The latest Biden administration talking point is that "Trump lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs."
Even CNN Fact Checkers have declared this fiction.
The chart below shows this big gain in manufacturing jobs in Trump's first three years before COVID hit. This was in the wake of the Trump tax cut, which among other things allowed companies to expense their capital purchases, which expanded manufacturing output.
Factories deemed "non-essential" were ordered closed during the lockdowns, so you can see from the chart that employment crashed. When Biden took office, we were back up to 12.2 million. We rose to 13 million, but most of the rise was due to come-back jobs. Manufacturing jobs have been flat for two years. That’s not much to crow about.
Among the many "dangers to the Republic" if the Left has their way, is their promise to end the filibuster in the Senate. This is called "the nuclear option." This would allow a Democratic (or Republican) majority to steamroll through legislation with just 51 votes, not 60. It's mob rule that endangers the rights of the minority.
FTR: we were against ending the filibuster when Republicans have had Senate control.
We wanted to call to your attention to a brilliant piece from one of our favorite senators, Mike Lee of Utah, that explains why the 60-vote rule should be sacrosanct:
"Woke" leftists tend to see the Senate's 60-vote cloture threshold not as a prudent protection of minority rights, but as an anti-democratic obstacle to progress. Indeed, former president Barack Obama -- a prolific filibusterer himself during his Senate career -- falsely derided the filibuster rule as a "Jim Crow relic."
The Left seems to see nuking the cloture rule as a pure win for its side, with no tradeoffs or downsides. It's a simple step, they believe, that will lead the United States, at long last, to the broad, sunlit uplands of Scandinavian social democracy...
The true purpose of nuking the filibuster is not to "finally get things done" or to "break through the gridlock" or any other hackish trope parroted by the political press. Rather, it is to allow a Senate majority to pass partisan bills that aren't politically compelling enough to attract bipartisan support. That's not a value judgment; it's a fact.
What the Democrats' "Nuke It!" caucus seems to believe is that such bills -- those popular enough to get 51 Senate votes, but not 60 -- are somehow, by definition, progressive. This is where they veer from theory into fantasy...
But make no mistake: It could be very, very good for many conservative activists and an absolute disaster for the Democratic Party's woke, progressive elite.
Here, in no particular order, is an inexhaustive list of conservative policy reforms that have never had a serious chance to win 60 Senate votes under current rules, but that could very plausibly get 51 in a post-nuclear upper chamber after the next "red wave" election. Among them:
Education reforms embracing school choice, simultaneously rescuing poor families from lousy school bureaucracies and politically declawing left-wing teachers' unions.
Fully funding a border wall and workplace enforcement of immigration laws, including the overdue "E-Verify" system...
Laws to improve America's election security and integrity..
Defunding critical-race-theory boondoggles at federal agencies and federal contractors...
Barring federal aid to cities that defund their police departments.
Turning the District of Columbia -- over which Congress has total legislative authority -- into a working laboratory of conservative policy experimentation...
Further protecting Americans' Second Amendment rights....
Upon reading this, conservatives might now be licking their chops, begging Senate Democrats to hand us this gift. But as gratifying as it would be to see the aforementioned conservative reforms put into law after the next "red wave" election, and as happy as I would be voting for most of them, I still urge my victorious Democratic colleagues to resist the temptation. Partisan advantage aside, it remains the case that nuking the filibuster would still be bad for America.
Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema were the only two Senate Democrats who heroically saved the filibuster two years ago – but both will be gone from the Senate next year
Who among the remaining Senate Ds will vote to preserve it? This is a question that should be asked NOW of every candidate of BOTH parties running for the Senate this year.
3) Media Calls Victorious Freedom Party in Austria "Nazis"
Here we go again. Whenever populists or conservatives win an election, the media attacks the victors as being fascist or authoritarian and opposed to freedom itself.
It happened when Giorgia Meloni won in Italy and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands – both of whom have been governing successfully for many months. In Argentina, Javier Milei was attacked as a dangerous radical before being sworn into office, after a landslide win last December. Since then, his country's economy has stabilized as inflation has plummeted.
Now in Austria. The first-place finish of the "far-right" Freedom Party in Sunday's election has been met with hysterical headlines and warnings. The one from Politico is typical.
In reality, Austria's economy has been in stagnation and the failure to deal with rising numbers of migrants and asylum seekers is why voters have given the Freedom Party its largest percentage ever.
The policy agenda of the Freedom Party is the opposite of fascism. The platform is the most free market ever, and was co-written by Barbara Kolm of the Hayek Institute and a former deputy director of Austria's central bank.
She is in favor of a flat tax, against measures to curb tax competition between nations, ending taxes on capital gains, and imposing tuition fees for Austrian universities. Hardly radical stuff! We hope the Freedom Party will have the chance to prove its critics wrong by actually implementing some of its reforms as part of the new government and seeing them succeed.
The new Harvard Youth Poll says the very youngest voters in this election – 18-to-24-year-olds – are actually more conservative in their views than older young people. It's a rare development for a group of young Americans to be more conservative than their immediate predecessors.
The Harvard poll shows that both men and women aged 18 to 24 identify as more conservative, even though moderates make up the biggest chunk of both genders. And the young women are still to the left of their male peers.
John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, says the youngest voters were hardest hit by COVID lockdowns in schools, feel ignored by the establishment and are worried about their future job prospects.
Those strike us as very sound reasons for young voters to be highly skeptical of big government.
