Fox News contributor George Will says GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will not release his tax returns because they may show “he is deeply involved in dealing with Russia oligarchs.”
The claim — which Will could not support with any tangible proof — was made to Bret Baier on Fox News’s “Special Report” live from the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Monday night. The topic was raised after some Democratic Party officials, including presumptive Democratic presidential nomineeHillary Clinton‘s campaign manager, Robby Mook, attempted to connect the Republican presidential nominee to a leak of Democratic National Committee (DNC) emails.
The Friday release by WikiLeaks of those emails, which appear to show an effort by DNC officials to lead a campaign against Clinton’s primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders(I-Vt.), led to the resignation of DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who will step down after the convention.
“Both the campaign chair and anybody you talk to, including Sen. [Chris] Murphy [D-Conn.] would not go down that road once pressed on the connection between Russia and the Trump campaign,” said Baier. “But they have thrown it out there. George?”
“Well, it’s the sort of thing we might learn if we saw the candidate’s tax returns,” Will responded. “Perhaps one more reason why we’re not seeing his tax returns — because he is deeply involved in dealing with Russian oligarchs and others. Whether that’s good, bad or indifferent, it’s probably the reasonable surmise.”
Will was not making an out-of-the-ether statement. Josh Marshall says:
Over the last year there has been a recurrent refrain about the seeming bromance between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. More seriously, but relatedly, many believe Trump is an admirer and would-be emulator of Putin’s increasingly autocratic and illiberal rule. But there’s quite a bit more to the story. At a minimum, Trump appears to have a deep financial dependence on Russian money from persons close to Putin. And this is matched to a conspicuous solicitousness to Russian foreign policy interests where they come into conflict with US policies which go back decades through administrations of both parties. There is also something between a non-trivial and a substantial amount of evidence suggesting Putin-backed financial support for Trump or a non-tacit alliance between the two men. …
Let’s start with the basic facts. There is a lot of Russian money flowing into Trump’s coffers and he is conspicuously solicitous of Russian foreign policy priorities.
I’ll list off some facts.
1. All the other discussions of Trump’s finances aside, his debt load has grown dramatically over the last year, from $350 million to $630 million. This is in just one year while his liquid assets have also decreased. Trump has been blackballed by all major US banks.
2. Post-bankruptcy Trump has been highly reliant on money from Russia, most of which has over the years become increasingly concentrated among oligarchs and sub-garchs close to Vladimir Putin. Here’s a good overview from The Washington Post, with one morsel for illustration …
Since the 1980s, Trump and his family members have made numerous trips to Moscow in search of business opportunities, and they have relied on Russian investors to buy their properties around the world.“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son, Donald Jr., told a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
3. One example of this is the Trump Soho development in Manhattan, one of Trump’s largest recent endeavors. The project was the hit with a series of lawsuits in response to some typically Trumpian efforts to defraud investors by making fraudulent claims about the financial health of the project. Emerging out of that litigation however was news about secret financing for the project from Russia and Kazakhstan. Most attention about the project has focused on the presence of a twice imprisoned Russian immigrant with extensive ties to the Russian criminal underworld. But that’s not the most salient part of the story. As the Times put it,
“Mr. Lauria brokered a $50 million investment in Trump SoHo and three other Bayrock projects by an Icelandic firm preferred by wealthy Russians “in favor with” President Vladimir V. Putin, according to a lawsuit against Bayrock by one of its former executives. The Icelandic company, FL Group, was identified in a Bayrock investor presentation as a “strategic partner,” along with Alexander Mashkevich, a billionaire once charged in a corruption case involving fees paid by a Belgian company seeking business in Kazakhstan; that case was settled with no admission of guilt.”
Another suit alleged the project “occasionally received unexplained infusions of cash from accounts in Kazakhstan and Russia.”
Sounds completely legit.
Read both articles: After his bankruptcy and business failures roughly a decade ago Trump has had an increasingly difficult time finding sources of capital for new investments. As I noted above, Trump has been blackballed by all major US banks with the exception of Deutschebank, which is of course a foreign bank with a major US presence. He has steadied and rebuilt his financial empire with a heavy reliance on capital from Russia. At a minimum the Trump organization is receiving lots of investment capital from people close to Vladimir Putin.
Trump’s tax returns would likely clarify the depth of his connections to and dependence on Russian capital aligned with Putin. And in case you’re keeping score at home: no, that’s not reassuring.
4. Then there’s Paul Manafort, Trump’s nominal ‘campaign chair’ who now functions as campaign manager and top advisor. Manafort spent most of the last decade as top campaign and communications advisor for Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian Ukrainian Prime Minister and then President whose ouster in 2014 led to the on-going crisis and proxy war in Ukraine. Yanukovych was and remains a close Putin ally. Manafort is running Trump’s campaign.
