Had Enough Yet?

Better Off? Earnings Never Kept Up With Inflation And 8 Million Border Crossings Later, We’ll Find Out On Nov. 5

By Robert Romano

“Simple question: Are you better off now than you were four years ago?”

That was former President Donald Trump’s pitch to voters in Allentown, Pa. on Oct. 29, quoting the oft-repeated adage from Ronald Reagan’s successful 1980 presidential bid that ousted then incumbent President Jimmy Carter.

At the time, the U.S. was in the middle of a recession, with the unemployment rate at 7.5 percent on Election Day and annual inflation at 12.6 percent. The result was a landslide, with Reagan winning 44 states, easily winning the Electoral College, but also picking up 9 seats in the Senate and 34 seats in the House for Republicans.

In 2024, the election will almost certainly be closer but Trump is still seeking to remind voters that their pocket books still have not caught up to the inflation that peaked at 9.1 percent in 2022, unemployment is up almost 1.3 million since Dec. 2022 and that President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have sat idly as millions of illegal aliens have been allowed to come to the U.S. during their tenure in office.

For starters, consumer inflation is up 19.87 percent since Jan. 2021, while median weekly nominal earnings are only up 18.5 percent.

It’s like that across the board. Since Jan. 2021, food prices have increased 22.3 percent, faster than the American people’s incomes, with a weekly reminder every time they go to the grocery store.

Energy is up 29.4 percent as the Biden-Harris administration blocked expansive leasing on federal lands for new oil and gas exploration, despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that disrupted global supply chains.

That includes gasoline, which has increased 38.4 percent since Jan. 2021 after oil production failed to catch up to demand following the Covid recession, not reaching Dec. 2019 levels of 12.9 million barrels a day until July 2023. Today it’s higher than that at 13.4 million barrels a day, but still not enough for prices to return to their earlier levels. 

And electricity, which has increased 23.8 percent since Jan. 2021 as the Biden-Harris administration continues to transition the U.S. economy away from carbon-based electricity without a sufficient offset — on purpose.

In 2008, the U.S. total electric power industry was producing 4.119 billion megawatt hours (MWh), including 1.985 billion MWh from coal, 882.4 million MWh from natural gas and 56.2 million MWh from solar and wind combined, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) shows.

And in 2022, total electricity output was up to 4.230 billion MWh, including 831 million MWh from coal, 1.687 billion MWh from natural gas and 578 million MWh from solar and wind combined.

In the meantime, the U.S. population has increased by more than 30 million to 334.9 million, a 10.1 percent increase. But overall electricity generation has only increased by 2.6 percent. Demand is up, but electricity production has not kept up — by design. The idea is to drive up prices to force the transition to the so-called green economy.

It’s the same story with shelter, with prices for homes and rent up 22.9 percent since Jan. 2021 despite 1.5 million new housing starts every year. The trouble?

Since Feb. 2021, there have been 8.3 million encounters by the U.S. Border Patrol on the southwest border, the most in recorded U.S. history, of which, most were allowed to remain.

For example, in Fiscal Year 2024, of the 2.75 million southwest border encounters, 1.4 million were Title 8 apprehensions, of which only about 309,000 were subjected to expedited removal, about 109,000 were detained pending proceedings and another 139,000 voluntarily returned, with almost all of the rest given a voluntary “notice to appear” for later immigration proceedings. The rest were just caught and released. In other words, about 2.2 million stayed.

And they are competing for scarce housing, despite home construction continuing — but also food and energy and everything else.

The point former President Trump and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) have been making is, they shouldn’t even be here, driving up demand in the first place. And if the American people are not better off because of it, it might not be on the illegal immigrants per se for exploiting the porous border — it might be on Biden and Harris for leaving the door wide open.

Now, is all that enough to overcome the incumbency advantage that Harris possesses in this reelection cycle? First term incumbent parties tend to win reelection about 66 percent of the time regardless of the nominee. A Trump win will say it was but a Harris win might mean the American people have not paid nearly a big enough price in order to change voters’ typical complacency in favor of the status quo as we reach the midpoint of the political cycle. Either way, we’ll find out on Tuesday, Nov. 5. Stay tuned.

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/11/better-off-earnings-never-kept-up-with-inflation-and-8-million-border-crossings-later-well-find-out-on-nov-5/

After Donald Trump Interview On Joe Rogan, Streaming Campaign Beats 60 Minutes

By Rick Manning

“The line it is drawn, the curse it is cast
The slowest now will later be fast
As the present now will later be past
The order is rapidly fadin'
And the first one now will later be last
'Cause the times, they are a-changin'”—Bob Dylan

The 2024 election may very well be viewed similarly to the 1960 presidential election in terms of what matters in influencing voters.

