It’s a familiar response whenever the National Weather Service warns of a Category 5 hurricane, a life-threatening winter blizzard or some other looming natural disaster. Government officials urge local citizens to seek shelter immediately, while promising that area police will keep guard to ensure that looters do not use the emergency to rob boarded-up homes and abandoned stores.
Today, Americans are being warned to brace for another kind of storm, one involving not the weather but their personal finances. Economic experts as diverse as Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio, Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Allianz advisor Mohamed El-Erian and former Harvard president Larry Summers are all predicting that the US will soon experience a major monetary upheaval as a result of the country’s unwieldy $33.5 trillion debt. As legendary investor Jim Rogers recently put it, “No nation has ever been as deeply in debt as the US is, and that cannot be good… Somebody’s going to suffer.”
Yet sadly, the government’s traditional sense of obligation to protect citizens from those who would take advantage of them during a life-threatening weather event does not extend to the coming financial tempest. Over the last decade, according to a recent study by Americans for Tax Reform, annual spending by America’s fifty state governments — excluding what they passed on from Washington — increased 51.7 percent. And total annual spending by the federal government itself rose 69.4 percent over the same period — more than three times as fast as the 21.6 percent increase in population growth, adjusted for inflation.
A close examination of the most recent jobs reports from the US Department of Labor is even more revealing. Of the 336,000 new positions added to the American economy in September, 96,000 were at some level of government. Include the 41,000 new spots that were created in government-subsidized healthcare, and 137,000 — or more than 40 percent — of all the jobs currently being filled are in the public sector.
What all this means is that federal, state and local governments have put themselves in a position to appear to economize when the coming fiscal crisis finally hits, but even after cosmetic cuts continue spending far more than if their growth had been responsibly limited. Meanwhile, all the policies that currently make public services far larger and more costly than necessary will still be on the books.
Take the example of President Biden’s deceptively named Inflation Reduction Act, which among other things creates a huge federal “Climate Corps.” As described by Presidential Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi, this force is slated to employ millions of people “to do the essential work of averting climate catastrophe and building a fair and equitable new economy” — even though no one has ever said exactly what this work would involve.
In deep blue states like New York, Democrat politicians have not even tried to disguise their use of climate legislation to guarantee a post-fiscal crisis expansion of government. The Albany legislature’s Climate Action Council, for instance, has recently published its “Scoping Plan,” which commits the Empire State to funding at least 300,000 highly-paid emissions control jobs over the coming years, completely regardless of whatever environmental technologies are actually in use at the time.
Still in place are all the federal and local education policies which mandate such cumbersome public school administrative structures that half the country’s districts have more non-instructional personnel than teachers. (The Chicago Board of Education, which currently has 3,300 employees, is larger than the entire Japanese Ministry of Education.) Unchanged as well are the so-called Certificate of Need (COD) laws which in thirty-five states prevent entrepreneurs from lowering local healthcare costs by competing with local hospital, ambulatory care, and medical testing monopolies.
And just to make sure that future public and quasi-public spending is paid for by a less affluent post-crisis electorate, the president’s Inflation Reduction Act conveniently dedicates $79.6 billion to the hiring 87,000 additional IRS agents. Last spring, the new GOP House did manage to trim $20 billion of this proposed funding as part of its budget compromise with the Senate, but the resulting $59.6 billion for new tax collectors remains an effective cudgel.
As America’s painful reckoning with the widely predicted fiscal crises gets ever closer, a growing number of commentators have expressed surprise that so many consumers are still splurging on expensive holiday excursions — what has come to be called “revenge travel.” Initially financed by the savings many had accumulated during Covid, this extended spree has since pushed the nation’s cumulative credit card debt to an all-time high of over $1 trillion. Instead of putting aside money to protect themselves from the looming financial squeeze, notes Wall Street Journal economics reporter Rachel Wolfe, the public is literally “spending like there’s no tomorrow.”
But is it really any wonder that so many people would be living for the present when their own government’s selfish response to the last national crisis — the pandemic itself — is still fresh in their minds?
