Kevin D. Williamson could have written this one year ago, and other than the references to 2016 events, it would be every bit as accurate:
Rock stars, the heroes who stormed the beaches at Normandy, or Jesus Christ Himself — it doesn’t matter who you are next to the president.
For the past year, there have been cringe-inducing headlines reminding us that x, y, or z is Barack Obama’s last as president. “This is Obama’s last Veterans’ Day as president,” the cable-news mouth said, as though that were the story. President Obama is about as beside-the-point as it is possible for a commander-in-chief to be on Veterans’ Day: He isn’t a veteran, for one thing. It isn’t his day.
But all the days are the president’s days.
The Kennedy Center honored James Taylor, Mavis Staples, Al Pacino, Martha Argerich, and the Eagles — it is easy to see Barack Obama as a James Taylor fan — and the headlines announced: “Obama’s last Kennedy Center honors as president.” Barack Obama is many things, but he is not exactly what you would call a man of culture. I doubt he knew who Martha Argerich was before he was called on to present her with an award. But everything the president touches is about the president — that is true of all recent presidents and especially true of this remarkably self-regarding one.
“And God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten” — hey, wait, this is Obama’s last Christmas as president! And — thank you, Wall Street Journal, for this one — his last Christmas vacation as president, too.
Meanwhile, the president-elect this week publicly thanked himself for recent improvements in economic indicators: “The U.S. Consumer Confidence Index for December surged nearly four points to 113.7, THE HIGHEST LEVEL IN MORE THAN 15 YEARS! Thanks, Donald!”
Trump has also claimed personal credit for a year-end bump in the stock market.
Presidents do this sort of thing all the time. Voters go along with it, too, blaming or rewarding presidents for developments in the economy that often have precisely nothing to do with who occupies the Oval Office.
The American presidency is degenerating into a cult. Historians a century or two hence will look back on this development with some puzzlement.
To be a republican in the 18th century was to be a radical. The American founders were deeply suspicious of pomp and circumstance: It is not mere coincidence that the ban on an official national church (that, and not having a manger scene at city hall, is what “establishment of religion” means) came in the first item on the Bill of Rights. Many republicans of the founding era were so suspicious of religious bureaucracies that it was not a foregone conclusion that the Catholic Church would be tolerated throughout the colonies. (Indeed, for a time it wasn’t.) And they were even more suspicious of the claims of royalty. In the person of the English king, they found a compound of those sources of suspicion: a hereditary monarch who was head of state and church both.
The idea that a large, complex society enjoying English liberty could long endure without the guiding hand of a priest-king was, in 1776, radical. A few decades later, it became ordinary — Americans could not imagine living any other way. The republican manner of American presidents was pronounced: There is a famous story about President Lincoln’s supposedly receiving a European ambassador who was shocked to see him shining his own shoes. The diplomat said that in Europe, a man of Lincoln’s stature would never shine his own shoes. “Whose shoes would he shine?” Lincoln asked.
As American society grows less literate and the state of its moral education declines, the American people grow less able to engage their government as intellectually and morally prepared citizens. We are in the process — late in the process, I’m afraid — of reverting from citizens to subjects. Subjects are led by their emotions, mainly terror and greed. They need not be intellectually or morally engaged — their attitude toward government is a lot like that of Trump’s old pal Roy Cohn: “Don’t tell me what the law is. Tell me who the judge is.”
For more than two centuries, we Americans have been working to make government subject to us rather than the other way around, to make it our instrument rather than our master. But that requires a republican culture, which is necessarily a culture of responsibility. Citizenship, which means a great deal more than showing up at the polls every two years to pull a lever for Team R or Team D, is exhausting. On the other hand, monarchy is amusing, a splendid spectacle and a wonderful form of public theater. But the price of admission is submission.
But the price of admission is submission.
Donald Trump is not my president. Had she won, Hillary Clinton wouldn’t have been my president either. Obama wasn’t my president. There is no president of me. There should be no president of you either. Presidents specifically and politicians generally are a cancer on our lives.
… read this from Washington Post reporter David Fahrenthold on his year of covering Donald Trump, breaking big stories, getting worldwide national media attention … and not having it matter because Trump won anyway.
Two excerpts:
When the leaked Trump video still seemed to have swung the 2016 campaign, I was interviewed by a German reporter, who asked, “Do you have the feeling … ‘This is it, this is the peak of my career?’ ”
The point of my stories was not to defeat Trump. The point was to tell readers the facts about this man running for president. How reliable was he at keeping promises? How much moral responsibility did he feel to help those less fortunate than he?
Then, after the election …
A few days later, I was interviewed by another German reporter. He asked if these past nine months, the greatest adventure in my life as a journalist, had been for naught.
“Do you feel like your work perhaps did not matter at all?” he said.
I didn’t feel like that.
It did matter. But, in an election as long and wild as this, a lot of other stories and other people mattered, too. I did my job. The voters did theirs. Now my job goes on. I’ll seek to cover Trump the president with the same vigor as I scrutinized Trump the candidate.
The media response frames the fake news issue as nearly the single greatest threat to democracy in our time. But despite the worries that surround an uptick in fraudulent news, the phenomenon is nothing new, nor does it particularly portend dark times in America’s future.
The overreaction in response, potentially damaging both the right to free speech and a culture that supports it, may be more dangerous to a free society.
The idea that the press could try to deceive rather than enlighten readers was not lost on the Founders. In the years before and after the American Revolution there was an explosion of printing presses throughout the Western world as improved printing technology was becoming widely available.
