Reportedly, the president told Myeshia Johnson that her husband, Sergeant La David Johnson, “knew what he was signing up for.” Set aside Gold Star father and retired General John Kelly’s claim that Trump spoke based on Kelly’s counsel, and hold off on the important discussions about whether this entire episode was inappropriately politicized. Instead, consider whether what President Trump reportedly said to a grieving widow is what much of the country actually believes about military service. Consider whether we are all too casual about the ultimate sacrifice that service sometimes requires.
To say that soldiers know what they’re getting into is to acknowledge that ours is an all-volunteer force. Members of our military are not conscripted, but consciously choose a profession that involves physical risk. And we, as taxpayers and citizens, hire those professionals to perform that dangerous work. We outsource the necessity of security to a subset of the population. We believe that we compensate those serving us at fair market price and that, because they accept that price, our role in the transaction is over. And we have begun to act as though we are entitled to that service by virtue of paying the bills.
But to think about our sociopolitical contract with the military in purely transactional terms dramatically limits how we understand our responsibilities to each other. This is not a customer-company relationship, but one between citizens equal before the same constitution, vulnerable to the same threats, sharing the same interests. The fact that only some Americans defend those interests at risk to their own lives in order to benefit all of us elevates national military service beyond being a mere market solution to a labor problem. It makes it a moral debt. We pay some; they pay more, and differently.
To be sure, many Americans have a sneaking sense of this uncomfortable fact. But that is why telling ourselves that “they signed up for it” is so reassuring. How many Americans have seen the names of the dead on television and paused for just a moment before changing the channel to shift from discomfort to entertainment? How many have marveled that anyone could have signed up for a job that gets them sent to Iraq? How many have read the stories about the four men killed in action in Niger on October 4 and felt badly but not known what to do and therefore done nothing? Very many. That’s the social contract we have with our all-volunteer military: They sign up, and we busy ourselves elsewhere.
It is true that they signed up. Military professionals are professionals. As a profession, it is fulfilling and sometimes demoralizing. We should not dismiss sacrifice, but neither is the point to pity those who have suffered in the course of work the country depends on. The point is that we should also feel invested in it. The point is that it is work we should acknowledge through more than just taxes. We should pay some attention. We should care about what these men and women are doing.
In the grind and rush of our daily lives at home, many of us don’t think very hard about where we are sending our fellow citizens. Many people are asking what our soldiers were even doing in Niger in the first place, as if U.S. counterterrorism efforts had never been covered by the news, discussed in congressional hearings, or explained on the Africa Command website. Why did we have to lose four soldiers before we all began to pay attention to where they’d been?
There has been a lot of debate recently about the quality of our democracy. One of the measures of that quality is whether all citizens engage in the gravest decisions our government makes. It is both ethical and healthy for those who don’t fight to reflect on the service done on their behalf. It isn’t sufficient simply to adjust our rhetoric or occasionally thank a Marine for her service. We must pay attention. We must try to understand. If there is no sense of debt nor reflection on our responsibility to the soldier and his widow and his orphan, then the service and its outcomes are taken for granted and thought of as unrelated to how we live our own lives. People in uniform do indeed know what they sign up for. So should those of us who do not serve.
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The number one single today in 1959:
Today in 1970, the Who’s Keith Moon was trying to escape from a gang of skinheads when he accidentally hit and killed chauffeur Neil Boland.
The problem was Moon’s attempt at escape. He had never passed his driver’s license test.
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Stephen L. Miller asks an inconvenient question about this photo from London’s Daily Mail:
The most striking images coming out of the Iran human rights protests are not of men – they are of women. And while American media was slow and even hesitant to pick up that anything at all was actually happening – this, while protests ignited for what is now six full days around Iran, nine years after the Green Movement protests began – Twitter was flooded with videos and photos on the ground, in defiance of the Iranian regime’s social media policy.
Almost none was more striking than a young Iranian woman standing atop a container and shedding her hijab – a garment mandated and enforced upon her and all women in Iran – while simultaneously waving it as a flag. It was an act of defiance much like that of the Iranian chess champion Dorsa Derakhshani, who was expelled from competition in Iran for refusing to wear a headscarf in competition.
There were unconfirmed reports that the unidentified girl was taken into custody and the spot where she stood had become a makeshift shrine, but because of the scattering of information on the ground there’s no way to confirm that.
Nevertheless, she became an immediate symbol for the growing movement now in its fifth full day. Twitter avatars were changed to an illustration capturing the moment. The drawing was spread on Facebook. But she wasn’t the only one.
Another video spread on social media shows a woman confronting security forces and proclaiming “Death to Khamenei” while crowds around her join in.