Politicians were caught vacationing and partying while their constituents were commanded to lock down. Teacher union members across the country got paid not to show up for work while the intellectual development of millions of school children was stunted for lack of classroom learning. Government officials even colluded with social media to make sure that those who questioned the official orthodoxy with respect to the origins of Covid or how to treat it were bullied into silence.
If there is a fatalistic abandon afflicting American voters on the eve of what many experts predict will be an unprecedented financial cataclysm, only half of it likely stems from a fear of the fiscal crisis itself. The other half quite reasonably flows from the public’s suspicion of what happens in the aftermath: a grossly disproportionate allocation of the subsequent pain between the government and the people it supposedly exists to serve.
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Wisconsinites know that the first radio station was what now is WHA in Madison. Today in 1920, the nation’s first commercial radio station, KDKA in Pittsburgh, went on the air.
The number one British single today in 1956 is the only number one song cowritten by a vice president, Charles Dawes:
The number one song today in 1974:
The number one British album today in 1985 was Simple Minds’ “Once Upon a Time” …
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Today begins with a non-music anniversary: Today in 1870, the U.S. Weather Bureau was created, later to become the National Weather Service.
Tomorrow in 1870, the first complaints were made about the Weather Bureau’s being wrong about its forecast.
Today in 1946, two New York radio stations changed call letters. WABC, owned by CBS, became (natch) WCBS, paving the way for WJZ, owned by ABC, to become (natch) WABC seven years later. WEAF changed its call letters to WNBC.
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The Hill passes on a delightful thought from Rutgers University–Newark Prof. Alexander J. Motyl:
Is Russian President Vladimir Putin dead?
According to a mysterious Russian Telegram channel called “General SVR” and Valery Solovey, a prominent Russian political analyst, the answer is yes.
In fact, the Russian president supposedly breathed his last on Thursday, Oct. 26. The Putin we see now is thus actually his double, who, Solovey claims, has been filling in for the sickly real Putin for several months.
Few Russian or Western analysts believe General SVR and Solovey (who some say are one and the same person). After all, they have no concrete evidence supporting their sensational claims. They do provide remarkably detailed accounts of Putin’s supposed death that enhance their verisimilitude, but imaginative crackpots and secret police provocateurs would be expected to do the same.
The problem is that Solovey strikes one as anything but a crackpot or a dupe of the Federal Security Service. He has a biting sense of humor, speaks well, argues logically and generally comes across as the kind of professor every student would want. Other than his claims regarding Putin’s death and the supposed exile of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the deceased head of the mercenary Wagner Group, to an island off the coast of Venezuela, his analyses of Russia’s internal politics are invariably smart and incisive.
So, if Solovey isn’t a madman or a puppet, he must be one of two remaining possibilities.
As a would-be opposition leader who may or may not really believe that Putin is dead, Solovey may be determined to sow confusion in the ranks of Russian elites and among ordinary Russians, leading them to wonder whether the great leader is still alive and to question whether the man claiming to be Putin really is Putin — thereby undermining his legitimacy.
With Russia’s presidential elections scheduled for March 2024, popular doubt about Putin’s health and existence can only complicate the Kremlin’s plans regarding just who should run and what margin of victory should there be. Unsurprisingly, Putin’s spokesman, the ever-mendacious Dmitry Peskov, felt compelled to deny rumors of Putin’s death and the existence of Putin doubles as fake news. But, since Peskov is always assumed never to tell the truth, was the denial a confirmation, or was it really a denial?
The other possibility is that Solovey and General SVR are not bona fide independent democratic oppositionists, as they claim to be. They may in fact be agents of the security services or spokesmen for powerful elites able to provide Solovey — who lives in Moscow and, despite his savage criticism of Putin, has managed to avoid arrest — with protection. The intended effect of the death claim would be the same — doubt, confusion and delegitimation — but the fact that the instigators could be establishment elites has more worrisome implications for Putin and the political system.
Two democrats in cahoots with a handful of others in Russia can effectively spread rumors, but cannot upend the existing system. In contrast, elite efforts to delegitimize the current regime bespeak a significant crack within what appears to outside observers as a monolithic regime.