Journalists and pamphleteers were certainly vital to spreading the ideas of American rebellion against the English—names like Thomas Paine and Samuel Adams were nearly synonymous with the American Revolution, and they certainly weren’t alone. Though propaganda and distortion of the news were common as well.
After America gained independence, there were still huge numbers of scribblers writing about news and politics with varying levels of credibility and accuracy.
When the framers of the Constitution met to discuss the construction of the new government at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, freedom of the press and what it would mean for the future of the country was certainly on their minds.
Many Founders fretted about what the proliferation of false or destructive notions would mean for the idea of democracy and a society of mass political participation.
Massachusetts delegate Elbridge Gerry lamented how the people in his home state were being led astray by false stories from malcontents and manipulators.
“The people do not want [lack] virtue, but are the dupes of pretended patriots,” Gerry said. “In Massachusetts it had been fully confirmed by experience, that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions, by the false reports circulated by designing men, and which no one on the spot can refute.”
So what did the Founders do to stop this problem? They created a system of government that would allow room for democracy, yet checked its vices: through institutions like Congress, the constitutional amendment process, and division of power between branches of government as well as the states and federal government. Not to mention the Electoral College, which the modern left now decries as unfair and undemocratic.
Unfortunately, some of these checks have been eroded over time and continue to be undermined. For instance, the 17th Amendment forced states to elect senators through a popular vote rather than have the state legislature choose a representative, which has reduced the power of the states in the American system.
And in some states, like California, the requirement to pass a constitutional amendment is simply 50 percent of the vote plus one, yet again increasing the chance that a temporary excitement of the populace can lead to rapid, negative changes in governance.
The weakening of the structural checks on democracy has been the greater threat of fake news’ proliferation than nonsense peddlers themselves.
It was not only the Founders who understood the trade-offs between a free press and misleading news. Alexis de Tocqueville, the famed French observer of American life, wrote about the freedom of the press in his 1835 book “Democracy in America.”
Tocqueville noted that when he arrived in the U.S., the very first newspaper article he read was an overheated piece accusing then-President Andrew Jackson of being a “heartless despot, solely occupied with the preservation of his own authority” and a “gamester” who ruled by corruption. This type of account was not unusual.
The years following the founding saw a booming and free-wheeling publishing industry, unimpeded by the licensing and restrictions common in other countries. Freedom allowed newspapers to proliferate throughout the United States in a highly decentralized way.
And in early American history, most newspapers were expressly partisan or outright controlled by individual politicians. They often aggressively attacked and made outrageous comments about political opponents.
Yet Tocqueville wrote that despite the general vehemence of the press, America was further from actual violence and political revolution than other societies that tightly controlled information.
While recognizing the occasional problems of an unimpeded fourth estate, Tocqueville wrote that “in order to enjoy the inestimable benefits that the liberty of the press ensures, it is necessary to submit to the inevitable evils that it creates.”
An attempt to submit “false” news and opinions through an official fact-checker would likely only elevate and perhaps justify a false opinion in the minds of the people, according to Tocqueville.
He continued to write that expecting to have the good of a free press without the bad has been “one of those illusions which commonly mislead nations in their times of sickness when, tired with faction and exhausted by effort, they attempt to make hostile opinions and contrary principles coexist upon the same soil.”
Americans were so used to being bombarded with opinions and information from a diverse media, Tocqueville wrote, that they were less likely to react to falsehoods and outrageous opinions.
Fake News existed in that time as well as ours, but it did little to outright convince people to change their views. This continues to be the case today. …
The reality is, barriers to prevent modern Americans from receiving “fake news” are unlikely to succeed in a free society where a mass of information is readily available.
The internet, and a lack of trust in the legacy media, has allowed numerous new media publications to find success. It has again radically decentralized the way Americans get their information.
These legacy media organizations are attempting to reign in the chaos with new gimmicks like fact-checkers, but ultimately their influence and credibility are fading in the minds of Americans as fewer people trust or desire to read those sources.
This isn’t an anomaly in American life—it has been the norm. We must trust and maintain the mediating constitutional system the Founders created along the judgment of the American people.
The freedom of the press, enshrined in the First Amendment and tempered by institutions designed to slow governmental change and thwart temporary excitements of opinion, created a nation incredibly free, yet robust enough to withstand potential large-scale errors in judgment.
The Founders understood that the good would outweigh the bad with a free press, and no court could justly measure the rightness or wrongness of news and public opinion. They realized that without allowing the press to operate freely and leaving the people as its ultimate tribunal, America would never truly be a land of liberty.
Fake or biased news was the willingly paid price of an open society, and the winnowing process of the American system ultimately leads the country toward the truth.
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”:
As I have been doing for most of the past two decades in one medium or another, I bring you That Was the Year That Was …
… 2016, as strange and unpredictable a year as has existed during my lifetime at least.
Consider this: In three weeks, Donald Trump will be president. Almost no one predicted this, and I question the seriousness of anyone who did. Trump was a major Democratic donor whose positions (depending on the time of day) didn’t really match the GOP mainstream. He won a plurality of GOP primary votes, but trailed basically every day of the race, and made enough gaffes to make one question whether he was trying to sabotage his own campaign. And to a majority of voters in enough states to top 270 electoral votes, it didn’t matter.
That’s because Trump’s voters were, and are, angry with political correctness, being called racist for daring to criticize Barack Obama and sexist for daring to criticize Hillary Clinton, and angry with a political establishment more concerned with staying in office than fixing this country’s problems (if in fact they can be fixed). Black Lives Matter helped elect Trump, and so did for that matter one of the worst major-party presidential candidates of all time in an arrogant, too-smart-for-you campaign that blew off states that Clinton should have won.