5. Trump’s foreign policy advisor on Russia and Europe is Carter Page, a man whose entire professional career has revolved around investments in Russia and who has deep and continuing financial and employment ties to Gazprom. If you’re not familiar with Gazprom, imagine if most or all of the US energy industry were rolled up into a single company and it were personally controlled by the US President who used it as a source of revenue and patronage. That is Gazprom’s role in the Russian political and economic system. It is no exaggeration to say that you cannot be involved with Gazprom at the very high level which Page has been without being wholly in alignment with Putin’s policies. Those ties also allow Putin to put Page out of business at any time.
6. Over the course of the last year, Putin has aligned all Russian state controlled media behind Trump. As Frank Foer explains here, this fits a pattern with how Putin has sought to prop up rightist/nationalist politicians across Europe, often with direct or covert infusions of money. In some cases this is because they support Russia-backed policies; in others it is simply because they sow discord in Western aligned states. Of course, Trump has repeatedly praised Putin, not only in the abstract but often for the authoritarian policies and patterns of government which have most soured his reputation around the world.
7. Here’s where it gets more interesting. This is one of a handful of developments that tipped me from seeing all this as just a part of Trump’s larger shadiness to something more specific and ominous about the relationship between Putin and Trump. As TPM’s Tierney Sneed explained in this article, one of the most enduring dynamics of GOP conventions (there’s a comparable dynamic on the Dem side) is more mainstream nominees battling conservative activists over the party platform, with activists trying to check all the hardline ideological boxes and the nominees trying to soften most or all of those edges. This is one thing that made the Trump convention very different. The Trump Camp was totally indifferent to the platform. So party activists were able to write one of the most conservative platforms in history. Not with Trump’s backing but because he simply didn’t care. With one big exception: Trump’s team mobilized the nominee’s traditional mix of cajoling and strong-arming on one point: changing the party platform on assistance to Ukraine against Russian military operations in eastern Ukraine. For what it’s worth (and it’s not worth much) I am quite skeptical of most Republicans call for aggressively arming Ukraine to resist Russian aggression. But the single-mindedness of this focus on this one issue – in the context of total indifference to everything else in the platform – speaks volumes.
This does not mean Trump is controlled by or in the pay of Russia or Putin. It can just as easily be explained by having many of his top advisors having spent years working in Putin’s orbit and being aligned with his thinking and agenda. But it is certainly no coincidence. Again, in the context of near total indifference to the platform and willingness to let party activists write it in any way they want, his team zeroed in on one fairly obscure plank to exert maximum force and it just happens to be the one most important to Putin in terms of US policy. …
To put this all into perspective, if Vladimir Putin were simply the CEO of a major American corporation and there was this much money flowing in Trump’s direction, combined with this much solicitousness of Putin’s policy agenda, it would set off alarm bells galore. That is not hyperbole or exaggeration. And yet Putin is not the CEO of an American corporation. He’s the autocrat who rules a foreign state, with an increasingly hostile posture towards the United States and a substantial stockpile of nuclear weapons. The stakes involved in finding out ‘what’s going on’ as Trump might put it are quite a bit higher.
Donald Trump said he never met Vladimir Putin in a news conference Wednesday, contradicting a boast he’d made during the Republican primary debates about getting to know the Russian president.
“He said one nice thing about me. He said I’m a genius. I said thank you very much to the newspaper and that was the end of it. I never met Putin,” Trump said.
Trump, who has complimented Putin before, said that he would treat the dictator “firmly” but have their two countries be “friendly.”
On the GOP debate stage in November, though, Trump bragged about meeting the Russian leader.
“I got to know him very well because we were both on ’60 Minutes,’ we were stablemates, and we did very well that night,” Trump said.
Time reported that for that edition of “60 Minutes,” Trump was interviewed in the United States by CBS host Charlie Rose, who then traveled to Russia to interview Putin. The two appeared on the same segment of the long-running docu-series.
Trump contradicted something he previously said? Insert shocked face here!
This is from the final, and arguably worst, episode of the original “Star Trek,” in which Captain Kirk and a woman who bears some personality resemblance to Hillary Clinton switched bodies. Really.
Wait! There’s more! Sean Davis focuses on the most controversial statement of Trump’s news conference:
After taunting Hillary Clinton by asking Russian hackers to release 30,000 e-mails she deleted, Donald Trump finally forced Clinton’s campaign to admit that her unsanctioned e-mail server scheme was a “national security issue.” …
Trump’s comments about Russian hacking followed numerous reports this week that Russian hackers compromised the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) servers and then leaked thousands of e-mails sent by top Democratic staffers. DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz was forced to resign her position as a result of the leaks. …
On Wednesday morning, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump asked Russia to turn over the tens of thousands of e-mails deleted by Hillary Clinton. The scandal-plagued former Secretary of State maintained for months that the e-mails were personal, not work-related, and that they were in no way classified.
