the Biden administration agreed to let foreign governments tax U.S. companies on their U.S. earnings if Congress refuses to adopt the minimum tax. In this extraordinary circumvention of the Constitution, the Biden administration has attempted to use an international agreement that Congress never approved to force Congress to raise taxes.
This follows similar administrative practices of using European regulations and antitrust actions to impose policies on U.S. companies that our courts have rejected. Fortunately, the State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Bill as reported by the House subcommittee terminates all U.S. funding for the OECD. Congress should further disavow the tax agreement and, using the power of the House to legislate on appropriations bills, mandate retaliation against any nation attempting to tax U.S. companies on U.S. earnings.
Lawmakers can wield the power of the purse to make regulatory agencies follow the law, such as requiring that Federal Trade Commission funds are used solely to promote consumer welfare. Securities and Exchange Commission funding must hinge on the agency promoting the stated goals of U.S. securities laws, not the administration’s environmental goals. The power of the purse can be used to ensure that the Labor Department requires pension funds to invest “solely” and “exclusively”—as the law stipulates—in the financial interest of retirees, not to promote ESG goals.
Congress must use the power of the purse to strengthen national defense. Today, the Defense Department spends billions of dollars on social spending that has little or nothing to do with national defense, such as zero-emissions vehicles, offshore wind energy R&D, EV charging stations, sensitivity training, transgender treatments, and general education funding. Given the budget limitations we face and the dangerous world we confront, Congress’s plundering of national defense should end.
The nation needs a replay of the debt-limit unity among House Republicans to bring the Biden imperial presidency back under constitutional control. As James Madison, the father of the Constitution, envisioned it, the power of the purse was “the most complete and effectual weapon with which any constitution can arm the immediate representatives of the people, for obtaining a redress of every grievance.”
Mr. Gramm, a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. Mr. Solon is an adviser to US Policy Metrics.
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Biden is not intelligent. He has always been a hack politician.
Furthermore, Biden has seldom been right on most major issues. In the case of Israel he slept in Obama's bed too long.
When you are clueless you are more likely to associate with and become persuaded by the aggressor.
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What Does Biden Have Against Israel?
The President treats the governing coalition in Jerusalem worse than he does Iran.
By The Editorial Board
Why does President Biden go out of his way to snub, criticize and give marching orders to the government of Israel? At least rhetorically, the President and his Administration treat Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his governing coalition worse than they do the ruling mullahs in Iran.
Mr. Biden declined again this week in gratuitous public fashion to invite Mr. Netanyahu to the White House, pointing to the Prime Minister’s elected coalition partners. Tom Nides, Mr. Biden’s departing Ambassador to Israel, chimes in that the U.S. must speak up to stop Israel from “going off the rails.” Each gibe makes headlines in Israel.
When Mr. Netanyahu was most vulnerable, in late March, Mr. Biden needlessly decreed that Israel “cannot continue down this road” on judicial reform. The Prime Minister had already changed course and agreed to moderate the reforms—a domestic Israeli affair in which the U.S. President has no business. Mr. Nides publicly instructed Mr. Netanyahu, as if with his chauffeur, to “pump the brakes.”
The effect of this piling on is for Israelis to see that the U.S. sides with their opposition parties. This is no way to treat a democratic ally and no way to pursue U.S. interests while Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud Party is in power, as it has been for most of the past 25 years.
Whether Israel’s proposed reforms would rein in its high court’s unusual powers, in the absence of a constitution, or tip the balance too far toward British-style parliamentary supremacy, is for Israelis to debate. Which they do, noisily, without Mr. Biden’s commentary.
The President’s Israel policy has been counterproductive. U.S. aid to anti-Israel international bodies has resumed, and all of the West Bank and East Jerusalem is treated as “occupied territory.” This is now a liberal article of faith, but how does it advance peace to indulge Palestinians in the belief that Jews are interlopers in Judea and at the Western Wall?
While Mr. Biden undermines the Netanyahu government, Hamas and other Iranian proxies are gaining power in the West Bank, activating another front against Israel. The new wave of terrorism against Jewish civilians will set back the Palestinian cause but advance Iran’s.
Perhaps most disappointing has been the failure to extend the Trump-brokered Abraham Accords. The Saudis are the prize, but Mr. Biden’s open hostility drove them to hedge their bets by signing a Chinese-brokered deal with Iran instead. Normalization with Israel may have to wait for a U.S. President interested in rallying a coalition to contain Tehran.
As usual in the region, Iran is the story behind the story. The “longer and stronger” nuclear deal the President promised is long gone. His Administration has been reduced to floating an unwritten, stopgap agreement that would give Tehran tens of billions of dollars to sit on the precipice of nuclear breakout. Call it Hezbollah’s and Islamic Jihad’s lucky day.