Mind you, this wasn’t inauguration protests from January of last year with celebrity activists screaming freely into microphones about how much they’ve thought about blowing up the White House. This was a woman endangering her life and possibly the lives of her loved ones to stand up to government forces of a hardline Islamic theocracy. She was risking death. And yet, nevertheless, she persisted.
Another woman was seen on tape declaring “You raised your fists and ruined our lives. Now we raise our fists. Be men, join us. I as a woman will stand in front and protect you. Come represent your country.”
Another image that managed to make its way into some mainstream coverage shows a young woman – reported to be a student – covering her face as she runs from tear gas just outside the University of Tehran, her fist raised defiantly in the air. She was a symbol of a growing secular youth movement merging with thousands of others protesting the regime’s involvement with Hezbollah, Hamas and Syria.
And as the protests entered their fifth night, another striking video on Twitter shows a woman demanding fair wages and an end to regime attempts to silence them. Women reportedly led protests in the city of Isfahan.
Every one of these searing images are of women. Women are the predominant face of this blossoming revolution. Women are risking the most to speak out against the Iranian Mullahs. So the question must be asked: Where are the women’s movement supporters in the United States and Europe, which gathered en masse to protest a newly inaugurated American president last year?
More specifically, empowered by the cultural muscle of #MeToo celebrity leaders and Women’s March organizers such as Linda Sarsour: Why are you silent? If these nameless women can speak out in the face of true tyranny, risking actual imprisonment and death, why can’t you?
Iranian women are not adorning pink knitted hats, or costumes resembling female genitalia. They won’t be attending award shows. They aren’t wearing red cloaks and bonnets inspired by their favorite Netflix show. No, these brave women are caught on videotape and in photographs for the world to see, and the women’s movements have yet to barely offer so much as a tweet or a Facebook post of support. The official Women’s March Twitter account has tweeted exactly zero times in support of women protesting in Iran. Zero.
Among such “women’s” leaders as Tamika Mallory, Carmen Perez, Janaye Ingram and Linda Sarsour, only one tweet has been offered at all about the protests, and that came from Sarsour and had nothing to do with the women at all, but President Trump. “Is it just me or is Trump praising Iranian protesters AND at the same time also banned Iranians from entering the USA?”
What seems to be lost on Ms. Sarsour is that these women are currently risking their lives and protesting – not for the right to come to the United States – but for the rights to live and thrive in their own country.
I do sympathize with Sarsour and the women’s movement of the political left and their sudden predicament with supporting these brave women. Women in Iran are shedding their hijabs while progressive women’s movements in the United States try to hold them up as a symbol of empowerment and feminism – going so far as Shepard Fairey-esque illustrations attempting to mainstream the hijab into pop culture.
What’s empowering about the hijab is the choice to don one. Muslim women in the United States have that choice. Women in Iran do not. If these pro-women groups are all about choice for deprived women around the globe, now would be a good time to speak up on behalf of them.
Women in Iran are standing in defiance of the regime’s financial support of Hezbollah and Hamas rather than fair wages and human rights. But for progressive women’s groups to oppose Hamas in the face of these protests, it would mean abandoning months of pro-Palestinian support, capped off last week when pop singer Lorde cancelled her Tel Aviv show.
Sarsour, as a self-professed leading advocate for Muslim women in the United States and around the world, should be asked to clarify her position by journalists who are all too eager to present her with awards and speaking gigs: Does she support the women of Iran or the hardline theocracy that is currently brutalizing them?
Remaining silent in the face of this growing movement is another black eye for Sarsour in particular, who is facing charges of ignoring complaints of sexual abuse while she was director of the Arab American Association.
Of the prominent supporters for progressive women’s movements in Congress, only Bernie Sanders has offered measurable support for the protestors, tweeting, “It is the right of all people to speak out against their government. The government of Iran should respect this right and heed the voices of thousands of Iranians who are demonstrating across the country for better opportunities and a better future.” Not hard stuff.
Chuck Schumer found time to tweet out support of the New York Giants football team keeping quarterback Eli Manning, but not for the women now splashed across news services worldwide.
Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand – leading progressive women’s rights advocates all – have not only not released statements in support of these women, they’ve said nothing in support of the protests at all. Not a press release. Not a tweet. Nothing.
Hillary Clinton has not offered support of the women beyond a tweet stating she hopes “their government responds peacefully and supports their hopes.” Hate to break it to the onetime self-declared ceiling breaker, but the government is very much not responding peacefully nor are they supporting their hopes. They are, indeed, emboldened financially by an Iran Nuclear deal she herself claimed partial credit for.
Powerful women in entertainment have never been hesitant to raise their voices and organize in support of their personal beliefs. And today, because of the #MeToo wave, they have never been more influential in politics or culture. Yet they remain silent. First Lady Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump could also certainly publicly show support, but would the left then just simply write off joining them?