The 1960 presidential election between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon featured the first ever televised presidential debate was viewed on 66.4 million televisions. To put this into context, a total of 68.8 million people voted in that election. Voter turnout increased to the highest level since 1908.

For the next 60 years, television was the kingmaker as polling after the first debate showed that those who watched on television thought Kennedy won and those who listened to it on radio identified Nixon as the winner of the debate.  (Sidenote: If you want to experience how dumbed down our current politics are, listen or watch that debate and remember that half of America stayed tuned to it.)

Television was king. At the University of Southern California in my Media Politics class, the Professor led with the following line, “If you learn nothing else from this class, the only thing you need to remember about media and politics is ‘television, television and television’.”

And that is all I remember from that class. But today the winds have changed, permanently.

Media Research Center just released a report on the bias in ABC, CBS and NBC’s news coverage finding that the average coverage of Kamala Harris was 78 percent positive versus 85 percent negative for Donald Trump.  Given this disparity, if the ‘television’ axiom of old still held true, Trump would be toast, yet the race remains a virtual toss-up with Trump having a slight advantage.

Independent, non-corporate streaming broadcasts now dominate the communications landscape. Donald Trump spending three hours unedited on Joe Rogan’s program matters more than Kamala Harris’ heavily edited twenty minute interview with the once gold standard 60 Minutes. Trump on Rogan got 40 million views in three days on YouTube alone, 60 Minutes got Kamala 5.7 million viewers.

The unstructured streaming show allowed Rogan to have a conversation with Trump giving viewers an opportunity to judge him based upon what they saw, whereas the establishment media broadcast was just another packaged presentation not allowing viewers to see the authentic Harris. 

Allowing people to see and hear unscripted, real Donald Trump was a risk as it made the former president vulnerable to extended scrutiny by viewers, yet it was this very risk that makes the new medium so much more effective. It is safe to assume that many of these viewers had been bombarded with media spin trying to define Trump. By going over the establishment media’s heads, Trump gambled that he would negate their bias by allowing people to make their own minds up. 

In essence, 60 Minutes didn’t matter and the Donald Trump wisely rejected their offer to present their edited version of his interview to the public, instead preferring to take his chances with a longer, unedited, neutral interview.

Rogan combined with Trump’s 100 million views for his interview with Elon Musk on X, and the reported 150 million views for his interview with Tucker Carlson on X demonstrates the mass reach possible outside of over the air or even cable dependence. 

In 2024, Tim Pool, Theo Von, Joe Rogan and Dan Bongino are the new kingmakers in American politics, not the networks and their cable subsidiaries. Unlike the reign of television network news, the streaming influencers are likely to change as new big audience influencers emerge and the streaming publics tastes change. 

But there can be no doubt that the age of television is dead, replaced by entrepreneurs and entertainers who build their own audiences and expose them to politicians as they see fit. It is a brave new and unpredictable world, but it is also a world where politicians will have to demonstrate talent and intelligence as well as a charisma that translates across the Internet without the protection of editing.

And this undoubtedly explains why Joe Rogan had to move his Trump interview onto X after discovering that it was very difficult to find on YouTube. With the well-documented political censorship by Department of Homeland Security and the FBI fresh on our minds, it becomes even more important that Congress aggressively tie the federal government’s hands when it comes to free speech.

Streaming itself will only get more and more prevalent with a reach that dwarfs other media, and stopping government encroachment on these free speech platforms is job one when it comes to securing future political debate.

Will the new media reality always get it right?

No. The success of psychic hotlines on cable television proves that charlatans can do quite well in fooling the public. But, in some ways, it will be refreshing to have voters exposed to the real unedited candidates rather than the shrink wrap version foisted upon the American public by the Democratic Party elites and billionaires in 2024.

The new streaming regime is what government by the people, for the people and of the people looks like, and the end of the establishment media oligarchy is a political revolution that free people should and must embrace.  Cause times they are a changing.

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/11/after-donald-trump-interview-on-joe-rogan-streaming-campaign-beats-60-minutes/

Video: On the Brink

Watch Now: https://www.facebook.com/AmericansForLimitedGovernment/videos/822937355689215

ALG Urges All Americans To Vote

Campaign Expected To Reach 1 Million

Oct. 28, 2024, Americans for Limited Government President Rick Manning today issued the following statement atop a video campaign urging Americans to vote:

“The reason every American who believes in the founding principles of this country must vote is that the soul of America is at stake. Will we be a country that is based on individual liberties or one driven by government mandates? I want to urge people to share these videos and to expand their reach to maximize their impact.”

This Year, Vote: https://www.facebook.com/AmericansForLimitedGovernment/videos/993374399141713/