November 13, 2024

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

America’s Brave Rejection of Globalism will go Down in History

By Bill Wilson

While the public’s desire for lower prices at the grocery store and gas pump and a secure border were at the heart of President Donald Trump’s sweeping victory last week, the election was also an absolute rejection of the left-wing globalist agenda that has wreaked havoc on our country at every level for decades.

On a majority of the top issues for Americans – inflation, immigration, trade, jobs, war, and even guns – Americans were largely aligning with Trump and Republicans for months leading up to this election.

This included a growing number of groups that supported President Joe Biden in 2020, from independents and minorities to young people and suburbanites. It also included the broad, white working-class coalition that got Trump elected the first time in 2016.  

And yet, according to most national polls, Trump was within two to three points of Harris, often a few points behind her. Although conservatives hoped for the best, many were tempering their expectations after the nightmare election of 2020.

Yet, on Wednesday morning it became abundantly clear that the so called ‘nonpartisan’ polls had once again, skewed predictions in Democrats’ favor, underestimated Trump, and failed to capture vast swathes of the electorate.

A red wave began to descend across counties in every single state as Trump secured not only the electoral college but won the popular vote for the first time for a Republican candidate in 20 years. Republicans also swept the Senate and maintained their leadership in the House. Something flipped Tuesday, from the suburbs to cities and small towns, as Americans stood up and said, ‘enough’.

The Nov. 5, 2024, election served as a powerful referendum on the crippling and outright evil clutch of globalism that has held the American economy and culture hostage for decades.

Not only did Democrats lose power at virtually every level of government, but the greedy, destructive ideology of globalism was vehemently rejected in one of the strongest rebukes of centralized power since our nation became a nation. 

The United States is still a new country compared to much of the Western world, and last century exploitative forces sank their teeth into the country at every level of government, media, academia, and culture. The Democrat Party, once branding itself as a party of the working-class, abandoned all pretense that it stood for anything other than the enrichment of wealthy elites.

Globalists sold out the middle-class through nefarious schemes like importing cheap foreign labor to undermine American wages, allowing greedy companies to utilize slave labor overseas while benefiting from the infrastructure American taxpayers paid to keep running, and allowing our country to be taken advantage of by enemies and even allies in global affairs and trade.

They hollowed out our middle class, destroyed any attempt at energy independence, and furthered racist admissions policies that punished our own citizens.

They controlled the press, ensuring that endless streams of propaganda painted a constant smear campaign of President Donald Trump and his allies, including any Democrats who crossed over to join him such as Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

They formed a ruthless cancel culture that encouraged the general public to terrorize and ‘cancel’ conservatives for daring to defer to science over radical gender ideology or question if the United States should continue to remain heavily involved in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Americans who had concerns with, or even simply questions for, the current administration and the radical ideology of gender hysteria, open borders, and globalist foreign policy, were bullied, belittled, and threatened with job loss and violence.

Many Americans decided to stay silent about politics. Suburbanites in liberal hubs like Los Angeles and Boston, moderates, independents, Hispanic and Black voters, young people, groups who could suffer social ostracization, or worse, were bullied into silence. 

Yet, all over the country, supposedly deep blue pockets are showing cracks in the system, with Americans breaking for Trump in larger proportions than last time. 

According to existing exit polls, Trump made a sweeping eleven-point gain with our youngest voters – those under age 25 – going from just 31 percent of their vote four years ago to 42 percent on Tuesday.

Among the broader coalition of young people under age 30, Trump gained seven points, going from 36 percent of their vote in 2020 to 43 percent last week. A bulk of Trump’s support came from young men under age 30, with Trump outright securing their vote by two points, 49 percent to 47 percent.

However, Trump also gained with young women compared to four years ago, despite running against Harris, who targeted her campaign specifically at young women. Harris beat Trump by only 24 percentage points among young women, after Biden beat Trump by 35 points in 2020.

NBC News even admitted that their polling data shows Trump secured more voters under age 30 than any Republican presidential candidate since 2008, reversing a 16-year trend of young people eschewing Republicans.  

Another sweeping victory for Trump was his support among minorities, specifically Latino men and women and Black men. According to exit polls, Trump gained fourteen points with Latinos, going from 32 percent in 2020 to 46 percent on Tuesday.

Trump gained a stunning 19 percentage points with Latino men, going from 36 percent in 2020 to 55 percent this year. This number is very close to the share of white men Trump earned this cycle – 60 percent. 

Among Latino women, Trump also gained, but by less. He is sitting at a sizeable eight-point gain with Latino women compared to 2020, going from 30 percent to 38 percent, just seven points shy of his share of white women this cycle.  

Black voters dropped slightly as a share of the electorate this year, indicating possible reduced interest in supporting Harris. Trump did make some stunning victories with Black men – for example he gained sixteen points with Black men in Pennsylvania – but his share of the Black vote moved up by only a percentage point nationwide compared to 2020. Broken down by gender, Trump gained three points with Black men, winning one in five, and lost two points with Black women.

Trump also gained with independents, securing 46 percent of their vote this year compared to 41 percent in 2020. Moderates moved six points toward Trump as well, going from 34 percent for Trump in 2020 to 40 percent Tuesday.

Trump also made slim but important gains among suburbanites, a three point gain compared to 2020, and lost no ground against Harris among urbanites according to CNN’s exit polls.

Trump also gained five points with union households, going from 40 percent of their vote in 2020 to 45 percent this year.