Political support for the women of Iran would of course contradict the careful echo chamber narrative Democrat politicians spent months crafting in support of President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran – which is in fact a major reason for the uprising happening now. The Mullahs squandered most of their financial windfall from the Iran deal on support for terror groups such as the Assad regime, Hezbollah and Hamas after promising to invest it in the people at home. The people of Iran have had enough of these empty promises.
More importantly, the women of Iran have had enough and are leading the way, with or without public support from the self-declared women’s groups on the left around the world, who have decided they are the public voice of resistance for women – except in places where a collective voice of support could actually help women the most. Their ideas of empowerment apparently stop where their politics start.
Despite a world attempting to rationalize looking away, a solitary woman stood up in defiance of the rule of law, risked her life and removed her head scarf. She did this at the risk of arrest, or death. She did this without public support from women’s groups who claim their entire existence is to support this very act of defiance. While they remain silent, I’m with her.
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The number one single on both sides of the Atlantic today in 1957:
Today in 1964, NBC-TV’s Tonight show showed the first U.S. video of the Beatles:
Today in 1967, Beach Boy Carl Wilson got his draft notice, and declared he was a conscientious objector.
Today in 1969, Jimi Hendrix appeared on BBC’s Lulu show, and demonstrated the perils of live TV:
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Michael Graham:
It’s the first day back at work in 2018 for us pundit types, and already one of last year’s biggest memes is back too, courtesy of the Iran protests: #ThatsHowYouGetTrump.
The premise of the meme is that, while intellectual elites might be smart in a general way about broad political issues, they failed to see their practical impact on real people—particularly blue-collar, lower-middle-class people—here at home. So, for example, while elites write 5,000 word articles about the evils of building a border wall, many Americans are more moved by stories like the shooting of Kate Steinle, allegedly carried out by an illegal immigrant, or the diversity lottery terrorist who hit New York City on Halloween.
On foreign policy, President Obama offered a nuanced argument for refusing to back up his “red line” on Syrian use of chemical weapons against children, while President Trump later offered arguments—just a missile barrage that so far has brought the attacks to an end.
And so it is with the street protests in Iran, a story that’s impossible to view apart from the Iran Deal, the centerpiece of Obama’s foreign policy.
The anti-regime protests, the Rouhani government’s violent crackdown and the resulting deaths all feed the notion that liberal elites have “an inability to see the forest through the trees,” as Mideast analyst Michael Rubin puts it—on Iran, or on the world as a whole. It’s another argument for the pro-Trump view that, while Barack Obama had a patina of egghead-ism and elegance, the current president at least knows the good guys from the bad guys.
And for most Americans, Iran has long been the bad guys. More than 80 percent of Americans have had an unfavorable view of Iran for decades, with more than 70 percent consistently describing its Islamist government as a “critical threat” to the US.
And with good reason. After all, the Iranian regime has:
· Funded Hezbollah terrorists.
· Backed the chemical-weapon using Assad regime in Syria.
· Humiliated US sailors when a damaged ship drifted into Iranian waters.
· Repeatedly tested ballistic missile technology in violation of UN resolutions.
And they’ve done all this after striking the Iran Deal with President Obama. No wonder most Americans opposed the deal at the time (though support has picked up since Trump took office, likely a symptom of anti-Trump partisanship). In other words, this is how the Iranians behave when you’re nice to them.
As former Ambassador John Bolton wrote on the one-year anniversary of the Iran Deal: “Tehran has disproved any idea that acceding to its nuclear demands would cause basic shifts in its international conduct.” Obama defenders argue that changing their behavior was never the goal, it was merely, as President Obama put it when he announced the agreement, “preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. This deal does exactly that.”
Except it doesn’t. The Iran Deal allows Iran to do whatever it wants when restrictions “sunset” in seven years. In the meantime, Iran has rejected “any time, anywhere” inspections that were promised by the Obama administration and continues to test new, more advanced centrifuges. As a result, says Michael Rubin, “Iran would have access to an industrial-scale nuclear program, fully-funded, with few restrictions and the most advanced centrifuges as soon as the sunset clauses within the [Iran Deal] came into effect.”
That’s bad. What’s worse is recent reporting of what it cost America to make Obama’s deal in the first place. In 2016, many Americans were horrified to learn that the Obama administration had secretly flown pallets of cash—literally millions of dollars— to the Iranians as part of a prisoner swap to sweeten the deal for Iran. Dangerous actors from the Iranian regime were either released or had their criminal cases dropped, along with a total payout of $1.7 billion in contested money, in exchange for the release of four Americans wrongly held by the Iranian regime.