And that, in turn, means that the post-Putin power struggle has already broken out, even if the real Putin is still alive. It’s broken out because the elites, both those supporting Putin and those opposing him, believe that Putin is too enervated, too weak or too politically moribund to make a difference.
Would the elites providing cover to Solovey be democratically inclined or, at least, opposed to retaining the existing Putinite system? Given Russia’s political culture, given that its population has been taught to despise liberalism and democracy for over two decades, and given the high likelihood that establishment elites may be out to merely reform the system and not replace it, chances are that Solovey’s possible protectors are conservative reformers who would want to dismantle the worst aspects of Putinism and try to end the war against Ukraine before the number of Russian dead exceeds 300,000. Solovey himself describes his politics as liberal conservative, which may also be the appropriate modifiers to describe his protectors.
Regardless of whether Putin is physically dead or alive, the brouhaha over his rumored death clearly shows that he’s in serious trouble. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have read General SVR’s and Solovey’s claims. Many more are discussing them. Seeds of doubt about the “grandpa in the bunker,” as Putin’s critics call him, have been planted.
And just as the general and Solovey have no proof of Putin’s death, their critics have no proof of his life, as one can always claim that the man claiming to be the real Putin is really a doppelganger.
Russian politics is becoming even more bizarre than usual. Strap on your seatbelts: The next few weeks and months are likely to be even more full of surprises.
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Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu in the Wall Street Journal:
Until recently, many believed that the promise of progress in the 21st century would enable us to move beyond the barbaric horrors of the past toward a brilliant future—that we could go about our comfortable lives and that evil will simply pass us.
It will not. The horrors that Hamas perpetrated on Oct. 7 remind us that we won’t realize the promise of a better future unless we, the civilized world, are willing to fight the barbarians. The barbarians are willing to fight us, and their goal is clear: Shatter that promising future, destroy all that we cherish, and usher in a world of fear and darkness.
This is a turning point for leaders and nations. It is a time for all of us to decide if we are willing to fight for a future of hope and promise or surrender to tyranny and terror.
Rest assured, Israel will fight. Since Oct. 7, Israel has been at war. Israel didn’t start this war. Israel didn’t want this war. But Israel will win this war.
Hamas launched this war by perpetrating the worst savagery our people have seen since the Holocaust. Hamas murdered children in front of their parents and parents in front of their children. They burned people alive, raped women, beheaded men. They tortured Holocaust survivors and kidnapped babies. They committed the most horrific crimes imaginable.
Iran has formed an axis of terror by arming, training and financing Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and other terror proxies throughout the Middle East and beyond. In fighting Hamas and the Iranian axis of terror, Israel is fighting the enemies of civilization itself.
Victory over these enemies begins with moral clarity. It begins with knowing the difference between good and evil, between right and wrong. It means making a moral distinction between the deliberate murder of the innocent and the unintentional casualties that are the inevitable result of even the most just war.
It means holding Hamas accountable for the double war crime it commits every day by deliberately targeting Israeli civilians and deliberately using Palestinian civilians as human shields. It means not only making clear that the use of human shields is an immoral tactic of war, but making certain it is an ineffective one.
As long as the international community blames Israel for Hamas’s use of Palestinian human shields, Hamas will continue to employ this tool of terror. Hamas will continue to use the basements in Gaza’s hospitals as the command posts of its vast terror tunnel network. It will continue to use mosques as fortified military outposts and weapons depots. It will continue to steal fuel and humanitarian assistance from United Nations facilities.
While Israel is doing everything to get Palestinian civilians out of harm’s way, Hamas is doing everything to keep Palestinian civilians in harm’s way. Israel urges Palestinian civilians to leave the areas of armed conflict, while Hamas prevents those civilians from leaving those areas at gunpoint. Hamas is preventing foreign nationals from leaving Gaza altogether.
Most despicably, Hamas is holding more than 200 Israeli hostages, including 33 children. Every civilized nation should stand with Israel in demanding that these hostages be freed immediately and unconditionally.
