1) The Bureau of Lame Statistics

One of our favorite economic websites (besides our own, of course) is Issues and Insights, and we love this chart they published showing the errors in the initial monthly jobs reports. This picture really is worth a thousand words and a devastating indictment of the miscounting by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Notice that the errors keep getting larger over time.

This is why EJ Antoni can't get over to the BLS fast enough to fix these wild inaccuracies. Antoni, who has served as one of our most valued members of the UP economics team, promises to get accuracy and honesty in jobs numbers. That's exactly what the country needs and deserves.

2) Trump Declares War on Debanking

The Left and the media claimed that debanking under Biden’s reign of regulatory terror was merely right-wing paranoia. But as more of the facts come out about the scandal of  Operation Chokepoint - Biden’s secretive initiative to force banks to take away banking services from conservative-leaning, but lawful businesses - the more widespread the scandal becomes.

Conservatives and Trump supporters - including both Donald and Melanie Trump as well as certain out-of-favor industries, like gun manufacturers, crypto companies, payday lenders, and the oil and gas and coal producers, were labeled by bank regulators a "reputational risk" because they were regarded as potential enemies of the state. Countless companies and individuals were illegally stripped of their access to banking and financial services like credit cards, checking accounts, and loans.

In short, even the 5,000 (!) federal bank regulators were weaponized against Biden's enemies.

So thank you, Donald Trump for your Executive Order ending debanking for political beliefs.

Banking expert Stephen Gannon points out that even though "debanking is a fundamentally unfair, and even un-American, process, the evidence is now overwhelming that it did, in fact, happen."

The villains here were not the banks. Banks aren't  in the business of turning away customers.

Bank regulators at the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency  "made it clear that if a bank knew what was good for it, it would stop doing business with a particular customer or set of customers."

Trump has just signed a new executive order making this discrimination illegal - which, in a free society, it should be.

Here is the order:

It is the policy of the United States that no American should be denied access to financial services because of their constitutionally or statutorily protected beliefs, affiliations, or political views, and to ensure that politicized or unlawful debanking is not used as a tool to inhibit such beliefs, affiliations, or political views.  Banking decisions must instead be made on the basis of individualized, objective, and risk-based analyses.

3) Liberals Were Against Crime In DC Before They Were For It

Liberals have lined up this week to attack President Trump's putting Washington D.C.'s police department under federal control.  

But it was not long ago leaders on the Left, some of whom live in Washington, were very vocal about the failure of local officials to control crime. In 2023, 33 Democratic senators, including Chuck Schumer, Tammy Baldwin, and Tim Kaine, joined Republicans to overturn D.C.'s criminal code reform, driven by worries that its allowance for early release of some felons would exacerbate the city's already rising murder rate.

A few gutsy Democrats are still speaking out. Anthony Coley, who directed public affairs at the Biden Justice Department from 2021 to 2023, says the city's juvenile arrest record is way too low given how high the juvenile crime rate is, and that the city only employs 3,187 police officers - one of the lowest levels since the 1970s. "If officials in the district don't do something, they may give the president and Congress reason to try to take over even more than they already have," Coley warned.

Liberals now say the crime problem is under control in DC. Too bad DC residents - mostly black - don't agree. A Mary Washington poll earlier this year found that over half of Washington D.C residents rate crime in the city as  "extremely serious" or "very serious"?

4) Let's Get Every Millionaire in the World To Move to the USA

This headline from Europe not long ago caught our attention:

An EU state “cannot grant its nationality – and indeed European citizenship – in exchange for predetermined payments or investments, as this essentially amounts to rendering the acquisition of nationality a mere commercial transaction…”

Wow, that gives the U.S. a wide opening for our own Golden Passport program - something Trump supports. Sell visas for $5 million for millionaires who can pass a security check. America can be like the Los Angeles Dodgers - which has been the dominant baseball team for several years now by buying up all the best players.  

We get the dollars to reduce our deficit and we get the successful people to come here and invest their money here and their businesses will employ tens, if not hundreds of thousands of American workers.  

America can be an all-star team of the greatest entrepreneurs, entertainers, sports stars, business owners, and financiers. The chart below shows that right now we only get about one-quarter of the expatriate millionaires.  

5) Does Anybody Go to the Movies Anymore?

We continue to see the devastation of COVID lockdowns. This time, we see how the decline of moviegoers accelerated due to the lockdowns.  Sure, the trend didn't look good for cinemas before the lockdowns - especially given Hollywood continues to produce woke films that people hate watching. But this is a trend we continue to see throughout the economy, and renews our call to NEVER lock down again!

6) The Democrat’s Ingenious Solution To Reducing Crime

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