This is a startling retreat even from Barack Obama’s position, but with the same ends in mind: staying Israel’s hand and reshaping the region with Iran on board. Alas for the U.S., the enemy gets a say. While Tehran escalates its proxy wars and whittles down U.S. nuclear demands, Mr. Biden carries out diplomatic offensives against Saudi Arabia and Israel.
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It’s a Shame About Christopher Wray
The FBI director seems oblivious to the source of the bureau’s damaged reputation.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
FBI Director Christopher Wray began his hearing before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday by praising the bureau’s 38,000 rank-and-file personnel who protect the country “each and every day.” In doing so, he inadvertently highlighted the FBI’s real problem: the politicized few at the top.
In his testimony, Mr. Wray rightly noted that FBI agents battle child predators, fentanyl cartels, Chinese espionage, cyber attackers, gangs, foreign terrorists and human traffickers. He griped that this work is overshadowed by “the one or two investigations that seem to capture all the headlines.”
And whose fault is that? Those “one or two” (or five or 10) probes are hardly tiny affairs, but some of the biggest scandals in FBI history, in part because of bureau actions that violated bedrock American principles. And as the hearing illuminated, those headline cases have something in common: The bad judgment and poor behavior mostly comes from the upper echelons—FBI headquarters, senior agents, task force leaders and Justice Department honchos. They are the ones damaging the bureau’s reputation and undermining the good work of everyone else.
The FBI should have learned one obvious lesson from its disastrous Crossfire Hurricane investigation into nonexistent Trump-Russia collusion: Don’t strip cases from field offices to run them out of the political hotbed known as Washington. Yet the FBI keeps doing it.
Take the unprecedented August 2022 raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home. Steven D’Antuono, then in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, told House investigators last month that he questioned why headquarters assigned the raid to Washington—not Miami. He also voiced his concerns that no U.S. attorney was assigned to oversee the case—the usual step. Instead it was left in the hands of the Justice Department’s chief of counterintelligence, pit bull Jay Bratt. Mr. D’Antuono said he pushed back against the department’s demand for an immediate raid, arguing the FBI should first attempt to get consent for a search—which would have been “the best thing for all parties”—“for the FBI, for former President Trump and for the country.”
Mr. D’Antuono intimated he and other objectors were overruled at the highest level. He worried about the bureau’s “reputational risk” from the raid and that the FBI would be left “holding the bag again.” On Wednesday, Mr. Wray dodged questions about his role, instead disputing the definition of the word “raid.”
Take another of those “one or two” controversial cases—the FBI’s role in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story in the runup to the 2020 election. Federal Judge Terry Doughty last week ruled the Biden administration likely violated the First Amendment by pressuring social media to censor information, including the laptop story. The judge noted the FBI had primed social media outlets for this censorship by warning them about a potential “hack and leak” operation related to Hunter. The judge found “particularly troubling” the “FBI’s failure to alert social-media companies that the Hunter Biden laptop story was real,” given it took possession of the device the previous year.
But who exactly at the FBI was engaged in this jujitsu? Not the 38,000. According to the opinion, the woman who refused to answer a direct Facebook inquiry as to whether the Hunter laptop story was disinformation—leading to the story’s suppression—was Laura Dehmlow, the agent in charge of the secretive Foreign Influence Task Force, which Mr. Wray created in 2017. Ms. Dehmlow was among those who warned about the “hack” potential. There’s also evidence that two senior agents in Washington—both previously involved with Crossfire Hurricane—took steps to thwart the Hunter investigation. Instead of acknowledging the obvious problem of an elite FBI team of thought police, Mr. Wray once again denied the bureau had done anything wrong, and refused to answer questions about ongoing personnel issues.
Or consider yet another issue that’s landed the FBI in hot water. Mr. Wray admitted Wednesday that, to his knowledge, his hardworking 38,000 had not come up with any compelling reason for Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to issue his infamous 2021 memo putting targets on the backs of parents who attend school board meetings. Mr. Garland made that decision on his own, and now refuses to rescind the memo—subjecting his law enforcement troops to criticism.
This question of what has actually gone awry at the FBI matters, because the GOP will at some point have to do more than express outrage. As it is, Judiciary Committee Democrats had a field day with Republican threats to dismantle or defund the FBI—teeing up the GOP for blame the next time the bureau misses a real security issue.
While the Wray hearing made for tedious theater, it was no substitute for testimony from actual agents—including those who have resigned in recent years in frustration—who can illuminate the real problems at the FBI. And who can help Congress develop concrete policy steps to stop abuses that keep radiating from the top down.
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