Want to know why Trump won? Jon Caldara counts the reasons:
Watching this meltdown, it’s clear the anti-Trumpies aren’t just poor losers. They don’t get that Trump won because, in great part, they had been such poor winners. The hard-edged progressive left just can’t help but do a dance in the public policy end zone. The Trump victory was the ref’s flag for “excessive celebration.”
It’s not that the left won gay marriage (which I support), it’s that they destroyed bakers who, for their religious convictions, wouldn’t bake cakes for the victors.
It’s not that they passed a federal takeover of health care, it’s that they just had to force nuns to pay for birth control sinful to their core beliefs.
It’s not that they imposed massive environmental and energy restrictions, or even that they went around the Constitution to do it by presidential fiat. It’s that they insultingly label those who’ve come to a different conclusion on global warming as “deniers.”
I could go on and on.
Every time I witness another example of how Trump-phobes help Trump, that little thought surfaces and rings like a bell — “And that’s why Trump won.”
It happens so often, I’m launching it as its own hashtag: #ATWTW.
My daughter comes home from school and tells me how the teacher taught how we need raise taxes, and the bell rings, #ATWTW.
I hear reporters and activists talk about the need to “end gun violence” instead of saying what we all know they mean, “gun control,” #ATWTW.
Boulder passes a soda tax, #ATWTW. “Minorities can’t be racist,” #ATWTW. University speech codes, #ATWTW. “There is a consensus on climate change,” #ATWTW. (If there really was a consensus, he wouldn’t have won.)
The media still has no clue they were a driving force for Trump. I’m an avid public radio listener and this year they went into anti-Trump overdrive, completely oblivious to the possibility their sticky-sweet, politically correct story telling was driving people to, not away from, Trump.
How many #ATWTWs do you encounter every day?
Unfortunately, Trump will disappoint conservatives (including his weird bromance with Putin, who is not this country’s friend) even as he terrifies liberals. Trump’s inability to speak (including tweet) before thinking and his, well, mixed work since the election should not make conservatives optimistic at all.
There were accusations the Russians “hacked” the election, explained by Tim Nerenz:
So a Swede living under Ecuadorian asylum in Britain releases a trove of emails which proved a campaign funded by Saudis rigged the Democrat primaries and the Presidential debates with the help of American journalists, while a Hungarian emigrant paid Mexican thugs to assault rival supporters at rallies. This is called “Russian hacking”.
Sorry, I am not mad at the Russians. I am not buying it until I see some evidence – you know, like emails that discuss illegal and unethical violations of law and regulation, maybe a money trail through a bogus front organization, or perhaps a couple dozen classified documents on a pedophile’s laptop would be convincing.
Or how about a statistical analysis of California’s machine count anomalies that show the absurdity of the reported Trump victory….oh, wait, that was Clinton’s win over Sanders in the primary…never mind. We’ll just go with the President’s word on this one: “if you like your Russian hack you can keep your Russian hack…period.” That worked so well for health care.
Putin is the big threat to our Constitutional Republic? Really? Did he fabricate those thousands of duplicate ballots found in the Detroit recount? Did Vlad send all those death threats to electors across the country to scare them off from voting Trump? Why would the Russians want to steal the election away from the sickly globalist whose money laundering Foundation they had already greased for favors and hand it over to the combative America First guy with way too much swag and a fondness for Israel? This makes no sense, but then again, neither did that YouTube video explanation, the last bogus excuse to come from the Clinton camp when she biffed a slam dunk with Arab Spring.
News flash: governments and digital mercenaries have been attempting to hack into every computer and phone in the world every day for the past 15 years – millions of times per day. There is even an Army recruiting commercial on TV that shows our soldiers thwarting the attempts – no need to attend the daily briefing to know the score. Whoever it was that stole the e-mails exposing Democrat corruption and malfeasance were able to do so because of the ignorance, arrogance, gross incompetence, and criminality of five prominent Democrats – Clinton, Aberdin, Podesta, Wasserman-Shultz, and Weiner. I have not seen any of those names on the back of an NHL or Olympic hockey jersey, so I am quite certain they are not Russian. These are Democrats who mucked it up by what they did, not because we found out, and they blame everyone else when it didn’t work – par for the course.
But I have to say that I am quite pleased that those posers are not going to be managing our nation’s secrets and appointing our top national security team. President Obama’s own crack national security apparatus is still unable to determine who hacked the computers of Sony, Department of Defense, Healthcare.gov, and half a dozen central banks around the world and they are the same guys and gals who are unable to unlock an iPhone. But they are suddenly certain about this international election hacking caper, the one where Assange has already identified the leak source who surprise-surprise turned up dead two days later.
President Obama has retaliated by expelling Russian “diplomats” and closing two safe-houses he has allowed to operate for years with impunity. He did not care when espionage was being directed against American interests, and he did not act when the first accusations of electoral manipulation were raised in July and it was Trump who was the suspected victim. In fact, he scoffed at the stupidity of Trump’s people who suggested the election could be manipulated. This is the same President who sent teams of ACORN people and gobs of money to Israel and Canada to hack their elections – and bragged about it.
Obama only got his hackles up when his own personal engagement in the Presidential campaign failed to deliver the black vote to Hillary and his legacy was bruised when she lost. Even Putin sees through the ruse and is not taking the bait. Obama is shamelessly dropping a turd in Trump’s punch bowl and hoping to provoke a confrontation sufficient to wake the anti-war left out of their 8-year partisan coma. We were warned against electing a petty and vindictive narcissist with no experience, but we did it anyway…in 2008.