But in a press release issued on Wednesday, Clinton’s top campaign spokesman suddenly declared those e-mails to be a “national security issue”:
This has to be the first time that a major presidential candidate has actively encouraged a foreign power to conduct espionage against his political opponent. That’s not hyperbole, those are just the facts. This has gone from being a curiosity, and a matter of politics, to being a national security.
Contrary to Sullivan’s assertion about the unprecedented nature of Russian meddling in U.S. elections, former U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) begged the Soviets to help him get rid of President Ronald Reagan in 1984.
You can certainly tell that the Democrats are increasingly rattled about the Wikileaks of Democratic National Committee emails. The Washington Post reports:
Activists and campaign officials, anxious about what leaks may be yet to come, also worried about the alleged involvement of the Russian government, with campaign officials suggesting that the Kremlin was releasing the documents to damage Clinton’s candidacy. National security experts, while cautious about leaping to premature conclusions, warned of the possibility of a significant escalation in an ongoing information war.
If the Russians were behind the leaks, said former CIA director Michael Hayden, “they’re clearly taking their game to another level. It would be weaponizing information.” He added: “You don’t want a foreign power affecting your election. We have laws against that.”
On Monday, the FBI formally acknowledged that it is looking into the DNC hack. The agency has been probing the matter for months and on Monday said publicly that it will “investigate and hold accountable those who pose a threat in cyberspace.” The FBI announcement followed the stunning allegation by the Clinton campaign Sunday that the Russian government was behind the release of damaging documents on the WikiLeaks website as part of a ploy to help Republican nominee Donald Trump.
Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, called the suggestions “absurd” and suggested that Democrats were looking to shift attention away from damaging information about the party’s conduct during the primary campaign.
On Monday, fallout from the hack also reverberated at the Kremlin, where a spokesman declined to comment on the hack except to refer reporters to comments by Trump’s son, Don Jr., calling the allegations part of a pattern of “lie after lie.”
“Mr. Trump Jr. has already strongly responded” to the Clinton campaign’s claims, the Russian spokesman said, according to the news agency Tass.
The founder of WikiLeaks and its current top editor, Julian Assange, told the Democracy Now radio show Monday that he would not discuss the source of the data.
“In relation to sourcing, I can say some things. (A), we never reveal our sources, obviously. That’s what we pride ourselves on. And we won’t in this case, either. But no one knows who our source is.” Assange has said the release Friday was the first in a series. …
The email releases continued to cause anxiety among Democratic officials as the party gathered for its convention in Philadelphia.
Most unnerving to activists here is the uncertainty over what may come next.
Former Senate majority leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) told The Post that his email account was hacked recently, but he said he had no indication that the hack originated overseas or was a matter of concern to law enforcement.
Former White House chief of staff William M. Daley, attending the convention, called the Russian hack of DNC emails “pretty frightening.”
Given Russia’s sophistication in this realm, Daley said that it would be reasonable to conclude that President Vladimir Putin and his government are behind the email leak in an effort to undermine Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.
“I don’t think anybody would be surprised if Putin would try to affect the election,” Daley said in an interview Monday. “That’s like the old ‘Casablanca’ — there’s gambling in the casino. It doesn’t surprise me at all. Period. I think anybody who dismisses that is living in fairy land here.”
An idiot writer for Slate (but I repeat myself) claimed that the DNC email hack was worse than Watergate, and said the way to defeat Putin and the Russians was to vote for Hillary Clinton. That assertion contains enough hypocrisy to sink a battleship, identified by David French:
It’s hard not to resist schadenfreude, but we must. After all, this is the same progressive movement that mocked Mitt Romney’s accurate declaration of Russia’s ambitions and intentions during the 2012 election. But now that the DNC is under siege, we face a national emergency. Better late than never, I suppose. On the list of threats to our national interests, I’d rank the DNC hack well below Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, annexation of the Crimea, threats against NATO-allied Baltic states, and aggressive assertions of power in the Middle East, but meddling in American presidential politics is serious nonetheless.
And it’s a matter of concern that the Putin government may view Trump favorably enough to intervene on his behalf to humiliate his opponent. It’s fair to wonder, what does Putin either like about Trump or hate about Hillary? Or is Putin merely seeking to cause chaos, and the DNC servers were a target of opportunity? Spare me any explanation that Putin would ratchet up international tensions merely because Trump “respects” him or has said nice things about him. Putin is a cold-eyed calculator who plays an old-school great power political game — from the line of thinking that says that nations don’t have “friends,” only interests. If Putin is intervening in the American election, he’s pursuing Russian interests, not Trump interests. But why?
Add the Wikileaks data dump to interesting research indicating that at least some online pro-Trump Twitter accounts appear to be Russian in origin (this isn’t news to those of us who’ve been targeted by the alt-right — it’s plain that many of those accounts aren’t American), and the concern should only grow. Again, I don’t claim to know why Putin seems to be intervening to aid Trump, only that for now that appears to be the Russian strategy. If the goal is sheer disruption, however, then he could shift his fire at any time. If the goal is to truly aid Trump, I’d be surprised if this was the last Russian surprise of the election.