I want to make clear Israel’s position regarding a cease-fire. Just as the U.S. wouldn’t have agreed to a cease-fire after the bombing of Pearl Harbor or after the terrorist attack on 9/11, Israel will not agree to a cessation of hostilities with Hamas after the horrific attacks of Oct. 7.
Calls for a cease-fire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas, to surrender to terrorism, to surrender to barbarism. That will not happen.
The Book of Ecclesiastes says that there is a time for peace and a time for war. This is a time for war—a war for our common future. Today we draw a line between civilization and barbarism. It is a time for everyone to decide where they stand. Israel will stand against the forces of barbarism until victory.
I hope and pray that civilized nations everywhere will back this fight. Because Israel’s fight is your fight. If Hamas and Iran’s axis of evil win, you will be their next target. That’s why Israel’s victory will be your victory.
Regardless of who stands with Israel, Israel will fight this battle until it is won. Israel will prevail. May God bless Israel, and may God bless all who stand with Israel.
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Today in 1963, Ed Sullivan was at Heathrow Airport in London just as the Beatles deplaned to a crowd of screaming fans and a mob of journalists and photographers.
Intrigued, Sullivan decided to investigate getting the Beatles onto his show.
Today in 1964, Ray Charles was arrested at Logan Airport in Boston and charged with heroin. Charles was sentenced to one year probation after he kicked the horse.
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This Washington Post article confirms what’s been obvious for almost two weeks: Joe Biden is playing a double game when it comes to the war between Israel and Hamas. Biden uses public pronouncements of support for Israel’s effort to destroy Hamas as cover for his private pressure on Israel to eschew measures necessary for that destruction.
Here’s how the Post puts it:
In public, President Biden and his top officials have indicated support for a planned ground offensive if Israel concludes that that is its best move, while adding that they are asking “tough questions” about the idea. The private advice is a significant departure from the administration’s public posture, and it is a distinct shift from the administration’s position in the days immediately after the Hamas attack inside Israel. . . .
Right.
What, though, is Biden’s private advice to Israel? According to the Post, Biden’s advice is that instead of an invasion of Gaza, the Israelis should “opt for a more ‘surgical’ operation using aircraft and special operations forces carrying out precise, targeted raids on high-value Hamas targets and infrastructure.” This, according to “five U.S. officials familiar with the discussions” between the Biden administration and the Israeli government. (I guess that private advice isn’t so private any longer.)
But the danger Hamas poses to Israel can’t be eliminated through the “narrowly tailored” methods Biden recommends. That danger will remain unless the terrorist outfit’s weaponry is destroyed; its vast web of tunnels is eliminated; and its foot soldiers are killed or captured (preferably killed).
None of this can be accomplished with “surgical” operations against high-value Hamas targets and infrastructure. That approach is similar to what Israel has attempted in response to past aggression by Hamas. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.
All Hamas targets and infrastructure must be destroyed if Israel is to end, at least for a decent interval, the threat from Gaza. And this can only be accomplished through a full-scale invasion.
Sure, there are disadvantages to Israel associated with such an invasion. The Israelis are smart enough to know what these disadvantages are, but I have no problem with Biden pointing them out — as I’m sure he and his team have done ad nauseum by now.
But even Biden must understand the inadequacy of the alternative he’s proposing. The U.S. operation against ISIS, which began when Biden was Vice President, was not limited to surgical strikes against high value targets and infrastructure. Instead, the U.S. used boots on the ground to attack the ISIS “Caliphate.” And remember, that Caliphate posed less of a threat to the U.S. than Hamas poses to Israel.
Under President Trump, the mission against ISIS was accomplished. ISIS wasn’t destroyed — it still exists. However, it was driven out of the large territory it controlled and its terrorists were dealt an enormous blow.
This is what Israel apparently has decided it needs to do to Hamas in Gaza. Now that the war-time government has heard Team Biden’s arguments and attempted to answer its questions, it would be nice if Biden returned to his initial stance in this war — that “Israel has the right to defend itself and its people. Full stop” — and adhere to that stance both in public and in private.
