1) What Biden's $170 Billion Giveaway to the Teachers Unions Bought
The National Education Association - the largest teachers union in the country - blasted this out everywhere right before the November election:
How did that "investment" turn out? Here are the test results:
What this is telling us is the more money Washington spends on schools, the worse the performance. Good job, Joe.
Just think of how many tens of thousands of kids could have been rescued from failing schools if this $170 billion had gone directly to the parents to choose great Catholic or other private schools in their neighborhood.
Oh, and by the way, how can the kids be expected to learn to spell when the teachers can't?
UP's co-founder Steve Moore was honored to join with a handful of Republican governors and conservative activists to meet with President Trump on Friday to strategize on school choice, tax cuts, and the economy. And to congratulate him on his amazing first week in office.
For the record: we didn't advise him on tariff policy.
We did cheer for his deregulation agenda which he coincidentally(?) calls "Unleashing Prosperity." In his first term, Trump required every agency to remove two old regulations for every new one put in place. This time, he is requiring a TEN to one ratio and that every agency have a net deregulatory annual impact on the economy.
This EO was perfectly named! What a day to be in the Oval Office!
Donald Trump has been firing Biden admin holdovers and has even threatened to replace Jerome Powell as Fed chairman - a move we would favor.
Whether Trump has this authority is unresolved. But in recent years the Supreme Court has inched towards restoring the president's full power to remove executive branch officials - as the footnote in Trump's excellent "You're Fired!" letter to NLRB Democrats explains.
During a recent Federalist Society meeting, the legal experts agreed that the next mega issue for the Supreme Court to decide will be this one, as explained by Francis Menton:
Humphrey's Executor is the key Supreme Court case addressing the following question: Can the President fire anybody and everybody in the federal bureaucracy whom he wants to fire, effective immediately, no questions asked? This is a rather important question...
Given that the Constitution vests all of the "Executive Power" in the President, aren't such restrictions on his power unconstitutional?
This is where Humphrey's Executor comes into the mix. The facts of the case arose in 1933 -- early in Franklin Roosevelt's first term as President -- and the case was decided by the Supreme Court in 1935. Humphrey was a Commissioner of the FTC, appointed by prior President Herbert Hoover to a seven-year term, that would then continue throughout Roosevelt's first administration. Roosevelt wanted to get rid of Humphrey, but the FTC statute at the time provided (as it still provides today) that Commissioners could only be removed for "inefficiency, neglect off duty, or malfeasance in office." So Roosevelt just ignored the statutory restriction and fired the guy. Humphrey sued. (He died while the case was pending, and the case for his pay was then continued by his executor, which is why the case goes by the name of Humphrey's Executor.)
The Supreme Court held, in one of its most bizarre opinions ever, that Humphrey was improperly fired and that his estate was entitled to its back pay... The Court's logic turns on the idea that the power of an FTC Commissioner is not "executive" in nature, even though the Commissioners have the authority to execute and enforce the laws. The opinion makes no sense whatsoever. However, it has never been overruled, and stands today as Supreme Court precedent. I'll be surprised if even the crazy liberals on today's Supreme Court are ready to uphold this case.
Doesn't it seem like just yesterday that green activists were assuring us that offshore wind was going to replace fossil fuels as the energy source of the future? Never mind.
According to Carboncredits.com: "over the past two years, the average cost of offshore wind projects has risen by 30% to 40%, reaching $230 per megawatt hour."
Inflation, supply chain disruptions, and high interest rates have further exacerbated the financial strain.
Equinor, a leading player in renewable energy, recently withdrew from offshore wind projects in Vietnam, Spain, and Portugal, citing unsustainable costs…
Similarly, Shell, another energy giant, is scaling back its offshore wind ambitions. Shell sold its stakes in projects across Massachusetts, South Korea, Ireland, and France.
5) LAFFER and NELSON: America on the Cusp of Tremendous Positive Change
UP co-founder Art Laffer and board of directors member Lisa Nelson of ALEC note that Republicans control not just the major levers of power in the federal government, but most of the states as well. This creates a rare opportunity for positive change:
The divisions of left vs. right, red vs. blue, are very real. So far, the red side appears to be in the lead. As of noon on Jan. 20, six of the seven citadels of power are led by the right. The Republican Party holds the presidency and Congress. A majority of the U.S. Supreme Court are Bush & Trump appointees. In the states, 27 of the 50 governors are Republicans, and representatives of the party of Lincoln occupy 55.56% of all state legislative seats and make up the majority in 57 of 99 state legislative chambers. That places our nation on the cusp of momentous change.
It's been done before. Welfare reform, which the Gingrich-era Congress forced President Clinton to make law, has been the most successful domestic public policy change of the past 50 years. Why couldn't we find the same success if we choose to reforge our educational systems, reform our tax structure or revamp a health care system that is ripe for makeover?