Less than 39% of the American people believe the President’s claim that Russians hacked the election – rejecting Obama/Clinton for the second month in a row. And that is because more than 61% of Americans are smarter than the liberal Ivy Leaguers in government and media who look down their noses at us with disgust and pity. Our election was not hacked, but our government has been – by partisans, ideologues, unionists, globalists, and a puppet press who have completely disgraced themselves over the past year of pimping for The Her.
Trump’s election means the end of Barack Obama, of whom Courtney Kirchoff writes:
Respectfully, you sir are both the discourteous denizen who deserts dog excrement to be stepped in, and the excrement itself. You may wonder how someone can embody both human and dung forms simultaneously, but then I wonder how a human being with such a deplorable (to borrow Hillary’s expression) character could ever be president. Mysteries both. …
Rather than maintain appearances for the sake of America’s greatest ally in the Middle East, rather than protect America’s friend from the gutter-dwelling gangsters of the UN, instead of allowing the next administration to smoothly transition into international affairs, you visited your favorite manicurist. Drew your twiddling fingers from satin gloves. Offered your digits for a fine polishing. Then flipped both middle fingers to the Jewish state.
Was I surprised? No. For unlike your most fawning admirers, I am not a spinning-wheel bound gerbil, taking news from a self-serving drip bottle. For years I’ve witnessed your reluctance to string both “terrorism” and “Islam” into the same sentence. Even after the Paris terrorist attacks. Then Belgium. San Bernardino. I could go on, but why? You know what moves your frigid heart better than anyone. What pulls at your heart strings is not a small, successful first world democracy amidst the barbaric third world Islamic nations. No, no. What causes you to drop your pompous head in sadness is how an unapologetically Jewish state is outperforming its Islamic neighbors. Both economically and morally. Despite its Muslim neighbors (your pals) actively calling for its destruction.
You cannot bear to see success in any form, much less when that success has been… Jewish. Not when you, an Islamic sympathizer (allegedly?), believes the future does not belong to those who mock Muhammad.
You, Barack Obama, are a sad, pathetic, scrawny little man. That’s more than a potshot against your affinity for denim worn better by matriarchs. I’m targeting your character. It is one thing to harbor a personal animosity toward Israel. It’s one thing to personally believe the Jews are in the wrong. It is an entirely different notion to leverage the Presidency of the United States as a vessel for your seething hatred. That’s crossing a line. A red line. …
Well good riddance, you festering pile of pulsating fecal zits. You are not America’s pride, you’re our embarrassment. Our downfall. Our one small step backward, one giant leap forward for narcissism. You didn’t bring us hope or change. You didn’t create a legacy worth protecting. You ushered in intolerance for people who don’t think as you do. You embodied hatred for those who believed in a God who was not Muhammad. You actively made America, and by extension the world, less safe. You did all of this while touring the globe on America’s generous dime, while enjoying the riches the office of the presidency allowed. An office you used to undermine America’s ally. You did all of this knowingly, purposefully, with a smug countenance better displayed on a barroom dartboard.
May you enter the history books for exactly what you are: the first American President to undermine America at every possible opportunity. Out of spite. Out of pettiness. Out of an angry, massive ego.
The worst trend of the year was the continuing deification of politicians, including Trump, Hillary, Obama, Scott Walker and too many more to list here. They all suck. The ones I vote for may suck less than others. Politicians suck, and government sucks at every level. (As the FUBARed-up street project behind my house that included not linking the house to the new sewer system demonstrated earlier this year.)
The second, and related, worst trend of the year is the inability of people to be civil about politics, which is a direct result of government and politics’ taking far too large a role in our lives. Stupidities such as calling Charlie Sykes a RINO because he didn’t bow down to Trump make you wish that the last prediction of the Apocalypse was accurate.
While Trump tended to gobble up all the attention, the MacIver Institute found 10 undercovered stories this year:
10. Referendum Voters Around the State Increase Their Own Taxes
Our #10 most under-reported story of 2016 is the increase in the number of referendums where voters are increasingly approving local spending increases and essentially raising their own property taxes.
For example, of the 71 referendums on the April 5 ballot, voters approved 55 of them, giving school districts a total of $630.6 million in new spending power. Voters rejected only 16 referendums, a 77 percent passage rate – keeping with recent trends.
A MacIver Institute analysis also found that referendums held during Gov. Walker’s administration have increased in number, decreased in price tag, and have been far more likely to pass.
Legislators were concerned some school districts were up to no good by holding referendums on low turnout elections or placing them on the ballot during consecutive elections until they finally pass. The author of one piece of legislation intended to limit such tactics, Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville), considers these to be dirty tricks intended to bypass the will of a majority of voters, particularly if a referendum initially fails.
In the end, assuming these referendums are held in a fair and democratic way, it’s ultimately up to local voters to be informed about the merits of the ballot questions and make the decision they think is best.
9. Republicans Roll Out Ambitious Agenda
When Speaker Paul Ryan and House Republicans rolled out their Better Way agenda back in June, the smart money in the media was on Hillary Clinton easily defeating Donald Trump in the November election. President Clinton would use her veto pen to stop any Better Way legislation, so what would be the point of giving any ink or airtime to the ideas contained within that agenda?
Well, that didn’t happen. Instead, President-elect Donald Trump will take office in January along with an all-GOP Congress. Right now, while everyone seems to be getting along, it’s likely that many of the ideas in the Better Way agenda – including tax reform, health care, the Constitution, the economy, national security, and poverty – will be signed into law by President-elect Donald Trump.