But at least now — on this one thing — most progressives and conservatives are united. Putin’s Russia is, in fact, a geopolitical threat.
The Washington Post reminded us last year that “It’s been over five years since the United States and Russia vowed to ‘reset’ their relationship.”
On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, one country, and one authoritarian, was on everybody’s lips: Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
It was July 2016, sure, but it was also August 2008, when Democrats held their quadrennial convention in Denver against the backdrop of war between Russia and Georgia. Having been out of the White House for almost eight years, and energized in opposition to George W. Bush’s foreign policy, the donkey party had confident ideas about how to handle Putin.
“In recent days, we’ve once again seen the consequences of [Bush’s foreign policy] neglect with Russia’s challenge to the free and democratic country of Georgia,” soon-to-be Vice President Joe Biden said in his convention speech. “Barack Obama and I will end this neglect. We will hold Russia accountable for its actions, and we’ll help the people of Georgia rebuild.”
Former Secretary of Defense William Perry, a foreign policy advisor for Candidate Obama, insisted that “Russia really wants respect…We start off by treating Russia with respect.” And Obama himself vowed to “renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can…curb Russian aggression.”
Needless to say, Russian aggression during the Obama era has been anything but “curbed”—Putin annexed Crimea under military threat, and continues to be involved in low-level skirmishing in Ukraine. “Treating Russia with respect,” in the form of abandoning a planned NATO missile shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, didn’t put a dent in Putin’s scheming, particularly in the countries under question: Russian intelligence and state-owned entities have been pouring into former Warsaw Pact countries, effectively turning the once-free country of Hungary into a client state.
Hillary Clinton, as secretary of state, teamed up with President Obama and Vice President Biden on a “reset” of Washington-Moscow relations, betting that newly installed President Dmitry Medvedev would prove to be a more willing diplomatic partner. Clinton even presented her counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with a bright red reset button in 2009. And no, I’m not making that up …
Conducting good foreign policy is hard, quickly exposing the limits of American omnipotence. But as the Democratic Party power structure cranks up for some full on Russia-baiting against both Donald Trump and Wikileaks, it’s worth remembering that very selling proposition of its presidential nominee is her experience conducting foreign policy, and that her track record with Russia was at best naïve and ineffectual. Democrats made the fatal mistake of believing their own campaign bluster, including the narcissistic notion that being different than George W. Bush was enough to be better.
Yes, the U.S. failures against Russia (as well as all our other foreign policy failures) are solely the responsibility of Obama and his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who we are to believe will be the tougher of the two candidates against Russia. The truth is neither Clinton nor Trump — and I’m pretty sure not Gary Johnson either — can adequately take on our new old enemy Russia.
Just like last week, I will be on WBEL radio, which calls itself The Big 1380, on Big Mornings with Ted Ehlen Friday at 6:45 a.m. Just like last week, thanks to the Internet, you can listen, if you dare, online here. Just like last week, WBEL is near Domenico’s, delivering excellent Italian food since 1973.
My lack of faith in voters getting the Nov. 8 election correct (which would mean voting for neither Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump) makes me doubt Ben Shapiro‘s first sentence, but the rest is correct:
Hillary Clinton is in serious trouble.
She’s not in trouble because of the massive competence of Donald Trump. She’s in trouble because she is terrible at the game her husband invented: the game of “who cares more about people like you.” In March 1992, Bill Clinton met a member of an AIDS-activism group at an event at a nightclub in New York City. Attacked by the activist for not doing enough for AIDS victims, Clinton famously responded, “I feel your pain, I feel your pain.” Clinton’s false empathy led him from victory to victory; he defeated the out-of-touch George H. W. Bush and crushed the oddly self-referential Bob Dole.
But Bill Clinton’s wife is one of the least empathy-driven candidates in the history of politics. She’s manipulating, cynical, and nasty. She’s instinctively defensive, brutally cutting, and utterly cold.
The polls show it.
This week’s CNN poll demonstrated that 68 percent of Americans consider Hillary dishonest, and 54 percent think she’s running for personal gain. Fifty-five percent view Hillary unfavorably overall; but only 52 percent view Trump unfavorably. Just 47 percent think he’s running for personal gain.
A majority of Americans think Trump is running to help America. They think Hillary is running to help Hillary.
That’s Hillary’s fault.
But more important, it’s Barack Obama’s fault, and the Left’s fault.
Barack Obama has been a highly unsuccessful president by any objective measure. His foreign policy has led to the single most explosive rise in terrorism since the empowerment of al-Qaeda in the late 1990s by Hillary’s husband. His last two years have been plagued by a national increase in violent crime, particularly murder in major cities. The economy has continued to stall under his redistributionist, anti-capitalist watch.