Since then, Politico has reported that the Obama administration shut down an investigation into drug dealing and gun running by Hezbollah—Iran’s terrorist allies—in the lead up to the Iran Deal. Obama officials acknowledge that cases were dropped but deny that these decision were in any way linked to appeasing Iran. Members of Congress are now calling for an investigation.
The American people now see the same regime that the Obama administration strengthened shooting its own people in the streets. The average American never would have trusted the Iranians, and they know Donald Trump agrees.
When Obama administration smart guys like Ben Rhodes and John Kerry describe Trump as a simpleton, many Trump supporters would agree: Simple, yes. But right. As opposed to smart but wrong. That’s the political force Trump has tapped into.
Interestingly, the protesters in Iran appear to have a similar view. Among the slogans reportedly being shouted in the streets are “Let go of Syria. Put your thoughts on us,” “Not Gaza, Not Lebanon, We Will Give Our Lives to Iran,” and “We are Iranians, we don’t worship Islamism.” These protesters hoped the financial benefits of the Iran Deal would reach them. Instead, the regime continues to fund terrorism abroad and their citizens are angry. You could almost translate their message to “Make Iran Great Again.”
Betting on Iran abandoning terror or becoming an ally was always a bad bet. Barack Obama and the Washington elites made it. And #ThatsHowYouGetTrump.
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David French goes back to 1988:
The rapture was supposed to happen on September 13, 1988. A few fringe pastors were screaming that the end was nigh, that the righteous would soon disappear into the air while the rest of humanity was doomed to suffer a quite literal hell on earth. Forget the biblical admonition that no man knows the day nor hour of Christ’s return, these men had figured it out. It was time to prepare yourself.
I was a sophomore at a Christian college in Nashville, and it was the talk of the campus. No one likes to make fun of crazy Christian preachers more than irreverent Christian college students, and we couldn’t stop dividing the student body between the saved and the damned.
When the alarm clock rang the morning after the scheduled rapture, I hit snooze, and said, triumphantly, to my roommate, “We’re still here!” There was no response. “Hello?” Still no response. I looked down at his bed, and no one was there. For about nine seconds I was gripped by sheer panic. I’d been left behind. The lake of fire awaits! Then my roommate walked in from the shower, and the crisis passed.I thought of this story as I watched Rush Limbaugh’s Al Gore “armageddon” clock expire. In January, 2006 — when promoting his Oscar-winning (yes, Oscar-winning) documentary, An Inconvenient Truth — Gore declared that unless we took “drastic measures” to reduce greenhouse gasses, the world would reach a “point of no return” in a mere ten years. He called it a “true planetary emergency.” Well, the ten years passed today, we’re still here, and the climate activists have postponed the apocalypse. Again.
There’s a veritable online cottage industry cataloguing hysterical, failed predictions of environmentalist catastrophe.
Gore’s prediction fits right in with the rest of his comrades in the wild-eyed environmentalist movement. There’s a veritable online cottage industry cataloguing hysterical, failed predictions of environmentalist catastrophe. Over at the American Enterprise Institute, Mark Perry keeps his list of “18 spectacularly wrong apocalyptic predictions” made around the original Earth Day in 1970. Robert Tracinski at The Federalist has a nice list of “Seven big failed environmentalist predictions.” The Daily Caller’s “25 years of predicting the global warming ‘tipping point’” makes for amusing reading, including one declaration that we had mere “hours to act” to “avert a slow-motion tsunami.”
But for sheer vivid lunacy, nothing matches this Good Morning America report from 2008:The images show Manhattan shrinking against the onslaught of the rising seas — in 2015. Last year. Gasoline was supposed to be $9 per gallon. Milk would cost almost $13 per gallon. Wildfires would rage, hurricanes would strike with ever-greater intensity. By the end of the clip I was expecting to see the esteemed doctors Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, and Ray Stantz step forward to predict, “Rivers and Seas boiling!” “Forty years of darkness!” And of course the ultimate disasters: “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together . . . Mass hysteria!”
Can we ignore them yet? Apparently not. Being a climate hysteric means never having to say you’re sorry. Simply change the cataclysm — Overpopulation! No, global cooling! No, global warming! No, climate change! — push the apocalypse back just a few more years, and you’re in business, big business.
Being a climate hysteric means never having to say you’re sorry.