Brush up on the Better Way agenda and see what kind of legislation Congress is likely to put on President Trump’s desk next year.
8. The Left’s War on Free Speech
Receiving scant mainstream media coverage, the left’s ongoing crusade to stamp out free speech continued to grow more fervent in 2016. Democratic attorneys general banded together to intimidate climate change skeptics, including attempting to illegally seize private documents from the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Then in July, 19 Senate Democrats took to the floor of the U.S. Senate in a fascist attempt to publicly intimidate and silence groups opposed to their policy positions. In response, the MacIver Institute joined the American Legislative Exchange Council and other groups from around the country in co-signing a letter fiercely defending the fundamental right to free speech of all Americans.
Joe McCarthy would’ve been proud of Senate Democrats for their Putin-like tactics.
Meanwhile, back in Wisconsin, the effects of the John Doe probe still linger. In that ordeal, conservative activists had their homes raided and possessions seized in an attempt by some in government to use the heavy hand of the law to intimidate their political opponents.
Hopefully 2017 brings a new era of toleration for ideas from all sides of the debate, even the ones liberal-progressive officials don’t agree with.
7. Overtime Rule Threatens to Crush Businesses and Taxpayers
The Obama Department of Labor tried to double the overtime threshold without a single vote of Congress. First you’ve heard of it? You wouldn’t be alone – aside from a handful of fawning headlines praising the change, this major policy change and the undemocratic way the administration tried to implement it went virtually unreported in the mainstream media.
The new rule would have doubled the salary threshold to $47,500. Anyone not earning more than that would have to be paid overtime. It doesn’t take an HR professional to see the real-world impact such a drastic change would have.
It’s a classic one-size-fits-all blanket regulation because it doesn’t consider differences in the cost of living from one region to another. A bag of groceries bought in downtown Mequon does not cost the same as one bought in midtown Manhattan. The rule change was widely opposed by private and public sector employers, and it could’ve cost Wisconsin taxpayers $200 million over two years, according to one estimate.
Fortunately a federal judge in Texas blocked the rule shortly before its December 1 implementation date. It’s also increasingly likely that President-elect Trump will stop the regulation in its tracks, making this yet another part of President Obama’s cherished legacy that will go nowhere.
Future presidents who want to use their phone and pen to bypass Congress and dictate rules and regulations to the entire country should take note.
6. Crime Waves Hit Wisconsin
Wisconsin’s antiquated Unfair Sales Act, also known as the minimum markup law, managed to escape serious scrutiny in 2016. The law makes deep discounts illegal in the Badger State and requires gasoline and other items to be marked up 9.18 percent above cost.
Last year, we warned Wisconsinites about an impending Black Friday crime wave and to be on the lookout for suspiciously low prices. In 2016, multiple crime waves hit Wisconsin once again thanks to the minimum markup law, no doubt keeping the Price Police busy tracking down illegal good deals.
We warned consumers about low prices on Amazon Prime Day (which would be better described as Amazon Crime Day in Wisconsin). We also renewed our unfortunate tradition of warning Black Friday Shoppers that they should be wary of really good deals when doing their Christmas shopping.
We’re hopeful the legislation repealing the minimum markup law will be dusted off and given a long-overdue public hearing in the next legislative session.
5. Obamacare Co-Ops Fall Like Dominoes
While it’s hard to argue that Obamacare itself – notably its sky-high premium and deductible increases – received too little scrutiny, the failures of the health insurance co-ops set up under the (Un)Affordable Care Act were hardly even an afterthought.
That might be because they’re going belly-up so fast it’s hard for the media to keep up. We started 2016 with just half of the original 23 co-ops dragging themselves into the new year. At the dawn of 2017, we’re down to just four after Maryland’s Evergreen Health co-op recently threw in the towel and stopped offering plans.
Among the four is Wisconsin’s Common Ground, which secured secret funding from an undisclosed source to stay alive for a while longer. However, earlier this year we reported on a study that showed Common Ground’s ugly fiscal situation.
When a co-op fails, the consequences are worthy of media attention. Often, tens of thousands of people are kicked off their plan and forced to find new coverage. So much for “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” Hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funded financing also went down the drain with the failed co-ops.
4. Milwaukee Public Schools: The Rest of the Story
It seems MPS has a remarkable ability to sweep unsavory stories under the rug.
While the media preferred to report on the public breakdown of the Opportunity Schools Partnership Program (OSPP) and touted the flowery statements by MPS about their cherry-picked successes, the behind-the-scenes political maneuvering over OSPP went largely uncovered – as did the motives of MPS leadership in successfully stymying the turnaround plan.
From the very outset, the adults running MPS made a circus out of the turnaround plan, finally leading to the resignation of OSPP administrator Demond Means before any progress could be made. In the meantime, the children trapped in failing MPS schools continue to wait for the grown-ups to get their act together and finally tackle the shameful status quo at MPS.
Another under-reported story this year was the groundbreaking report on violence against teachers at MPS by WISN’s Dan O’Donnell. The report, entitled “Blood on the Blackboard,” revealed the shocking stories of teachers who endure violence in the classroom on an almost daily basis. O’Donnell told us the story behind the report here.
Needless to say, the public at large likely remains unaware of the true problems facing MPS thanks to the deafening silence of many in the media.
3. Welfare Reforms Help Wisconsinites Find Work
One of the great success stories of recent conservative reforms was virtually brushed aside this year, so it’s worthy of one more mention as 2016 becomes 2017.