And the Democrats have paid the price. The media that built Obama into a godhead for racial progress couldn’t abandon Obama; instead, they kept happy-talking their way through an increasingly dystopian America. So did Obama’s fellow Democrats. The result: massive Republican gains at the state and local level, and historic elections in 2010 and 2014 in Congressional races.
The media still can’t escape the Obama trap. When Donald Trump rightly pointed out a series of problems facing America at home and abroad, ranging from rising crime and economic malaise to the rise of jihadism, the media and the Obama administration responded by pooh-poohing Trump’s critique. No, they said, Trump’s wrong: Everything’s hunky-dory. He’s just being too “dark.”
Except he isn’t. And Americans know that.
Hillary knows it too, but she’s stuck in a bind.
Obama trapped her. Early in her campaign, Hillary seemed to want to break with Barack Obama’s presidency. She recognized that while Obama was personally popular, his tenure had largely been seen as a failure by a dissatisfied American republic. She therefore pursued twin goals: tying herself to Obama’s “first black president” legacy and big-government growth, and avoiding the consequences of his rotten decision-making.
By first delaying a decision from Vice President Joe Biden about whether Biden would run, the Obama White House forced Hillary into full-scale obeisance to the Obama era. That’s been disastrous for Hillary. Her convention week has completely ignored the serious problems that keep most Americans up at night. There have been five jihadist attacks in Europe in the last eleven months. On the first day of the convention, 61 speakers mentioned ISIS precisely zero times. That same day, ISIS beheaded an 86-year-old priest in Normandy, France. Over the past few weeks, Americans have mourned over a wave of anti-cop massacres. So Hillary is now trotting out the “Mothers of the Movement” — Black Lives Matter activists including the mother of attempted cop-killer Michael Brown — to promulgate myths about police racism.
Hillary doesn’t take Americans’ concerns seriously. She doesn’t feel their pain.
She feels her own pain.
Hillary’s pathetic self-indulgence leads her to moan about her plight even as the media fête her. On Sunday, Hillary complained about her victimhood at the hands of the brutal vast right-wing conspiracy: “I often feel like there’s the Hillary standard, and then there’s the standard for everybody else.” Scott Pelley of CBS News, who was purportedly interviewing her, then followed up by asking, “Why do you put yourself through it?”
Hillary’s answer: “ ’Cause I really believe in this country.”
Nobody believes that for a heartbeat. Not when she’s dismissing the problems of Americans in order to pander to Cecile Richards of Planned Parenthood or remind Americans of the importance of transgender bathrooms.
Now, Hillary believes that she can succeed by labeling Trump arrogant and self-centered. But Americans already know he’s arrogant and self-centered. They think he’s out to help blue-collar Americans, that he’s ready to protect them from the vicissitudes of the global economy and the evils of crime. Americans have no idea why Hillary Clinton is running.
This they do know: She doesn’t share their priorities.
But she’s trapped now. Barack Obama is her greatest asset, but he’s also her greatest liability. When Michelle Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention to the plaudits of the media, she painted a rosy picture of America. Hillary’s going to have to do the same in order to defend the Obama program. But that program means nothing without Obama at the head of it, as former majority leader Harry Reid and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi have found out.
In the end, that could be Obama’s final revenge on Hillary: not helping to deny her the nomination, but forcing her to go down fighting for his priorities, even as the American people increasingly come to believe she doesn’t care about theirs.
Five years ago this summer, Wisconsin’s budget-repair law, better known as Act 10, went into effect. The legislation, which significantly curtailed collective-bargaining rights for public employees, was a signature part of Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to close the state’s $3.6 billion budget deficit. It sparked chaos in Madison: Tens of thousands of protesters occupied the capital. Fourteen Democratic state senators fled across state lines in an effort to stop the bill from passing. When it became law anyway, opposition culminated in a failed effort to recall Gov. Walker in 2012.
Looking at the law’s results half a decade later, it is safe to say that it was worth the trouble. Wisconsin’s example ought to embolden reformers everywhere: It’s possible to reform spending on public employees without damaging the quality of services.
Act 10 has saved taxpayers $5 billion since June 2011, according to the John K. MacIver Institute, a free-market think tank in Madison. Local school districts, government agencies and municipalities have acquired more affordable health-care plans, allowing them to put money into classrooms and critical services. Even Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Gov. Walker’s opponent in the 2012 recall election, used Act 10 to save his city nearly $20 million.
Because the law’s financial benefits have always been indisputable, Democratic lawmakers and teachers unions instead claim that Act 10 has led to increased class sizes and teacher shortages. A 2011 attack ad from a union-funded group claimed, without evidence, that the law was “so devastating that students are without chairs and a government survey found 47 kids in a classroom.” This earned a “false” rating from an independent fact-checker, but similar arguments too often go unchallenged. The top Democrat in the state senate, Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling, claimed only days ago that the “sun is setting on public education.”