In reality, I respect the wild-eyed rapture-pastors far more than the climate hysterics. They merely ask me to believe, they don’t use the power of government to dictate how I live. Pastors aren’t circumventing the democratic process to impose dangerous and job-killing environmental regulations. Draconian fuel-economy standards have actually cost American lives. And now the coal industry is reeling in part because of stringent EPA standards. Overall, the EPA’s climate-change regulations are set to impose enormous economic costs.Even worse, the hysterics are hypocrites. It’s austerity for thee but not for me as they jet around the globe to speak to adoring audiences about the need for sacrifice. As Good Morning America broadcast its shrieking warning about Manhattan’s imminent doom, how many environmentalist liberals were selling their Park Avenue apartments and moving to higher ground? They’re like a drunk preacher screaming about the evils of demon rum. They refuse to walk their talk. As Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds often says, we should believe there’s a crisis when the alarmists start acting like there’s a crisis.
There are indeed scientists laboring away in good faith to understand more about our climate, and I applaud their work. But climate activists all too often are the close cousins of politically correct campus race hucksters — they cloak their raw will to power in the self-righteous cloak of the great and glorious cause. We’ve taken them seriously for far too long. Now, it’s time to laugh.
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The number one album today in 1965 was the soundtrack to “Roustabout”:
Today in 1968, the complete shipment of John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s new album, “Two Virgins,” was confiscated by New Jersey authorities due to the album cover. A revised cover was used in record stores:
Click here to see why the album cover was revised.
The number one album today in 1971 was fellow ex-Beatle George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass”:
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For, let’s see, about the 18th year and the 11th consecutive year, it’s time for That Was the Year That Was 2017, patterned on …
In contrast to the ’60s British TV series “That Was the Week That Was,” rarely has been a year of so many things that defied rational description. Some of them had nothing to do with America’s First Tweeter, either.
Let’s start with the worst trend of 2017, a continuation of the last few years — tribalism and people’s stubborn refusal to judge things on their merits. That includes unthinking praise of everything Donald Trump does, and knee-jerk criticism of anything Donald Trump does.
Worst trend number 1B is also a continuation of the last few years — hypersensitivity and, on the left, unthinking accusations of racism, sexism, misogyny and every other -ism they hate, and on the right, unthinking accusations of disloyalty, particularly when confronted by ideas they don’t agree with but cannot say why or what’s wrong with those ideas.
I saw an example of that Sunday — the latest Star Wars movie, which some conservatives have been complaining about because of what they claim to be too much diversity. As if normal viewers should care one way or another about that.
I’m certainly fine with the self-demolition of Harvey Weinstein, Kevin Spacey, Al Franken, Garrison Keillor, Matt Lauer, U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore, etc., whose past bad acts ended their careers this year. Due process was completely ignored, of course, which will make for interesting days depending on which liberal icon is next claimed to be a sexual harasser like Bill Clinton. (Who skated, as did Hillary, because of their positions on abortion rights.)
How did The Donald do? Rob Saker posted this list …
… I expected Jeff Sessions to be beyond horrible. I think I am on the record as saying I believe him to be an authoritarian religious zealot who isn’t very bright. To date, I can’t think of anything he has done that I disagree with (Any suggestions on how to prepare crow would be appreciated).
My list of great accomplishments…
1. Signed an Executive Order demanding that two regulations be killed for every new one creates. He cut 16 regulations for every one created, saving $8.1 billion.
2. Gorsuch on the SCOTUS.
3. Tax cut bill.
4. Jerusalem announcement, ending a game of delaying tactics and signaling our firm support for Israel (after they were attacked by Obama’s administration).
5. Revoking the EPA’s navigable waters interpretation, which was an egregious seizure of property rights.
6. Nominated 73 federal judges. Trump is filling up lower courts with lifetime appointees.
7. Recognized opioids as a national epidemic and putting resources against it. This is possibly Obama’s greatest failure.
8. Removed the gloves on the fight with ISIS. What was believed a year ago to be a war that would last years is now in its last stages.
9. Eliminating the Obamacare individual mandate.
10. Generating such confidence in the economy that a mature market saw record gains (Yes, Obama saw large gains but on an artificially low market thanks to the crash).
11. Respect for law making process. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the Department of Justice will cease the practice initiated by President Obama of issuing “guidance memos” to enact new regulations that sometimes have had the effect of changing federal laws.
12. Diversity of opinions. EPA Director Scott Pruitt placed 66 new experts on three different EPA scientific committees who espouse more conservative views than their predecessors.
13. Manufacturing. During Trump’s first six months, the manufacturing index was the highest it had been since 1983 under President Reagan. Michigan’s ISM reported its June barometer of manufacturing rose to 57.8, the fastest pace in three years (50 is flat).
14. Withdrawal from a Paris climate treaty that would have required huge sums on the US with no appreciable beneficial impact on the climate.
15. Rescinded Title IX “dear colleague” letter that led to kangaroo courts and the denial of due process. There are numerous general benefits such as VA reform, reducing waste in government spending, and a healthy uptick in government job attrition.
… to which was added:
Arctic wildlife drilling, keystone pipeline, UN budget cut
Hiring freeze at State.