Gov. Walker’s work and training requirements for the FoodShare program went into effect in 2015, and since then they’ve led to increased wages and hours worked for participants in the FoodShare Employment Training (FSET) program. More than 14,400 people found jobs between April 2015 and August 2016.
That positive trend continuedthrough the end of the year as nearly 18,000 people had found jobs, and wages and hours continued to increase over the previous three months.
The success of FSET is a win for taxpayers, but more importantly it’s also a win for the people who are moving off government dependence to independence, a well-paying job, and the dignity that comes with work.
2. Taxpayers Keep Winning, and the Budget Hasn’t Collapsed
For Wisconsin taxpayers, 2016 was a great year, but you might not know it if you rely on your morning newspaper or nightly news report. Not only did we see that the tax burden in Wisconsin has been moving in the right direction, but that the state’s revenues are increasing.
The MacIver Institute reported that over the course of six years and three biennial budgets, a wide variety of changes to Wisconsin tax laws generated total taxpayer savings of $4.756 billion, according to an estimate by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.
In February, we also released a report highlighting more than $5 billion in taxpayer savings from Act 10 during the five years since the landmark law was enacted in 2011.
Despite the all-too-predicable cries that the billions in tax relief would put government in the poorhouse and destroy any ability to pay for basic services, the sky is still up there and the lights are still on at the Capitol. In fact, the Department of Revenue estimates steady revenue growth over the next biennial budget period – an increase of $343 million in revenue for the 2016-17 fiscal year, a $448 million increase for ’17-’18, and a $482 million increase in ’18-’19.
As has been demonstrated time after time, fiscal responsibility and lowering the tax burden is a recipe for economic revival and financial success.
1. National Debt
Last year, the national debt was our top under-reported story. Just 12 short months ago, the debt was $18.8 trillion, a staggering number. …
The nation will soon cross an ominous threshold: $20 trillion in debt, by far the most debt any country has ever held in the history of the world.
Yet, it seems even many in the conservative media have brushed the debt problem under the rug. Part of President-elect Trump’s stump speech was to spend an additional trillion dollars on infrastructure. It’s not entirely clear how he plans to pay for it. Some of his supporters have said much of the money will be recovered by reforming the tax code, revitalizing the economy, and re-patriating the enormous sums of money American companies have parked overseas.
Without specifics, it should concern Americans if the plan ends up being to put the new spending on the national credit card. However, there is hope. Trump’s plans to lower tax rates, reform the tax code, and pull back on regulations could spark an economic renaissance. Many of his cabinet picks also have the potential to actually reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
It was disheartening to see an entire presidential campaign go by with hardly a mention of the massive weight of the national debt. But we’re cautiously optimistic that the new political landscape will be an opportunity to finally turn the tide on rampant deficit spending by the federal government with a long-term debt reduction plan.
At least 2017 won’t have the damnable election. (Except for the next deluge of elections, such as state Supreme Court and superintendent of public instruction.)
As always, may your 2017 be better than your 2016.
Christian Toto reports on that issue of national importance, who will perform (and should) at Donald Trump’s coronation:
Donald Trump is having a hard time lining up stars to perform at his inauguration.
Is anyone shocked?
Hollywood threw all its support to then-Senator Barack Obama eight years ago. This time around, it supported Hillary. It became commonplace to hear celebrities name-drop Hitler when referring to the president-elect.
TheWrap.com recently suggested Team Trump is bribing celebrities to perform during the inauguration festivities. True? Possibly. If so, it’s a big mistake.
Trump would do better to simply flip the script on celebrity cameos at presidential inaugurations. How? Don’t ask any stars to perform for him. Not one. No Beyoncé, Adele, or Cher. No progressive poets reciting celebratory verses or musicians offering paeans to power.
The message Trump would send is simple yet true: He doesn’t need Hollywood flattery. Trump forged his path to 270 electoral votes by connecting with everyday Americans. Even if you think he is as honest as a used-car salesman, those packed arenas (and his eventual win) suggest his message resonated with many Americans.
When he twisted Hillary Clinton’s campaign slogan, “I’m with Her,” to “I’m with You,” crowds roared. It was a political masterstroke. Now, he can do it again. And he can do it by tapping the vast pool of talent available to him across the country.
When was the last time you took in a local stage production, concert, or festival performance? Chances are you saw plenty of people with either raw, untrained talent or far more moxie than skill. Bet you winced once or twice. Maybe more. But you probably also heard or saw some very talented performers who aren’t household names. These talented artists are scattered all across America. They play at honkytonk bars and local chili cook-offs. Some make it all the way to mid-sized arenas.
They kill it night after night but no one knows their names.
We’re a nation teeming with talent, but for some reason we still reward only celebrity (which is a very different thing — see, for example, the Kardashian family). Team Trump should start scouring Middle America in search of hidden talents. Extend the biggest platform possible to them and see what happens.
If he does, Trump will show celebrities that he didn’t need their support during the campaign, and he doesn’t need them now. One can hope that the stars will take the message to heart. They may even reconsider their condescending attitude toward people who live in flyover country.
Of course, this all assumes Trump’s ego will allow him to take this course. That might be the biggest X factor. He could always enlist a predictable celebrity ringer or two, a Kid Rock here or a Ted Nugent there. Why not? Just keep the focus on the new kids. Give them the chance of a lifetime. After all, much of Trump’s campaign was built on telling Americans to give an unlikely candidate a chance; he should do the same for America’s unheralded performers at his inauguration.
The New York Times explores the influence of former UW hockey coach Bob Johnson:
If there is such a thing as a hockey gene, Bob Johnson surely had it.