Even in densely blue states, Trump made tangible inroads. As exit polling stands now Trump lost California by 21 points this year after losing it by 29 in 2020.  He also gained in the liberal bastion of Massachusetts, which he lost by 25 points this year after losing it to Biden by 33 points in 2020. 

The 2024 election also put possible future battleground states into play, with Trump adding enough points in liberal certain states that if the GOP continues to make inroads these states could become battleground states in the next few years.

One example is New Jersey, which Trump lost by a mere six points this year after surrendering it by sixteen points in 2020. Another is New Mexico, which he lost by six points this year, after losing it by eleven in 2020.

By all accounts, a vast number of Americans simply refused to share with pollsters who they intended to vote for, which goes part of the way in explaining the vast gap between pre-election polls and reality.

A swell of new voters also entered the voter pool, encouraged by Trump to reject globalism and put America First again. This strong rejection will go down in history as the voice of the people, and generations to come will benefit from Americans who decided that regardless of an entire political and cultural matrix stacked against them, the Republic was worth it.

Bill Wilson is the former president of Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/11/americas-brave-rejection-of-globalism-will-go-down-in-history/

Cartoon: Cleaning House

By A.F. Branco

Click here for a higher level resolution version.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/11/cartoon-cleaning-house-2/

Trump Appoints Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy To Run Department of Government Efficiency, Promises To Look At Every Inch Of The Budget As Debt Set To Hit $100 Trillion By 2032

By Robert Romano

President-elect Donald Trump announced on Nov. 12 the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Tesla, SpaceX and X.com owner Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, which will exist “outside of government” but will serve an important function monitoring and offering recommendations to the President and the White House Office of Management and Budget for ways to optimize the expenditure of federal taxpayer dollars by the executive but also with what is allocated at the legislative level.

Since 1980, the gross national debt, now $35.9 trillion, has grown 8.8 percent a year on average, breaking largely from its postwar trajectory of 3.5 percent average a year from 1946 through 1979. (During World War II, from 1940 to 1945, it grew an average 30 percent a year). Debt is incurred when expenditures exceed revenues, resulting in the issuance of U.S. treasuries to borrow the difference.

The spending itself is broken into two categories, mandatory spending, which comprises of items like net interest on the debt ($889 billion in 2024), Social Security ($1.45 trillion), Medicare ($839 billion), Medicaid ($567 billion) and so forth, all coming in at $5.05 trillion, comprising nearly 73 percent of the $6.9 trillion total budget.

The other $1.9 trillion is the so-called discretionary spending for all of the departments, agencies and the 3 million non-military personnel, presumably the focus of Musk and Ramaswamy’s efforts, with a view towards reducing redundant personnel, reforming the federal contracting process, rebuilding antiquated systems and eliminating unnecessary programs and regulations — a complete optimization and modernization of the federal government. 

After that, on the mandatory side of the ledger, DOGE presumably would want to reevaluate eligibility for the government’s safety net programs but also to identify areas of waste, fraud and abuse, eking out whatever savings present themselves.

The greatest savings, however, could come from not spending cuts per se, but the return on investment for the government’s $7.3 trillion of intergovernmental holdings of U.S. treasuries — i.e. the trust funds — that at the moment only earned an average interest rate of 4.1 percent, and an effective interest rate of 2.4 percent in 2024, according to the Social Security administration.

That’s not a very good rate of return in today’s economy, and is barely keeping up with inflation, let alone salvaging the shortfalls in the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, which will dry up completely around 2033 according to the Trustees. The problem is low fertility and demographic decline that has resulted in relatively fewer taxpayers to pay into the system.

Barring a turnaround in childrearing — a generational project at best — that means the most “efficient” means of shoring up the trust funds would not be with tax hikes or deferring retirement age, but in increasing the rate of return for the trust funds.

For example, the federal Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) for federal employees has traditionally earned about 6.8 percent a year. If the same exact model were adopted for Social Security, Medicare and other government trust funds, instead of buying useless treasuries, it could resolve the current deficits rapidly, and instead grow the funds to about $12.5 trillion by 2032. Anyone got any better ideas?

The alternatives, some combination of tax hikes and never letting people retire, combined with the debt still continuing to grow astronomically, are not particularly appetizing.

Just looking at the growth of the national debt, if it were to continue growing at 8 percent a year, the national debt would grow to be about $100 trillion by 2032 alone. In the meantime, the economy’s Gross Domestic Product has only grown by 5.5 percent on average since 1980, and along that continued pace, would only equal about $45 trillion.

That would put U.S. debt to GDP at more than 200 percent in just a short eight years. That’s just two more presidential terms. By then the trust funds will be exhausted and who knows what sort of interest rate crisis we might find ourselves in. We’d be on the brink of default by then.

But if anyone can find a way to optimize how the massive federal government allocates resources, when Congress and the presidency have failed for almost a century, perhaps it is Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s DOGE.

Trump has set July 4, 2026 as a deadline for DOGE to complete its work, in time for America’s 250th anniversary, but clearly the work to be done is actually long overdue. We’re on borrowed time, but the DOGE could be just the sort of novel idea that can produce a plan for the President’s budget to be submitted to Congress for adoption — before it is too late. Time’s up.

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

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2024/11/trump-appoints-elon-musk-and-vivek-ramaswamy-to-run-department-of-government-efficiency-promises-to-look-at-every-inch-of-the-budget-as-debt-set-to-hit-100-trillion-by-2032/