A new study from our organization, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, disputes that conventional wisdom. The Institute’s Will Flanders, along with Marty Lueken of the Friedman Foundation, conducted a comprehensive survey of Act 10’s effect on teachers’ age, experience, salary and benefits, as well as classroom size. Using data from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and the U.S. Education Department, the authors found that dire claims about Act 10 are greatly exaggerated.
For instance, the report shows that the number of students per teacher in Wisconsin has kept pace with surrounding states. Between 2009 and 2013, the ratio in Wisconsin increased by only 0.4 students per teacher, compared with 0.6 in Michigan and Iowa. The average age of Wisconsin teachers dropped 1.7 years between 2011 and 2014, and their average experience declined by three-quarters of one year. Hardly a radical undermining of the Badger State’s public schools.
The average teacher’s base salary did decline by $2,095, or 3.8%, between 2009 and 2014. But Wisconsin teachers’ pay remains above the U.S. average. Besides, thanks to Act 10 school districts have plenty of tools beyond base salary to attract, retain and reward good teachers: signing and retention bonuses, performance-based stipends, and tuition reimbursement for master’s degrees or advanced certifications. When this other compensation is included, Act 10 had no discernible effect on pay when compared to surrounding states.
Opponents of Act 10 have been quick to assert that the law led to a decline in the number of teachers in the state. But Wisconsin was already losing teachers before it was implemented. Between 2008 and 2011, the number of fully licensed teachers in the state shrank by 2.2%. Since 2012 the figure has dropped only 0.1%. Over the years the decline in teachers has roughly tracked the decline in student enrollment caused by an aging population with fewer children.
Public unions will continue to use anecdotes to suggest that Act 10 represented a death knell for Wisconsin schools. But the evidence tells another story. The law’s critics, who blame it for every negative trend in Wisconsin education over the past five years, will have to explain why many of the same changes occurred in Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota and Iowa—neighboring states without similar laws.
The results validate Gov. Scott Walker, his allies in the legislature and the millions of conservatives who rallied to support their cause. Wisconsin’s story should encourage other governors who face increasing budget pressure to reform ballooning pensions and benefits for public employees. Many may have looked to the backlash in Wisconsin and decided the fight wasn’t worth it. But as time passes, it becomes more clear than ever that it was.
Joel Pollak read the leaked emails between the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, and found out …
After being told for weeks by very concerned liberals and media pundits that Donald J. Trump represents the second coming of Adolf Hitler, it is richly ironic to learn that Hillary Clinton’s Democratic National Committee (DNC) planned to target Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for his faith.
(And it is Hilary Clinton’s DNC: Rep. Debbie Waserman-Schultz (D-FL) resigned on Sunday after Wikileaks revealed emails showing that the DNC and the media conspired to stop Sanders’s insurgent candidacy.)
In one email, Chief Financial Officer Brad Marshall allegedly said: “It might may (sic) no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.”
Note that at least part of the senior leadership of the Democratic Party presumed a) that the voters of Kentucky and West Virginia are religious bigots; b) that Southern Baptist voters in those states are bigots, perhaps even more so; c) that these groups might have some problem with voting for a Jew; and d) but they would be even more troubled by voting for an atheist.
Forget Donald Trump and his retweets. This is as close to an honest-to-goodness “dog whistle” as you are going to get. The DNC actually contemplated appealing to the presumed prejudices of their own bitter-clinger voters by planting questions in a public forum.
On a day when the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee announced she plans to resign over a disturbing email leak, a new email has surfaced appearing to call outreach to hispanics “taco bowl engagement.” It’s unclear if the email chain or “script” referred to in the email was meant as a response to a picture that Donald Trump had tweeted on Cinco De Mayo that depicted him eating a taco salad and proclaiming his appreciation for latinos. Progressives and conservatives called for more firings on Sunday evening because of the email.
… and then got an immediate DNC response:
A representative with the DNC says the comment that some have perceived to be racist in nature was simply referring to a video. DNC staffer Eric Walker emailed VNL on Tuesday morning saying “The phrase “taco bowl engagement” was referring to a video we put out in response to Trump’s taco bowl tweet. Here’s the video we produced: https://www.facebook.com/democrats/videos/10153916682971943/.” We have linked to the email in question on the right side of this page. There you can also find a link to the full Wikileaks email archive from the DNC. Walker said the staffer who was named in the original email release from Wikileaks has been the subject of “incredibly unfair vitriol.”
The DNC demanded in their email to VNL that our original story be changed or taken down as they claimed “it reads as a grotesque misrepresentation of our staffers comments.” Walker also wanted to know how the story was going to be changed.
Ironic, isn’t it, that the DNC immediately jumped on Trump’s taco bowl tweet (which was, you’ll recall, his holding a taco bowl and proclaiming his love of Latinos on Cinco de Mayo) and then denied the DNC’s own racism by attacking the messenger instead of apologizing for its own message.