Twenty-five years after his death, Johnson’s influence extends from the N.H.L., where he helped pave the way for American college players and coaches in a league then dominated by Canadians, to N.C.A.A. hockey, which he endlessly promoted.
Johnson died of brain cancer at age 60 on Nov. 26, 1991, six months after leading the Pittsburgh Penguins to their first Stanley Cup in his only year as coach.
Yet his signature saying, “It’s a great day for hockey,” is still painted above the stick rack outside the team’s locker room at PPG Paints Arena, which opened in 2010. It also hangs from a banner at Honnen Ice Arena at Colorado College, where Johnson started his coaching career in 1963.
Johnson built Wisconsin’s modern program beginning in 1966 and led the Badgers to three national titles from 1973 to 1981. His impact is felt in women’s college hockey, too, where his son Mark has coached the top-ranked Badgers to four national titles since 2002. And the youth hockey camp Bob Johnson started with Art Berglund in Aspen, Colo., in 1964 is still thriving, now run by Johnson’s sons Mark and Pete and his grandson Scott McConnell.
Johnson’s importance remains larger than games and championships won. Much of what he did beginning 50 years ago was greeted with rolled eyes and guffaws, but is now commonplace throughout the sport: an emphasis on conditioning, fundamentals practiced in on- and off-ice drills, and a creative, up-tempo style reliant on one-touch passes and carrying the puck into the offensive zone.
Jeff Sauer, who played for Johnson at Colorado College and succeeded him as coach at Wisconsin, remembers him emphasizing nutrition, even scrapping the traditional pregame steak dinner for toast, honey and chocolate milk so his players would have energy in the third period. He also recalls off-ice drills with tennis balls to promote dexterity.
Phil Bourque had played more than 200 N.H.L. games over six seasons before Johnson took over a veteran Penguins team in 1990. Bourque, a color commentator on the team’s television broadcasts since 2000, said Johnson often had the Penguins work on the most basic skills.
“Now, if I see a coach doing a real simple drill, I think of him,” he said.
“Ahead of his time” is how many describe Johnson, whose heartfelt belief that hockey should be fun and his embrace of innovation defined his coaching style. Exposed to the European game during his years coaching United States national teams, Johnson filled notebooks with drills and plays he witnessed, especially from the Soviet coach Anatoly Tarasov.
Those notebooks now reside with Mark Johnson, who said he had dipped into them for ideas over the years.
Sauer said: “He was the first real innovative coach. Every day, every practice was different. He was unafraid to try unproven things. The rink was his lab.”
Back when there was much less emphasis on the power play, Johnson borrowed from the Europeans and created a juggernaut at Wisconsin. The Badgers converted on 37 percent of their chances during the 1977 title season.
Jack Parker, a former Boston University coach, whose teams competed against Johnson’s in the 1970s, said he had copied from Johnson and created a potent power play for his team. Parker went on to win three national championships in 40 years with the Terriers.
Johnson and members of the United States team after a victory over Finland in the 1976 Olympics.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Growing up in Minneapolis, Johnson coached Midgets when he was 13 and local high school teams when he was in college. His son Mark said: “He was first and foremost a teacher. His instincts in coaching came from teaching.”
Johnson taught high school history using a hockey stick as a pointer, earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in physical education from Minnesota, his alma mater, and left Wisconsin as a tenured professor.
“He was always hungry to learn,” said George Gwozdecky, a player on the 1977 Wisconsin title team, who later won two N.C.A.A. championships as a coach at Denver University.
Nicknamed Hawk by his early Wisconsin players for the prominent nose that he tugged constantly, Johnson picked up the sobriquet Badger Bob from his players on the 1976 United States Olympic team for his love of Wisconsin hockey and his rah-rah style.
Steve Alley, a freshman forward on the 1973 title team at Wisconsin, said the secret to Johnson’s success was “one big thing — a tremendously positive attitude.”
“No human being who ever lived had a more positive attitude than Bob Johnson,” Alley said.
Always eager to be challenged, Johnson left Wisconsin after the 1982 season to coach the Calgary Flames. Goalie Wayne Thomas, who went on to play nine seasons in the N.H.L. after playing two for Johnson at Wisconsin, said it had taken “a lot of courage” for him to leave the college game.
Johnson brought along his unusual techniques, including having players lie on the floor of a hotel ballroom and close their eyes while he conducted a visualization exercise. Or outlining a rink with tape on the locker room carpet and explaining plays by moving around pucks, his players denoted by their pictures on the pucks.
“You just didn’t get coaches like that at the N.H.L. level back then,” Bourque said.
Johnson’s influence remains strong on Mario Lemieux, who was in his seventh N.H.L. season during Johnson’s one year with the team. Lemieux, now the Penguins’ owner, credited Johnson with influencing everything from the team’s community outreach programs to its branding and marketing campaigns, which include “It’s a Great Day for Hockey.”
In the team’s recently released 50th anniversary documentary, “Pittsburgh Is Home: The Story of the Penguins,” Lemieux praised Johnson for teaching him how to approach the game, and how to win.
“He’s affected all of us throughout our careers,” he said. “And that certainly stayed with all of us who had a chance to have him as a coach.”
Such was Johnson’s impact that his name was engraved on the Stanley Cup after his death, when the Penguins won again in 1992 with many of his same players.
Bourque said much of the way the organization operated was still a reflection of Johnson’s ideals and passions.
“People still talk about him all the time,” he said. “It’s like he never left.”