Placing a Secretary of HUD who has lived in public housing.
With respect to policy toward North Korea, no longer kicking the can down the road.How did the stock market do?
Based on admittedly a small sample size, Trump could be said to be the most pro-business president in the nation’s history. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained one-third in the 14 months since Trump was elected president.
As someone who did not vote for Trump but has vowed to praise Trump when praise is due and condemn Trump when condemnation is due (see previous comment about tribalism), I find that to be a pretty good list of accomplishments, whether Trump actually accomplished them or regular old Republicans did. Trump’s various idiotic tweets and public statements make some people forget those actual accomplishments, while other question, with some validity, who deserves credit — Trump or “establishment” Republicans — for those accomplishments.
Meanwhile, how was Gov. Scott Walker’s year?
The project at the top made Kevin Binversie comment:
You know who I feel sorry for sometimes? The children of deeply-committed Scott Walker haters who due to their parents’ obsessions will never own either an iPhone, Nintendo Switch or 3DS.
All three products are assembled by Foxconn.
The MacIver Institute assembled its own top 10 list, which included:
#10 – WISDOT Audit
It was a bad sign when Wisconsin Department of Transportation Secretary Mark Gottlieb resigned just weeks before the Legislative Audit Bureau was set to release a report on the State Highway Program. When the report came out in January, it was in a word – devastating.
The auditors found the DOT regularly breaks state law in budgeting, negotiating, communicating, and managing contracts. Among these statutory violations: the department does not always solicit bids from more than one vendor, it does not spread out solicitations throughout the year, it does not post required information on its website, its cost estimates to the governor are incomplete, and it skips steps in the evaluation process for selecting projects. These practices manifest themselves through an inescapable reality: the cost of major projects tends to double after the DOT gets approval from the governor and Legislature to proceed. The auditors looked at 16 current highway projects and found they are over-budget by $3.1 billion.
Some public officials tried to spin the report, claiming it indicated the state is not spending enough on transportation. That didn’t fly. Instead the audit became an insurmountable obstacle for those seeking to raise the gas tax. It also sparked a series of reforms that aimed to make the DOT more transparent and accountable to the taxpayers of Wisconsin.
#8 – UW Regents Protect Free Speech
As protests and demonstrations gripped campuses across the country, the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents took a stand for free expression this year. In October, the Regents voted to allow any UW campus to expel students who repeatedly disrupt speakers or stifle speech.
The sole dissenting vote was that of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers, who is running for governor.
Jose Delgado, a UW Regent who came to America from his native Cuba in 1961 at the age of 13, spoke to MacIver about his yes vote. Delgado’s family fled the oppressive Castro regime, which brutally struck down dissenting speech. Delgado said that back then, the Cuban government would simply arrest and murder anyone who disagreed with it. For that reason, the 70-year-old said, he has always been passionate about his freedom of speech as an American. He’s been deeply troubled by the decline of peaceful dialogue, especially on university campuses.
Summing up his reason for the vote, Delgado said “I cannot make you listen, but I can certainly prevent others from preventing you from listening. You have the right to listen.”
#7 – Gas Tax Battle Heats Up
Predictably, the forces behind a push to increase the state gas tax, vehicle registration fee, or other source of revenue for transportation saddled up in 2017.
Gov. Walker – insistent he would not sign a budget that raised the gas tax or registration fees – made the first move when he appointed Dave Ross to be secretary of the Department of Transportation after the resignation of Mark Gottlieb. Since he took over in January, Ross has been steadfast in insisting the department doesn’t need new revenue, it needs to find savings in the multibillion dollar budget it already has.
Members of the Legislature spent the summer sparring over the issue. A protracted public relations battle raged across the state – possibly manifesting itself in a series of phony letters to the editor that appeared in newspapers from Janesville to Rice Lake begging lawmakers to increase taxes. All along, MacIver was suspicious that more revenue was truly needed – and we found plenty of examples to back us up.
Proponents of an increased gas tax have advocated putting more money into a department with a record of wasting it. We, at MacIver, refuse to just go along with this ‘increase taxes first, ask questions later’ mentality. We’ve suggested instead that Secretary Ross should have the opportunity to scour the department for savings before Madison lawmakers foist a permanent tax increase on Wisconsinites.
#6 – Russia, Russia, Russia!
Unless you’ve been living under a rock with no human contact throughout all of 2017, you’ve likely heard the words “Russia” and “collusion” on a near-daily basis.
Ever since President Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton, liberals – still in shock that they lost – have been charging that the Trump campaign was working with Russian agents behind the scenes to hack the election, propagate fake news, and swing the election. Throughout 2017, a special investigation being run by former FBI Director Robert Mueller has produced nonstop daily headlines that might sound nefarious to the casual observer. But other than nabbing Michael Flynn for lying to the FBI (never do that, by the way) the probe has so far come up mostly empty-handed.
