1) Could Illegal Immigration Sway Elections in Swing States?
Our friend Jon Sutz has reported in his "Fact Check" blog that illegal immigration numbers have roughly quadrupled in the seven swing states under Biden. Funny how that was allowed to happen. As we’ve noted in previous HOTLINE issues, if even a small fraction of these non-citizens cast ballots in the razor-tight races in these battleground states, it could decide who the next president is.
Our friends at the Phoenix Center have published a compelling study on the Justice Department’s flimsy antitrust case against Apple. The DOJ alleges that “to protect its smartphone monopoly… Apple repeatedly chooses to make its products worse.” Seriously? How can a company expand its market share by making a worse product at a higher price?! The Phoenix Center study rips these “monopoly” charges to shreds and points out that Apple's phones have a high consumer satisfaction rating.
Their overall conclusion is worth reading:
First, Apple is not a monopoly, but competes against many established mobile device manufacturers, with a global market share of less than 30%.
Second, degrading product quality as a means of customer retention is counterintuitive and is belied by high customer satisfaction ratings for Apple products, including by sophisticated enterprise users.
Third, the DOJ's claim regarding Apple's "extraordinary profits" is inconsistent with the evidence--the company's profit margins are not unusually high compared to industry averages.
Fourth, Apple's design choices, absent regulatory intervention, and pricing strategies are uniform globally, contradicting the DOJ's theory that these practices are correlated with market share.
This chart from the paper is also devastating to the government's case, which claims that Apple uses its alleged monopoly to jack up prices. It shows that Apple’s prices are essentially flat and its major competitor, Samsung, has HIGHER prices.
3) Election Night May Turn Into Election Month Before We Know Who Won
The 2024 election may take longer to decide than the drawn-out drama of 2020.
In all seven battleground states, less than a single percentage point currently separates the major candidates. Each one of those states could involve recounts, extensive litigation, and voting irregularities. Mail-in ballots, which represented over 40% of ballots in 2020, are notoriously slow to count and the ballot security measures (or lack thereof) surrounding them are flimsy.
Recall that in 2020, the Associated Press didn't declare Joe Biden the winner until the Saturday after the election, four days later.
Arizona, Michigan, and Wisconsin were called one day after the election.
Nevada and Pennsylvania were called four days after the election.
Georgia was called nine days later.
North Carolina was called ten days later.
And let's not forget that most of us remember the 2000 election, which was not decided for 46 days. It wasn't until the eve of the meeting of the Electoral College in mid-December that George W. Bush was declared the winner of Florida by 531 votes, and thus the next president.
Mayor Pete was caught boasting about how well the Biden Admin’s high-speed rail plans are going.
Really? You be the judge.
Here are the most recent facts on the most expensive high-speed rail program in California from Senator Ted Cruz and Rep. Sam Graves (the top Republicans on the committees of jurisdiction), in a recent letter to Mayor Pete:
Voters were promised that the California High-Speed Rail project would cost the state $33 billion and be completed by 2020.
Fifteen years later, the California High-Speed Rail project The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) still has not completed a single segment of the system, the total estimated cost has ballooned to $128 billion and counting, and there is no expected completion date.
CHSRA has recently focused its efforts on completing a 171-mile segment between Merced and Bakersfield. This segment alone will cost more than $35 billion to serve about two million riders annually.
Great new video from Kite & Key. Crime in American cities can often feel chaotic. But social science research shows ... there are actually pretty clear rules at work.