Josh Rogin reports on the coming rocky relationship between the U.S. and the United Nations:
Even before Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, Congress is planning to escalate the clash over the U.N. Security Council’s anti-Israel resolution into a full-on conflict between the United States and the United Nations. If Trump embraces the strategy — and all signals indicate he will — the battle could become the Trump administration’s first confrontation with a major international organization, with consequential but largely unpredictable results.
Immediately after the Obama administration abstained Friday from a vote to condemn Israeli settlements as illegal, which passed the Security Council by a vote of 14 to zero, Republicans and Democrats alike criticized both the United Nations and the U.S. government for allowing what Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) called “a one-sided, biased resolution.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee for the State Department and foreign operations, pledged to lead an effort to withhold the U.S. funding that makes up 22 percent of the U.N.’s annual operating budget.
“The U.N. has made it impossible for us to continue with business as usual,” Graham told me right after the vote. “Almost every Republican will feel like this is a betrayal of Israel and the only response that we have is the power of purse.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, never shy about working with Republicans against the Obama administration, told Graham: “Please stand with us, it’s time to take the gloves off,” according to Graham.
In the days since the vote, three Republican senators and their staffs have been working up options behind the scenes for how to convert their threat into action: Graham, Ted Cruz (Tex.) and Tom Cotton (Ark.). They believe they will have support for quick Senate action from both Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and incoming Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a strong supporter of Israel.
There are several options under consideration, two senior Senate aides working on the issue told me. Some are considered “micro” options, such as passing a resolution that would bar any funding that might go to implementing the anti-settlement resolution. Other options include withdrawing the United States from U.N. organizations such as UNESCO or passing legislation to protect settlers who are American citizens and might be vulnerable to consequences of the resolution.
Withholding U.S. contributions to the United Nations could be done in different ways. There are discretionary funds Congress can easily cut off, but the bulk of U.S. support is obligatory, mandated by treaties that Congress has ratified, making them de facto U.S. law. Depending on how drastic the funding cuts are to be, Congress may have to pass new legislation to undo some of the obligations.
Senators are also looking at ways to withhold U.S. aid to the Palestinian Authority or perhaps punish the Palestine Liberation Organization representative office in Washington. Republicans in the Senate don’t plan to wait until Trump is actually in office; aides said to expect action as soon as senators return to Washington next week.
“We will make a very strong attempt to do something immediately,” one senior GOP senate aide said. “It is a real moment to reexamine the relationship with the United Nations and what it really does.”
Not all involved agree on whether the effort is simply about pressuring the Security Council to reverse course on the settlements resolution, or to fundamentally challenge a broad range of U.N. practices and reorient the U.S. approach to the United Nations overall.
Rick Santorum, who served in the Senate the last time the United States refused to pay its dues in full, told me that the coming crisis in U.S.-U.N. relations is the perfect chance for those who want to dismantle the organization altogether.
“This has opened up the opportunity for those of us who are very anti-U.N., who think the it has passed its prime, it’s not serving any really good purpose, it’s not helping legitimate governments around the world and it’s outlived its usefulness,” he said. “To the extent we can deconstruct it, the better.”
During the presidential campaign, most observers predicted that if elected, Trump would focus his international-organization ire on NATO, which he often criticized as being obsolete and a burden on U.S. taxpayers. Now, Santorum said, the United Nations could be first up for action.
“The focus will come off NATO and will move squarely onto the U.N.,” he said. “It’s going to be a very raucous time. Barack Obama, with this move, did more damage to the United Nations than he did to Israel.”
Some Republicans in Congress are comparing the coming U.S. response to the anti-settlement resolution to the U.S. opposition in 1975 to a U.N. General Assembly resolution that equated Zionism with racism. U.S. Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan led the U.S. opposition to that resolution and gave a famous speech defending the Jewish state from international persecution. That resolution was eventually repealed.
Other Republican foreign-policy experts see the coming battle as more akin to the effort by then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) to withhold portions of America’s U.N. dues in order to pressure the body into reforms. After years of tension, Helms eventually joined with then-Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) to pass legislation restoring U.S. funding in exchange for a compromise on reforms.
President Clinton signed the Helms-Biden legislation, and the Clinton administration negotiated many but not all of the reforms with U.N. leadership. In January 2000, Helms became the first U.S. senator ever to speak directly to the U.N. Security Council, after the deal was struck.
“The interests of the United States are better served by demanding reform and seeing that reform takes place than by removing our influence from the U.N.,” Helms said at the time. “It may surprise people to know that I advocate the reform of the United Nations, not its abolishment.”
Danielle Pletka, who served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff under Helms, said the lesson of that episode is that taking on the United Nations can be done, but not without costs and the risk of retaliation. The United Nations could stop doing things that the United States sees as important. Allied countries that value U.N. operations will be upset if those programs are affected. Also, the dues don’t go just go away.
“When you don’t pay, it’s like a mortgage, the bill just racks up. At the end of the day, we negotiated with the United Nations, but we paid a tax,” Pletka said. “This is a great opportunity for Donald Trump to show us he can negotiate the art of the deal. The Congress can give him leverage.”There are signs that the Trump administration might be willing to make that deal. Its nominees for secretary of state and U.N. ambassador, Rex Tillerson and Nikki Haley, respectively have no ideological baggage on the issue. Trump himself tweeted that the United Nations “has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad!”
The Security Council’s anti-settlement resolution has opened up a Pandora’s box in Washington, allowing anyone with a grievance against the world body to have their day in the sun. But most in Washington believe that despite the body’s problems, the United States is better off with a functioning United Nations and should seek as much influence there as possible. Congress and the Trump administration must be strategic and thoughtful as they chart out what seems to be an inevitable clash.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 