We saw the birth of this story all the way back in December 2016, when members of Wisconsin’s electoral college cast their ballots for Donald Trump at the state Capitol – the first time Wisconsin Republicans did so since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide. While they voted, they were serenaded by protesters screaming about selling out the country to Russia and Putin and ushering in fascism. …
#4 – Foxconn
At the beginning of 2017, it’s likely the vast majority of Wisconsinites had never heard of Foxconn, but most had likely used their products.
Then earlier this year, President Trump hinted that the state would soon get good economic news when visiting a Snap-on plant in Kenosha in April. The mystery soon was lifted, and a months-long saga of negotiations, deal-making, and legislative action ended in a contract signing between the electronics manufacturing giant and the State of Wisconsin.
The deal that was inked is the largest development agreement of its kind in American history, offering Foxconn up to $3 billion in tax incentives if the company invests $10 billion in a massive manufacturing campus and creates 13,000 jobs. Foxconn’s Wisconsin operation — now on track to begin construction in 2018 — won’t just be a plant, it will be a small city unto itself in southern Racine County.
Emerging over the course of a few months in 2017, the Foxconn deal will surely be a transformational project for the entire state of Wisconsin. The company’s leaders have signaled their goal is to establish a high-tech manufacturing hub right here in Wisconsin to rival (and supply hardware to) Silicon Valley.
From groundbreaking ceremonies to other new announcements related to the massive new development, we expect 2018 to bring lots more news about Foxconn.
#3 – Wisconsin State Budget: Entire Taxes Eliminated, No Tax Increase
What would a list of the top stories of the year be without talking about the state budget? It might’ve crossed the finish line months late, but the 2017-19 budget included some historic reforms, including completely eliminating two taxes.
Under the new budget, the state Forestry Mill Tax and Alternative Minimum tax are both deleted from the books. The budget also holds the line on income taxes and continues the push to reduce the property tax burden, while increasing spending in classrooms.
It’s easy to forget the old days when Jim Doyle and the Democrats were raising every tax imaginable and increasing spending by leaps and bounds. It’s also easy to take today’s momentum for reducing taxes for granted.
It’s for exactly that reason that here at MacIver, we work hard to celebrate these conservative wins. It’s certainly not every day that entire taxes are eliminated, and it’s certainly not every state that is determined to walk down a path of lowering taxes and shrinking government. On, Wisconsin.
#2 – John Doe Returns
In last year’s annual roundups, we had hoped that 2017 would bring a new era of toleration for ideas from all sides of the debate, including for the victims of the John Doe probes. With the Supreme Court officially declaring the efforts illegal and ordering that they be shut down immediately, we hoped that those victims would see some justice.
After all, those individuals had their private information illegally seized, their homes searched in pre-dawn raids, their rights to free speech trampled, and their names dragged through the mud, all while an unsympathetic media continued to cover the story with an eye on Gov. Walker.
Unfortunately, in 2017, that new era did not come. Rather, we learned that government employees had continued their unconstitutional search through private records. The very watchdog meant to uphold the government’s standard of ethics seized even more personal records – including private text messages between a Senator and her daughter – and put them in a file labeled “opposition research.”
This all came to light after the state’s Department of Justice looked into leaks, suspecting that private records had been illegally handed off by members of the Ethics Commission – the old Government Accountability Board. In the end, the DOJ declined to press charges in the leak, saying that the wrongdoing was so widespread and the data so mishandled that they couldn’t determine who exactly was the source of the leak.
In many ways, John Doe returned to headlines this year…but in reality, we found out that it never went away at all. In its report, the DOJ itself refers to the new probe as “John Doe 3.” Just before Christmas, the Senate Committee on Organization voted to authorize the DOJ to dig deeper into the wrongdoing. While we hoped that the saga would come to an end, we now know that the last chapter of this story has not yet been written.
Without further adieu, the biggest story of 2017…
#1 – Time to Cut Taxes – the federal government’s first go at significant tax reform since ‘86
The last time they did this, Top Gun was the highest-grossing movie in America, the world met Ferris Bueller, and Whitney Houston’s self-titled album was at the top of the charts. That’s right — it was 1986 the last time the federal government took on tax reform. Boy, has the world changed.
This year, congress made good on its promise to pass a tax reform bill and get it signed into law by Christmas. Among many (many) other things, the bill cuts both individual and corporate rates, cleans the tax code, and nearly doubles the standard deduction. According to the Department of Revenue, the average Wisconsin family will see a tax cut of more than $2,500. That’s more than $200 every month that hard-working families won’t have to turn over to the IRS.
