The last time we had a major pandemic was the flu of 1918-19. But by the early 1920s the economy went on an eight-year economic and financial boom - almost unprecedented in American history. But coming out of the Covid pandemic, the economy has flatlined and incomes have fallen under Bidenomics.
CTUP board member John Childs reminds us in his must-read New York Sun article of recent days why we saw the boom under America’s most underrated president: Calvin Coolidge. Tomorrow, August 2, is the 100th Anniversary of his swearing in as President.
Cal cut the highest income tax from 70% to 25% (blue line) and look at what happened to tax revenues (red line).
If there were ever an example of the Laffer Curve in action it is the roaring ‘20s. And then Hoover and FDR raised taxes back up to 70% and we had a 10-year Depression.
So let us all raise our glasses and toast the anniversary of the Coolidge tax cuts, which unleashed arguably the biggest economic boom in American history.
2) Biden Teaches Us Another Economic Lesson: Inflation Causes Strikes
Yesterday we noted that one reason labor unrest has surged in the last two years is that Biden’s inflation has sunk real wages. Workers are making less money relative to their purchasing power. Rising prices create worker anger and increase support for union action – including strikes.
This recent headline confirms this and things have gotten worse in 2023 as evidenced by the lengthy writers’ strike in Hollywood.
This chart shows that the last time we saw a huge surge in work stoppages was in the late 1960s through 1980 - an era when inflation hit double digits and over 12 years of the decade prices nearly doubled.
Notice that when Reagan and then-Fed chair Paul Volcker took inflation down from 11% to 3% and inflation remained tame for the next forty years, strikes were few and far between. Biden comes in, prices surge and workers demand higher pay. This could be coincidental – but we think not.
3) Oakland Is Yet Another Progressive Crime-Ridden Nightmare
San Francisco gets all the attention for its swift descent into chaos and anarchy, but almost no attention is paid to the equally sad decline of Oakland, a city of 440,000 across the Bay Bridge. And we're not just talking about the city losing its THREE major league sports franchises: the Raiders, Warriors, and Athletics.
Kudos to the Oakland NAACP for sounding the alarm and calling for the city to declare a state of emergency over crime.
"Failed leadership, including the movement to defund the police, our District Attorney’s unwillingness to charge and prosecute people who murder and commit life-threatening serious crimes, and the proliferation of anti-police rhetoric have created a heyday for Oakland criminals," a letter from the group says. It cites incidents in which women were targeted by "young mobs," Asians were robbed in Chinatown, motorists had thieves smash car windows with them often still inside the vehicles, and news crews had their cameras stolen from them while working.
District Attorney Pamela Price – a George Soros-funded soft-on-crime DA - dismissed the group’s letter as a “false narrative.” She defended her decision not to charge nine juveniles, aged 12 to 17, over a recent string of 35 robberies.
Price prohibits her staff from including sentencing enhancements when they charge criminals and orders they offer probation whenever possible. Last month, she told a TV station that “the DA’s role really has no impact on crime” and was instead focused on racial equity issues.
"It is not racist or unkind to want to be safe from crime. No one should live in fear in our city." Says Bishop Bob Jackson of the Acts Full Gospel Church.
4) A Democratic Governor Takes on the Anti-Housing Extremists
One of the common denominators of most Blue states is how difficult they make it to build new housing. In Hawaii, which gave Joe Biden 64% of the vote, the median home price is more than three times the national average (even though the state is losing population to other states), in large part because regulations add between $233,000 to $325,000 to the cost of developing a new home.
Josh Green, the new Democratic governor, says the problem is so dire that he is ignoring the objections of environmentalists and issuing an emergency to suspend a half dozen state and county laws to allow the building of 50,000 housing units. "If anyone says this isn’t an emergency or isn’t a crisis, they don’t know what’s happening in Hawaii,” Green said.
The governor’s order targets “the lengthy and cumbersome planning, zoning and permitting processes” that have made housing so expensive that 20 people a day are leaving a state many used to consider a paradise. The sick joke in Hawaii is that the old NIMBY “Not In My Backyard” anti-housing movement has morphed into BANANA - “Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anybody.”
5) It’s Official: Democrats No Longer Believe in Civil Liberties
Last week we cited a highly-disturbing poll showing that 70% of Democrats believe the government should suppress freedom of speech to root out “misinformation.”
Fortunately, the Senate’s conscience when it comes to protecting our First Amendment rights has Introduced the Protect Americans Against Government Censorship Act.
The legislation would seem to be a no-brainer:
“It is the policy of the Congress that federal employees acting in their official capacity should neither take action within their authority or influence to promote the censorship of any lawful speech, nor advocate that a third party, including a private entity, censor such speech.”
This resolution was necessary because of the revelations that government agencies were trying to bully social media companies like Facebook to censor online speech the Biden Administration didn’t approve of.
This bill has passed the House - but - no Democrats supported it!!
As recently as 10 years ago, this resolution would have passed with near unanimity. Now free speech is a partisan issue. This is VERY un-American and very dangerous.