In contrast, Virginia Allen:
If elected president, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says he has a plan to combat the threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to the U.S. and American democracy, a threat that he says represents no less than a “global dystopia.”
“The threat posed by the CCP requires our primary focus and attention right now,” DeSantis said during a speech at The Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., Friday morning, adding that China is America’s “first truly peer competitor that we have dealt with in our lifetimes.” (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of Heritage.)
“A world that’s dominated by CCP will see them export their authoritarian vision all across the world,” he warned. “This will be a world marked by internet policing, artificial intelligence, facial recognition, and social credit scores. It will end up creating a global dystopia.”
DeSantis said his plan to combat the threat from China is multifaceted, but put simply, it boils down to, “We win and they lose.”
First, the governor pledged that as president he would “modernize and bolster our military capability to deter CCP aggression” because “peace can only be achieved through strength.”
To this end, the Florida governor said he would strengthen America’s Navy with “355 ships by the end of the first term, 385 by the end of the second term, and a pathway for 600 ships within the next 20 years.”
Second, DeSantis said the U.S. must “unleash America’s full economic potential and prevent the CCP from surpassing us as an economic power.”
“Third thing we have to do,” the governor continued, “is ensure robust technological dominance in fields like robotics, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, biotech and blockchain.”
To maintain America’s presence on the world stage and combat China’s growing power, DeSantis said America must also “defend the homeland against CCP influence.” According to the governor, this includes securing America’s borders, preventing the CCP from purchasing American land, revamping “domestic intel and law enforcement agencies,” and removing CCP influence from America’s colleges and universities.
Finally, he said America must combat China by standing “for individual liberty and human dignity. We need to expose CCP oppression. We need to give hope to those chafing under authoritarian rule.”
DeSantis criticized not only of President Joe Biden’s handling of China, but also American foreign policy at large.
“The Biden foreign policy is rudderless, weak, misguided, and solicitous of America’s adversary,” he said, pointing to the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, sanctions relief on Iran, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Hamas’ attack on Israel, and the situation along America’s border with Mexico.
“We have a major national security issue in our own country at our own southern border,” DeSantis said. “We’ve had 7 to 8 million people pour into this country illegally since Joe Biden took office,” he added, noting that individuals are illegally crossing the border from the Middle East, Russia, and China.
Customs and Border Protection encountered over 3.2 million illegal aliens on Americas border and at ports of entry in fiscal year 2023 alone. Among these, 57,163 came from Russia and 52,700 from China.
Securing America’s southern border is “not just the right thing for the United States in terms of the rule of law and our economy, it is a national security issue and it’s one that we need to tackle,” DeSantis said.
While speaking of the current conflict in the Middle East, DeSantis blamed Iran for funding and orchestrating Hamas’s recent attack on Israel.
The Florida governor said he has expanded ties with Israel while leading the Sunshine State and he pledged to continue to support Israel if elected president.
On Thursday, the governor’s office said that it is sending weapons, drones, body armor, and other items to Israel to assist the nation in its war against Hamas.
“At the request of the Israeli Consul General in Miami, cargo planes contracted by Florida were used to transport healthcare and hospital supplies, drones, body armor, and helmets that first responders can use,” Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for DeSantis’s office, said in a statement reported by CNN.
The Israeli government acquired the equipment, according to CNN, and asked Florida for help transporting the items to Israel on two cargo planes that also carried donated medical supplies, clothing, and other essentials.
Israel needs to “end Hamas once and for all,” DeSantis said during his Friday speech, adding that “we should be supportive of that, not just publicly, but also in private, not just in words, but also in our deeds.”
DeSantis’ speech at Heritage is part of the ongoing Mandate for Leadership Series presented by The Heritage Foundation and The Epoch Times. Named after Heritage’s signature publication, “Mandate for Leadership,” first released in 1981 and updated over the years, the series features public policy discussions on some of the most critical issues America faces today.
Heritage released the latest “Mandate for Leadership” book in April. It includes contributions from more than 35 primary authors and hundreds of contributors, each focused on providing research and recommendations to every department of government, from Homeland Security to Education to Agriculture.