Not only will individuals be able to file their taxes on a form the size of a postcard, our economy will take notice, too. By lowering the tax burden on everyday Americans and unlocking the secret to economic success, the plan is undeniably pro-growth.
Sean Davis has a list of the top 10 undercovered stories, including …
2. The economy roared
The U.S. economy came roaring back in 2017. GDP growth is strong and steady, and the unemployment rate now approaches lows not seen since the early 2000s. The economy has added over 1.9 million payroll jobs this year. Consumer confidence is at a 17-year high. The 2017 economic recovery is nonetheless a major story widely ignored by the political press. …
4. Islamic State was crushed in Raqqah and Mosul
A year ago, the Islamic State wasn’t just on the rise in the Middle East, it was firmly in charge, with wide swaths of the region under its control. But in October, U.S.-backed forces completed the total liberation of Raqqah, the Islamic State’s Syrian capital. That followed the liberation of Mosul, a major Iraqi city captured by the Islamic State in 2014. In less than a year, Trump and his national security team accomplished what the previous administration suggested was impossible.
5. Thanks to James Comey, the FBI’s reputation is in tatters
This year we learned that the FBI’s top ranks were infested with political actors eager to use the agency to settle scores. Not only did former Director James Comey abscond with confidential documents, he leaked them to his friends and the press, then refused to give those documents to Congress. In addition, his top deputies — those responsible for investigating both Hillary Clinton and Trump — were sharing text messages about how important it was to defeat Trump. One of these Comey deputies even mused about deploying a secret “insurance policy” to keep Trump out of the White House. Comey’s biggest accomplishment wasn’t equitable enforcement of the law; it was the corrupt politicization of the agency’s leadership ranks and the destruction of its reputation.
6. We still know nothing about what motivated the Vegas shooter
Months after the deadliest mass shooting in American history, we don’t know why the gunman fired on a crowd of innocent concertgoers. If law enforcement authorities have any leads or theories, they’re not sharing them with citizens eager for answers. Perhaps the feds don’t have a clue, either. Either way, it’s shocking that, months later, the country is still in the dark about what happened.
7. The Iran deal’s facade collapsed
Despite the Obama administration’s assurances that Iran would be a reliable partner for peace, the opposite has proved true. By deliberately funding and fomenting terror against the U.S. and its allies in the region, Iran has shown that it cannot be trusted, and the Obama administration’s claims about the peaceful intentions of the top terror sponsor on Earth had no basis in reality.
8. Persecution of religious minorities continues across the globe
In the U.K., Jews were targeted in record numbers in 2017. Just weeks ago, a synagogue in Sweden was firebombed. Throughout India, Christians continue to be targeted by violent religious extremists. In North Korea and China, totalitarian atheist governments regularly imprison and torture those who openly worship and proselytize. And in the Middle East, Muslims remain the No. 1 target of radical jihadists hell-bent on purging from the Earth anyone who rejects the authority of the Islamic State’s caliphate. …
10. Due process and rule of law were restored to college campuses
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos finally restored the rule of law to college campuses and put an end to disastrous campus courts. Prior to her much-needed rule change, campuses across the country declared that secret proceedings, bereft of due process, were the best way to handle sexual assault allegations. That kangaroo system, justifiably gutted by DeVos, resulted in predators who were allowed to avoid law enforcement, victims who never received justice, and innocent people who were denied basic rights such as jury trials and access to attorneys.
As far as football was concerned, to quote Charles Dickens, it was the best of times, it was the worst of recent times. The Badgers had their best season that didn’t include a Rose Bowl berth, winning a record 13 games and their first Orange Bowl. With a young team, this season might not be the best season of the decade.
The Badgers’ season was particularly good because the Packers’ season was quite bad, thanks to the second broken collarbone of quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ career, which served to expose all the holes the Packers have on both offense (including backup quarterback) and defense (for which defensive coordinator Dom Capers will be sacrificed). Every football problem today can be traced back to the players, but the person responsible for getting those players, general manager Ted Thompson, hasn’t shown signs of departure, voluntarily (he could retire) or not.
As always, may your 2018 be better than your 2017. It can’t be stranger … can it?
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I’m going to guess that not many readers will read this immediately upon posting, either because when posted you were out, or you were already in bed.
Perhaps that was the problem for the Beatles in 1962, when they went to Decca Records for an audition, and Decca declined to sign them.
Before that, the number one single (for the second time) today in 1956:
Today in 1964, BBC-TV premiered “Top of the Pops”:
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Later during the game, Gifford said on the air (inside the open-air press box), “Let me have a bite of your coffee.” Buck called that the single funniest thing Gifford ever said.
For the story of this iconic photo …
… click here.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 