This shouldn’t be a surprise, because the Democratic Party has always been full of bigots. The party that ended slavery was not the Democratic Party. The party that enacted Jim Crow laws after the Civil War was the Democratic Party. The dirty little secret about the Progressive Era was the racism of such Democratic heroes as Woodrow Wilson, who, as reported by The Atlantic, “as president … oversaw unprecedented segregation in federal offices.” Franklin D. Roosevelt locked up Japanese-Americans during World War II despite no evidence that Japanese-Americans were threats to the nation. And of course there is U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia), former Ku Klux Klan leader.
In this state, Democrats except for late Rep. Polly Williams (D-Milwaukee) almost universally opposed school choice because teacher unions were more important to Democrats than education of minority children. Democrats refer to the Tea Party by a term that is offensive to conservatives and homosexuals. This week’s Democratic National Convention demonstrates that Democrats now take the side of criminals and against police. And recall Obama’s line about “clinging to their guns and religion”?
Today in 1958, a study by Esso (formerly one of the bazillion Standard Oil companies, now ExxonMobil) reported that drivers drove faster and therefore waste more gas when listening to rock music.
If a driver wastes (however you define that) gas, the oil companies sell more gasoline. It’s unclear to me why the oil companies would consider that to be a bad thing, particularly in the 1950s when cars got all of 12 or so mpg.
Today in 1968, Sly and the Family Stone failed to appear at a free concert in Chicago.
A riot ensued.
Today in 1977, John Lennon did not get instant karma, but he did get a green card to become a permanent resident, five years after the federal government (that is, Richard Nixon) sought to deport him. So can you imagine who played mind games on whom?
Ron Fournier watched day one of the Democratic National Convention so you didn’t have to, and chronicles 30 things, four of which were last week, and 10 of which are between later this week and November:
Hillary Clinton, her advisers, and their allies at the Democratic National Committee watched Donald Trump’s nominating convention in Cleveland with smug satisfaction.
Team Trump had insulted Ohio’s governor, approved a Melania Trump speech that plagiarized Michelle Obama, lied about the plagiarism, and allowed Ted Cruz to expose party divisions in a prime-time speech.
“Hey @Reince,” Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz tweeted GOP chairman Reince Priebus. “I’m in Cleveland if you need another chair to keep your convention in order.”
Schultz reflected the Democratic establishment’s false sense of security. Headed to their convention in Philadelphia, Democrats felt more united than Republicans, better organized, and less vulnerable to the long-term disruption of a populist insurgency.
All hell broke loose.
WikiLeaks released 20,000 emails stolen from DNC computers, proof of the worst-kept secret in Democratic politics: The party worked against socialist-populist Bernie Sanders to ease Hillary Clinton’s path to the nomination. The FBI said it would investigate whether Russia hacked the DNC to influence the U.S. election.
All hell broke loose.
“Lock her up!” chanted Democratic activists in the streets of Philadelphia. These Sanders supporters carried signs and wore T-shirts that called for Clinton’s indictment, channeling those GOP delegates in Cleveland who drew rebukes for defying old rules of political decorum.
Schultz cut a deal with the Clinton team to resign, effective upon the conclusion of the convention. She planned to open and close the gathering with remarks lauding her leadership.
All hell broke loose.
Addressing delegates from her home state of Florida, Shultz chastised an unruly crowd carrying signs reading “Division!” and “EMAILS.” She said, “We know that the voices in this room that are standing up and being disruptive, we know that is not the Florida we know.”
“Shame! Shame! Shame!” crowd members chanted. Schultz scurried out of the room.
Sanders himself tried to prevent a show of disunity on the convention floor,pleading with his supporters to back Clinton. Having promised his followers “a revolution,” he now fed them bitter pragmatism. “Brothers and sisters,” Sanders said, “this is the real world that we live in.”
All hell broke loose.
While the streets filled with a sweaty mass of angry Sanders supporters—mostly young and white and disconnected from the political system—the Clinton team told Shultz she couldn’t address the convention.
Sanders sent his supporters a text message, urging them not to protest on the convention floor.
All hell broke loose.
As the convention came to order, hundreds of Democrats protested outside. “No, no, DNC—we won’t vote for Hillary!”
Inside, Cynthia Hale mentioned Clinton’s name during the opening prayer. Some delegates booed, others chanted for Sanders.
There would be more protests.
Eventually, Clinton likely will regain control of her convention. Like in Cleveland, the desire to defeat a hated enemy will overcome internal differences. The blues will line up against the reds, Wall Street will support both teams, Clinton will win in November, and the status quo will declare victory over change. Populist unrest will broaden and intensify.
Or Trump will win. He won’t keep his promises, because he never does. He won’t make America any greater than it already is. He might make it worse. The status quo will declare victory over change. Populist unrest will broaden and intensify.
Whether it’s Clinton or Trump, historians will note how a billionaire celebrity took over the GOP with an anti-trade, anti-immigration nativism, setting fire to the political playbook that guided campaigns for the last half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st.