The book is intended to serve as a roadmap of policy solutions prepared by conservatives for the next administration. The Mandate for Leadership Series features discussions focused on the policy issues in the book and has included remarks from Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., who serves as chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
The Mandate for Leadership Series highlights that “America is at a crossroads,” Kevin Roberts, The Heritage Foundation president, said. “Every election is vital, but this election of 2024 really will dictate whether the republic continues its lurch toward decline,” or whether America will be brought to “a new series of victories, both domestically and in terms of national security.”
Remember when we had presidents who could correctly identify the bad guys?
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Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is pushing back against claims from some in the media that an education bill she signed into law back in late May involved banning books.
Senate File 496 prohibited books with written and visual depictions of sex acts from school libraries.
“If you’re a parent, and you think it’s important … for your child to have access to that, then OK, go buy the book. We didn’t ban them,” Reynolds said at a Wednesday news conference.
“Go buy the book, sit down, and have a conversation with your child, but let’s not put that on the teachers, and let’s not put that on the schools,” said Reynolds, a Republican who won a landslide reelection last November.
Charges of “book banning” have spread among left-leaning and LGBTQ groups in the past few years. Some claim, without evidence, that up to 2,532 books were removed from schools in the 2021-2022 school year alone.
“We know this is false because we examined online card catalogues and found that 74% of the books PEN America identified as banned from school libraries are actually listed as available in the catalogues of those school districts. Among the books that PEN America alleges were banned are classic works, such as ‘Anne Frank’s Diary,’ ‘Brave New World,’ ‘Lord of the Flies,’ ‘Of Mice and Men,’ ‘The Color Purple,’ and ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’ In every school district in which PEN America alleges those books were banned, we found copies listed as available in the online card catalogue,” wrote researchers Jay Greene and Madison Marino of The Heritage Foundation in a report in May. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.)
The books removed from schools, like in Iowa, have been few in number, and typically contained sexually graphic content.
One of the books declared to be inappropriate for schools in Iowa was “All Boys Aren’t Blue.” Reynolds said she read an excerpt from that book to Des Moines’ NBC affiliate, WHO TV News, “and you all [the media] couldn’t even show that portion of the interview … the media was uncomfortable with saying that on TV, but yet somebody believes our kids should be subjected to that.”
“Our kids and our teachers deserve better,” Reynolds said. “They deserve the tools to help these kids succeed. Not a damn distraction on a nasty, pornographic book that should never, ever be in a classroom.”
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Today in 1938, CBS (radio, obviously, because there was no TV yet) broadcasted The Mercury Theater on the Air production of “The War of the Worlds,” from H.G. Wells’ novel.
Some number of listeners who missed the opening (such as those listening to the NBC Red Network’s “Chase and Sanborn” show with ventriloquist Edgar Bergen who changed the channel when Nelson Eddy started signing) thought the simulated news bulletins were actual news bulletins about the Martian invasion, or an invasion by Nazi Germany. Half an hour into the broadcast, the CBS switchboard lit up, and police arrived at the studios. As he had planned, Welles concluded the broadcast by calling it the equivalent “of dressing up in a sheet, jumping out of a bush and saying, ‘Boo!’”
Then, the actors and producer John Houseman (before he became a law school professor and pitchman for Smith Barney) were locked into a storeroom while CBS executives grabbed every copy of the script. And then the reporters showed up.
The New York Times/Wikipedia At WGAR radio in Cleveland, host Jack Paar (yes, that Jack Paar) reassured callers that Martians were not actually invading. Paar was immediately accused of covering up the news.
The number one single today in 1971:
A low, low moment in rock history: Today in 1978, NBC-TV broadcast “Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park”:
(The entire movie, believe it or don’t, can be viewed on YouTube.)
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There is no question what is the number one song today in 1966:
Today in 1983, Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon” spent its 491st week on the charts, surpassing the previous record set by Johnny Mathis’ “Johnny’s Greatest Hits.” “Dark Side of the Moon” finally departed the charts in October 1988, after 741 weeks on the charts.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 