Today will be long remembered, too. Sanders couldn’t calm the churning of his supporters and, as in a mutiny aboard a pirate ship, the deckhands have seized control from the captain.
This could be the start of something big inside the Democratic Party. What if, for instance, Sanders’s coalition banded together with Black Lives Matters to create Tea Party-like takeover of the Democratic Party?
People have witnessed disruption in the retail, entertainment, and financial industries—in virtually every institution except for government and politics. In an era of choice and technological efficiency, the American voter is given a binary choice and gridlocked government.
Most Americans want something better than what the Democratic-Republican duopoly crams down their throats.
They’re mad as hell and, as evidenced in Cleveland and Philadelphia, they’re just starting to realize how powerful they are. They don’t need to take it anymore.
Charles Koch is concerned about where business in this country is going, with good reason given one regulation-happy presidential candidate and one anti-free-trade presidential candidate:
I was born in the midst of the Great Depression, when no one could imagine the revolutionary technological advances that we now take for granted. Innovations in countless fields have transformed society and radically improved individual well-being, especially for the least fortunate. Every American’s life is now immeasurably better than it was 80 years ago.
What made these dramatic improvements possible was America’s uniquely free and open society, which has brought the country to the cusp of another explosion of life-changing innovation. But there are dangerous signs that the U.S. is turning its back on the principles that foster such advances, particularly in education, business and government. Which path will the country take?
When I attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1950s, I quickly came to appreciate that scientific and technological progress requires the free and open exchange of ideas. The same holds true for moral and social progress. I have spent more than a half-century trying to apply this lesson in business and my personal life.
It was once widely accepted that progress depends on people challenging and testing each other’s hypotheses. This leads to the creation of knowledge that, when shared, inspires others and spurs the innovation that moves society forward and improves lives. It is a spontaneous process that is deeply collaborative and dependent on the contributions of others. Recall Sir Isaac Newton’s statement that he achieved so much by “standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Scientific progress in seemingly disparate fields creates opportunities for fusion, which is where the greatest innovations often occur. The British writer Matt Ridley has brilliantly described this process as “ideas having sex.” Today, this creation-from-coupling is evident in, for example, the development of driverless cars, which combine advances in transportation and artificial intelligence. When seen through this prism, the opportunities for life-altering innovation are limitless.
Despite our enormous potential for further progress, a clear majority of Americans see a darker future. Some 56% believe their children’s lives will be worse off than their own, according to a January CNN poll. A Rasmussen poll released the following month found that 46% believe America’s best days are behind it. Little more than a third believe better days lie ahead.
I empathize with this fear. The U.S. is already far down the path to becoming a less open and free society, and the current cultural and political atmosphere threatens to make the situation worse: Growing attacks on free speech and free association, hostile rhetoric toward immigrants, fear that global trade impoverishes rather than enriches, demands that innovators in cutting-edge industries first seek government permission.
This trajectory takes the U.S. further away from the brighter future that is otherwise within reach. Resisting calls to exclude, divide or restrict—and promoting a free and open society—ought to be the great moral cause of these times. The most urgent tasks involve the key institutions of education, business and government.
Education in America, and particularly higher education, has become increasingly hostile to the free exchange of ideas. On many campuses, a climate of intellectual conformity has replaced open debate and inquiry, stifling discussion on a host of topics ranging from history to science to economics. Dissenters are demonized, ostracized or otherwise treated with scorn and derision. This disrupts the process of discovery and challenge that is at the root of human progress. Holland embraced this philosophy—best expressed by the phrase “Listen even to the other side”—in the 17th century, contributing to it becoming the most prosperous country in the world at the time.
Similarly, in business the proliferation of corporate welfare wastes resources and closes off opportunity for newcomers. It takes many forms—direct subsidies, anticompetitive regulations, mandates, tax credits and carve-outs—all of which tip the scales in favor of established businesses and industries. The losers are invariably the new, disruptive and innovative entrepreneurs who drive progress, along with everyone who stands to benefit from their work. Just ask the citizens of Austin, Texas, who recently lost access to Uber after a campaign backed by its competitors in the taxi industry.
Government, which often has strong incentives to stifle the revolutionary advances that could transform lives, may be the most dangerous. The state often claims to keep its citizens safe, when it is actually inhibiting increased individual well-being. See, for example, the FDA’s astronomically expensive and time-consuming drug-approval process, which University of Chicago professor Sam Peltzman argues has caused “more sickness and death than it prevented.” These kinds of harmful barriers to life-enhancing advances exist at every level of government.
Unleashing innovation, no matter what form it takes, is the essential component of truly helping people improve their lives. The material and social transformations in my own days have been nothing short of astonishing, with a marked improvement in well-being for all Americans. If the country can unite around a vision for a tolerant, free and open society, it can achieve even greater advances, and a brighter future for everyone, in the years ahead.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 